“Much Always Wants More”

I Kings 21:1-21A

Third Sunday after Pentecost + June 13, 2010

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Sulking and pouting are among the least attractive human characteristics, yet they are virtually universal. Two and three year – olds often act this way when they don’t get what they want. As parents and grandparents we try our best to teach them this is unacceptable behavior. Of course, some adults, like King Ahab, aren’t above sulking and pouting either.

You just heard the story of why Ahab was behaving like a spoiled child: he couldn’t persuade Naboth to sell him a beautiful vineyard that had belonged to Naboth’s family for generations. Ahab offered to give Naboth an even better vineyard in exchange for it or to pay him its value in money. But Naboth refused to let Ahab have the vineyard at any price.

Before we go any further it’s important to know something about the context of this story which is not immediately apparent to casual modern listeners accustomed to contemporary real estate transactions.

First, land ownership in ancient Israel was not understood the way we understand it in our culture. Laws concerning the use of the Promised Land date back to the book of Leviticus, and are very particular about who is the real owner of the land. In Leviticus 25 God declares, “The land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. If anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property, then the next of kin shall come and redeem what the relative has sold . . .” (Leviticus 25:23-25)

The care of inherited property was seen as a religious obligation. To sell one’s family property to anyone you pleased was not a commercial right: it was an offense against the law of God. In some ways this reminds me of the way Native Americans looked upon the land. They, too, believed they had no right to sell the land. They were to use it responsibly during their lifetime and then pass it on to the next generation in the same condition they received it. Tragically, we descendants of Europeans have had a very different understanding. The land, the waters around it, and the air above it, were ours to pillage and pollute as much as we liked with no concern about future generations. The disastrous oil spill in the Gulf is only the latest example of our selfish and wicked folly.

In his own ancient way, Naboth knew he had an obligation to the future need of his descendants, not to his own immediate greed. Naboth was first and foremost a faithful, religious man. He believed that the true owner of the land – indeed, the ultimate owner of all things if we should stop and think about it – is God. Naboth did not believe he had a right or was free to sell what God has given him through his ancestors. He is simply the caretaker – the steward, if you will – of what he has inherited and which one day he will pass on to the next generation. (Today, those who prate endlessly of how America is supposed to be a Christian nation and then, in the next breath, shout “Drill, baby, drill!” should think about their hypocrisy though I doubt that they will.)

There is something else we should notice about Naboth: he has a naively democratic understanding of his rights in this conversation with King Ahab. Though he doesn’t put it into words, it seems clear Naboth believes that not even kings are permitted under the law of God to deprive people of their God-given rights without violating God’s intention for the human family. Again, despite their fury at leaders in Washington, the Tea-Partiers seem unable to direct their outrage against criminal corporations and selfish individuals. It is so easy to scapegoat others when we ourselves share responsibility.

And this is where Ahab’s wife, Queen Jezebel, comes in to play her part. (By the way, have you noticed? In the current fashion of giving children biblical names – Aaron, Jason, Sarah, Priscilla – I haven’t heard of anyone naming a daughter Jezebel!) Jezebel was not an Israelite, she was a Phoenician. While that might have condemned her in Israelite eyes, we shouldn’t hold that against her. The real problem is that she was a fanatical follower of the fertility god, Baal, and she did her best to impose her religious views on her adopted country. This made her loyal to the idea of the absolute rights of monarchs, a concept foreign to Israel which always believed even kings had to answer to God.

These three things – Ahab’s greed, Naboth’s need to be faithful, and Jezebel’s pagan creed – brought a tragic end to this story. When Jezebel found Ahab pouting and sulking on his bed and asked the reason, Ahab left out the most important part of Naboth’s response. Ahab said Naboth told him “I will not give you my ancestral inheritance.” He left out what was, for Naboth, the most important part. Naboth wouldn’t sell his vineyard to Ahab because that would have meant going against the commandment of God. To Jezebel, pagan that she was, it sounded like a straightforward bit of treason to refuse a king what he wanted.

You remember the rest. First, Ahab coveted what was not his, then failed to tell the truth, or told a half-truth, which led to Jezebel recruiting scoundrel underlings to do some strategic lying and false-witness-bearing, which then led to the perversion of truth – accusing faithful Naboth of cursing God, which then led to Naboth being accused of treason and blasphemy and, finally, being judicially murdered, not the first or last time an innocent man would suffer capital punishment, something any capital punishment advocates among us might want to ponder. Toting up all the violations of various Ten Commandments in this story begins to require a calculator. I found five. How many do you see?

All that aside, all the human manipulations and machinations discounted, the great point this story makes is that God has the last word on behalf of the powerless through God’s prophets. And remember this: the way we can always recognize a true prophet is that his or her words comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. By that standard I leave to your own reflections who are the true prophets in our society today.

Two more things and then we can all go home. First, throughout my adult life I have been fortunate to have had a number of surrogate fathers, wise older men who were both my friends as well as my mentors. One of them was G. Elmo Hall with whom I played golf for the last twelve years of his life. Elmo, like my own father, had a wonderful collection of wise sayings. He repeated them often enough so that several stuck in my memory. One of his favorites is my sermon topic today: “Much always wants more.” If you don’t remember anything else I said today, please remember that. If just might help to temper some of the gross materialism which tempts us and all Americans these days. Though we live in a material world, it is more true that we are spiritual creatures living in it.

Even so unexpected a witness as Stephen King, author of “The Shining” and a bazillion other books, testified to this when he spoke at the Spring commencement at Vassar in May, 2001:

“A couple of years ago I found out what ‘you can’t take it with you’ means. I found out while I was lying in the ditch at the side of a country road, covered with mud and blood and with the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans like the branch of a tree taken down in a thunderstorm. I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you’re lying in the ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard . . . On that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life’s simple backstage truths. We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we’re just as broke . . . Bill Gates? Going to go out broke. You guys? Broke. Not a crying dime.” (Stephen King Commencement Speech, 20 May 2001, © 2001 Vassar College)

Stephen King’s response to this discovery? He began to divest himself of some of his considerable fortune by giving it away to sometimes surprised and unexpecting but worthy organizations that outlive our own little lives. He announced that commencement day that he was giving $20,000 to a local hunger-fighting organization called “Dutchess Outreach,” and challenged the class of 2001 to match that amount and they did! Surpassed it, actually. I think that is a far more appropriate response to the materialism of our time than simply railing at it. I also think it is entirely in the spirit of Naboth to do so. So what are you and I waiting for? Really? Amen.