Naboth's Vineyard
Children's sermon
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Preaching
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This week's Old Testament text tells the striking story of Naboth's vineyard -- a story that raises many issues that still resonate for us today. When King Ahab desires to buy the vineyard from Naboth in a process very similar to our practice of eminent domain, Naboth boldly refuses because it is his ancestral inheritance. So Jezebel turns to darker means of subterfuge to achieve the desired result. After all, as Jezebel tells Ahab, isn't he the governor of Israel -- aren't they entitled to make decisions in the public interest? In this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Dean Feldmeyer notes that this story has a long history of being used as a cautionary example -- but Dean also notes that we often miss the real issue the story raises: the arrogance of power, often driven by our compulsion to define success and accomplishment in terms of acquisition and ownership. Should land and our other natural resources serve merely as fodder for personal profit and satisfaction, or do we hold them in public trust for the Lord? That's a question with real resonance for our time, as we watch not only the arrogance of BP in its handling of the Gulf oil spill, but also a seemingly endless list of giant corporations and corrupt public officials run roughshod over relatively powerless and unconnected individuals. But what do we do with the passion and anger that results from such injustice? Team member Kate Murphy offers some additional thoughts on this week's gospel text, in which Jesus tells a parable about two debtors to Simon the Pharisee. While the subject of the parable is ostensibly the boundless immensity of God's forgiveness, Jesus is also addressing the judgmental nature of the Pharisee's worldview. Kate notes that we are often quick to see the Pharisee as a personification of hubris and a judgmental view toward others -- but what Jesus is teaching us is more subtle and profound: Sin matters to God; yet at the same time, God forgives even those sinners who make us angry and who we cannot imagine deserve forgiveness.
Naboth's Vineyard
by Dean Feldmeyer
1 Kings 21:1-21
The lessons to be drawn from the story of Naboth's vineyard are legion.
In 1870, Massachusets senator and abolitionist Charles Sumner used this text as the basis for a speech he delivered on the floor of the Senate that opposed President Grant's proposal to annex the Dominican Republic as a colony of the United States.
The Great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan, used it for one of the most famous speeches in American history, a speech against imperialism and colonialism delivered in Denver in the winter of 1898.
Preachers have long used it as a parable about the sin of covetousness -- desiring something that is the property of someone else -- and the terrible things that come as a result of wanting and striving to take that which is off-limits.
The name "Jezebel" has become a metaphor for a sinful woman, a woman of loose morals, and a temptress. Although it has become lost to us in recent years, in the early part of the twentieth century a "Naboth's Vineyard" was a metaphor for something that was desirable and tempting but could not be had.
Many of these interpretations -- while well-meant and somewhat accurate -- miss the main point of the story, however. Naboth's Vineyard is, in the final analysis, a story about the arrogance of wealth and power.
THE WORLD
The Psalmist sings: "The Earth is the Lord's and all that is in it" (Psalm 24).
Do we really believe that? Do we believe that the earth is a sacred trust placed in our care by the God who made it? Or do we believe that it is a commodity to be used and exploited by whoever is strong enough to take it? The answer may be found in our behavior.
In June of 1979, the Ixtoc I oil well blew out in the Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. It burst into flames, and the two-mile deep oil well began to spew oil into the bay. The efforts to stop the flow were exactly the same as those being used today on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They all failed.
Two relief wells had to be dug to ease the pressure on Ixtoc I before it could be capped. It took nine months -- and in that time over 140 million gallons of oil were spilled into the sea. The beaches of Texas were coated in oil in some places a couple of inches deep; in others more than a foot. The cost in lost revenue in Texas alone was over $50 million -- and that was in 1979 dollars.
Thirty-one years later we are faced with a virtually identical problem.
Did we learn anything from Ixtoc I in 1979? Did we invest in finding better methods for dealing with such a disaster? Did we demand better, more reliable safety measures from our oil companies? Apparently not.
How might we have handled this problem differently if we truly believed that the Gulf of Mexico belongs to God who has put us in charge to take care of it?
In his book Atheist Delusions, theologian David Bently Hart reminds us that since the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, nearly every war that has been fought in the western world has been over territory. From the American Revolution to Vietnam, territory -- who owns it, who controls it, who gets to use it, who profits from it -- has been at the center of our wars.
In 1776 it the territory was the American Colonies. In 1812 it was, again, North America. In 1836 the territory in dispute was Texas. In 1898 it was Cuba and Puerto Rico. In 1911 it was Alsace-Lorraine. In 1940 it was all of Europe. This list does not even include the dozens of wars that European-Americans fought against Native American Indians for the land, the territory, we now call America.
If this land is God's land, lent to us for our care, how is it that we are so quick to kill each other over it?
Israel and Palestine are now and will probably ever be in a state of hostile tension toward each other over territory. Who owns the Gaza? Who controls the West Bank? Should Palestine have a territory of its own? Where? By what right does Israel exist as a nation, the owners and holders of a certain piece of land? And whose land is it anyway? If the land is the Lord's, then what right does Israel -- or any of us, for that matter -- have to throw other people off of it?
Finally, what does this discussion, this understanding of territory and ownership bring to bear upon our understanding of immigration and immigration reform?
If the land goes to the strongest, to those who have the strength to take it and do with it as they wish, then certainly we have the right to say who can stand upon it and who cannot. But if the land is a gift from God, a sacred trust that we hold as tenants charged with its care, then how does that change our understanding of who is welcome upon it and who is not?
What insights does the text bring to this discussion?
THE WORD
It's 860 BCE, and Ahab, the king of Israel, has married Jezebel, princess of Phoenicia, in an attempt to unite their two countries for mutual benefit and trade. By this union Israel will gain access to the seaports of Phoenicia, and Phoenicia will gain access to the King's Highway that runs through the hills and mountains of northern Israel and on to Syria, Assyria, and the entire Middle East.
What Ahab didn't count on was Jezebel's dedication to the religion of her homeland. A worshiper of Baal, she dedicates herself to the task of converting all of Israel to her faith. She is ruthless in this pursuit and not above using conspiracy and even murder to gain her goals if she must.
To keep peace in the palace, Ahab allows Jezebel to erect a temple to Melqart (god of storms, thunder, lightning, and rain) in the center of Samaria and to place pillars or statues of Melqart's consort Asheron (goddess of sex and war) all over the city.
This sets off a small civil war between the prophet, Elijah, and the queen, Jezebel, which after several skirmishes finds Elijah hiding in the caves north of the capital city. During the temporary quiet, Ahab and Jezebel decide to leave Samaria during the cold winter months and spend some time at their palace in the warm city of Jezreel.
It is in Jezreel that Ahab decides that he wants to plant a vegetable garden, but the perfect spot he has picked out belongs to one Naboth the Jezreelite, who has erected a vineyard there. Ahab makes what he believes is a reasonable offer to Naboth: give me your little vineyard and I'll give you a better (bigger?) one in another location. Or, name your price and I'll pay you money for it, more than it's worth.
But Naboth is of the Hebrew old school when it comes to his understanding of land and ownership. The land is not his to do with as he pleases. It is not a commodity; it is a responsibility. God gave this little piece of land to Naboth's family not as a piece of property to be exploited for its cash value but as a sacred trust. Generations ago, the Lord put this land under the care of the Naboth clan, and their current descendants are responsible for what happens to it. So he must demur in this deal. Sorry, your Highness, no can do.
This may very well be the first time Ahab has been refused anything. He clearly doesn't know how to handle the situation. He goes home to the palace, takes to his bed, and pouts, refusing to eat.
Enter Queen Jezebel. She asks him, as a mother might ask a petulant and peevish child, why he is so sad -- and he responds that "That guy, Naboth, won't give me his vineyard so I can have my vegetable garden."
One can nearly hear the laughter and derision in Jezebel's response: "Excuse me, but I thought you were the king here. So what's the problem? Get up, eat, wash your face. I'll give you Naboth's vineyard."
Note that she doesn't offer to help him get it. Neither does she offer to help him come up with an alternative solution to his problem. "I'll give it to you," she says. She is of the Phoenician/Baalite school of thought. The land is not some sacred trust from a monotheistic God. It is a creation of the gods, available to whomever is crafty, sly, and ruthless enough to take it and hold onto it.
King Ahab finds himself involved in a conflict triangle, one in which he will have to choose sides -- and he chooses the side most likely to get him what he wants. He allows Jezebel to use his royal stationery and his royal seal and to write letters in his name -- and she hatches a plot that sees Naboth falsely accused of blasphemy and treason before an angry mob who seizes him, drags him away, and beats him to death.
Jezebel goes to the king and delivers the news: Naboth is dead; the vineyard is yours. Go and enjoy it.
Oh, how we want Ahab to stop here. How we hope that he will be appalled at her actions. How we wish that he will say to her in horror and disgust, "Woman, what have you done?" But, alas, he does not. He just does as he is told; he goes to the vineyard to take possession of it. And who should show up fresh from his hiding place up in the mountains but Elijah.
Listen again to the dialogue in the opening of this "you-are-the-man" moment, how pregnant with meaning is every word:
AHAB: Have you found me, O my enemy? (Of course you have. I just knew this was too good to be true.)
ELIJAH: I have found you. (Oh yeah. You can't escape God's judgment. You can lie to yourself and to these people, but God knows exactly what you and that wife of yours have done.)
Then Elijah pronounces the sentence: "You have sold yourself for a vegetable garden." Therefore, in the same place where the dogs of the street licked up the blood of Naboth, they will lick up your blood. You will die not as a king, but as a commoner and a criminal in the street, and the same for your wife and the same for your children. Because of what you have done here you will be cut off from all other people. No one will trust you or respect you. Your legacy will be one of ineffectiveness and failure. Your life will end in desperation and despair. You will be remembered as the worst king of Israel.
Later, Ahab will repent of his role in this fiasco and God will, at Elijah's suggestion, relent somewhat in his judgment. But the consequences will be as a bell that cannot be unrung. His will be an honorable death in battle but his reign will end in failure and his memory will be a disgrace. People will not trust him, and the sins he has committed will trickle down and erode the foundations of his legacy. His sons will be met with failure and ineffectiveness because of the choices of their father.
As for Jezebel -- well, as she is unrepentant, there will be no grace for her.
After Ahab's death his general, Jehu, will seize control of the country and his first act of power will be to order the execution of Jezebel, the queen who could challenge his authority. Jehu threatens Jezebel's servants with a charge of collusion and allows them to prove their innocence by turning the queen over to him. In response, they throw her off the wall. She is killed in the fall and, not content to merely lick up her blood, the wild dogs of the streets devour her body.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
Rarely does the text deliver to us a story so ripe for retelling in the sermon. It simply is not enough to hear it read as part of the liturgy; this story begs to be told. In fact, it virtually demands retelling, couched in familiar language and contemporary images, so the congregation can make it their own, so it can speak to the experience of every Christian.
The preacher would do well to begin with a very little history and context. Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal and the outcome of that event could be mentioned. The bad blood between the prophet and the queen should be explained, as should their competition for the ear of the king.
Now the stage is set for launching into the story itself. As we work our way through the plot we can stop to highlight some important factors:
1. The difference in how Hebrews and Phoenicians understood ownership and land. Their theologies shaped their economics and not the other way around, as is more often the case today. We are descendents of Naboth and, as Christians, ought to hold an understanding not unlike his: Those things which we own are sacred trusts, placed in our care by the God who made them.
2. The triangulated position of Ahab, forced to choose between what he knew was right and what he knew would get him what he wanted -- and how we are often put into that same position, deciding between the expedient and the ethical. Coal and oil are cheap and quick to get to, but at what price? What effect are they having on the planet that has been left in our care? Dare we sell our souls for the price of a vegetable garden?
3. Metaphors abound in the text and might be explored in the sermon or left for the congregation to explore at their own leisure. Have you ever been tempted by a "Naboth's Vineyard" that you couldn't have? Who is the Jezebel that is currently telling you: "Ethics? Ethics are for weaklings. Take what you want." Who is the Elijah in our culture who comes to us and says, "You have sold yourself!" What is the contemporary equivalent to having the "dogs lick your blood"?
4. The consequences of arrogance. Using wealth and power unscrupulously comes with consequences. Ahab gets his garden -- but at what price? His legacy is destroyed, his children are doomed to failure. The sins of the father are visited upon his sons and daughters. How do we see this being lived out today? How can we avoid it?
5. Jezebel's manipulation of the mob. Adolf Hitler was obviously not the first to discover the power of the Big Lie. Jezebel's instructions to her henchmen are to make sure that the mob is hungry and short-tempered, and then to denounce Naboth to them, inciting the two most emotionally charged crimes one could commit in that day. The mob acts as mobs always do -- quickly and violently. Today we would call it a lynching. But lynchings need not be done with ropes or stones; they can be done with words as well.
The arrogance of wealth and power led Ahab to heed the bad advice of his wife, and in doing so, he destroyed the life of an innocent man, condemned his children to failure, and consigned himself to ignominy. How differently things might have gone had he simply followed the example of his victim, Naboth, and accepted that "the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it."
May the great Creator God deliver us from Ahab's fate, a fate such as Mary Oliver beautifully and darkly describes in her poem "Of the Empire":
"We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity."
ANOTHER VIEW
Oily Feet
by Kate Murphy
Luke 7:36--8:3
Satirist Andy Borowitz tapped into a common theme when he suggested plugging the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with BP executives. "It's a win-win," he argues. "Best case scenario, they plug the leak, and at the very least, they'll shut... up." Funny, initially, until you remember that those executives are real people -- someone's children, someone's parents -- and you realize you just laughed at the thought of violently drowning them.
But how else can we respond to an overwhelming catastrophe that grows more and more unbelievable each day? We want the oil to stop leaking, but we are powerless to make that happen, so we get angry. We take all that frustrated energy and channel it into rage.
There's a lot of rage to go around these days. We hate BP executives, and we hate liberal environmentalists who forced oil companies to drill offshore and out-of-sight. We hate greedy bankers, and we hate irresponsible people who took on more debt than they could handle. We hate self-serving politicians, and we hate welfare queens who game the system. We hate umpires who blow obvious calls and wreck perfect games, and we hate out-of-touch baseball commissioners who won't allow instant replay or reverse the call.
We live in an age of constant information. We are constantly bombarded with new details about intractable problems that threaten to destroy what we hold most dear: the newest economic forecast, the latest failed attempt to contain leaking oil, the most recent political scandal. We can't avoid the bad news. And we can't seem to rewrite the script. As individuals, we don't have enough power to fix the problems -- the best we can do is hate the people who cause them. And so we do that with great passion.
In this week's gospel lection we find Jesus as the dinner guest of a Pharisee. A woman enters the home and interrupts the meal with a tearful act of devotion. She washes Jesus' feet with her tears and wipes them clean with her hair. A scandalous act -- except we've become very familiar with this story. We know that in the gospel, Pharisees are the enemy and prostitutes are the heroes. So before the pastor finishes reading the lesson, many parishioners will be reciting the sermon: "We know, we know. The Pharisee was a hypocrite. The woman was genuinely seeking God. She was humbly acknowledging her sins. The Pharisee thought he was perfect, so he was rejecting God."
But what if we take the story at face value? What if we challenge ourselves not to make this a story about hypocrisy or self-righteousness? What if we let it be about sin -- real sin that destroys people's lives in concrete ways? What if we let ourselves imagine that the Pharisee really was a genuine man of faith who lived a life of integrity and the woman really was a selfish person whose intentional sin wounded other people? After all, in his teaching parable Jesus clearly says that it is the woman, not the Pharisee, who owes God the greatest debt. Jesus himself says there is a quantitative difference in the lives these two people lead. She has sinned more greatly than the Pharisee has.
For once, let's not cast her as the first-century equivalent of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (a hooker with a heart of gold). Let's not assume that her only crime was being born powerless into a patriarchal society. What if we challenge our church to imagine that she is a serial adulterer, or a child abuser, or a BP oil executive? What if we re-imagine our Pharisee host as a sincere God-seeker who practices his faith with integrity, or a redeemer of orphans, or an earnest environmental activist who, through great personal sacrifice, has figured out a way to live off-the-grid? In other words, what if we imagined ourselves hosting Jesus at a dinner party, when the door burst open and Tony Hayward, CEO of British Petroleum, ran in and threw himself at Christ's feet sobbing and Jesus forgave him -- just like that. And the oil was still flowing into the Gulf.
If we can get folks to be offended, then we've made a good start at teasing out the meaning of the story. That's because Jesus does seem to be saying that the moral calculations we perform to quantify the difference between us and them -- us Christians and them sinners, us liberals and them conservatives, us Republicans and them Democrats, Palestinians and Israelis, us oil-consumers and them oil-executives -- suggest that the difference between the people we are and the people we hate is miniscule in contrast with the righteousness of God. Preachers must be careful not to imply that our moral choices do not matter to God, while at the same time reminding the church that in light of the vast and unfathomable gulf between divine righteousness and human righteousness, our religious posturing and judgmental accusations of our brothers and sisters is particularly galling.
Furthermore, the preacher might wish to remind the church that even our righteous behavior is a product of God's grace. Like the Pharisee, many of us were blessed to be born into families who nurtured us in faith. What is it but God's grace that allows some to experiment with drugs and alcohol in young adulthood and walk away unscarred, while the brain chemistry of others launches them into a lifelong cycle of addiction? What is it but God's grace that guides some of us into "honorable" careers in medicine and ministry, while others who pursued engineering wake up one morning to find themselves the most hated people on the planet? And if we really believe that Jesus is right about that, then we will accept his rebuke gratefully and we will gaze down at that woman, at that oil executive, weepily, joyfully, ecstatically worshiping at his feet -- and realize "Why didn't I think of that?" and join her.
ILLUSTRATIONS
"There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do, I'd like my life back." Thus spoke BP chief executive Tony Hayward recently on NBC's Meet the Press. But after realizing the harshness and insensitivity of his remark, Hayward spent the next several days spinning and twisting the statement from one of callousness to one of concern. In one message Hayward posted to BP America's Facebook page, he said: "I made a hurtful and thoughtless comment on Sunday when I said that 'I wanted my life back.' When I read that recently, I was appalled. I apologize, especially to the families of the 11 men who lost their lives in this tragic accident." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100602/ts_alt_afp/usoilpollutionenvironmenthayward)
I think we correctly place more credence in the candor of the original comment, rather than the carefully crafted retractions and reinterpretations. I would never be one to dismiss the stress this catastrophe has placed on the chief executive officer of BP, but beyond pride, he has suffered no personal loss. Along the Gulf coast we not only have families that are mourning the death of 11 men on the Deep Horizon oil platform, we are also confronted with the economic ruin of countless families and communities -- and there is an ecosystem that may never be restored. With beaches saturated in oil, how long will it be when off on the horizon we will see countless new BP drilling rigs?
In a way the Gulf is "Naboth's Vineyard" -- a land entrusted to us by God for cultivation and preservation. Yet instead of being stewards, we act as possessors. No cost, even the cost of a human life, seemed to stand in the way of a king's desire to exploit the land for personal gain. Reviewing BP's countless drilling violations, was the Gulf a place to be exploited or preserved? And to be exploited at what cost? Eleven lives? A decimated fishing industry? A loss of tourism? The death of countless birds and other wildlife?
Elijah told Ahab: "You have sold yourself to evil in the eyes of the Lord." This, because Ahab was more concerned about personal gain than the well-being of the community. Before Hayward wants his life back, he ought to read the story of Ahab and Jezebel. And we can only hope that in doing so he will be able to hear the voice of Elijah.
* * *
Mary Johnson is 88 years old. She had moved into that little house at the corner of Maple and Gregory as a bride nearly 67 years ago. Behind those walls she raised four children -- even giving birth to one of them in the upstairs bedroom during a blinding snowstorm that kept her from getting to the hospital. Her husband of five decades died nearly 20 years previously while watching a football game on Sunday afternoon. That house holds many memories for Mary -- it is her home, and she wants to live out her last days in it.
Unfortunately, the town's shopping area has surrounded the house. Her little bungalow is the only residence remaining at the front of an enormous shopping mall parking lot. The large multi-national corporation developing the area wants Mary's house. They have brought enormous pressure to bear on her and on the city council because they want the street widened to four lanes -- and doing so would require her house and her land. The city council is considering imposing its legal authority and claiming her property.
There are times when one comes to appreciate the curse of Elijah for a king who exercised his right of eminent domain over Naboth's vineyard.
* * *
There are times when land is more than just a commodity to be bought and sold. This is especially so for country people, or at least it used to be. A family I know lived on a "centennial farm," one which had been in their family for more than 100 years. It had been passed from father to son through four generations. From the time the great-great-grandparents came from Europe to this new world and opened up the land to farming, each succeeding generation had kept the land as a trust. Each took from the land what they needed, and put back what the land needed to stay fertile and rich. But in the end, a son was born into the family who just did not understand. He had no feel for the land and no appreciation for his heritage. To him land was potential cash, so he moved into town and put the farm up for sale to the highest bidder. And then a strange thing happened.
An old dog he loved taught him a lesson. As often as he would take that old dog to their new home, the dog would get out and walk all the miles back to the farm. Time and again he would bring the dog home, tie him up, pen him in, but it was no use. The dog was born on that land and knew the land and would not leave the farm. Finally the farmer said, "That dog taught me a lesson. He knew where we belonged, and he would not give up until he convinced me that I belonged there too." So he came to realize that if he had sold his land, he would indeed have sold himself.
* * *
The arrogance of power sometimes comes to a remarkable end. Lee Atwater, the Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, is cited by some as the architect of the modern style of political campaigning -- and during his career was known for the nastiness of his attack ads.
As Wikipedia notes: "Atwater's most noteworthy campaign was the 1988 presidential election where he served as campaign manager for Republican nominee George H.W. Bush. A particularly aggressive media program included a television advertisement... comparing Bush and Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis on crime." This was the infamous Willie Horton ad. Wikipedia further notes: "In reference to Dukakis, Atwater declared that he would 'strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate.'... During the election, a number of allegations were made in the media about Dukakis' personal life, including the unsubstantiated claim that... Dukakis himself had been treated for a mental illness. In the film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, Robert Novak reveals for the first time that Atwater personally tried to get him to spread these mental health rumors."
In 1990, Atwater was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor, and in 1991 he gave an interview with Life magazine, in which he said: "My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth." Atwater died on March 29, 1991.
* * *
The tragedy of Ahab and Jezebel is reminiscent of Shakespeare's Macbeth, who -- after being entreated by three witches greeting him as "king" and thus confirming his lecherous and latent longings for the throne -- was drawn into a conspiracy of murder by his wife, Lady Macbeth. Jezebel's plot included forgery and assassination. Because Naboth would not sell Ahab his land, she conspired to have him killed. Lady Macbeth, desiring her husband to have the throne, murdered King Duncan by driving a knife through his heart while he slept in her home. Both men were witting co-conspirators in crimes that brought disgrace and devastation on their households. Macbeth was later slain in battle after his wife's own death, and Ahab was killed at Ramoth Gilead by the Aramites. Although their wives had strong influences in their demise, these men destroyed themselves by abandoning personal morality and principles for the sake of unbridled and untempered ambition.
* * *
It had been so many years since the incident, Silvia had lost count; it was something beyond 40 -- a lifetime ago, actually. But the incident itself was etched in her memory, not because she particularly wanted to recall it, but because she had no choice. It wouldn't go away; she couldn't forget. Third grade? Fourth grade? She had been young -- but old enough to know better. She was a member of a service club that met after school, a club that valued honor. They had gone on a field trip to a lapidary shop. Silvia had been enthralled! Brightly polished stones in all shapes and sizes glittered everywhere. She had been fascinated with rocks for as much of her young life as memory let her grasp; but these were so bright, so shiny, so... so unattainable for her, coming as she did from a family that lived on the margins of the American economy. She had not been brought up to steal. Even though her family was poor, she had been taught the importance of not taking that which wasn't hers. But there had been so many stones, all in neat rows of little white boxes, arranged by color and size. How would the proprietor ever miss one or two? Almost of its own volition, her hand darted into the nearest box. Suddenly she was conscious of the smooth, polished coolness in her pocket, as her heart raced from a rush of adrenaline. The rest of the shop tour was a blur for Silvia. When the club members emerged she realized she had five or six hard, silky-surfaced stones hidden beneath the hand in her pocket. That fact struck her simultaneously with fear. What if someone discovered her awful crime? She'd be thrown out of the club. And the humiliation would be more than she could bear! What could she do? As soon as the group returned to her school, Silvia excused herself and raced home. Silently she crept to her room and found a small white box, quite similar to those at the lapidary shop. Silvia placed the small, beautiful stones on a bed of cotton in the box, put on the lid, and hid it beneath her clothes in a drawer. As the ensuing years passed, she periodically stumbled across the box and recalled the fear and shame that assailed her the day she had taken the stones. The terrible irony of their hidden beauty was not lost on her either: she possessed the stones she had coveted, but she could never show them to a living soul without having to reveal the terrible story of how they came into her possession. These small rocks, taken in a moment of passion, were a continual reminder of the awful price one pays by taking that to which one is not entitled.
* * *
Television host and comedy writer Dick Cavett was asked to write an appreciation piece for the New York Times commemorating the recent death of Art Linkletter. Cavett noted in his opening paragraph that his article "may not be everyone's idea of an appreciation." While Cavett said that "Linketter was a man of great accomplishments and performing skill, a shrewd, shrewd businessman," he also identified one of the Linkletter's shortcomings -- specifically, lacking the skill to do a decent stand-up monologue. As one of the substitute hosts of The Tonight Show during the transition period between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, Linketter failed measurably with the ability to tell a joke onstage. A major part of his problem, according to Cavett, was Linkletter's inability to accept the jokes and advice of his writers. Instead of accepting that good humor is based on subtleties, Linkletter felt the need to spell out for the audience every punch line to be sure everyone understood the point, and in so doing the humor was lost.
Cavett cited an example that involved Jack E. Leonard, a well-known and popular comedian at the time who was also rather rotund. Thus he was called "Fat Jack." Writer David Lloyd submitted to Linkletter the following joke poking fun at Leonard: "On tonight's show we're going to talk about comedy teams. You know, comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis... Jack E. Leonard." But Linkletter presented the joke like this: "On tonight's show we're going to talk about comedy teams. You know, comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis... and BIG FAT Jack E. Leonard... who's SO fat, he's a one man comedy team... ALL BY HIMSELF!" As you might guess, the audience responded with silence, not even a snicker. Cavett notes that at this point the writers no longer wrote jokes for Linkletter. Instead, they went to the local bookstore, purchased a Bennett Cerf joke book, and just copied a few jokes and gave them to the host.
In our lesson King Ahab chased the prophet Elijah into the mountains where his voice could not be heard. This allowed the king and his wife Jezebel to desecrate the land and commit atrocities upon any person who opposed them, especially Naboth. As a result their kingdom came to shattering ruins and Ahab is remembered as the worst of Israel's kings. If we fail to listen to the advice of God's appointed, whether they be a prophet or our assigned comedy writing team, we shall stand on the world stage both humiliated and in the shadow of a ruined career.
* * *
Fred Zain worked in a West Virginia State Police chemistry lab from 1986-89, before moving to similar positions in Texas and Florida. In his heyday, he was somewhat of a forensics "star," being called in by prosecutors who wanted to win their case, and Zain delivered. But eventually he was charged with falsifying and/or fabricating evidence and lying on the witness stand. His false reports sent countless people to jail in rape and murder cases.
Zain's descent began with the Glen Woodall case. On the strength of Zain's testimony, Woodall was convicted of two sexual assaults. Later DNA testing proved that Woodall was not the assailant. Woodall's conviction was overturned and he was freed, and he subsequently won a million-dollar settlement for wrongful imprisonment. It also led to a reopening of all the cases that Fred Zain had worked. A report to the West Virginia Supreme Court by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors in November 1993 reported that Fred Zain "fabricated or falsified evidence in just about every case he touched." And that included at least 133 murder and rape cases.
False accusers were not unique to Jezebel's day.
* * *
Churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms. Entering a person's house unexpectedly, we are sometimes met with a barrage of apologies.... Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to churches that are lived in. They are not showrooms. They are living rooms, and if the persons living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork, and mud on the carpet. For as long as Jesus insists on calling sinners and not the righteous to repentance -- and there is no indication as yet that he has changed his policy in that regard -- churches are going to be embarrassing to the fastidious and an affront to the upright.
-- Eugene Peterson
* * *
What blocks forgiveness is not God's reticence... but ours. God's arms are always extended; we are the ones who turn away.
-- Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan, 1997), p. 52
* * *
Children, being innocent, love justice. Adults, being guilty, love mercy.
-- G. K. Chesterton
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: Give ear to our words, O God;
People: Give heed to our sighing.
Leader: We enter you house through the abundance of your steadfast love.
People: We bow down in awe of you, our Sovereign.
Leader: Lead us in your righteousness;
People: Make your way straight before us.
OR
Leader: Come and worship God, the creator of all.
People: How do we come into the presence of such glory?
Leader: Come with joy, for God loves us.
People: We rejoice in God's presence and celebrate God's love.
Leader: Come with humility, because we are not God!
People: We are aware of our shortcomings and bow before God.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
"I Need Thee Every Hour"
found in:
UMH: 397
AAHH: 451
NNBH: 303
NCH: 517
CH: 278
"Make Me a Captive, Lord"
found in:
UMH: 421
PH: 378
"O Crucified Redeemer"
found in:
UMH: 425
"Behold a Broken World"
found in:
UMH: 426
"Jesu, Jesu"
found in:
UMH: 432
H82: 602
PH: 367
NCH: 498
CH: 600
CCB: 66
Renew: 289
"Cuando El Pore" ("When the Poor Ones")
found in:
UMH: 434
PH: 407
CH: 662
"What Does the Lord Require"
found in:
UMH: 441
H82: 605
PH: 405
CH: 659
"Go Down, Moses"
found in:
UMH: 448
PH: 333
AAHH: 543
NNBH: 490
CH: 663
"Humble Yourself in the Sight of the Lord"
found in:
CCB: 72
Renew: 188
"Make Me a Servant"
found in:
CCB: 90
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who is the sovereign over all creation and yet chose to come as a servant: Grant us the grace and courage to live our lives honestly instead of lording ourselves over others; through Jesus Christ the humble servant. Amen.
OR
We come to worship you the God who is sovereign of creation as well as its creator. We come to rejoice in your love and grace and to bow in adoration of your glory. Help us to celebrate your love without becoming arrogant and disdainful of our brothers and sisters. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially the ways we falsely assume we are superior to our brothers and sisters.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have loved us with a love that has no bounds, and yet we have loved others with a love that has many conditions. We judge others and find them less than ourselves, while you judge them and declare them your daughters and your sons. Forgive our foolish haughtiness, and bring us once again to the joy of living humbly in the knowledge of who we are in your sight and the esteem of who others are in your sight. Amen.
Leader: God does love us and desires us to live joyfully. God knows we cannot do that if we live in judgment and condemnation. Love God by loving God's children and God's creation.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord's Prayer)
We adore you, O God, and praise you for your greatness. Your power is beyond understanding and your love beyond naming.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have loved us with a love that has no bounds, and yet we have loved others with a love that has many conditions. We judge others and find them less than ourselves, while you judge them and declare them your daughters and your sons. Forgive our foolish haughtiness, and bring us once again to the joy of living humbly in the knowledge of who we are in your sight and the esteem of who others are in your sight.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which you have endowed your creatures and all creation with your majesty. We are truly blessed to be your creatures. You have made us but a little lower than yourself and filled us with your own glory and Spirit.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for those who have not yet come to understand their own worth in your eyes. We pray for ourselves and others who have belittled others and often done so in your Name. We pray that we may truly be your presence and your blessing to others.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father... Amen.
(or if the Lord's Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Visuals
pictures of world leaders, especially those who are no longer alive, showing that greatness is fleeting
Children's Sermon Starter
The story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" would make a wonderful way to share with children that being a person with power doesn't make us better than others. Even a little child can be smarter than the most powerful person.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Forgive Us Our Debts
Luke 7:36--8:3
Object: bills (debts)
Good morning, boys and girls! How many of you have heard parents or other people talk about bills? Bills are debts. Bills are statements showing how much money we owe someone else. I have several bills with me here this morning. (read them) I need to pay these bills -- these debts.
Have you ever thought that we owe God? Why would we owe God? (let them answer) We owe God for everything! Everything we are and all that we have comes from God.
The next question I have is: How do we pay God? Does anybody have an idea? (let them answer) We pay God by living lives worthy of all the good that God has given us. Here is where I start feeling bad, because I have not done everything I should have done. Some things I have done I should not have done. We call these actions or inactions "sin," and God hates sin!
But God loves me! Even though I have not done all I should have done and I have done some things I should not have -- God cancels my bill. God still gives me life and breath and everything else -- even though I owe God so much.
In the gospel lesson today, Jesus tells a story about a woman who did many things wrong. Yet she loved God and accepted God's forgiveness -- just like you and I do. I'm glad we have such a God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, June 13, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
Naboth's Vineyard
by Dean Feldmeyer
1 Kings 21:1-21
The lessons to be drawn from the story of Naboth's vineyard are legion.
In 1870, Massachusets senator and abolitionist Charles Sumner used this text as the basis for a speech he delivered on the floor of the Senate that opposed President Grant's proposal to annex the Dominican Republic as a colony of the United States.
The Great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan, used it for one of the most famous speeches in American history, a speech against imperialism and colonialism delivered in Denver in the winter of 1898.
Preachers have long used it as a parable about the sin of covetousness -- desiring something that is the property of someone else -- and the terrible things that come as a result of wanting and striving to take that which is off-limits.
The name "Jezebel" has become a metaphor for a sinful woman, a woman of loose morals, and a temptress. Although it has become lost to us in recent years, in the early part of the twentieth century a "Naboth's Vineyard" was a metaphor for something that was desirable and tempting but could not be had.
Many of these interpretations -- while well-meant and somewhat accurate -- miss the main point of the story, however. Naboth's Vineyard is, in the final analysis, a story about the arrogance of wealth and power.
THE WORLD
The Psalmist sings: "The Earth is the Lord's and all that is in it" (Psalm 24).
Do we really believe that? Do we believe that the earth is a sacred trust placed in our care by the God who made it? Or do we believe that it is a commodity to be used and exploited by whoever is strong enough to take it? The answer may be found in our behavior.
In June of 1979, the Ixtoc I oil well blew out in the Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. It burst into flames, and the two-mile deep oil well began to spew oil into the bay. The efforts to stop the flow were exactly the same as those being used today on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They all failed.
Two relief wells had to be dug to ease the pressure on Ixtoc I before it could be capped. It took nine months -- and in that time over 140 million gallons of oil were spilled into the sea. The beaches of Texas were coated in oil in some places a couple of inches deep; in others more than a foot. The cost in lost revenue in Texas alone was over $50 million -- and that was in 1979 dollars.
Thirty-one years later we are faced with a virtually identical problem.
Did we learn anything from Ixtoc I in 1979? Did we invest in finding better methods for dealing with such a disaster? Did we demand better, more reliable safety measures from our oil companies? Apparently not.
How might we have handled this problem differently if we truly believed that the Gulf of Mexico belongs to God who has put us in charge to take care of it?
In his book Atheist Delusions, theologian David Bently Hart reminds us that since the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, nearly every war that has been fought in the western world has been over territory. From the American Revolution to Vietnam, territory -- who owns it, who controls it, who gets to use it, who profits from it -- has been at the center of our wars.
In 1776 it the territory was the American Colonies. In 1812 it was, again, North America. In 1836 the territory in dispute was Texas. In 1898 it was Cuba and Puerto Rico. In 1911 it was Alsace-Lorraine. In 1940 it was all of Europe. This list does not even include the dozens of wars that European-Americans fought against Native American Indians for the land, the territory, we now call America.
If this land is God's land, lent to us for our care, how is it that we are so quick to kill each other over it?
Israel and Palestine are now and will probably ever be in a state of hostile tension toward each other over territory. Who owns the Gaza? Who controls the West Bank? Should Palestine have a territory of its own? Where? By what right does Israel exist as a nation, the owners and holders of a certain piece of land? And whose land is it anyway? If the land is the Lord's, then what right does Israel -- or any of us, for that matter -- have to throw other people off of it?
Finally, what does this discussion, this understanding of territory and ownership bring to bear upon our understanding of immigration and immigration reform?
If the land goes to the strongest, to those who have the strength to take it and do with it as they wish, then certainly we have the right to say who can stand upon it and who cannot. But if the land is a gift from God, a sacred trust that we hold as tenants charged with its care, then how does that change our understanding of who is welcome upon it and who is not?
What insights does the text bring to this discussion?
THE WORD
It's 860 BCE, and Ahab, the king of Israel, has married Jezebel, princess of Phoenicia, in an attempt to unite their two countries for mutual benefit and trade. By this union Israel will gain access to the seaports of Phoenicia, and Phoenicia will gain access to the King's Highway that runs through the hills and mountains of northern Israel and on to Syria, Assyria, and the entire Middle East.
What Ahab didn't count on was Jezebel's dedication to the religion of her homeland. A worshiper of Baal, she dedicates herself to the task of converting all of Israel to her faith. She is ruthless in this pursuit and not above using conspiracy and even murder to gain her goals if she must.
To keep peace in the palace, Ahab allows Jezebel to erect a temple to Melqart (god of storms, thunder, lightning, and rain) in the center of Samaria and to place pillars or statues of Melqart's consort Asheron (goddess of sex and war) all over the city.
This sets off a small civil war between the prophet, Elijah, and the queen, Jezebel, which after several skirmishes finds Elijah hiding in the caves north of the capital city. During the temporary quiet, Ahab and Jezebel decide to leave Samaria during the cold winter months and spend some time at their palace in the warm city of Jezreel.
It is in Jezreel that Ahab decides that he wants to plant a vegetable garden, but the perfect spot he has picked out belongs to one Naboth the Jezreelite, who has erected a vineyard there. Ahab makes what he believes is a reasonable offer to Naboth: give me your little vineyard and I'll give you a better (bigger?) one in another location. Or, name your price and I'll pay you money for it, more than it's worth.
But Naboth is of the Hebrew old school when it comes to his understanding of land and ownership. The land is not his to do with as he pleases. It is not a commodity; it is a responsibility. God gave this little piece of land to Naboth's family not as a piece of property to be exploited for its cash value but as a sacred trust. Generations ago, the Lord put this land under the care of the Naboth clan, and their current descendants are responsible for what happens to it. So he must demur in this deal. Sorry, your Highness, no can do.
This may very well be the first time Ahab has been refused anything. He clearly doesn't know how to handle the situation. He goes home to the palace, takes to his bed, and pouts, refusing to eat.
Enter Queen Jezebel. She asks him, as a mother might ask a petulant and peevish child, why he is so sad -- and he responds that "That guy, Naboth, won't give me his vineyard so I can have my vegetable garden."
One can nearly hear the laughter and derision in Jezebel's response: "Excuse me, but I thought you were the king here. So what's the problem? Get up, eat, wash your face. I'll give you Naboth's vineyard."
Note that she doesn't offer to help him get it. Neither does she offer to help him come up with an alternative solution to his problem. "I'll give it to you," she says. She is of the Phoenician/Baalite school of thought. The land is not some sacred trust from a monotheistic God. It is a creation of the gods, available to whomever is crafty, sly, and ruthless enough to take it and hold onto it.
King Ahab finds himself involved in a conflict triangle, one in which he will have to choose sides -- and he chooses the side most likely to get him what he wants. He allows Jezebel to use his royal stationery and his royal seal and to write letters in his name -- and she hatches a plot that sees Naboth falsely accused of blasphemy and treason before an angry mob who seizes him, drags him away, and beats him to death.
Jezebel goes to the king and delivers the news: Naboth is dead; the vineyard is yours. Go and enjoy it.
Oh, how we want Ahab to stop here. How we hope that he will be appalled at her actions. How we wish that he will say to her in horror and disgust, "Woman, what have you done?" But, alas, he does not. He just does as he is told; he goes to the vineyard to take possession of it. And who should show up fresh from his hiding place up in the mountains but Elijah.
Listen again to the dialogue in the opening of this "you-are-the-man" moment, how pregnant with meaning is every word:
AHAB: Have you found me, O my enemy? (Of course you have. I just knew this was too good to be true.)
ELIJAH: I have found you. (Oh yeah. You can't escape God's judgment. You can lie to yourself and to these people, but God knows exactly what you and that wife of yours have done.)
Then Elijah pronounces the sentence: "You have sold yourself for a vegetable garden." Therefore, in the same place where the dogs of the street licked up the blood of Naboth, they will lick up your blood. You will die not as a king, but as a commoner and a criminal in the street, and the same for your wife and the same for your children. Because of what you have done here you will be cut off from all other people. No one will trust you or respect you. Your legacy will be one of ineffectiveness and failure. Your life will end in desperation and despair. You will be remembered as the worst king of Israel.
Later, Ahab will repent of his role in this fiasco and God will, at Elijah's suggestion, relent somewhat in his judgment. But the consequences will be as a bell that cannot be unrung. His will be an honorable death in battle but his reign will end in failure and his memory will be a disgrace. People will not trust him, and the sins he has committed will trickle down and erode the foundations of his legacy. His sons will be met with failure and ineffectiveness because of the choices of their father.
As for Jezebel -- well, as she is unrepentant, there will be no grace for her.
After Ahab's death his general, Jehu, will seize control of the country and his first act of power will be to order the execution of Jezebel, the queen who could challenge his authority. Jehu threatens Jezebel's servants with a charge of collusion and allows them to prove their innocence by turning the queen over to him. In response, they throw her off the wall. She is killed in the fall and, not content to merely lick up her blood, the wild dogs of the streets devour her body.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
Rarely does the text deliver to us a story so ripe for retelling in the sermon. It simply is not enough to hear it read as part of the liturgy; this story begs to be told. In fact, it virtually demands retelling, couched in familiar language and contemporary images, so the congregation can make it their own, so it can speak to the experience of every Christian.
The preacher would do well to begin with a very little history and context. Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal and the outcome of that event could be mentioned. The bad blood between the prophet and the queen should be explained, as should their competition for the ear of the king.
Now the stage is set for launching into the story itself. As we work our way through the plot we can stop to highlight some important factors:
1. The difference in how Hebrews and Phoenicians understood ownership and land. Their theologies shaped their economics and not the other way around, as is more often the case today. We are descendents of Naboth and, as Christians, ought to hold an understanding not unlike his: Those things which we own are sacred trusts, placed in our care by the God who made them.
2. The triangulated position of Ahab, forced to choose between what he knew was right and what he knew would get him what he wanted -- and how we are often put into that same position, deciding between the expedient and the ethical. Coal and oil are cheap and quick to get to, but at what price? What effect are they having on the planet that has been left in our care? Dare we sell our souls for the price of a vegetable garden?
3. Metaphors abound in the text and might be explored in the sermon or left for the congregation to explore at their own leisure. Have you ever been tempted by a "Naboth's Vineyard" that you couldn't have? Who is the Jezebel that is currently telling you: "Ethics? Ethics are for weaklings. Take what you want." Who is the Elijah in our culture who comes to us and says, "You have sold yourself!" What is the contemporary equivalent to having the "dogs lick your blood"?
4. The consequences of arrogance. Using wealth and power unscrupulously comes with consequences. Ahab gets his garden -- but at what price? His legacy is destroyed, his children are doomed to failure. The sins of the father are visited upon his sons and daughters. How do we see this being lived out today? How can we avoid it?
5. Jezebel's manipulation of the mob. Adolf Hitler was obviously not the first to discover the power of the Big Lie. Jezebel's instructions to her henchmen are to make sure that the mob is hungry and short-tempered, and then to denounce Naboth to them, inciting the two most emotionally charged crimes one could commit in that day. The mob acts as mobs always do -- quickly and violently. Today we would call it a lynching. But lynchings need not be done with ropes or stones; they can be done with words as well.
The arrogance of wealth and power led Ahab to heed the bad advice of his wife, and in doing so, he destroyed the life of an innocent man, condemned his children to failure, and consigned himself to ignominy. How differently things might have gone had he simply followed the example of his victim, Naboth, and accepted that "the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it."
May the great Creator God deliver us from Ahab's fate, a fate such as Mary Oliver beautifully and darkly describes in her poem "Of the Empire":
"We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity."
ANOTHER VIEW
Oily Feet
by Kate Murphy
Luke 7:36--8:3
Satirist Andy Borowitz tapped into a common theme when he suggested plugging the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with BP executives. "It's a win-win," he argues. "Best case scenario, they plug the leak, and at the very least, they'll shut... up." Funny, initially, until you remember that those executives are real people -- someone's children, someone's parents -- and you realize you just laughed at the thought of violently drowning them.
But how else can we respond to an overwhelming catastrophe that grows more and more unbelievable each day? We want the oil to stop leaking, but we are powerless to make that happen, so we get angry. We take all that frustrated energy and channel it into rage.
There's a lot of rage to go around these days. We hate BP executives, and we hate liberal environmentalists who forced oil companies to drill offshore and out-of-sight. We hate greedy bankers, and we hate irresponsible people who took on more debt than they could handle. We hate self-serving politicians, and we hate welfare queens who game the system. We hate umpires who blow obvious calls and wreck perfect games, and we hate out-of-touch baseball commissioners who won't allow instant replay or reverse the call.
We live in an age of constant information. We are constantly bombarded with new details about intractable problems that threaten to destroy what we hold most dear: the newest economic forecast, the latest failed attempt to contain leaking oil, the most recent political scandal. We can't avoid the bad news. And we can't seem to rewrite the script. As individuals, we don't have enough power to fix the problems -- the best we can do is hate the people who cause them. And so we do that with great passion.
In this week's gospel lection we find Jesus as the dinner guest of a Pharisee. A woman enters the home and interrupts the meal with a tearful act of devotion. She washes Jesus' feet with her tears and wipes them clean with her hair. A scandalous act -- except we've become very familiar with this story. We know that in the gospel, Pharisees are the enemy and prostitutes are the heroes. So before the pastor finishes reading the lesson, many parishioners will be reciting the sermon: "We know, we know. The Pharisee was a hypocrite. The woman was genuinely seeking God. She was humbly acknowledging her sins. The Pharisee thought he was perfect, so he was rejecting God."
But what if we take the story at face value? What if we challenge ourselves not to make this a story about hypocrisy or self-righteousness? What if we let it be about sin -- real sin that destroys people's lives in concrete ways? What if we let ourselves imagine that the Pharisee really was a genuine man of faith who lived a life of integrity and the woman really was a selfish person whose intentional sin wounded other people? After all, in his teaching parable Jesus clearly says that it is the woman, not the Pharisee, who owes God the greatest debt. Jesus himself says there is a quantitative difference in the lives these two people lead. She has sinned more greatly than the Pharisee has.
For once, let's not cast her as the first-century equivalent of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (a hooker with a heart of gold). Let's not assume that her only crime was being born powerless into a patriarchal society. What if we challenge our church to imagine that she is a serial adulterer, or a child abuser, or a BP oil executive? What if we re-imagine our Pharisee host as a sincere God-seeker who practices his faith with integrity, or a redeemer of orphans, or an earnest environmental activist who, through great personal sacrifice, has figured out a way to live off-the-grid? In other words, what if we imagined ourselves hosting Jesus at a dinner party, when the door burst open and Tony Hayward, CEO of British Petroleum, ran in and threw himself at Christ's feet sobbing and Jesus forgave him -- just like that. And the oil was still flowing into the Gulf.
If we can get folks to be offended, then we've made a good start at teasing out the meaning of the story. That's because Jesus does seem to be saying that the moral calculations we perform to quantify the difference between us and them -- us Christians and them sinners, us liberals and them conservatives, us Republicans and them Democrats, Palestinians and Israelis, us oil-consumers and them oil-executives -- suggest that the difference between the people we are and the people we hate is miniscule in contrast with the righteousness of God. Preachers must be careful not to imply that our moral choices do not matter to God, while at the same time reminding the church that in light of the vast and unfathomable gulf between divine righteousness and human righteousness, our religious posturing and judgmental accusations of our brothers and sisters is particularly galling.
Furthermore, the preacher might wish to remind the church that even our righteous behavior is a product of God's grace. Like the Pharisee, many of us were blessed to be born into families who nurtured us in faith. What is it but God's grace that allows some to experiment with drugs and alcohol in young adulthood and walk away unscarred, while the brain chemistry of others launches them into a lifelong cycle of addiction? What is it but God's grace that guides some of us into "honorable" careers in medicine and ministry, while others who pursued engineering wake up one morning to find themselves the most hated people on the planet? And if we really believe that Jesus is right about that, then we will accept his rebuke gratefully and we will gaze down at that woman, at that oil executive, weepily, joyfully, ecstatically worshiping at his feet -- and realize "Why didn't I think of that?" and join her.
ILLUSTRATIONS
"There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do, I'd like my life back." Thus spoke BP chief executive Tony Hayward recently on NBC's Meet the Press. But after realizing the harshness and insensitivity of his remark, Hayward spent the next several days spinning and twisting the statement from one of callousness to one of concern. In one message Hayward posted to BP America's Facebook page, he said: "I made a hurtful and thoughtless comment on Sunday when I said that 'I wanted my life back.' When I read that recently, I was appalled. I apologize, especially to the families of the 11 men who lost their lives in this tragic accident." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100602/ts_alt_afp/usoilpollutionenvironmenthayward)
I think we correctly place more credence in the candor of the original comment, rather than the carefully crafted retractions and reinterpretations. I would never be one to dismiss the stress this catastrophe has placed on the chief executive officer of BP, but beyond pride, he has suffered no personal loss. Along the Gulf coast we not only have families that are mourning the death of 11 men on the Deep Horizon oil platform, we are also confronted with the economic ruin of countless families and communities -- and there is an ecosystem that may never be restored. With beaches saturated in oil, how long will it be when off on the horizon we will see countless new BP drilling rigs?
In a way the Gulf is "Naboth's Vineyard" -- a land entrusted to us by God for cultivation and preservation. Yet instead of being stewards, we act as possessors. No cost, even the cost of a human life, seemed to stand in the way of a king's desire to exploit the land for personal gain. Reviewing BP's countless drilling violations, was the Gulf a place to be exploited or preserved? And to be exploited at what cost? Eleven lives? A decimated fishing industry? A loss of tourism? The death of countless birds and other wildlife?
Elijah told Ahab: "You have sold yourself to evil in the eyes of the Lord." This, because Ahab was more concerned about personal gain than the well-being of the community. Before Hayward wants his life back, he ought to read the story of Ahab and Jezebel. And we can only hope that in doing so he will be able to hear the voice of Elijah.
* * *
Mary Johnson is 88 years old. She had moved into that little house at the corner of Maple and Gregory as a bride nearly 67 years ago. Behind those walls she raised four children -- even giving birth to one of them in the upstairs bedroom during a blinding snowstorm that kept her from getting to the hospital. Her husband of five decades died nearly 20 years previously while watching a football game on Sunday afternoon. That house holds many memories for Mary -- it is her home, and she wants to live out her last days in it.
Unfortunately, the town's shopping area has surrounded the house. Her little bungalow is the only residence remaining at the front of an enormous shopping mall parking lot. The large multi-national corporation developing the area wants Mary's house. They have brought enormous pressure to bear on her and on the city council because they want the street widened to four lanes -- and doing so would require her house and her land. The city council is considering imposing its legal authority and claiming her property.
There are times when one comes to appreciate the curse of Elijah for a king who exercised his right of eminent domain over Naboth's vineyard.
* * *
There are times when land is more than just a commodity to be bought and sold. This is especially so for country people, or at least it used to be. A family I know lived on a "centennial farm," one which had been in their family for more than 100 years. It had been passed from father to son through four generations. From the time the great-great-grandparents came from Europe to this new world and opened up the land to farming, each succeeding generation had kept the land as a trust. Each took from the land what they needed, and put back what the land needed to stay fertile and rich. But in the end, a son was born into the family who just did not understand. He had no feel for the land and no appreciation for his heritage. To him land was potential cash, so he moved into town and put the farm up for sale to the highest bidder. And then a strange thing happened.
An old dog he loved taught him a lesson. As often as he would take that old dog to their new home, the dog would get out and walk all the miles back to the farm. Time and again he would bring the dog home, tie him up, pen him in, but it was no use. The dog was born on that land and knew the land and would not leave the farm. Finally the farmer said, "That dog taught me a lesson. He knew where we belonged, and he would not give up until he convinced me that I belonged there too." So he came to realize that if he had sold his land, he would indeed have sold himself.
* * *
The arrogance of power sometimes comes to a remarkable end. Lee Atwater, the Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, is cited by some as the architect of the modern style of political campaigning -- and during his career was known for the nastiness of his attack ads.
As Wikipedia notes: "Atwater's most noteworthy campaign was the 1988 presidential election where he served as campaign manager for Republican nominee George H.W. Bush. A particularly aggressive media program included a television advertisement... comparing Bush and Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis on crime." This was the infamous Willie Horton ad. Wikipedia further notes: "In reference to Dukakis, Atwater declared that he would 'strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate.'... During the election, a number of allegations were made in the media about Dukakis' personal life, including the unsubstantiated claim that... Dukakis himself had been treated for a mental illness. In the film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, Robert Novak reveals for the first time that Atwater personally tried to get him to spread these mental health rumors."
In 1990, Atwater was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor, and in 1991 he gave an interview with Life magazine, in which he said: "My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth." Atwater died on March 29, 1991.
* * *
The tragedy of Ahab and Jezebel is reminiscent of Shakespeare's Macbeth, who -- after being entreated by three witches greeting him as "king" and thus confirming his lecherous and latent longings for the throne -- was drawn into a conspiracy of murder by his wife, Lady Macbeth. Jezebel's plot included forgery and assassination. Because Naboth would not sell Ahab his land, she conspired to have him killed. Lady Macbeth, desiring her husband to have the throne, murdered King Duncan by driving a knife through his heart while he slept in her home. Both men were witting co-conspirators in crimes that brought disgrace and devastation on their households. Macbeth was later slain in battle after his wife's own death, and Ahab was killed at Ramoth Gilead by the Aramites. Although their wives had strong influences in their demise, these men destroyed themselves by abandoning personal morality and principles for the sake of unbridled and untempered ambition.
* * *
It had been so many years since the incident, Silvia had lost count; it was something beyond 40 -- a lifetime ago, actually. But the incident itself was etched in her memory, not because she particularly wanted to recall it, but because she had no choice. It wouldn't go away; she couldn't forget. Third grade? Fourth grade? She had been young -- but old enough to know better. She was a member of a service club that met after school, a club that valued honor. They had gone on a field trip to a lapidary shop. Silvia had been enthralled! Brightly polished stones in all shapes and sizes glittered everywhere. She had been fascinated with rocks for as much of her young life as memory let her grasp; but these were so bright, so shiny, so... so unattainable for her, coming as she did from a family that lived on the margins of the American economy. She had not been brought up to steal. Even though her family was poor, she had been taught the importance of not taking that which wasn't hers. But there had been so many stones, all in neat rows of little white boxes, arranged by color and size. How would the proprietor ever miss one or two? Almost of its own volition, her hand darted into the nearest box. Suddenly she was conscious of the smooth, polished coolness in her pocket, as her heart raced from a rush of adrenaline. The rest of the shop tour was a blur for Silvia. When the club members emerged she realized she had five or six hard, silky-surfaced stones hidden beneath the hand in her pocket. That fact struck her simultaneously with fear. What if someone discovered her awful crime? She'd be thrown out of the club. And the humiliation would be more than she could bear! What could she do? As soon as the group returned to her school, Silvia excused herself and raced home. Silently she crept to her room and found a small white box, quite similar to those at the lapidary shop. Silvia placed the small, beautiful stones on a bed of cotton in the box, put on the lid, and hid it beneath her clothes in a drawer. As the ensuing years passed, she periodically stumbled across the box and recalled the fear and shame that assailed her the day she had taken the stones. The terrible irony of their hidden beauty was not lost on her either: she possessed the stones she had coveted, but she could never show them to a living soul without having to reveal the terrible story of how they came into her possession. These small rocks, taken in a moment of passion, were a continual reminder of the awful price one pays by taking that to which one is not entitled.
* * *
Television host and comedy writer Dick Cavett was asked to write an appreciation piece for the New York Times commemorating the recent death of Art Linkletter. Cavett noted in his opening paragraph that his article "may not be everyone's idea of an appreciation." While Cavett said that "Linketter was a man of great accomplishments and performing skill, a shrewd, shrewd businessman," he also identified one of the Linkletter's shortcomings -- specifically, lacking the skill to do a decent stand-up monologue. As one of the substitute hosts of The Tonight Show during the transition period between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, Linketter failed measurably with the ability to tell a joke onstage. A major part of his problem, according to Cavett, was Linkletter's inability to accept the jokes and advice of his writers. Instead of accepting that good humor is based on subtleties, Linkletter felt the need to spell out for the audience every punch line to be sure everyone understood the point, and in so doing the humor was lost.
Cavett cited an example that involved Jack E. Leonard, a well-known and popular comedian at the time who was also rather rotund. Thus he was called "Fat Jack." Writer David Lloyd submitted to Linkletter the following joke poking fun at Leonard: "On tonight's show we're going to talk about comedy teams. You know, comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis... Jack E. Leonard." But Linkletter presented the joke like this: "On tonight's show we're going to talk about comedy teams. You know, comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis... and BIG FAT Jack E. Leonard... who's SO fat, he's a one man comedy team... ALL BY HIMSELF!" As you might guess, the audience responded with silence, not even a snicker. Cavett notes that at this point the writers no longer wrote jokes for Linkletter. Instead, they went to the local bookstore, purchased a Bennett Cerf joke book, and just copied a few jokes and gave them to the host.
In our lesson King Ahab chased the prophet Elijah into the mountains where his voice could not be heard. This allowed the king and his wife Jezebel to desecrate the land and commit atrocities upon any person who opposed them, especially Naboth. As a result their kingdom came to shattering ruins and Ahab is remembered as the worst of Israel's kings. If we fail to listen to the advice of God's appointed, whether they be a prophet or our assigned comedy writing team, we shall stand on the world stage both humiliated and in the shadow of a ruined career.
* * *
Fred Zain worked in a West Virginia State Police chemistry lab from 1986-89, before moving to similar positions in Texas and Florida. In his heyday, he was somewhat of a forensics "star," being called in by prosecutors who wanted to win their case, and Zain delivered. But eventually he was charged with falsifying and/or fabricating evidence and lying on the witness stand. His false reports sent countless people to jail in rape and murder cases.
Zain's descent began with the Glen Woodall case. On the strength of Zain's testimony, Woodall was convicted of two sexual assaults. Later DNA testing proved that Woodall was not the assailant. Woodall's conviction was overturned and he was freed, and he subsequently won a million-dollar settlement for wrongful imprisonment. It also led to a reopening of all the cases that Fred Zain had worked. A report to the West Virginia Supreme Court by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors in November 1993 reported that Fred Zain "fabricated or falsified evidence in just about every case he touched." And that included at least 133 murder and rape cases.
False accusers were not unique to Jezebel's day.
* * *
Churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms. Entering a person's house unexpectedly, we are sometimes met with a barrage of apologies.... Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to churches that are lived in. They are not showrooms. They are living rooms, and if the persons living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork, and mud on the carpet. For as long as Jesus insists on calling sinners and not the righteous to repentance -- and there is no indication as yet that he has changed his policy in that regard -- churches are going to be embarrassing to the fastidious and an affront to the upright.
-- Eugene Peterson
* * *
What blocks forgiveness is not God's reticence... but ours. God's arms are always extended; we are the ones who turn away.
-- Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan, 1997), p. 52
* * *
Children, being innocent, love justice. Adults, being guilty, love mercy.
-- G. K. Chesterton
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: Give ear to our words, O God;
People: Give heed to our sighing.
Leader: We enter you house through the abundance of your steadfast love.
People: We bow down in awe of you, our Sovereign.
Leader: Lead us in your righteousness;
People: Make your way straight before us.
OR
Leader: Come and worship God, the creator of all.
People: How do we come into the presence of such glory?
Leader: Come with joy, for God loves us.
People: We rejoice in God's presence and celebrate God's love.
Leader: Come with humility, because we are not God!
People: We are aware of our shortcomings and bow before God.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
"I Need Thee Every Hour"
found in:
UMH: 397
AAHH: 451
NNBH: 303
NCH: 517
CH: 278
"Make Me a Captive, Lord"
found in:
UMH: 421
PH: 378
"O Crucified Redeemer"
found in:
UMH: 425
"Behold a Broken World"
found in:
UMH: 426
"Jesu, Jesu"
found in:
UMH: 432
H82: 602
PH: 367
NCH: 498
CH: 600
CCB: 66
Renew: 289
"Cuando El Pore" ("When the Poor Ones")
found in:
UMH: 434
PH: 407
CH: 662
"What Does the Lord Require"
found in:
UMH: 441
H82: 605
PH: 405
CH: 659
"Go Down, Moses"
found in:
UMH: 448
PH: 333
AAHH: 543
NNBH: 490
CH: 663
"Humble Yourself in the Sight of the Lord"
found in:
CCB: 72
Renew: 188
"Make Me a Servant"
found in:
CCB: 90
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who is the sovereign over all creation and yet chose to come as a servant: Grant us the grace and courage to live our lives honestly instead of lording ourselves over others; through Jesus Christ the humble servant. Amen.
OR
We come to worship you the God who is sovereign of creation as well as its creator. We come to rejoice in your love and grace and to bow in adoration of your glory. Help us to celebrate your love without becoming arrogant and disdainful of our brothers and sisters. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially the ways we falsely assume we are superior to our brothers and sisters.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have loved us with a love that has no bounds, and yet we have loved others with a love that has many conditions. We judge others and find them less than ourselves, while you judge them and declare them your daughters and your sons. Forgive our foolish haughtiness, and bring us once again to the joy of living humbly in the knowledge of who we are in your sight and the esteem of who others are in your sight. Amen.
Leader: God does love us and desires us to live joyfully. God knows we cannot do that if we live in judgment and condemnation. Love God by loving God's children and God's creation.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord's Prayer)
We adore you, O God, and praise you for your greatness. Your power is beyond understanding and your love beyond naming.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have loved us with a love that has no bounds, and yet we have loved others with a love that has many conditions. We judge others and find them less than ourselves, while you judge them and declare them your daughters and your sons. Forgive our foolish haughtiness, and bring us once again to the joy of living humbly in the knowledge of who we are in your sight and the esteem of who others are in your sight.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which you have endowed your creatures and all creation with your majesty. We are truly blessed to be your creatures. You have made us but a little lower than yourself and filled us with your own glory and Spirit.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for those who have not yet come to understand their own worth in your eyes. We pray for ourselves and others who have belittled others and often done so in your Name. We pray that we may truly be your presence and your blessing to others.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father... Amen.
(or if the Lord's Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Visuals
pictures of world leaders, especially those who are no longer alive, showing that greatness is fleeting
Children's Sermon Starter
The story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" would make a wonderful way to share with children that being a person with power doesn't make us better than others. Even a little child can be smarter than the most powerful person.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Forgive Us Our Debts
Luke 7:36--8:3
Object: bills (debts)
Good morning, boys and girls! How many of you have heard parents or other people talk about bills? Bills are debts. Bills are statements showing how much money we owe someone else. I have several bills with me here this morning. (read them) I need to pay these bills -- these debts.
Have you ever thought that we owe God? Why would we owe God? (let them answer) We owe God for everything! Everything we are and all that we have comes from God.
The next question I have is: How do we pay God? Does anybody have an idea? (let them answer) We pay God by living lives worthy of all the good that God has given us. Here is where I start feeling bad, because I have not done everything I should have done. Some things I have done I should not have done. We call these actions or inactions "sin," and God hates sin!
But God loves me! Even though I have not done all I should have done and I have done some things I should not have -- God cancels my bill. God still gives me life and breath and everything else -- even though I owe God so much.
In the gospel lesson today, Jesus tells a story about a woman who did many things wrong. Yet she loved God and accepted God's forgiveness -- just like you and I do. I'm glad we have such a God.
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The Immediate Word, June 13, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
