On Loan From God
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
Sometimes it is hard to understand what it is in human nature that allows people to become so crass in their dealings with each other. We have all had the experience of being treated like a thing -- a nonperson whose only value is to be used by someone else to accomplish their goals. No one likes that. We all want to be treated with the dignity that we believe belongs to humans.
I think that some of the problem may be that we have forgotten how to treat things with proper respect. The degradation of the environment is ample testimony to our failure in that respect. When we do not know how to treat things with respect, it becomes doubly confusing when we then try to treat people with respect.
The story of the interchange between King Ahab, the anointed king of Israel, and his neighbor, Naboth the Jezreelite, can serve as an effective parable for what is happening in our society. To properly hear this story I would ask you not to identify with Naboth too quickly. Ahab is known as the anointed one of Israel. The Hebrew word for anointed is messiah and in Greek it is christ. As Christians we are called to be God's anointed or Christians. Therefore, the story becomes a cautionary tale about us.
One day Ahab looked out his palace window and saw a vineyard owned by Naboth the Jezreelite. As he gazed at the vineyard, it occurred to him that this small piece of land next to his palace would make an excellent garden. A curious feature of this story is that vineyards are usually planted on rocky soil and, also, they make the soil too alkaline to make a good vegetable garden. Right away we know that Ahab was no farmer. It was not for love of the land but for the love of possessions that Ahab was motivated.
Ahab is not an evil man. Like many of us he simply saw what he wanted and evaluated his ability to obtain it. Being a relatively honorable king, Ahab went to visit Naboth himself. Imagine the president of the United States visiting you personally to negotiate a deal.
Ahab began his negotiation from a generous position. "I would like to have your vineyard for a vegetable garden and in return I will get you an even better piece of land. Or, if you are tired of working the land, I will give you an excellent price in money."
Being the king and accustomed to getting his way, Ahab concluded his offer and began to suck on a grape as he let it dawn on Naboth how generous and fair his beloved king really was. What would you have done if you were Naboth?
What Naboth did was explode in anger. "The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestor's inheritance." Right away you know that there is something more going on than merely the commercial value of the land. We do not have the dialogue to explain Naboth's reaction, but because we know the Israelite faith, we can imagine it.
"I can understand how some pagan king who has no sense can make such an offer, but how can the king of Israel say such a thing? You should know that this land does not belong to me any more than the land your palace stands on belongs to you. All land belongs to God."
"But," said Ahab, "what would God care if I took your land and gave you another equally valuable piece of land in return?" For Ahab, the issue is value for value on a monetary basis.
"Land in Israel," responded Naboth, "is on loan from God for the sake not just of your present family but to sustain all the generations of your family line in the future. How we care for the land, what we do with it is a way of honoring or dishonoring God. God has provided each family line in Israel with enough land to provide for the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing. You know how the prophets rail against those who gather great land holdings at the expense of others who are left landless. We even have the year of jubilee every fifty years to redistribute the land in order to make sure that the generous provisions of God are not distorted by the greed of humanity."
"But," sputtered Ahab, "I will give you another piece of land, even a better one. You will be better off."
"Don't you understand our own faith?" responded Naboth. "God gave this land to my ancestors in trust for me. I, in turn, must provide for the children yet to come. It is a sacred trust."
Was Naboth wrong in clinging to this ancient tradition? Are we not free to see land and other parts of nature as simply things to use to benefit us? Does our faith really obligate us to consider such transactions from God's viewpoint and from the perspective of how it will affect the generations that come after us? How different our environmental debates would be if we held that perspective.
Let me attempt to provide a contemporary parallel for us. Sally leases a home on Cape Cod for the summer. It is an absolutely gorgeous setting with surf pounding the rocks below, clear summer breezes, and a beautiful blue sky. It is a wonderful place for her two teenage sons who love to sail. In the first week, they already made friends with some boys down the beach.
The owner had made a generous lease agreement because of his friendship with her grandparents. Those same grandparents had given her a cash gift for her birthday that made the whole deal possible. It was the perfect setting for some regeneration of her spirit after the loss of her husband a little over a year ago. She felt undergirded and sustained by this beautiful setting.
A week into their summer stay, a wealthy neighbor on the cape decides that the little house in which Sally and her sons are staying would be a perfect spillover for guests that he wished to have visit him during the summer. He comes to Sally and says, "Look, in the past I have not had the best relationship with the owner of this place, but I want to make a deal with you that will benefit both of us. I will find you another place with an equally beautiful setting and even more room. I will also give you a generous cash bonus that could make your summer even more pleasurable. I promise that I will take excellent care of the place. The owner will never have to know and we will all benefit."
Should Sally accept the deal? After all, who is it going to hurt? And she and her neighbor will benefit. In Sally's situation, we begin to feel the tug at our conscience. She would be taking advantage of the original owner, who, after all, had been very generous in the lease agreement. She would also risk dishonoring the friendship of her grandparents with the owner. Even if no one ever found out, the profit that she would make on the deal would be based on deceit. And, once she had made the deal, since it was based on violating the trust of the owner, she would have little control over whether the neighbor respected the property or not.
Like Naboth, we as a nation and as individuals have to decide whether what we have is a trust or a possession. If what we have received in this life is a possession, then we have no obligation to others or any future generations. We are free to exploit it for what we can get now. But, if all that we have is on loan to us for a higher purpose intended by God for all generations, then our lives are to be lived according to that higher purpose, and we are accountable. Most of us do not scheme to take someone's land away, but most of us do get the balance between trust and possessions confused.
In our marriages and our parenting we declare that our relationships come first. Yet in order to possess more things, we often sacrifice time needed to nurture those very relationships. The reason we come to worship is because we believe that our relationship with God is important. Yet the work we do to enable us to have more things often so exhausts us that we choose to sacrifice time with God to get away and get rested so that we can get back to work.
It is not easy to keep the right perspective between relationships and possessions in a world that keeps pushing things. God cares and has provided us the resources by which we might realize the fullness of life. Realizing that fullness requires time with God and each other, we dare not lose sight of that necessary balance between things and relationships. Amen.
I think that some of the problem may be that we have forgotten how to treat things with proper respect. The degradation of the environment is ample testimony to our failure in that respect. When we do not know how to treat things with respect, it becomes doubly confusing when we then try to treat people with respect.
The story of the interchange between King Ahab, the anointed king of Israel, and his neighbor, Naboth the Jezreelite, can serve as an effective parable for what is happening in our society. To properly hear this story I would ask you not to identify with Naboth too quickly. Ahab is known as the anointed one of Israel. The Hebrew word for anointed is messiah and in Greek it is christ. As Christians we are called to be God's anointed or Christians. Therefore, the story becomes a cautionary tale about us.
One day Ahab looked out his palace window and saw a vineyard owned by Naboth the Jezreelite. As he gazed at the vineyard, it occurred to him that this small piece of land next to his palace would make an excellent garden. A curious feature of this story is that vineyards are usually planted on rocky soil and, also, they make the soil too alkaline to make a good vegetable garden. Right away we know that Ahab was no farmer. It was not for love of the land but for the love of possessions that Ahab was motivated.
Ahab is not an evil man. Like many of us he simply saw what he wanted and evaluated his ability to obtain it. Being a relatively honorable king, Ahab went to visit Naboth himself. Imagine the president of the United States visiting you personally to negotiate a deal.
Ahab began his negotiation from a generous position. "I would like to have your vineyard for a vegetable garden and in return I will get you an even better piece of land. Or, if you are tired of working the land, I will give you an excellent price in money."
Being the king and accustomed to getting his way, Ahab concluded his offer and began to suck on a grape as he let it dawn on Naboth how generous and fair his beloved king really was. What would you have done if you were Naboth?
What Naboth did was explode in anger. "The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestor's inheritance." Right away you know that there is something more going on than merely the commercial value of the land. We do not have the dialogue to explain Naboth's reaction, but because we know the Israelite faith, we can imagine it.
"I can understand how some pagan king who has no sense can make such an offer, but how can the king of Israel say such a thing? You should know that this land does not belong to me any more than the land your palace stands on belongs to you. All land belongs to God."
"But," said Ahab, "what would God care if I took your land and gave you another equally valuable piece of land in return?" For Ahab, the issue is value for value on a monetary basis.
"Land in Israel," responded Naboth, "is on loan from God for the sake not just of your present family but to sustain all the generations of your family line in the future. How we care for the land, what we do with it is a way of honoring or dishonoring God. God has provided each family line in Israel with enough land to provide for the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing. You know how the prophets rail against those who gather great land holdings at the expense of others who are left landless. We even have the year of jubilee every fifty years to redistribute the land in order to make sure that the generous provisions of God are not distorted by the greed of humanity."
"But," sputtered Ahab, "I will give you another piece of land, even a better one. You will be better off."
"Don't you understand our own faith?" responded Naboth. "God gave this land to my ancestors in trust for me. I, in turn, must provide for the children yet to come. It is a sacred trust."
Was Naboth wrong in clinging to this ancient tradition? Are we not free to see land and other parts of nature as simply things to use to benefit us? Does our faith really obligate us to consider such transactions from God's viewpoint and from the perspective of how it will affect the generations that come after us? How different our environmental debates would be if we held that perspective.
Let me attempt to provide a contemporary parallel for us. Sally leases a home on Cape Cod for the summer. It is an absolutely gorgeous setting with surf pounding the rocks below, clear summer breezes, and a beautiful blue sky. It is a wonderful place for her two teenage sons who love to sail. In the first week, they already made friends with some boys down the beach.
The owner had made a generous lease agreement because of his friendship with her grandparents. Those same grandparents had given her a cash gift for her birthday that made the whole deal possible. It was the perfect setting for some regeneration of her spirit after the loss of her husband a little over a year ago. She felt undergirded and sustained by this beautiful setting.
A week into their summer stay, a wealthy neighbor on the cape decides that the little house in which Sally and her sons are staying would be a perfect spillover for guests that he wished to have visit him during the summer. He comes to Sally and says, "Look, in the past I have not had the best relationship with the owner of this place, but I want to make a deal with you that will benefit both of us. I will find you another place with an equally beautiful setting and even more room. I will also give you a generous cash bonus that could make your summer even more pleasurable. I promise that I will take excellent care of the place. The owner will never have to know and we will all benefit."
Should Sally accept the deal? After all, who is it going to hurt? And she and her neighbor will benefit. In Sally's situation, we begin to feel the tug at our conscience. She would be taking advantage of the original owner, who, after all, had been very generous in the lease agreement. She would also risk dishonoring the friendship of her grandparents with the owner. Even if no one ever found out, the profit that she would make on the deal would be based on deceit. And, once she had made the deal, since it was based on violating the trust of the owner, she would have little control over whether the neighbor respected the property or not.
Like Naboth, we as a nation and as individuals have to decide whether what we have is a trust or a possession. If what we have received in this life is a possession, then we have no obligation to others or any future generations. We are free to exploit it for what we can get now. But, if all that we have is on loan to us for a higher purpose intended by God for all generations, then our lives are to be lived according to that higher purpose, and we are accountable. Most of us do not scheme to take someone's land away, but most of us do get the balance between trust and possessions confused.
In our marriages and our parenting we declare that our relationships come first. Yet in order to possess more things, we often sacrifice time needed to nurture those very relationships. The reason we come to worship is because we believe that our relationship with God is important. Yet the work we do to enable us to have more things often so exhausts us that we choose to sacrifice time with God to get away and get rested so that we can get back to work.
It is not easy to keep the right perspective between relationships and possessions in a world that keeps pushing things. God cares and has provided us the resources by which we might realize the fullness of life. Realizing that fullness requires time with God and each other, we dare not lose sight of that necessary balance between things and relationships. Amen.
