3^rd Sunday after Pentecost - June 17, 2007

Kingswood UMC

Texts: I Kings 21:1-21a; Luke 7:36-8:3

Deuteronomy 5:6-21

the 10 commandments - Ahab ignores # 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10

We met Ahab and Jezebel and Elijah last week.

Ahab, son of Omri, is one of the worst kings from the Yahwist perspective.

Jezebel, his wife, a foreigner and princess of the royal house of Sidon ... married into the Omri dynasty ... creating a strategic peace that gave Israel a seaport. Brought her own religious and political perspectives and practices. Seen as a metaphor for all that is evil and rejected in ancient Israel.

Elijah – outspoken, eccentric, an in-your-face prophet who speaks truth to power, frequently getting into head to head-on confrontations with Ahab and Jezebel.

Today we meet Naboth, the owner of a vineyard adjacent to the king’s palace. It is a piece of property that is part of Naboth’s ancestral heritage. It does not belong to him alone, but to his kinship network ... past and future ... and as such, it is not a tradeable commodity but held in sacred trust, given by God. In fact, the whole of the ancient story is preoccupied with the promise of land ... from Abraham to Moses, land is promised. Core to God’s covenant with the people is the provision and protection of the land for the survival of all. Embedded in the law and the practices of Israel as part of God’s covenant with them is the protection of the small family unit that would otherwise be vulnerable to the rough and tumble of the economy. Land is guaranteed by Yahweh God for the survival of the weak and vulnerable. So Naboth cannot sell or trade this property without putting himself and his whole family network outside the bounds of their relationship with God and the community of God’s people.

But the king has gotten it into his head that he’d like to have exactly that piece of property, Naboth’s vineyard, for a garden to supply his kitchen. And so Naboth finds himself in the position of having to say no to this neighbor who also just happens to be the king!!! It is hard enough to say no to a friendly neighbor who wants to borrow your tools or your pool or your kid to do chores. Being neighborly is usually a good practice ... you may need some help some day. And you certainly don’t want to make an enemy of someone who lives right next door. But, this neighbor also happens to be the king ... a king who should know better, but whom Naboth knows is more influenced by assumptions about entitlement and privilege that come from his strategic marriage to Jezebel.

Jezebel is usually seen as the source of evil here ... as she connives and strategizes to gain the vineyard by putting out a hit on Naboth. But more accurately she represents the conflict within the Israelite community itself ... between covenantal, communitarian faith and practice, and monarchical values of power, wealth and entitlement.

It is easy to just blame her for being the evil one in this story. But the marriage was made with full awareness that she would bring an alliance with neighboring Sidon, access to the sea, as well as connection to those already in Northern Israel who worshiped Baal. And so, scheming and devious as she was, the fuller responsibility for what happens belongs to the king and the whole system of power, covetousness and greed, treachery, possession and murder in the name of God.

There is lots to unpack in this story:

It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize that we are also part of systems of power that exploit, grab and do violence in the name of what we claim are sacred values and goals. From our ‘manifest destiny’ to ‘making the world safe for democracy’ to the building of walls instead of bridges with our neighbors, the United States gets a mixed review in terms of its purity of intention and adherence to the deepest of Christian values. And though most of us aren’t personally involved in the particulars of these practices, or in developing the policies that support them, we are like Ahab as we look the other way, giving consent by our silence.

Naboth says no to Ahab, no to the values of power and privilege, no to the practices of greed and violence. It is an act of faith that finally costs him his life, as he holds fast to the yes of his faith, to his family inheritance, and to his God. It is a saying no that is ultimately a saying yes to life and to the promises of God.

In the gospel we find another story of saying no and saying yes. But this story is not about greed or covetousness or murder or manipulation ... at least on the surface. It is a beautiful and familiar story, especially in the gospel of Luke, where it appears earlier and is not directly linked with the days immediately before Jesus arrest and crucifixion. But the tensions of power and manipulation don’t run very far beneath the surface.

Jesus has been invited home for a meal by Simon, one of the Pharisees. But it turns out that Simon is a lousy host ... humiliating Jesus by offering none of the basics of hospitality. He fails to wash his feet, to anoint his head, and to acknowledge his equal rank of rabbi by offering a kiss. The woman ... un-named, described as a sinner ... is the only one in the room who understands Jesus’ pain and his embarrassment by the Pharisee’s rudeness. She realizes that in Jesus the Shekinah, or presence of God, has moved and now resides in a person ... this person in front of her named Jesus. She alone shows the expected grace of a host. She brings an alabaster jar of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she bathes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. She kisses his feet and anoints them with the ointment. She says nothing in this story ... but her actions speak her yes. She literally pours out her gratitude and devotion with tears from her eyes, with oil and caring touch.

We are told this woman is a sinner. We don’t know what her sin is ... though the reaction of Simon suggests her sin may be sexual. Her public display of affection and the intimacy she shows Jesus make the others quite uncomfortable .. and so most jump to the conclusion that she is a prostitute. But we don’t know ... at least in this story. And Jesus seems not to be offended at all. In fact, he is more disturbed by the attitude of the others. He uses the moment to teach ... to tell a story about debtors and forgiveness.

His hearers are engaged .. they understand commerce and the dynamics of creditors and debtors, and they judge rightly that the one who is forgiven more will show a greater loyalty and love. Then he connects it to Simon’s inaction, or rather, his action of failing to offer genuine hospitality. Jesus honors the gift of the unnamed woman as a response to forgiveness, implying that Simon may be too focused on righteous religious practice, leaving him unable to perceive his own sin and receive forgiveness and live in gratitude and grace. Jesus turns to the woman, naming her yes of extravagant hospitality as a response to forgiveness, making it ultimately a no to all that inhibits life lived in grace and hope. Yes, she says, pouring out her love in gratitude and courage. No, she says, to those who humiliate others and to the humiliation that bound her for so long.

Acting in faith involves living at the intersection of saying no and saying yes. Making the choices for life and against all that is death, involves:

A few years ago the seminary in Evanston renovated its chapel, making it more versatile and engaging. As they completed the project they decided to give it a new name ... something more appropriate than Garrett Chapel, by which it had been known before. That name referred only to one side of the merger that had taken place some years ago ... making the seminary Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. And it lifted up the gifts of only one person. But their choice of name rather stunned me ... I thought it was a joke at the time. But it makes a lot of sense in the light of this story ... and the reality that it is most often that acts of great love and faith are done by those whose names we never know. It is called the Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful .... and attests to what we can all hope to leave as our legacy.

More than land, or wealth, or even a name .... let us pray that we each and as God’s people, leave a legacy of love in our world ... saying no to all that leads to death, and yes to life in Jesus’ name.

Resources for this sermon:

Word of God, Word of Earth by Davie Napier

Lectionary Homiletics, June/July 2007

Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes

by Walter Brueggemann, especially articles on Elijah, Jezebel, jubilee and land