So this is the sixth week in our series on Kings.
For 4 of those weeks we have concentrated on Elijah and his prophetic witness. Elijah takes up a lot of space in Jewish and Christian imagination. In a part of the Bible dedicated to the kings, Brueggemann suggests that the Elijah narratives “function to delegitimate royal power and to assert that YHWH, the giver of life has other agents and other avenues outside monarchy to give the gift of life.”
We have particularly focused on his relationship with King Ahab and his wife the Queen Jezebel. This relationship between the prophet and the royal couple can perhaps be summed up in verse 20 of today’s reading. When the word of the Lord yet again sends Elijah to the king, Ahab asks, “have you found me, O my enemy?” And Elijah answers, “I have found you because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord.”
Today’s story tells of their last encounter and it is a powerful one indeed.
The story begins with King Ahab who desires the vineyard of his neighbour Naboth. This story of a king, who has more than he could ever need, looking down into his neighbour’s yard and desiring that which was not his to desire, recalls the story of David and Bathsheba.
And Ahab goes to Naboth and tells him to give him the vineyard. The king promises to pay Naboth well or to give him a better vineyard.
For most of us this is normal and reasonable and good. Personally, if I was presented the opportunity to sell my home for good money or swap it for a better one, I would take it. This system seems to have worked for a long while. But as the housing crisis hits fever pitch, particularly for younger generations, I wonder if some might be beginning to ask is there a better way.
But Naboth, refuses to give up his land, saying, “the Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” Naboth was shaped by a very different notion of land value. He, like Elijah was shaped by the tradition of Moses and the law given to the Hebrew people by God that said, “You must not move your neighbour’s boundary marker, set up by former generations, on the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.” Naboth understands land to be a gift from the Creator, its use contingent upon an intergenerational enduring covenant relationship.
This view of the land and way of relating to it, of course is strikingly similar to that of First Nations people here in Australia and across the world who speak not of owning land but of the land owning them.
For Naboth unfortunately the worldview of land possession triumphs in this particular battle. Jezebel convinces her husband that he should not accept no for an answer and she plots to have Naboth killed. Using the effective strategy of divide and conquer, she recruits local leaders, who likely feared for their own safety, to stone Naboth to death.
Those of you who were here two weeks ago might remember my rather vigorous critique of the way that the name Jezebel has become synonymous with adultery and sexual immorality and has been used throughout the history of the church to shame, silence and blame women. I wondered if she was truly deserving of the title of the Bible’s most depraved character given many others have killed as many, if not more people than her.
Some people felt that in doing this I was letting Jezebel off too lightly. I can see why it came across like this. But, it was not and is not, my intention to let her off the hook. Jezebel is, as I said then, a malicious, conniving, and murderous character. While I continue to feel that her actions were no worse than the king’s, and that he is ultimately responsible for his actions, she is dangerous. It seems King Ahab may have actually done the right thing in this story. He may have respected the laws here if she had not very intentionally lured him away from God and made him confused about what was right and wrong.
If there is a Jezebel spirit, which I am still totally convinced of, but I’m willing to admit there are things I do not know, its goal is not get inside our bedrooms but to lure us away from God and to convince us to take possession of that which is not ours to take possession of.
And this is what she does here. She conspires to have Naboth killed and takes his land.
However, Naboth’s resistance will not be silenced. Elijah, appears, in the same way the prophet Nathan came to David when he took Bathsheba, who was married to another. And Elijah asks Ahab, “Have you killed, and also taken possession?”
Have you killed, and also taken possession?” It is a rather succinct description of colonisation, is it not?
And then Elijah tells Ahab that because of this evil, disaster will be brought upon him and his descendants.
Ahab is contrite and thus avoids the disaster that was pronounced against him but it is not enough to save his sons. Enns and Myers note in this we encounter “an important dialectical realism that we often find in the biblical narratives.” That is, “Personal efforts to “turn around” are meaningful, even among the powerful, but by themselves they do not change political systems.”
And these systems have consequences down the generations. Again something Aboriginal people know well.
Ellen Davis calls the story of Naboth, “an emblematic tale of two economic systems or cultures in conflict, each with different principles of land tenure.”
Brueggemann says, “this pervasive clash between systems serves to make the Bible immediately and relentlessly contemporary, for this clash of covenantal and commercial is everywhere evident among us. Indeed, one can see that much of Israel’s Torah is designed for resistance to the commoditization of the land. This is unmistakable not least in the tenth commandment:”
“Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s wife. Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”
The coveting of a neighbour’s field is everywhere at work in ancient and contemporary society and in our hearts. For all of us I imagine there is at least one thing that triggers intense jealousy within us. Jealousy might seem like one of the lesser sins but this story would remind us of the way it can distort us and take away our joy.
Many of us here have also been following the ongoing saga of the Singleton Station water license granted in 2021. This license approved by the NT government enables Fortune Agribusiness to extract 40,000 megalitres of water per year for its station located about 300 kms North of Alice Springs. Over the life of this 30-year license, more than a trillion litres of water could be extracted, twice the volume of Sydney Harbour in one of the driest places in the country. After 30 years Fortune Agribusiness will likely move on leaving the area decimated.
The community of Ali Curung, local Alice Springs residents and environment groups have been fighting this license ever since. This year Central Land Council lawyers (some we know in this church) on behalf of native title holders launched an appeal over the license. The final decision is still to be made but thankfully while this happening Fortune Agribusiness cannot use this license.
For me this story is a 21st century Central Australian version of this story from Kings. It is emblematic of two economic systems and cultures in conflict. Australian legislation only sees water through an economic lens, as a resource for extraction like iron ore. But for first nations people, “Water is quite literally sacred.” So says Michael Jones, one of the area’s traditional owners. He says, “Many of the region’s sacred sites are part of groundwater-dependent ecosystems. . . These sites include trees, bush foods and soaks. These sites have helped people navigate the desert safely for tens of thousands of years.”
For Indigenous peoples who are the most impoverished in Australia, water security is one of the key issues brought about by climate change, but it will be an issue for all Australians.
Today, making our entire economic system fairer, one that looks more like the one given at Sinai seems pretty impossible but I do think our ongoing support and interest in cases like this make a difference. Practices like Sabbath in which we put aside a day for our Creator, one day a week in which we disengage from the marketplace also matter. Recognising things like social media that create within us jealous hearts and stepping away from them matters.
This story also seems contemporary this week. Today a number of people here will set off on a Spirit Journey with John Cavanagh to hopefully learn more about him and his people’s connection to this land. This also matters.
It is also NAIDOC week and the week the Uniting Church celebrates the 30 year anniversary of the covenant between the Uniting Church and the Uniting Aboriginal Christian Congress. This document is critical to the life of our church and the voice of Naboth rings out in it.
“We lament that our people took your land from you as if it were land belonging to nobody, and often responded with great violence to the resistance of your people; our people took from you your means of livelihood, and desecrated many sacred places. Our justice system discriminated against you and that denial of justice continues today.
Your people were prevented from caring for this land as you believe God required of you, and our failure to care for the land appropriately has brought many problems for all of us.”
Reading and reflecting on this document matters.
Jezebel might have been victorious in this situation. And others like her and Ahab might continue to be successful in many situations today but there is hope. Naboth’s resistance will not be silenced. The word of Lord spoken through the prophets still stands against greedy people and systems that seek to oppress and murder and steal and lure people away from God. The word of the Lord still stands with the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers.
In the words of Ruth Harvey from Iona, “The word of God still weaves a pattern, a golden thread through all lives and all of life! This golden thread, the Holy Spirit, if you like, is alive and continues to guide us.”
