And in Between We Garden

a sermon on 1 Kings 21.1-21a, with reference to Galatians 6.7-10

by David C. Mauldin

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

Are you a gardener?  Some people delight in gardening, even if they only cultivate a small flower bed.  I am not a gardener.  We have a little patch of landscaped ground in front of our house where I wage an unending battle against weeds.  Right now the weeds are ahead by two touchdowns.  What is a chore for me is a joy to others, however.  Some people garden as a spiritual exercise, a way to commune with the Creator, whose glory we see in creation.  There is an old saying:  “We come from the earth.  We return to the earth.  And in between we garden.”  That’s the motto of a true gardener.

In the Bible, some of the most significant events in God’s dealings with humanity take place in a garden.  It all starts in the Garden of Eden.  To answer the question “What’s wrong with the world?” ancient Hebrews told the story of things gone wrong in the Garden of Eden.  Today’s reading, the affair of Naboth’s vineyard, encapsulates all that is wrong in the world.  We see a picture of how people treat one another that is so universal, you could change the names and a few features of the story and set it in any time and place.  The New Testament has gardens too.  The Garden of Gethsemane figures prominently in the story of Jesus.  And John informs us that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was in a garden (Jn 19.21).  Recall that when Mary Magdalene met the risen Jesus, she initially mistook him for the gardener.  One might also point to the Tree of Life in the book of the Revelation as a hint of gardening as the saga of salvation draws to a triumphant conclusion, but I wouldn’t force the point.  In any case, given the rich references to gardens in scripture, we might adapt the Gardener’s Motto to sum up the message of the Bible:  We came from God.  We return to God.  And in between we garden.

This morning our focus is the account of Naboth’s vineyard.  It’s a nasty bit of work.  Half of the Ten Commandments are broken before it is over.  What are we to make of this story?  A helpful way to begin study of any Bible passage is to ask, What is this doing in the Bible?  After all, nothing is there by accident.  Someone wrote it down and put it into place for a reason.  Though the reason may be lost to us, in many cases we can see the purpose for a story by looking at the book or section of the Bible from which it comes.  In this case, the story of Naboth’s vineyard comes from 1 Kings.  First Kings is a book of history, and it does not stand alone.  The books from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings work together to tell the story of Israel from a particular perspective.  Deuteronomy contains the Law and the warning that God’s people will live or die by it.  If they obey, they will prosper.  If they disobey, they will suffer.  This perspective colors the history that follows in Joshua, which tells how Israel gained the promised land; Judges, which describes the early life of Israel before they had a king; Ruth, which is a fascinating interlude that gives background to David’s family; 1 Samuel, which is about Israel’s first king, Saul; 2 Samuel, which is about Israel’s greatest king, David; then 1 & 2 Kings, which are about the rest of Israel’s history, from Solomon to the division of the nation after his death, down to the time of the Exile.  All these books share a common obsession:  Only the Covenant God of Israel—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—is to be worshipped.  They work together to make a common point:  The Northern Kingdom, Israel, had been destroyed by the Assyrians because of Israel’s idolatry.  They had worshipped false gods and abandoned the way of the Lord.  Likewise, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple there resulted from the sins of the Southern Kingdom, Judah.  The prophets had warned them to change their ways, but the people of Judah didn’t listen.  Now most of them were captives in Babylon, and they had only themselves to blame.  Although the stories in these books are much older, they were put together during this period of exile.  People wanted to know:  Why did this happen?  Where is God?  The answer they got may sound very harsh and negative to us, but they had limited choices.  Either they could not count on God—because God was not in control after all or perhaps God had simply abandoned them.  Either they could not count on God, or God remains faithful but is chastising the nation.  If exile were the result of God’s failure, they had no hope.  That God could fail was unthinkable.  But if they had brought exile upon themselves, then perhaps God would forgive them and bring them home.  That is what the prophets promised, and that is what happened. 

With that in mind, this story begins to come alive.  We can see the perspective of Deuteronomy at work.  This story is a warning against idolatry and religious syncretism.  Syncretism is when you mix in parts of one religion with another.  Practically everyone does it today.  You take a few ideas you like from this religion, borrow something from this philosophy, add a little bit from still another source, and pow!  You have invented your own faith to suit your tastes.  The best part about inventing your own religion is it usually allows you to do all kinds of things straight Christianity won’t let you do—like “appropriate” a neighbor’s vineyard.  Jezebel comes across as the big villain in the whole Naboth’s vineyard business.  Jezebel was a foreign princess who married the king of Israel for political reasons.  The problem was, she brought her pagan gods with her, and the people of Israel began to worship them.  This passage is a warning:  When God’s people fear God and worship him alone, when they honor him as they should, then things like what Ahab did to Naboth don’t happen.  When they forget God, when they start diluting their faith and mixing in other things, this is exactly the kind of thing that happens. 

This account is also about God’s response to the problems of our world.  This is part of Elijah’s story, and Elijah appears in scripture as God’s mouthpiece to remind us that God is concerned about us, involved in our affairs, and willing to dole out justice. 

From a broader perspective, this story is about human righteousness and sin.  Naboth is righteous; Ahab and Jezebel are wicked.  As I said before, this story could happen any time, any place.  It warns us of the dangers of coveting what someone else has and of the abuse of power.

Use your imagination a little now.  Imagine that you lived in Jerusalem when the Babylonian army came.  They destroyed your home, took your land, and shipped you off to a strange place.  There you read about another person who had his land stolen, and at the end of the story you discover that the judgment of God falls on the perpetrators.  This might just become your favorite story in the whole Bible.

I want to bring out some things in the story that the writer assumed people would know, but most of us probably do not.  King Ahab began to rule Israel in 869 b.c.  Although he accomplished much politically and militarily, the Bible presents him as a weak and bumbling figure.  Ahab had a problem.  The kingdom on his northern border, Aram, which covered the area of present-day Syria, posed a serious threat.  Aram and Israel were frequently at war.  Ahab’s strategy for survival was to make alliances with all his other neighbors.  These alliances were sealed by marriage between royal families.  This is how he ended up married to a Jezebel like Jezebel.  She was a Phoenician princess.  On the home front, Ahab earned harsh treatment at the hands of biblical writers by placing Canaanite religion on an equal standing with the worship of Israel’s God.  He built Jezebel a temple to the god Baal and goddess Asherah.  Ahab himself worshipped both the Lord and Baal. 

One day Ahab is at his country home in Jezreel.  Samaria was his capital.  From the royal residence he chanced to spy a lovely vineyard conveniently located nearby.  “That’s just what I need,” he thought.  “I’ll go buy the place.  I’ll make Naboth an offer he can’t refuse.”  But refuse it he did.  Naboth appears in scripture only in connection with this story.  We know little about him, but we know he was a righteous man because he would not sell his ancestral land.  This was not simply his choice.  The Law was very clear on the subject.  Land allotted to families in Israel was to remain with that family.  Laws were in place so that under no circumstances would land allotted to one of the clans of Israel end up in the possession of one of the other clans.  Numbers 36.7 is just one of these laws: “No inheritance of the Israelites shall be transferred from one tribe to another; for all Israelites shall retain the inheritance of their ancestral tribes.”  I could quote many more.  Ahab had no recourse or appeal to imminent domain.  He knew it, and he went away sad.  There was nothing he could do, for even the king was subject to the law of God.  More than a rule was at stake.  If he were to seize Naboth’s land, the fabric of Israelite society would be damaged, including his own position as king. 

Jezebel, however, ain’t from here.  And she plays by Phoenician rules.  Where she comes from, the king does and gets whatever the king wants.  So after scolding Ahab, she takes matters into hand.  Idolatry is always in the background here, so the first commandment is broken.  Ahab covets and breaks number 10.  Jezebel arranges false witnesses, thus breaking number 9.  On the testimony of the two scoundrels Naboth is stoned to death, which adds murder to the charge.  That’s commandment number 6 you hear shattering.  And finally, Ahab moves in to take possession of the vineyard.  Stealing is commandment number 8.  See, fully half of the 10 Commandments are violated.  I told you it was a nasty bit of business. 

You know the story is not over.  Stories in the Bible do not end that way, because the Bible is about God being active in our world.  We come from God.  We return to God.  And in between we garden.  But this is God’s garden we are living in, and God does a little gardening too.  In this case God pulls up some weeds.

While Ahab enjoys his ill-gotten spoils, the word of the Lord comes to the prophet Elijah.  God says, “I have a job for you.  Go tell Ahab that his days are numbered.  Because of his evil I will bring disaster on him.”  Elijah goes, exchanges unfriendly greetings with Ahab, and gives him the message.  Long story short:  Ahab’s dynasty ends and the word of God spoken through Elijah is fulfilled….

In the passage I read from Galatians, Paul uses a gardening metaphor, “You reap whatever you sow.”  The truth of this is apparent to any gardener.  What grows in your garden, weeds notwithstanding, is what you plant.  We would like to believe the same is true for human conduct.  If you are righteous, you will reap the benefits of righteousness.  If you are wicked, you will get what’s coming to you.  At first, things do not work out that way in the story of Naboth’s vineyard.  Naboth was a righteous man.  He was a hard worker, for he kept a vineyard worth coveting.  He honored the law of God.  He ends up dead.  This is a great evil.  What’s more, the wickedness of Ahab and Jezebel tears at the fabric of Israelite society.  God intended each family to have a share of the land; Israel was not to be like other nations, in which the king owned everything.  Israel’s king had limited power, so that the people might enjoy shalom, peace and prosperity from God.  If we did not know how the story ends, we would be angry and wonder what God would do about it.  But we know that although the perpetrators enjoy the fruits of their sin briefly, the judgment of God is upon them.

In our day, when things go wrong, when evil and injustice are inflicted upon a helpless or unsuspecting victim, no Elijah comes forward to announce the judgment of God.  When you or I sin, only rarely are we even called on it.  The five commandments broken in today’s text get broken again everyday, along with the other five and pretty much any other commandment or moral injunction you can think of.  Nothing happens.  I want to ask the question the Psalmist asked, “Why do the wicked prosper?”  Was Paul wrong about reaping and sowing?  Has God put humankind on the honor system now? 

Ironically, we have the same kind of theological choice the Jews in exile had.  Either we cannot count on God—because God is unable or unwilling to do anything about injustice in our world.  Either we cannot count on God, or we can.  The story of Naboth’s vineyard portrays God as the defender of right, the restorer of justice, the One who makes everything balance in the end.  This story fits nicely into scripture, because that is a picture of God we find throughout the Bible.  It is what Paul had in mind when he wrote, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.” 

I propose to you that we need not look for instant, dramatic justice from the hand of God.  Rather, we should be patient and hopeful and put our trust in God.  I believe God has woven justice into the fabric of the universe.  Sin has a boomerang effect.  Once a person sins, that sin becomes a part of him or her.  Now fortunately, through Jesus Christ we can be forgiven and have the effects of sin cancelled.  But without repentance and faith, a person will be destroyed by his or her own sins.  Sin ruins something very special at the core of our being.  If this is true, then justice prevails after all.

God will put things right.  Scripture promises that God will, in his own time, finally make creation what he intended it to be.  You know the drill:  no more war or suffering or pain or tears.  Justice will triumph, and God will reign.  The prophets promised it.  Jesus preached it.  And his resurrection is our proof that God intends to do it. 

This is good or bad news, depending on where you choose to align yourself.  For those who would be righteous, God is merciful and forgiving.  Although we all sin, we are put right with God by faith in Jesus Christ because he died for us.  The time we spend waiting for justice, waiting for God to put things right, testifies to God’s grace.  God gives us opportunity to repent and turn to Jesus.  On the other hand, this is bad news for those who choose evil.  God is going to put things right, if you oppose this, you will get run over.

I doubt any of us wants to oppose God.  I say all this because I want you to believe in God as the One who sets things right.  I want you to believe God guarantees justice.  I want you to believe that you will reap what you sow.  Because your trust in God to maintain justice in the universe will shape how you think and act.  The fruits of sin seem less tempting once you realize you will pay a higher price than the one on the price tag.  Conversely, the fruits of righteousness will become more appealing. 

Paul’s advice based on reaping and sowing was this:  “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up.  So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially those of the household of faith.”  That is my message to you:  Do not give up!  It is easy to become discouraged when we look at all the evil and misery in the world.  It is easy to let opportunities for good slip by.  When you are dragged off into exile, it is easy to lose faith and sell out to the dark side.  When people tell lies about you and take what you have, it is easy to give up on justice and God and the whole thing and just start looking out for yourself.  But don’t let that happen.  We look around God’s garden, and we see weeds; and we think, “What’s the use?”  But we can trust God.  So let us not grow weary in doing what is right.  Do not give up.  Even when you get discouraged, hold on; because if you do not give up, you will reap at harvest-time….

We came from God.  We return to God.  And in between we garden.  When your good works yield no reward, and evil seems to prosper all around, do not give up.  The harvest is coming.  Let us not grow weary in doing what is right.  Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com