Faithful in the Face of Injustice
1 Kings 21: 1 – 29
A sermon by Mila Linke
These Are Precedented Times (Part 5)
Good morning. A big thank you to Pastor Susie & for Pastor Dave for allowing me to give the message today. As most of you know, my name is Mila Linke & I am the Bay Shore student minister. I’m an intern. Keep that in mind.
And I thought about this so much last week after Pastor Dave said he’s been preaching for 40 years, probably has thousands of sermons under his belt. And I kind of started late. Maybe I’ll get to a hundred. But God is leading & we shall see. In the meantime, will you pray with me?
Oh dear God of love & justice, my prayer is that I am faithful to your intentions & that there are those who might find conviction in this message. May the words of my mouth & the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, God, my rock & my redeemer. Amen.
Well, you heard that short story. Naboth had a vineyard. It’d been in the family for years & it was right next to the palace of King Ahab & he wanted to turn it into a vegetable garden. I don’t know about you, that doesn’t even sound right. Why take an established vineyard & create a veggie patch? You know, it sounds like the folly of a rich person. It reminded me of that song, they paved paradise to put up a parking lot. & probably a rich person’s parking lot.
And here’s the thing about powerful people. It doesn’t have to make sense because they want what they want & they don’t care what it takes to get it.
So you heard that Naboth was not at all interested in selling the land or changing the land. And he explained super clear it’s because it was his ancestral inheritance. Now, there might be some of us who have had a home in our family, a place for generations. And that comment would tug at our heartstrings & we could understand why. Because it brings out a deep emotion. But that’s not it for Naboth.
It wasn’t an emotional decision. You see, an ancestral inheritance is much more than that. It’s an established legal & cultural custom. And he could not have given it up because it was written in the law of Torah. It was actually an early form of economic justice designed to keep property from being squandered to the wealthy for being just bought & hoarded by powerful people. So the laws required it, faith required it. And most people of faith at that time believe that God required it.
Okay, that makes sense. It makes sense why he’d say no. But what doesn’t make sense is King Ahab would have known this before he even asked. See, he was an Israelite king. You know, he is his heritage was Naboth’s heritage. They shared the same book. He knew it was law. He knew it he would be turned down by someone as faithful as Naboth. Doesn’t make sense.
So, what you have here is simply a powerful person wanting what they want. I want what I want & I’m going to do anything to get it. And then he has the audacity to get ticked off because he didn’t get his own way knowing that he probably couldn’t all along. He wasn’t happy.
Well, I’m wondering. It kind of reminded me of our current times. a political system that seems similar. I guess that’s why we’ve been exploring that these are precedented times. Political power run amuck.
If you think this this is just an ancient story with no connection to today’s life, I ask you to let us look 70 miles down in that same area down from the palace, down from the vineyard. you’ll find a place called Gaza. Gaza. There’s ancestral land there, too. There are families there who have called it home for generations, & now they’ve been displaced. Their homes are in ruin. There’s even talk of turning it into the Riviera of the Middle East, a playground for the rich & famous, a folly. Oh yes, make no mistake. These are precedented times.
But what does that have to do with us? What about us? If history is doomed to repeat itself & the powerful are going to bulldoze over the marginalized like they have literally, figuratively, realistically, & consistently. Where does that leave us?
Well, there’s lots of things that we cannot easily change. But how we react & more importantly I believe when we react is something that we can change.
But let’s set that aside. Let’s get back to the story. Ahab is sulking. He’s being a great big baby because things didn’t go his way. The guy’s refusing to eat. Kind of sounds toddler-like. But his scheming wife Jezebel, well, she hatches a plan. And in scripture, you might notice Ahab never gives the reason why Naboth said no. He never mentions the ancestral heritage part of things. And that was for a good reason. She wouldn’t have understood. She wouldn’t have even respected it because she was not an Israelite. They didn’t say share the same background. She didn’t respect or understand the traditions of the Hebrew people. None of it was sacred to her.
So, her plan went on. One that would get Naboth into big trouble. But there’s something else in the scripture that isn’t being said, but struck me as being even more interesting. You heard that Jezebel invited elders & nobles. And it says right there, who lived in the city with Naboth. Most likely, these learned men would have shared his heritage. They would have been Israelites too. They would have worshiped the same God. These local leaders had the same religious customs, the same practices as Naboth. And supposedly they were men of faith.
But just as soon as Naboth was accused of cursing God & the king, well, they failed to take a deeper look. They didn’t even stop the killing that was bound to happen. They let it play out. These local leaders failed to protect him & they could have if they had just said a word.
This is why injustice happens because good people or even so-called good people just stay silent. They didn’t bother to look a little closer.
Has that happened to us? You know, we have another situation in our lives right now. One where we’re getting messages all the time. Messages like ICE is only taking away the bad guys. And come on, we don’t want those kind of people here.
You see, it’s easy to get played when you just hear something & you don’t even think about it. When you take statements like that at face value & you don’t bother to look a little deeper & it could be easy to forget, conveniently forget to ask questions, to see the things that might really be going on.
Well, back to the story. Naboth, he’s out of the picture. Ahab gets the land, the vineyard, & then Elijah steps in, & he tells Ahab, “God’s ticked off at you because of what you did, what you let happen. You’re going to look at some real hard times, & so is that wicked witch that you married.” In the mix, Elijah happens to mention that God’s heard about his idol worshiping on the side, & he’s not happy about that either. So once he’s confronted, what does Ahab do? Well, he changes his tune. He puts on sackcloth. Oh, wow. That’s really difficult. And then God seemingly changes God’s mind & said, “Okay, nothing bad’s going to happen to you, but your son, just wait & see. You better look out.”
Now this story has been preached countless times & preachers will say that this story is one or two ways. It’s standing firm for your beliefs like Naboth did, right? Or they could say it’s like Ahab. All you have to do is admit you’re a sinner, say you’re sorry, repent, & God will forgive you.
They emphasize this story as either standing up for what’s right or admitting that you’re a sinner & repenting. And I suppose that’s a way to look at it. But let’s face it, the dude got killed, you know, & Ahab, all he had to do was put on some scratchy clothes & say, “I’m sorry. Nothing happened to him.”
All right, this is just me, but I have a hard time finding morality or even a sense of justice in this story. You know, we heard that Elijah is the figure that speaks truth to power, speaking up for God. And it didn’t change the ending. Naboth is dead. His ancestral homeland got taken away. Nothing changed. seemed like it was too little, too late.
And I wonder what can we find in in this story for us. I wonder if maybe scripture isn’t always that nice happy ending tied up with a bow like we want. And maybe that is the point. Maybe the idea is to leave us with a challenge for ourselves for right now. It’s not a happy story. But maybe that’s our reminder.
We may not see change in our lifetimes when we step up for what is right. The result of our speaking truth to power may not give us the results when we want them, how we want them, the ones we know that are right & just. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. it.
Now, here’s a little Pastor David’s song title: We can’t always get what we want. The hard truth is we may speak up. We might even act, but we may not see justice even in our lifetime. But that doesn’t mean we should stop speaking.
Let me tell you a much smaller story. One where I knew I was in the right & I thought I could get an ending that would just make me happy. I didn’t & I’m still thinking about it decades later. You see, I was in a parking lot at Home Depot & I was slowly backing my car out into this crowded parking lot when a guy with a new big beautiful German SUV hits me. Oh, I said, “Wow.” Stopped the car. I got out. I said, “You hit me.” He looked at me straight in my face & said, “No, I didn’t.” I said, “Well, the shape of that new bumper of yours is matching the shape of my dent back there pretty accurately.” He goes, “No, it didn’t hit you.” I said, “Well, I don’t…” I didn’t know what to do.” All of a sudden, a lady shows up & she said, “I saw the whole thing. I saw everything. He hit you.” All right. Now, I’m getting smug. I said, “There you go.” But what the guy didn’t know was I had no intention of filing insurance or doing anything. Actually, that car had a gazillion miles on it. I taught the kids to drive in it, so you know, it had a few scratches & probably a few more dents. You know, I really didn’t care. I just wanted kind of an apology, you know, just a little I’m sorry. But he kept repeating how he did not hit my car. He said, okay, I’ll give you some money. Then he said, I know a guy that could pop that dent right out. Just follow me & I’ll take you over there. And I said, no, no, I don’t want any of that. I just want you to admit you did it. A little, I’m sorry, wouldn’t be a bad thing either. He said, no, not going to do it because I didn’t hit your car. Then I pulled out all the stops & I said, “What are you, a politician?” Well, that didn’t go over well. And I look over at my witness, well, she scooted right out of there because I was getting a little heated. And before it got worse, I decided just to let it go.
Now, this is kind of a silly story, but I tell it because there are times we know we’re right. We know that we’re standing up for something right, something hopefully a lot bigger than that. And speaking truth to power may not give us those instant results, the ones I was looking for, but it’s still the right thing to do. And more than doing it alone, we should do it together.
We stand better when we stand together. And the crux of it is we should do it before things get worse or start to even get bad.
Stand up for those who need it. Condemn the evil around us, but do it in a timely manner. Do it before things could even get worse.
You know, it reminds me of that German pastor & his words, Mark Martinholer.
First they came for the communists & I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the socialist & I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists & I did not speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews. I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
And then they came for me & there was no one left to speak for me.
You see, justice doesn’t happen by accident. It can happen when we speak up, even if it costs us. Well, this story was not a happy story. Naboth dies. Ahab gets the land. And Jezebel keeps on scheming. The elders & the nobles, the people who should have stood up & defended Naboth, well, they didn’t do anything. And yet, the story asks us, will we be the ones who stay silent or the ones who speak?
We may not see the results. We may never see them.
But faithfulness & justice is not about winning every fight. It’s about refusing to let the powerful write the only version of the story.
Right now, in these precedented times, it is our moment to speak. Not because it’s better for us, not because it’s safe, certainly not because it’s easy, but because every neighbor, every stranger, every person is part of our family.
So speak up whenever, however, as often as you can. But remember, if you ever hit a car in a parking lot, just admit it.
Amen.