St
Luke’s, Havelock North – Ordinary Sunday 11, 2007 - Sermon
There are a few things that every preacher
learns to take for granted. One is that eventually whatever you say will come
back to bite you in the backside, and another is that as far as ideas for
sermons go, it’s usually ether a feast or a famine. And this week has been
something of a feast. In fact it’s one of those times when you find yourself
torn every which way trying to decide what to focus on. In particular, I’ve
found myself with three competing and intriguing themes: the story of Naboth’s
vineyard from the Old Testament, the anointing of Jesus’ feet in the gospel and
my own personal desire to focus on our vision that I’ve signalled as a priority
for me over recent weeks.
So you can see my dilemma – all these options to
choose from. Then, of course, I remembered I’m an Anglican. We’re not so
bothered about making hard and fast choices. If there are a whole lot of
different ideas and we like them all, then we take them all, so that’s what I
decided I’d do – we’ll take the lot.
There are a few basic connections between the
stories of Naboth and the anointing of Jesus’ feet. Both bear some resemblance
to similar, better known stories with subtle but important differences, both
are easily misinterpreted by church-shaped ears, and both at their very core
are about a fundamental clash of cultures, and that, I believe is a key issue
for us today.
Let’s start with Naboth. It’s a story familiar
to many of us mainly because it’s often cited in discussions about Maori land
claims. Internationally it’s not so well known, although you’ll often find it
referred in reference to the story of David and Bathsheba – a story that bears
some resemblance to this one, but also some major differences.
It’s a simple enough tale. King Ahab wants
Naboth’s vineyard for a vege patch and offers him a fair price or a better
vineyard in return. Naboth refuses to part with his land, so Ahab goes home to
sulk while Jezebel gets angry because she sees Naboth’s refusal as an insult to
the status of the king. So Jezebel sets Naboth up to be falsely accused and
executed, then tells Ahab to go off and claim the now vacant vineyard as his
own. Ahab does just that and then the prophet Elijah shows up and gives him a
good telling off. The end, sort of.
As for the other story we’ve heard this morning,
it all begins when Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus round to his place for
dinner. There they are, reclining at the table when a woman of dubious repute
gatecrashes the party and proceeds to kiss Jesus’ feet before anointing them
with extravagant perfume. There are clear similarities here between other
stories in the gospels where we find two different Mary’s doing the anointing –
Mary Magdelene and Mary, the daughter of Lazarus. On those occasions Jesus’ own
disciples ask the questions and Jesus draws comparisons with preparing his body
for burial. In this story it’s Simon the Pharisee who questions what’s
happening and Jesus responds with a parable-like riddle and some teaching about
forgiveness.
This is where those church-shaped ears come in.
We who have heard these stories and others like them for years, who have sat
through copious sermons and listened to a multitude of exegetical explanations,
we know immediately who are the good guys and who are the baddies in these
stories, we understand straight away the Christian common sense in what Elijah
and Jesus have to say, and we tend not to hear at all the other sides to these
stories that do most definitely exist.
What do we know, for example, about Ahab and
Jezebel? Well, we know that Ahab was one of
It’s very important that when we hear the story
of Naboth’s vineyard we get the point that Ahab never tried to rip Naboth off.
He wasn’t trying to steal the land or get it cheap, but what he failed to
understand and what Jezebel just didn’t get was the virtually unbreakable
attachment to the land that Naboth felt because it was his inheritance, and in
the Hebrew understanding, that made the land a gift from God. So to Ahab and
Jezebel this was a commercial transaction, but to Naboth it was a sacred trust
and covenant, and it’s in that context that the whole story unfolds.
The context in our gospel story is, of course,
very different, but again our church-shaped ears step into action as soon as we
hear that Simon was a Pharisee. We know all about the Pharisees don’t we? I
wonder what words come to mind when you hear that name – chances are they’re
not overly positive ones. Yet for all intents and purposes Simon is not
portrayed in a negative light for the most part in this reading, but rather as
a bright and curious enquirer who genuinely wants to learn more about this
young rabbi, Jesus.
Where it all starts to unravel, though, is with
the arrival of the woman. We don’t know precisely what made her character so
dubious – there’s often an assumption that she was a prostitute, but there’s no
real proof of that – it could have involved any one or more of dozens of
different cultural protocols and rules, but whatever it was, when Jesus allows
this person – this woman – to not only kiss but also anoint his feet, Simon –
not really surprisingly – is taken aback. And while this story, obviously,
doesn’t end on as grisly a note as Naboth’s, Luke does quite deliberately use
it to nail one more metaphorical nail into Jesus’ coffin.
Do you want to know why Jesus was rejected by
the religious authorities and eventually nailed to a cross? See stories like
this one. Jesus’ actions so offended not only the religious, but the very
cultural, sensibilities of those with power in his land that really his fate
was totally unavoidable.
That’s what these stories have in common – a
fundamental clash of two different cultures, each with very different values
and attitudes about what matters most. What Naboth and eventually Jesus
discovered was that clashing with the dominant culture costs – end of story,
kind of.
So what do these stories have to say about our
vision? If we’re looking for details I guess we could take several different
points about hospitality and forgiveness and cherishing our gifts from God, but
I’m not so interested in the details this morning.
What I want to highlight for us today is that
fundamental reality, which I believe will be as true for us as it was for
Naboth and Jesus if our vision is in any way similar to theirs.
We haven’t yet named our vision, of course, and
I don’t intend to do so today - indeed, I plan on spending quite a number of
upcoming Sundays focusing on different aspects of it – but if, as I suspect,
the vision we eventually do name includes some reference to the gospel, or
Christ, or the reign of God, or pretty much anything along those lines, then I
believe we will face this challenge. Because the bottom line is the values of
the gospel are in so many ways not the values of the dominant culture in which
we live – despite what some others may say or think.
The values of the gospel are not the values of
commerce or business. The values of the gospel pay no attention to social status
or who’s more important than whom. The values of the gospel refuse to declare a
person – any person - unclean or unacceptable or unlovable – quite the
opposite.
The values of the gospel demand that hospitality
be shown to all, even those who patently don’t deserve it – especially those
who patently don’t deserve it. The values of the gospel say that those who want
to rule must also serve. The values of the gospel call for every person to be
treated with dignity and respect, because when you do it for the least – the
least likely, or the least likeable – then you do it for Christ.
Those are our values - those should be our
values, and if they are, then there will be some clashes. May God give us
strength to stand firm when they come. Amen.