The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

The reading in First Kings assigned for today makes best sense when it is related to its full context in the ministry of Elijah the prophet. Unfortunately, the first of the lessons about Elijah has been dropped from this year's lectionary; the arrangement of Sundays after Trinity Sunday moved us from the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time before Pentecost to the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time after Trinity. This means that the Ninth and Tenth Sundays in Ordinary Time are dropped from this year's calendar. So I decided to put in my exposition for First Kings 18 to set the context. The exposition of First Kings 21 follows this.

FIRST KINGS 18:20-21 (22-29) 30-39:

The pattern for Israelite prophecy was set by a strange man who burst unexpectedly before the nation during the kingship of Ahab. In the name of his God Yahweh, and in the spirit of the covenant made by Moses, Elijah the prophet challenged the policies of Ahab the king.

In Elijah's view, Ahab was perpetuating the basic pagan heresy begun in the time of Solomon and espoused by Ahab's own father, King Omri of Israel: the marriage of throne and altar. King Ahab, who ruled in the northern kingdom of Israel from about 869 to 850 BC, approximately l00 years after Solomon had taken over the throne of David, had inherited a wealthy and powerful state from his father Omri, and was anxious to continue to build the political and economic strength of his nation.

One of the methods he employed was to link his kingdom in commercial treaties with other principalities by marrying a princess of the other realm. Accordingly, Ahab went to the sea-coast town of Sidon, an important trading and commercial center one hundred miles north of his capital city of Samaria, and married a young woman named Jezebel, daughter of the Sidonian priest-king Ethbaal. While Ahab was relatively tolerant in matters of religion, Jezebel was not. Her name and her father's were both compounded with the name of their god, the baal, and Jezebel meant to live up to her name.

Ahab's tolerance was her opportunity and his undoing. Ahab was willing to worship Yahweh if it seemed a politic thing to do, but he did not intend to make such worship normative for all Israelites; if other gods were important to some of his subjects, he would provide for their worship as well. So when Jezebel was added to his family he built a temple to her baal.

To Jezebel, however, the worship of baal was of prime importance not only to herself but to all Israel. She immediately began to persecute the priests and worshipers of Yahweh and in the purge, as far as was within her power, she wiped out the worship and worshipers of Israel's God.

Her actions had wide-ranging political and ethical results. In the regions of Canaan and Syria where the baals were supreme, the king considered himself not only the primary political officer of the state but also the nation's chief spokesman for God. In other words, the king was the absolute ruler, accountable for his policies to no one in heaven or on earth but himself. This was the direction that the Davidic covenant under Solomon's Israel had poInted and under Ahab and Jezebel it came into full focus: the king was both king and high priest, and anyone who attacked the policies of the king was in effect attacking God.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that this was contrary to the basic religious faith of Israel. Ever since the time of Moses, Israelites had insisted that the king was not to be thought of as God's infallible spokesman; like all other citizens of the realm, he too was accountable to Yahweh. It was Elijah the prophet who stepped forth in the time of Ahab to call both king and people back to the ancient sources of their religion, back to the covenant established between God and people at the time of Moses, back to accountability to the living God.

Scriptures tell of two episodes in this critical contest between El1jah and Ahab. The first took place on Mount Carmel, a mountainous promontory which juts into the Mediterranean Sea thirty-five miles due west of the Sea of Galilee and fifty miles northwest of Samaria.

Israel, at this time, was experiencing one of the worst droughts in its history; for three dreadful years there had been no rain in the kingdom. Elijah, a native of the village of Tishbe in Gilead, had announced that the drought had been caused by the policies of King Ahab: because of the king's unfaithfulness. Yahweh had withdrawn the dew and the rain.

Elijah's very name speaks of his allegiance: "My God is Yahweh" is the precise meaning of the name. His little village was east of the Jordan river, where he had lived a rough, semi-nomadic life on the very edge of the desert. He must have been a strange sight to the cultured people of the land of Israel, clothed as he was in a garment of hair, held in place by a leather girdle around his waist, a man of rugged strength and enormous endurance.

In announcing that the drought came at the hand of Yahweh, he was challenging the prophets of baal in the very sphere of their power. They insisted that their god was the god of fertility, who brought life to the seed and water to the earth. In issuing his challenge, Elijah was claiming that Yahweh's authority extended over the fertility of the land as well as all other spheres of life. The priests of baal accepted his challenge, and both sides agreed that the contest should take place on Mount Carmel.

The site itself was significant. Mount Carmel stood on the shores of the Great Sea, a region that the people of Sidon and the followers of baal had claimed as belonging to their god. The confrontation had drama written through it. On one side stood 450 prophets of baal and four hundred prophets of Asherah. On the other side, alone, stood Elijah. The people of Israel had gathered to witness the confrontation, and Elijah called upon them to make a choice. "How long," he asked them, "will you limp along with two different opinions, like a bird hopping from one leg to another?" (I Kings 18:21) He was comparing them to a bird jumping along a branch until it came to a fork, then vainly imagining it could continue its course by putting one foot on one branch and the other foot on the second branch. "Israel is like that bird," said the prophet. "You people want to keep one foot in the faith of Israel and the other foot in the worship of baal." But the time had come to make the choice, either to worship Yahweh, God of the covenant, or baal, god of fertility. To Elijah, the questions of religion were basically questions of loyalties and allegiances: to whom will a people give their allegiance?

The purpose of the confrontation between the two sides was to see which god would bring rain --in other words, who controlled the fertility of the land? Before the rain could come, however, one god or the other had to make a bold response to their agent's entreaties so each party agreed to perform their respective rites with the understanding that "the god who answers by fire" is God. (1 Kings 18:24)

The prophets of baal worked themselves into ecstatic frenzy as they performed their limping dance around the altar and shouted their ritual cries to baal. As they were doing this, Elijah stood off to the side, magnificently confident, laughing the baal into meaningless unreality and taunting the fanatic priests with jests: maybe baal does not answer, he suggested, because he is on a trip, or needs to be awakened from his slumber, or who knows, perhaps he had even gone out to the privy. Under Elijah's goading, the prophets of baal whipped themselves into even more frenzy. They were unsuccessful. No fire appeared. These solemn words stand in judgment over their futile efforts:

"There was no voice; no one answered; no one heeded." (1 Kings 18:29)

Elijah stepped forward. He repaired the altar to Yahweh that had been torn down in Jezebel's purge. Then he did a curious thing. He poured water onto the wood and into the trenches around the altar. Did he do this only to make it impossible for fire to appear except by supernatural means? Did he do it to have the water represent the storm that was about to come? Then he prayed. Then fire descended from heaven and consumed everything upon the altar, the altar itself, and the water in the trenches around it The people were so awed by the spectacle that they exclaimed, "Yahweh is God!" They quickly condemned to death the defeated prophets of baal and the sentence was immediately carried out.

The climax of the story came, however, not with the destruction of the antagonistic prophets but with the ending of the drought. Elijah announced to Ahab, "There is a sound of the rushing of rain." The prophet of God sent his servant to look toward the Mediterranean Sea while Elijah himself lay prostrate in prayer; seven times, in fact, he sent him to search the heavens for some sign of rain. The seventh time the servant returned with the announcement that a storm cloud -- "a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand" -- was approaching. (1 Kings 18:44)

The storm gathered and the rains descended. Ahab hurried to the Valley of Jezreel, the shortest route from the coast to Samaria, fearful all the while that his chariot might bog down in the mud. Elijah, with the triumph of the day hard upon him, in a mighty burst of exuberant energy ran before the king into the Valley. The issue had been contested and Yahweh had won: Yahweh was clearly God of the land and the skies and the seas, clearly the God who provides all things necessary for the people.

FIRST KINGS 21:1-21: The episode related in this text took place in and around the city of Samaria. Naboth, a citizen of Samaria, the capital city of Israel at this time, owned a vineyard that adjoined the palace of Ahab the King, and Ahab wanted to purchase the land in order that he might have room to expand his house. He offered Naboth very generous terms for the property, but Naboth refused to sell.

The vineyard in question was a family estate; it belonged to the whole family, the clan who had passed it down to him from generation to generation as a sacred trust, and Naboth wanted to hold it intact for his sons and his sons' sons. He felt that Yahweh was the real owner of the land, and Yahweh had called upon Naboth to be a wise steward and administer it for the welfare of the whole community; that by the nature of the covenant community, land-grabbing and private speculation were ruled out. So Naboth replied to the king: "Yahweh forbids that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers." Ahab was upset at this reply, but he accepted it as valid. He did not seek to force Naboth to give up the property, but returned to his palace to sulk.

Jezebel, ever alert to her husband's interests, saw him sulking and wanted to know the reason for his displeasure. He told her what had happened, and she immediately held before him the claim of the baals. "Are you not the king?" she asked. "Cannot you do with your own people and your own land what you desire?" So she set out to secure the land for him.

She did it in a legal, if not a moral, way. She called Naboth to trial for what he had done. A hearing was held before the elders of the people, and Naboth was seated in the front row as a defendant in the trial.

The charge was "cursing God and the king." Behind the charge was the fact that when Naboth had felt his ownership of the land threatened, he had reaffirmed his ownership by invoking the name of Yahweh and at the same time had appealed to the king to respect his rights. Jezebel tried to destroy his case by bribing two witnesses to say that they had heard Naboth promise in the name of Yahweh to sell the land to the king and that now he was reneging on the promise. Once a deal had been negotiated and agreed upon , the name of God invoked to seal it, the penalty to fail to complete the agreement was either mutilation or death. By presenting the evidence of the perjured witnesses, Jezebel's case against Naboth was airtight.

The sentence of the elders of Samaria was swift and complete: Naboth and his sons were sentenced to death, and the sentence was carried out. Jezebel was neither the first nor the last to use the systems of justice as a means of securing her own unjust aims. She proudly presented the land to Ahab who moved to take possession of his vineyard.

Jezebel and Ahab had forgotten one man: Elijah the Tishbite. As Ahab went to the vineyard to claim it as his own, he found the prophet standing there. On the ground stained by the blood of its rightful stewards, the prophet thundered out the impending divine judgment: "You and your family shall die in your sins."

Ahab was struck to the heart. As David had done in the presence of judgment of Nathan, Ahab threw himself on the ground before Elijah, penitent before the lord. Elijah thereupon changed the sentence. Ahab should not die for his sins, but his wife Jezebel should. The Israelite general, Jehu, a Yahweh enthusiast, carried out the sentence. In his brutal palace revolution against the sons of Ahab. Jezebel was cast from the palace window; the horses trampled her body into the ground. and the dogs lapped up her blood

These episodes from the ministry of Elijah clearly delineate the basic conflict between Yahweh and baal. In the land of the baals, the king was permitted to speak for God and he was accountable to no one except the god for whom he himself was the chief spokesman. In the covenant community of Yahweh, every person was equal before the law --whether he be rich or poor, king or private citizen --and the whole community was responsible to the sovereign will of the Lord as this will was expressed in the laws which had been handed down from the wilderness period and refined by usage in Israel. When this justice was overridden by the powerful people of the realm, Yahweh intervened to defend the weak and the defenceless and to restore the order and solidarity of the covenant community.

The confrontation between Elijah and Ahab poInted up the conflict between these two ways of life. Ahab's problem lay not in the idol that he worshiped but in the value or values it represented; the issue at hand centered around the kind of behavior sponsored by a particular kind of religion. In the religion of Yahweh, all behavior was accountable to the living God. In the religion of baal, the king's behavior was exempt from this, and he could set his own standards of ethical performance.

Seeing the religious problem in this way brings us the basic insight that Elijah offered: the main religious problem before humankind is not atheism but idolatry. The atheist is one who has no values at all. The idolater is one who has too many values and whose values contradict each other. By such a definition, few are atheists. but many, perhaps even ourselves, are idolaters who need again to hear the basic message of Elijah: "Our idolatries, our over-abundant and contradictory values, need to be regulated by our accountability to the living God who declares, 'I am your God, you are my people --now act as if you truly belong to me.'"

It is because of this message and the courageous way in which he presented it that Elijah is acknowledged to be the first of the truly great prophets of Israel. He was not the first prophet in Israel's history, but he was the first in the record of Scripture to give himself fully to the message from God hammered out by Moses himself.

PSALM 5:1-8: At first glance, this psalm seems a common one, expressing the kinds of ideas that are expressed in many of the psalms, and we might be tempted to pass it off as "nothing new." On further observation, however, this psalm contains much to which we need to give attention as we read it, and I will try to point out some of its distinctiveness.

1. This is the first psalm in the psalter that brings to our attention two words that are important to all the Old Testament.

One is the word "hesed." This was the last word to be translated by the translators of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, and that alone tells us that this word cannot be translated into a single English equivalent. We might use "grace" for it, or mercy, compassion, patience, faithfulness, loyalty, and love. The New Revised Standard Version ordinarily translates it as "steadfast love" and the New International Version as "unfailing love." It refers to God's loyalty to the covenant that God made with all people through Israel, in which God declared that he was their God and they were God's people. God is loyal to that covenant, God is faithful to it, God is patient in carrying it out, showing mercy and compassion to those who break it, and through it God's love for all is made known. That is God's side of the covenant. Our side is to respond faithfully to God, to show gratefulness for God's graciousness in treating us in this way, to love those whom God loves. No wonder these translators have assigned so many meanings to this word. It is the heart of God's relationship to us: God shows "hesed" to us through Moses and Jesus Christ, and we are to respond to God with a "hesed" of our own.

This psalm is also the first to call God "my King." God rules, says the image behind kingship. We experience the rule of God now, and we expect that rule to become apparent to all people in some future time. Jesus caught the tension encompassed in the phrase. "The kingdom of God is at hand," he told the world. He asked his disciples to pray, "Thy kingdom come."

2. The psalm is set before us as a "morning psalm": "in the morning I plead my case to you." This fits in with its context in the psalter. Psalms three and four are evening psalms, that is, they are set at the time of evening prayers. Israelites offered prayer both at morning and in the evening, and these three psalms may be ones that they used on these occasions.

Note the intensity of the prayer: "Give ear," heed my sighings, "listen to the sound of my cry," "I plead," "I watch." This is no casual prayer, offered on the spur of the moment. This is a desperate prayer offered from the depths of one's soul by one in urgent need for answers to his prayers. Moffatt translated the key phrase as "the murmurings of my soul." Beneath the placid exterior the man exhibited to the world the murmurings that showed him displeased with himself, with his situation in life, and with his God. Only when these murmurings were expressed in sighs and cries, pleading and watching could this psalmist find himself at peace with God.

Such a God! He is "My King." He keeps covenant with me. More even than that, this God hates evil of any sort. Watch, as the psalmist piles up words and ideas that show how much God abhors evil.

"You are not a God who delights in wickedness." God, rather, delights in righteousness.

"Evil will not sojourn with you." Behind the word "sojourn" is a picture of evil knocking on the gate of God's throne room asking to be admitted as a guest, only to be met with an indignant stare and a disdainful rejecting hand. As Sclater says (IB :37), "There is such a thing as the disgust of God."

"The boastful will not stand before your eyes." The "boastful" are those who think they can live life on their terms and not consider God's terms for their lives. "They will not stand," says the psalmist bluntly.

"You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. You abhor the bloodthirsty and deceitful." What must God have thought about the doings of those of us who have lived in the 20^th century. It was a time marked with evil and lying and deceit and violence. It is only by the mercy of God that we have a 21^st century to enter into!

3. The lection does not end, however, until it points for us a way through this mire of evil and violence. We need to come before the majesty of the Lord in awe and wonder. "I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you." Even this I can do only because of the wondrous love of God: "through the abundance of your hesed I will enter your house." Then comes the psalmist's final prayer: "Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness. Make your way straight before me."

GALATIANS 2:15-21: As happened above with the omission of important accounts in First Kings, when the usual ninth and tenth Sundays in Ordinary Time were replaced by Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, two important passages in Galatians were also omitted. It is important therefore to tell the story of the Letter to the Galatians before moving on to the interpretation of the text assigned in Galatians for this day.