Monday, June 7, 2010

I Kings 21:1-21a 

Original Pout

It all started with Ahab's pout. A neighbor of King Ahab of Israel refused to sell or barter a piece of property that the king wanted for a vegetable garden.

Ahab went home resentful and sullen because of what Naboth the Jezreelite had said to him; for he had said, "I will not give you my ancestral inheritance." He lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat. 
                    -21:4 (NRSV)

It's the same tactic I probably used when I was five or six when I wanted to add a new toy soldier to my collection every time we went to the dime store. (That was the '50's.) There was always a chance my mom or dad would say “Haven't you got enough of those?” Of course I didn't have enough! You never have enough. A king cannot have enough vegetable gardens, what with all those courtiers and visitors of state in and out all the time. 

Naboth's vineyard was an “ancestral inheritance.” In other words it was a God-given trust. Even if Naboth had wanted to sell it, he could not have done so without violating the trust granted to his family in their very identity as a constituent part of ancient covenantal Israel. The king knew this. 

The January 30, 2010 edition of the Christian Science Monitor ran an article titled “Africa's Continental Divide: Land Disputes” in which it reported that experts in African affairs had tried to make a case for years that behind the ethnic violence and political instability in the majority of sub-Saharan African countries, the heart of the issue is land ownership. Post colonial Africa has not done well with western-models of land ownership instituted as substitutes for the older traditional land tenure based on clan and tribal membership. One exception to the rule is Botswana, where market-based land ownership is restricted to the few urban areas, leaving rural areas with governmental boards designed to approximate the functionality of traditional land tenure. Sadly, Botswana is the exception in Africa. Although one cannot blame all of Africa's problems on the inequalities of land usage, it is easy to see how, in a place like Africa, as the bond between people and the land is broken, cities are swollen with the poverty of the landless. When the traditional ethnic “safety nets” break, states can fail. 

In ancient Israel God is the guarantor of the peace of the land. The psalm depicts the king as God's anointed enforcer of that covenantal peace. Ahab's pout is a mockery of that office. The trumped-up charges brought against Naboth (blaspheming God and cursing the king) describe the essence of Ahab's own misrule: he has effectively blasphemed God and the office he holds on God's behalf by subverting the land welfare covenant instituted by God's law. That law lies at the heart of Israel's very existence. 

A lot of Americans seem to be in a pretty pouty mood right now. The economy has not really recovered from last year's banking debacle. The war in Afghanistan is not going well. The buddy-buddy relationship cultivated over the last few decades between big oil and the federal government has failed us in the Gulf of Mexico. Voters are in an anti-incumbant mood. The Tea Party set blames our problems on big government and big spending - at the very moment that BP's tar balls are hitting Pensecola Beach. Petroleum consumption goes on unabated. 

Could it be that the whole problem goes back to original pout? We want more and more regardless of the cost to people we cannot see. Creatures we cannot see. Or do not want to see. Yet another “vegetable garden.” I am sure that the residents along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico are concerned that, once the new wears off our latest disaster, they will be written off by an electorate with a notoriously short memory. It's amazing how tolerant people can be of toxic waste as long as they don't have to live with it. 

If we don't really want to pay the shared cost of changing the system, we can just trade new politicians for old ones, go lay on the couch like Ahab and mumble, throw back a few beers, take the remote and channel surf until we pass out. Somebody will do something. While Ahab pouted Jezebel filled the power vacuum. Somebody always does. And, like Jezebnel (and African power cliques), it's never good. 

Thank God Ahab's pout was not the end of the story. That's the good news. The business of ancestral inheritance goes deeper than any one nation. The extent of the players and the boundaries may change. One thing does not change: everybody has a God-given portion. Woe to those who would try to work around that. 

They tried it with Jesus.

© 2010 Andy Gay