Naboth’s Vineyard and the General Assembly?

NABOTH’S VINEYARD AND THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY? (June 20, 2004)

“ Have you killed, and also taken possession?” 1 Kings 21:19

In two weeks Lydia Tembo and I will be in Richmond , Virginia attending the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). I will be one of four commissioners from the New York City presbytery and Lydia will be the only Youth Advisory Delegate, or YAD, from the presbytery. Lydia will on one of the committees, national issues, just as I will be, theological issues, and she will vote in her committee just as the commissioners and other advisory delegates will be able to vote, and their votes will all count the same. We are chosen for the committees on a purely random method. For votes on the floor of the General Assembly Lydia and the other YADs will give advisory votes, which will be recorded, but only the votes of commissioners from the presbyteries will be decisive. Over 800 commissioners and advisory delegates will be on the floor, and over 3000 people will attend. It is a jam-packed eight-day event, sometimes bewildering, sometimes cantankerous, frequently worshipful, and always democratic.

What in the world does the General Assembly have to do with a man who lost his vineyard almost 3000 years ago?

Naboth had a beloved vineyard with a location problem. It was located too well, right next to king Ahab's palace. The king coveted the property and tried to get Naboth to sell it to him, but Naboth honored his ancestors and refused to sell, even at top shekel. Ahab was bitterly disappointed but did nothing, until his wife, Jezebel, saw how depressed he was and said, “do you not govern Israel ? I will give you the vineyard of Naboth.” Jezebel was a Canaanite and she had no background in the Law of Moses or the teachings of the Hebrew faith. In fact, she scorned them. Ahab had a sense of what was right and wrong and he knew he couldn't just requisition whatever he wanted. Jezebel had no such scruples, and she went about getting the vineyard in a way that would have impressed Don Corleone. Naboth loses his beloved vineyard, his faith in government, and his life.

None of this escapes the attention of Elijah the prophet. Elijah confronts Ahab the king to his face. “Have you killed and also taken possession? In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.”

Elijah's courage was buttressed by a clear word from the Lord, as well as a host of laws in the Law of Moses itself giving numerous rights to the little man, to the downtrodden, even to the stranger within the gates. But having the law on one's side is one thing, having someone with the courage to speak out is another. Elijah was too late to save Naboth. He could have said, “it is too late to do anything about this” but he didn't. Instead, he directly confronted the king with powerful words the kind did not want to hear. Today we call this “speaking truth to power”.

In the 16 th century the fiery reformer John Knox spoke truth directly to power. Knox played the same role in Scotland that Luther played in Germany , changing the entire course of a country. You can see a bust of Knox in St. Andrew castle in Scotland and it shows him preaching from a pulpit, his right armed raised high in gesture and his left holding an open Bible and Knox himself almost falling out of the pulpit. This was not a man easily reckoned with

John Knox believed strongly that all government was instituted by God, but the difference was that he believed it came from the people and those who ruled did so on behalf of the people and if the people were not satisfied they could change their rulers. Destroying idolatry and tyranny, he wrote, was the duty of “the whole body of the people and every man in his vocation.” How's that for a democratic principle? Knox's colleague, John Buchanan, wrote that “the people have the right to confer royal authority on whomever they wish.”

This radical idea was later associated with an Englishman named John Locke, but Knox and Buchanan championed it 100 years before Locke and, what's more, set about creating a society where it worked.

Knox confronted Mary Queen of Scots so many times and so publicly that she at least once burst into tears and asked in vain to be rid of him. Mary was no Jezebel, but she had no appreciation whatever for the democratic winds sweeping 16 th century Europe or of such leveling influences as was represented by Knox. And in the end she was no match for him, just as Ahab was no match for Elijah. Knox's democratic ideas frightened the nobility and clergy of England . An English archbishop cried, “Keep us from such visitation as Knox hath attempted in Scotland , the people to be the orderers of things.”

Knox took everything he believed about civil government and transferred it to the church. The congregation became the center of everything. It elected its own board of elders and it even chose its own minister. The people ruled. When they called a minister to serve them they began with these words, “We, the People….” The elders made sure the work of the church, the caring for the poor in the community and the sick, the feeding of the hungry, even the settling of disputes, were all taken care of in Christ's name. It wasn't left up to a priest. The Church was God's people at work, not an institution “out there” with unelected leaders but right here in this place and all the people were to be involved, with the minister as interpreter of the Word and inspiration for the flock, but not the dictator. At every level of the church's life, lay people were to be equally represented with ministers.

The people became “the orderers of things”.

This was a staggeringly new way of going about “being church”. Not even some of the other Protestant groups were so radical. The Lutherans and Anglicans held on to bishops, for instance. But not the Calvinists, who said the bishop was in effect the concerted action of a presbytery, which is made up equally of ministers and elders. The presbytery would do in concert what individuals named bishops would do in other churches. This meant for a lot of extra work, and was terribly time consuming, but in the end you had no one to blame but yourself if you didn't like it.

Elijah directly confronted Ahab over a clear social wrong: the misappropriation of private property. As most people think of things “religious” private property would not count. But it counted for Elijah. The Church has often been told to tend to its own knitting, stick to things “spiritual” and forget about things social. But this was not to be the way in the kirk of John Knox, any more than it was the way of Elijah. At any General Assembly issues are discussed and positions taken on a whole raft of issues. The one area where the Church draws the line is in not endorsing political candidates, which is partisan. Nor does the Church ever threaten politicians.

In the early years of America no church was more involved in the revolutionary cause than the Presbyterians. Other churches straddled the fence, or were even pro-British, and others went off to Pennsylvania and said the war was none of their business, but the Presbyterians were so identified with what early thought to be a hopeless cause that the war was initially known in England as “that Presbyterian rebellion.”

In June of 1963 the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church, Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, was arrested at an amusement park in Baltimore , Maryland , protesting the park's segregationist policies. His picture appeared on the front page of the New York Times, showing him getting into a police paddy wagon. I saw the picture when I was in Iran in Time magazine and never felt prouder to be a Presbyterian. A few months later Blake was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with Dr. King. Like Elijah, he was protesting injustice. Though being a reserved Presbyterian, he didn't use inflammatory language about dogs licking up blood.

In two weeks Lydia and I will step into the river of this great history going back to Elijah. The site will be a modern convention hall in Richmond , Virginia , and we will be staying in nice hotel rooms, and conducting ourselves with Roberts' Rules of Order. But behind all the decorum and politeness will be the spirit of some very indecorous and absolutely impolite people such as Knox and Buchanan -- and Elijah -- who believed in the sole sovereignty of God, spoke truth to power, championed the rights of the people, and believed in the necessity to pursue justice everywhere.

Acknowledgement: How the Scots Invented the Modern World , by Arthur Herman, Three Rivers Press, 2003