“Grapes Of Wrath”

“Grapes Of Wrath”

Text: 1 Kings 21:1-29

© June 17, 2007 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

Back during World War II, one of Adolf Hitler’s closest advisers was a man by the name of Hermann Goering. Reichsmarshall Goering was not only the head of the Luftwaffe, the German air force, but he also played a major role in the Holocaust, where the Nazis imprisoned and put to death more than six million Jews, Gypsies, and mentally disabled people in the hopes of creating some kind of a master race, some kind of a racially pure society.

After the war ended, and while he and other Nazis were having their war crimes trials at Nuremberg, one day Goering sat down for an interview. And during the course of that interview he made some rather chilling statements. Goering admitted that when it comes to war, the common people never want to go to war: the people in Russia don’t want to go to war, the people in England don’t want to go to war, the people in the United States don’t want to go to war – even the common people in Nazi Germany didn’t want to go to war.

But, Goering said, it’s not the people who get to decide whether they go to war or not – it’s the leaders of the country that determine that. And according to Goering, no matter whether you live in a country that’s ruled by a democracy, a parliament, a fascist dictatorship, or a communist dictatorship, it’s always a simple matter to drag the people into war. The people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders, he said. It’s easy. All you have to do is tell the people they are being attacked, and then denounce the pacifists, denounce those who oppose you and who demand that the disagreements you have be handled peacefully. All you have to do is denounce those people for their lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to even greater danger. If you’re a leader and want to push your country into war, Goering said, that’s all you need to do.[1]

The chilling reality is that there is a lot of truth to what Goering said. You see, in any gathering of people – whether it’s a country, a town, or even a family or a group of friends – there are going to be at least occasional disagreements among the members of that group. And it can be hard work at times to work through those disagreements and to forgive other people for the wrongs they’ve done and to ask for forgiveness for the wrongs that we ourselves have committed.

And so instead of the members of a group – instead of the members of a nation or a town or a family or a group of friends – accepting blame and responsibility for the wrongs they’ve done, it’s a lot easier and a lot more appealing to shift all of that blame and responsibility onto someone else. It’s a lot easier and a lot more appealing to point at someone else, who’s outside of your group, and declare war on them by yelling, “All the problems we have – it’s their fault! They are the ones who should be blamed. They are the ones who should be punished, and perhaps even killed for what they’ve done.”

The term that we have for doing that, of course, is scapegoating. When we do that sort of thing, when we take the blame and responsibility that rightly should be pinned on us, and we transfer it onto someone else and blame them instead, what we are doing is creating a scapegoat.

That term “scapegoat” actually has its origins in a religious ceremony that is described in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. You see, in ancient times, on the holy day in the fall known as Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, the high priest would take a goat, and he would set his hands on the goat’s head. And when the high priest did that, he was symbolically drawing in all of the people’s sins and putting them on to that goat. Then the goat would be led out of the city, into the wilderness, and eventually chased off the edge of a cliff to make sure that the sins that had been placed on that goat would never come back again.

And in ancient times the Hebrews believed that by shifting the blame for their sins and their wrongdoings onto that goat, onto that scapegoat, that made things right between them and God. And I think we can see the appeal of that system. Instead of us having to face up to our own sins, if we can pin all of our shortcomings and evil deeds on someone else, or something else, who wouldn’t want to do that?

And that’s what we find going on here in this story about Naboth and his vineyard. One day King Ahab went to Naboth and asked if he could buy his vineyard from him. And the king seemed to make a rather fair offer, expressing a willingness to either pay cash for the land or else to help Naboth relocate to another vineyard.

But Naboth turned the king down. Now we need to understand that Naboth wasn’t just being difficult. He wasn’t just holding out in the hopes that the king might offer him a higher price. No, Naboth refused to sell because according to the law that God had given to Hebrews, he wasn’t allowed to sell it, and the king knew that.

In our society, the typical American moves about every 4 or 5 years. And so for most of us, we don’t think it’s that big of a deal to pack up our belongings and move from one plot of land to another. But in the Old Testament, the people understood the land in a very different way. You see, the people looked at the land they had as being a gift that God had given to them. The Hebrews remembered that at one time they had been slaves in Egypt, and they didn’t have a land to call their own. But Moses, and then eventually Joshua, led them through the wilderness during those 40 years and finally brought them out of Egypt and into a special land that God wanted them to have. And when they entered that land, God very specifically instructed Joshua about how to divide the land, so that each tribe, each clan, each family would have a plot of land that was to be entrusted to them, and to them alone, throughout all generations.

And so Naboth didn’t sell his vineyard because he couldn’t. It would have been an insult to God, since God was the one who had originally given that land to Naboth and to his ancestors before him. But instead of acknowledging that he was wrong for trying to get that property for himself, the king instead conspired with his wife, Queen Jezebel, to get what they wanted by turning Naboth into a scapegoat.

Queen Jezebel sent word to the leading citizens in the community where Naboth lived, and she told them to proclaim a fast. In the Old Testament, the main reason you proclaimed a fast was when there was some kind of crisis or when the people were under attack by some enemy. But according to the story, Jezebel didn’t say why they should have a fast. She must have figured that if you tell people that there’s a crisis, that they’re under attack, most people don’t ask too many questions. They just accept the fact that if a leader says that there’s a crisis and we’re under attack, then by golly there must be a crisis and we must be under attack.

And so once Queen Jezebel got the people of that community all worked up about some fictitious crisis, she told the local leaders to find two men who would agree to accuse Naboth of cursing both God and the king. And of all things, the local leaders went right along and did what the queen said. They didn’t bother asking if Naboth really committed those crimes. That’s because most likely they knew all along that the charges were false.

But if they knew that the charges were false, why would they still go ahead and set up Naboth as a scapegoat like that? The answer, I believe, is because they realized that if they didn’t help the queen turn Naboth into a scapegoat and pin all sorts of blame on him, then the queen might choose one of them to be a scapegoat in the future. And so Naboth gets accused, the local citizens take him out and kill him as punishment, and King Ahab moves in and gets what he had wanted all along – he moves in and takes over the vineyard.

When we turn into the New Testament, do you see how Jesus was a scapegoat, just like Naboth was? Even though Jesus was without sin, all kinds of charges, all kinds of lies, were heaped against him. Even the Roman governor Pontius Pilate recognized that Jesus had done nothing to make him deserving of death. But Caiaphas, the high priest, summed up the attitude of the people when he said, “It is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (John 11:50). In other words, “People, can’t you tell that we’re under attack? We’re under attack from the Roman empire, we’re under attack from the unorthodox ways of Jesus and his disciples. There’s chaos, there’s dissension. Can’t you see that the only way to bring us together is to unite as one and declare war on Jesus and put him to death?” And indeed, making Jesus out as some kind of bad guy and nailing him to a cross did bring the people together.

Throughout the ages, right up to our own day, we turn certain people or certain groups of people into scapegoats. Instead of admitting our own shortcomings, our own wrongs, our own sins, we figure that we can relieve ourselves of that burden if only we could all agree to put all that blame onto someone else and say, “It’s not my fault! It’s not our fault! It’s their fault! They are the ones who are to be blamed. They are the ones who need to be punished, and if necessary, even killed for what they’ve done.” Where do you see that kind of scapegoating going on in the world today? Where do you see that kind of blaming and demonizing of people going on in our country?[2]

When it comes to scapegoating, as Christians I believe we have two main responsibilities. First, we need to make sure that we don’t take part in doing it ourselves. But at times that’s easier said than done. Because when a crowd gets together and picks someone or some group to blame for the problems that exist in their midst, picking that person and blaming them is often presented as being the good, decent, moral, patriotic, godly thing to do. And not joining in with the group in picking on and blaming that person, or that group of people, might result in us being accused of not being so good, decent, moral, patriotic, or godly.

But in addition to not joining in and taking part in scapegoating, I believe the other responsibility we have as Christians is to have the courage to take a stand with those who are being scapegoated. Because sometimes all it takes in a situation like that are just a few voices that are willing to speak up and say that what’s going on isn’t right. But all too often when we see wrongs like scapegoating going on, we don’t speak up. We figure that it’s not our job. We figure that undoubtedly someone else will come along and take a stand, and so we do nothing.

A lot of the anger, a lot of the turmoil, a lot of the violence in the world goes on simply because we allow it to go on. But what would the world be like if we, and other Christians like us, committed ourselves more fully to saying, “Enough is enough. Anger, turmoil and violence is not the way that God wants things to be. It’s time that we broke ranks with the crowds around us and exposed the hate-mongering, the bigotry, and the racist hysteria that goes on for what it truly is”? What would the world be like if we did that? Why don’t we give it a try and see?