(Please read this Scripture passage first, before the homily.)
King David wanted to build a temple to the Lord God. He went to Arauna the Jebusite who owned a threshing floor where David wanted to build. He asked Arauna to sell the land to him. David paid for the land and make plans for the temple.
Did King Ahab think he were another King David? He wanted to plant a vegetable garden next to his palace. So he went to Naboth the Jezreelite and offered him money. When Naboth refused to sell his ancestral land to the King, the King conveniently accepted the Jezreelite’s death and confiscate his property.
Arauna was not an Israelite, but David paid him the true value of the land. Naboth, lived in Israel in a place called Jezreel. The author gives us the name of Naboth’s town. I surmise it could have been because it explain, in part, Ahab’s actions.
I wondered why it was necessary to name the place, but then I realized that we do the same. If we refer to some as from the State of Utah or Texas or any place other than Ohio, we tend to stereotype the person. Not all Utahans, however, are Mormons, nor are all Texans rich, any more than are all Ohioans as smart as we think ourselves.
The life of the man from Jezreel did not matter as much as the king’s desire for a vegetable garden. When reporters report about catastrophic loss of life, they mention the number of U.S. citizens affected, because our lives matter more than those of other places.
Whose lives matter to us? We can denounce people who do abortions, but we probably have no direct experience with people who have had abortions. We can denounce white supremacy or white superiority, but we have no negative experience of it. We have little concern over someone’s religious beliefs unless we do not like people of that faith. We tend to avoid people with whom we disagree. We all have personal prejudices. Whose lives matter to us?
We can praise King David because we tend to think we would have the same as his did. We want to blame King Ahab because we find his behavior reprehensible, but we probably have done things similar in our own lives.
Elijah will come back to confront King Ahab in tomorrow’s reading. How would Elijah react to us when he asks us, “Whose lives matter”?