Earth Day

Sunday, August 3, 2025

Sermon, Proper 6, "To Be Land Defenders"

C Proper 6 11 Ord Paul 2025
I Kings 21:1-24
August 3, 2025

           One of the most profound wisdom-givers of our age has been Kentucky farmer, Wendell Berry.  I remember reading the book, The Unsettling of America:  Culture and Agriculture, about 10 years ago and I remember being just blown away by how he saw rightly what was coming for all of us—what needed changing and transforming, what we were losing in our choices and our mindset about the land.  Berry wrote that great book over 40 years ago. But his predictions were like he was living in 20 to 30 years into the future.  Berry once wrote, “The great obstacle to [collective action] is simply this:  the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong.  But that is the addicts excuse, and we know that it will not do.”[1]

           The land is one of the primary themes of all of Hebrew Scripture.  The central covenant promise God extends to the sojourning Abraham and Sarah and their descendants is land.  Abraham and Sarah leave their ancestral homeland for the promise of descendants and land.  Salvation in Hebrew Scripture, as defined by the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, is a broadening or a widening of a space for community life and conduct.  Salvation for the Jewish people becomes a space, a land, where they might be able to practice their faith.  “Cultivating affection for place is a major theme of the Hebrew Scripture.”[2]  In Jewish thinking, “not to have one’s place is to cease to be.”[3]

           The western Apache frequently speak of the land as “stalking people” or “going to work on them” playing tricks on them so as to reconnect the people to their roots in the land.  For the western Apache, the land and the teaching stories of the land had a way of “shooting them with arrows,” calling them back to an identity and responsibility for the land.[4]

           Hebrew Scripture scholar, probably the most famous in the United Church of Christ, Walter Brueggemann, saw land as such a central Biblical topic that he wrote a whole book, a full 256 pages, titled simply, you guessed it, The Land.

           How we are to be in relation to the land, how the land defines our faith and our relationship to God, and how the land is in relationship to our larger community are all central questions for people of faith.  Scripture teaches again and again that the land is a central actor, a bellwether, for knowing ourselves to be just and righteous.  When we are just and righteous, the land is bountiful in life, brings forth food and color and goodness, a representation of when we are right with God.  But when we are not in right relationship, when we are violent and oppress the poor, the land dries up, cracks and trembles, and becomes desert and wasteland.  The land and the food become poison and toxic.[5]  If we should defile the land, Scripture says, the land will vomit us out.[6]

           Israel was not the owner of their place.  They lived in relation to their place.  And cultivating affection for the place is a major theme in Jewish tradition.  Again, how things went for the land was a signpost of either righteousness or sin.

           The Creator of the Universe wants to make it clear.  The land is not a dead, inanimate object.  The land is an actor, living in relationship, relating to us that our values are good or right or square.  Or, conversely, telling us when our values are misguided, askew, seeking after the things that are not in line with God’s heart.[7] 

           Sometimes I am not sure that is about God’s judgment but about the reality that how we are in relationships has consequences.  We reap, what we sow.  I have marveled at the number of Christians who deny climate change by somehow suggesting that the land and water do not matter in the grand scheme of things.  Or that God has made the expanse of the universe far larger so as not to expect what we do to land and water does not then have consequences. 

Again, Hebrew Scripture makes it clear that land and water are living, sentient parts of God’s good earth.  We are related to them and tied to them.  Like any real relationship then, how we are with them has real consequences for how life shall goes for us.

           All of that is the context for our Scripture verse for today.  And we should know, God establishes that relationship with the land for it not to be known as a commodity but as an ancestral heritage.  For the Jews, the land represented God’s covenant promise, God’s faithfulness remembering when life was difficult in slavery and when they were a wandering, nomadic people.  The land was not to be “owned” or bought and sold.  Because a particular piece of land or place represented your family’s ability to carve out a livelihood.  As I shared last week, within the covenantal tradition and law and practice, land was to revert back to a family so that your ancestors were not without resource in perpetuity. 

           King Ahab, ruler of Israel, looks upon the land as a way to expand his wealth, to manifest more profit.  How opportune that Naboth’s vineyard abuts the royal property.  As something that can be bought and sold, Ahab offers Naboth a property that is commensurate with his.  Seems fair.  Seems just, right?

           But that is counter to the Jewish ethic that understands the land as an actor, the three-way street of covenant between Naboth, the land, and God.  Walt Brueggemann writes that “the vineyard could not be without Naboth belonging to it.  Naboth could not be without this land.”[8]

Not every place is the same.  Even if it might be financially better, Naboth and the land have a relationship which will provide for his family and all the generations to come.  It is Naboth’s place—the touch of it, the smell of it, the goodness of it.  So he tells the king, “No, there are deeper things at play.  He uses the language used by God to tell the Jews of the covenant God makes between them and the land.   According to Numbers 33:54 and Joshua 13-19, the land of promise had been divided among the children of Israel and each family’s division was to be kept in perpetuity.[9]

           Naboth says no.  Naboth speaks with a strong voice.  He knows that if you are going to stand for something, you have to stand somewhere.[10]  Where he stands is that vineyard that abuts the palace.  The land is given by God to the Jewish people as an ancestral heritage, a particular place and space, that acts upon them for their salvation and deliverance.  In saying no, Naboth not only remembers that the land is fastened to his family and tribe, but also supports the infrastructure of his community and wider society.

And, it is said, that King Ahab withdraws, bummed that Naboth cannot understand the way of the world.  Ahab goes to his room and pouts.  As in many stories told by men, it is Queen Jezebel who reminds King Ahab he has many more options.  He is the king, after all.  He can take and take and take whatever it is he wants.  With the wealth and power afforded to the palace, Jezebel hatches a plan in which she is able to find two witnesses who will vouch for the fact (*cough, cough, “payoff” cough, cough*) that Naboth cursed God and King.  Jezebel, with executive, royal privilege, corrupts the judicial system that leads to the execution and death of Naboth.

Ironic that Naboth is accused of the very thing he did in faithfulness by telling Ahab no—he does not curse but honors God.  Naboth faithfully lived in relationship with God and the land. Naboth is found guilty of the crime and taken outside the city, out of sight so injustice can be done, so his blood does not defile or pollute the city.

           The report is sent back.  “Naboth has been stoned.  He is dead.”

No longer brooding in his bedroom, King Ahab goes and does what kings do with land that rightfully belongs to the community.  King Ahab takes.

Always a thorn in King Ahab’s side, God sends the prophet Elijah to the palace.  In echoing the Exodus story, when the original covenant was established, God tells Elijah to “God down!”  Go down as Moses  did to Egypt where he confronted the Pharaoh.

Every children’s sermon I ask the children to speak with a strong voice so that they might emulate someone like Elijah.  This is one of those moments, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins I want you to take into your hearts and make part of your bloodstream.  African-American writer Ralph Ellison stated:  “I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.”[11]

Now Elijah was go speak hard but truthful words to the Ruler of Israel spoken by the Ruler of the Universe.  So often passed over when read as a Scripture passage, this is when the music swells, Elijah musters what is in his heart and comes to speak with the voice of God. 

It takes courage to walk into a place that just murdered the righteous and say, “God has seen you.  And you shall reap what you sow.”  Elijah is much more graphic.  “Where the dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, so they shall lick up your blood.”  Violence begets violence.  And the Scripture goes on to say that the root of all of Ahab’s injustice is his idol worship, how he did not consider the values of God primary.  Elijah speaks with a strong voice knowing that Ahab and Jezebel could easily do to him what they have done to Naboth.  Elijah speaks with the voice of God.

What do we imagine the voice of God sounds like in our day? 

As you know, I look at the wealth in land so many United Church of Christ churches have in greater southwest Michigan, imagine how God might want us to be faithful, and hope once again that we will know our church buildings and land as God’s own, the land as an actor waiting for us . . . the land hoping we hear the call to relationship so that our children and our children’s children might have an ancestral heritage. 

The land cries out hoping that we are listening.  And God gives so much grace and abundance for us to get it right, to dream how we might partner with God to make our land and our building part of the wider Bainbridge and Watervliet community.

You may have heard the story of what happened recently out in the Western United States along the Klamath River. The history of water in the West has been shaped by conflict, greed, and scarcity.  The King Ahabs in the world had created a dam system in the Klamath River to maximize profit and greed. 

The headwaters of the Klamath River originate in Oregon, flowing through the Cascade Mountain Range, into Northern California, and emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Running 263 miles (423km), the river was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. 

But the dams blocked fish migration, leading to mass fish die-offs and degraded water quality. Fall chinook salmon numbers plummeted by more than 90% compared to their pre-dam numbers and spring chinook by 98%. Steelhead trout, coho salmon and Pacific lamprey numbers also saw drastic declines, and the Klamath tribes in the upper basin have been without their salmon fishery for a century . . . .[12]

In August 2024, through persistent campaigning of Native communities, to see the land and water as actors, subjects themselves, with their own wisdom and goodness, the last of the four dams were demolished.  This was the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, dams usually used for the very wealthy to direct waters to land and agricultural systems owned by them. 

            Yurok tribal member, Barry McCovey said, “The river is healing itself.”[13] 

In January 2025, those monitoring the return of the salmon reported that more than 6,000 Chinook salmon returned to their original spawning grounds.[14]  Places where salmon had not been seen for over a century were now replete with salmon.  Far faster and far greater than anyone ever imagined, the goodness, the abundance returned to a place where Naboth’s vineyard had been sold off to the highest bidder.  Now the land, as an ancestral heritage to so many peoples, was returned to them.  And the Creator of the Universe brought forth abundance and goodness, food for so many people who had depended on this ecosystem for centuries. 

Let us once again faithfully cultivate affection for our place.

The music swells as God speaks to faith communities in great southwest Michigan about how their land shall become part of the faithful story.  The land waits, hoping that we, in our righteousness and justice, will choose abundance remember how the land is fastened to us in relationship.  We reap what we sow.  Let us sow for the generations to follow us that we remember the covenant promises God has made between us and the land.  Amen.



[1] Matthew Humphrey, “A Pipeline Runs through Naboth’s Vineyard,” Watershed Discipleship, ed. by Ched Myers, (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2016), p. 123.

[2] Ibid, 127.

[3] Belden C. Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred:  Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality.  Expanded Second Edition (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 244.

[4] Ibid, p. 264.

[5] Deuteronomy 29:23; Deuteronomy 32:32; Jeremiah 2:21.

[6] Leviticus 18:25.

[7] e.g., Leviticus 26:3-5.

[8] Walter Brueggemann, “The Prophet as a Destabilizing Presence,” in A Social Reading of the Old Testament:  Prophetic Approaches to Israel’s Communal Life, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis:  Fortress, 1994), p. 239.

[9] Nancy deClaisse’-Walford, “Commentary on 1 Kings 21:1-10 [11-14] 15-21a,” Working Preacher, June 13, 2010, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-11-3/commentary-on-1-kings-211-1011-1415-21a.

[10] Ched Myers in Humphrey, “A Pipeline,” p. 125.

[11] Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man.

[12] Lucy Sheriff, “After 100 years, salmon have returned to the Klamath River – following a historic dam removal project in California,” BBC, November 25, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “More Than 6,000 Salmon Return to Spawning Grounds on Klamath River Following Dam Removal,” ActiveNorCal, January 5, 2025, https://www.activenorcal.com/more-than-6000-salmon-return-to-spawning-grounds-on-klamath-river-following-dam-removal/

[12] Lucy Sheriff, “After 100 years, salmon have returned to the Klamath River – following a historic dam removal project in California,” BBC, November 25, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “More Than 6,000 Salmon Return to Spawning Grounds on Klamath River Following Dam Removal,” ActiveNorCal, January 5, 2025, https://www.activenorcal.com/more-than-6000-salmon-return-to-spawning-grounds-on-klamath-river-following-dam-removal/.

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