SERMON AT IONA ABBEY
2nd July 2006
Murdoch MacKenzie
Bible Readings 1 Kings 4:29-31, 5:13-18 Matthew 6:24-33
(Hymn CH4 710)
Matthew 6:24+29: Jesus said: ‘You cannot serve God and mammon … I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’
Some of us, staying in the Abbey, have come here this week to gather where three streams meet. In the old Highland tradition, a person seeking justice would go to pray at dawn at a place where three streams meet. All kinds of streams meet on Iona each week and are held together by our Trinitarian faith, at the heart of which is the love of God, who is concerned for justice and mercy and peace, for the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed. All over the world people are dealing with these same issues and in particular with the corrosive effects of globalisation and sheer unadulterated greed on local communities, their languages and their cultures. And all over the world there are all kinds of people who are dreaming their dreams and seeing their visions and echoing the words of the hymn which we have just sung:
‘I have a dream’ a man once said,
where all is perfect peace;’
This morning we are going to look at this through the life of Solomon in all his glory, Solomon, the third king of Israel, who reigned from 971 – 931 BC and who spent 7 years building a temple for the Lord and 13 years building a palace for himself (1 Kings 6:38-7:1). Solomon, who discovered that at the end of the day you cannot serve both God and mammon. He began well enough as God gave him wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and largeness of mind like the sand on the seashore (1 Kings 4:29). He envisaged a welfare state in which there would be no North-South divide and in which in fact the people dwelt in safety from Dan in the far north even to Beersheba in the deep south, every one under their vine and under their fig tree, with no-one to make them afraid (1 Kings 4:25).
It sounds wonderful. Solomon in all his glory. The good old days. The swinging sixties when they never had it so good. Yet a closer examination of Solomon’s reign reveals, in the words of Professor John Bright, that ‘the Golden Age was not all gold’ (John Bright – A History of Israel – SCM Press pg 199ff). To some it brought wealth. To others slavery. Its price to all was an increase in the powers of the state and an economic burden quite without precedent in Israel.
Solomon’s commercial enterprises reached the banks of the Euphrates and trade was enormously profitable, but since for every item of goods imported, native products had to be exported, it was not profitable enough to bridge the gap, and balance the runaway national debt. Draconian measures were applied. Old tribal areas (ancient clans or even traditional county boundaries if you like) were disregarded and twelve artificial administrative districts were introduced.
In place of 12 tribes with an ancient communal loyalty to care for the tabernacle shrine, there were 12 districts taxed for the support of Solomon’s court. Each district was obliged to furnish provisons for the court for one month of the year (1 Kings 4:7-19). The bureaucracy burgeoned. For every three civil servants in Jerusalem there may have been only one left out in the sticks. Solomon deliberately sought to weaken tribal loyalties (local government if you like), to integrate the Canaanite population more thoroughly within the state, and to consolidate power more firmly in his own hands. The 12 governors were Solomon’s appointees, responsible to an officer of his cabinet, Solomon’s cronies, if you like. Two of them were his own sons-in-law.
But how does one deal with a runaway national debt? One way is to destroy the environment, to pillage the earth. Now, therefore command that the cedars of Lebanon be cut, and he imported guest labour, immigrants, to do it, in the form of the Sidonians (1 Kings 5:6). Another way is via job-creation schemes or food-for-work projects – something outside of the normal system of voluntary or paid labour. It began with the ethnic minority groups. They weren’t actually the immigrants. They were in the land before the Israelites made their Great Trek through the wilderness and over the Jordan. So all those who had survived of the Ammonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites were forced into labour gangs – 70,000 to bear burdens, 18,000 to quarry in the hill country and 3,600 to oversee them, or as it says in 2 Chronicles 2:18, ‘to make the people work’.
Subsequently, when even this source of labour proved inadequate, Solomon went so far as to inaugurate the corvee in Israel itself; labour gangs were levied and forced to work in relays in Lebanon felling timber for Solomon’s building projects (1 Kings 5:13ff). This was both a severe drain on manpower and a bitter dose for free-born Israelites to swallow. Where now the proud rally of the clans? Instead, slaves manned the refinery at Eziongeber and the mines of Arabah. Working conditions were so murderous that free labour would never have stood for it and the mortality rate must have been appalling.
Solomon’s financial predicament drove him to yet one further measure of desperation. He mortgaged 20 cities in the land of Galilee to the King of Tyre for 120 talents of gold (1 Kings 9:11). But even there he tried to do a bit of cheating because when Hiram, the King of Tyre, went to see them ‘they did not please him’ and as recorded in 1 Kings 9:13 they were called ‘Cabul’’ which means ‘sterile land’ to this day.
The result of all this was that tribal independence was ended. Tribesmen who had once known no central authority and no political obligation except to rally in times of danger (which could itself be compelled, if at all, only by religious sanctions) were now organised in government districts, liable to heavy taxes and conscription, not only for military service but for manual labour. The effective basis for social obligation was no longer Yahweh’s covenant but the state. An agrarian and pastoral society became commercial and industrial, hundreds migrated to the cities, including ethnic minority groups who knew nothing of covenant religion, and the growth of a wealthy class increased the gap between rich and poor.
In short tribal democracy was weakened and there was the beginning of a schism in Israelite society. It was a period of rapid social change, just as acute as that which is going on in many parts of the world today in the face of globalisation, and that which went on during the Highland clearances in Scotland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The rest of the 1st Book of Kings makes sorry but all too familiar reading. After Solomon’s death, things fell apart with great complaints about the heavy yoke laid on the people, but Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, instead of accepting the advice of the older generation to ‘speak good words to the people, and become their servant’ (1 Kings 12:3-7), turned to the New Right,the young Turks, the yuppies of his day, who advised law and order and discipline. Thus Jeroboam declared: ‘Whereas my father laid upon you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions’ (1 Kings 12:11). So, then came the riots. Adoniram, who was the taskmaster over the forced labour, was stoned to death (1 Kings 12:18). The people in the North, that is Israel, revolted, the North-South divide became a reality with the great Schism of 922 BC – and only the tribe of Judah followed the House of David and they were the people in the south.
So, there is nothing new under the sun, is there? The wonderful vision, the glorious vision, of making POVERTY history, of a roof over the world, of everyone under their vine and under their fig-tree, was soon forgotten. During the next two hundred years things got worse and worse. Jerusalem, down there in the South, was ruled by money and the market-place. The rich got richer and the poor became poorer. Vast sums were spent on armaments. There were gross miscarriages of justice perpretrated by those dedicated to the upholding of the Law, and all this was carried on, as it often is, in an atmosphere of false religiosity.
Eventually what was happening was challenged by Isaiah and by his younger contemporary, Micah, who recaptured the vision which had been there at the beginning of Solomon’s reign. ‘Come let us go to the mountain of the Lord – and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, and none shall make them afraid.’ So said Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4). Likewise Micah (4:3-4) who called on North and South alike, Israel and Judah, Samaria and Jerusalem, to return to their covenant obligations and to begin to take them seriously once again. For Micah this meant that the justice, which characterised the very nature of God, must be reflected in a similar state of affairs among the people of God. He castigated the rulers of Israel, the government of the day, for the social injustices perpetrated upon the small landowners, farmers and peasants and warned them that God would allow the nation to be destroyed because of it and, like a Highland seer, he foretold the invasion by Sennacherib in 701 BC. But they took no notice of him and in 701 Sennacherib came – ‘The Assyrian came like a wolf on the fold' …… and so it went on until in 587 those in Jerusalem itself were carried into exile, so that by the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept.
And it still goes on. Jerusalem, the city of peace knew no peace, a situation which has continued to the present day. The Children of Israel, the 12 tribes are scattered in a diaspora, across the ghettoes of the world, as city slickers rather than pastoral nomads, and a Berlin wall divides Israel and Palestine. Is it any wonder that Jesus said: ‘You cannot serve God and mammon …. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not neither do they spin. I tell you Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ But then, Jesus, though he was of the House of Judah, was brought up in Galilee. He was no city slicker, born in a stable, not in a palace. He died outside the city wall, outside the square mile, at which moment the veil of Solomon’s Temple was torn in two, which, quite literally, administered the kiss of death to all that Solomon stood for.
At that precise moment Jesus reconsecrated covenant religion,which is what we are here to celebrate this morning around this table. ‘This is the new covenant in my blood’, the covenant of justice and of peace for those who are far off and for those who are near, (Ephesians 2:13-14) who now can gather together and kneel down at the place where three streams meet to seek first, not mammon, but God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, knowing that everything else will be theirs as well (Matthew 6:33).
Therefore let us remember that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). Let us keep the Covenant through this covenant feast not with the old leaven, the leaven of greed, malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, of justice and of peace.
Amen. And to God be the glory. Amen.
Murdoch MacKenzie
2nd July 2006
Murdoch MacKenzie
Bible Readings 1 Kings 4:29-31, 5:13-18 Matthew 6:24-33
(Hymn CH4 710)
Matthew 6:24+29: Jesus said: ‘You cannot serve God and mammon … I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’
Some of us, staying in the Abbey, have come here this week to gather where three streams meet. In the old Highland tradition, a person seeking justice would go to pray at dawn at a place where three streams meet. All kinds of streams meet on Iona each week and are held together by our Trinitarian faith, at the heart of which is the love of God, who is concerned for justice and mercy and peace, for the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed. All over the world people are dealing with these same issues and in particular with the corrosive effects of globalisation and sheer unadulterated greed on local communities, their languages and their cultures. And all over the world there are all kinds of people who are dreaming their dreams and seeing their visions and echoing the words of the hymn which we have just sung:
‘I have a dream’ a man once said,
where all is perfect peace;’
This morning we are going to look at this through the life of Solomon in all his glory, Solomon, the third king of Israel, who reigned from 971 – 931 BC and who spent 7 years building a temple for the Lord and 13 years building a palace for himself (1 Kings 6:38-7:1). Solomon, who discovered that at the end of the day you cannot serve both God and mammon. He began well enough as God gave him wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and largeness of mind like the sand on the seashore (1 Kings 4:29). He envisaged a welfare state in which there would be no North-South divide and in which in fact the people dwelt in safety from Dan in the far north even to Beersheba in the deep south, every one under their vine and under their fig tree, with no-one to make them afraid (1 Kings 4:25).
It sounds wonderful. Solomon in all his glory. The good old days. The swinging sixties when they never had it so good. Yet a closer examination of Solomon’s reign reveals, in the words of Professor John Bright, that ‘the Golden Age was not all gold’ (John Bright – A History of Israel – SCM Press pg 199ff). To some it brought wealth. To others slavery. Its price to all was an increase in the powers of the state and an economic burden quite without precedent in Israel.
Solomon’s commercial enterprises reached the banks of the Euphrates and trade was enormously profitable, but since for every item of goods imported, native products had to be exported, it was not profitable enough to bridge the gap, and balance the runaway national debt. Draconian measures were applied. Old tribal areas (ancient clans or even traditional county boundaries if you like) were disregarded and twelve artificial administrative districts were introduced.
In place of 12 tribes with an ancient communal loyalty to care for the tabernacle shrine, there were 12 districts taxed for the support of Solomon’s court. Each district was obliged to furnish provisons for the court for one month of the year (1 Kings 4:7-19). The bureaucracy burgeoned. For every three civil servants in Jerusalem there may have been only one left out in the sticks. Solomon deliberately sought to weaken tribal loyalties (local government if you like), to integrate the Canaanite population more thoroughly within the state, and to consolidate power more firmly in his own hands. The 12 governors were Solomon’s appointees, responsible to an officer of his cabinet, Solomon’s cronies, if you like. Two of them were his own sons-in-law.
But how does one deal with a runaway national debt? One way is to destroy the environment, to pillage the earth. Now, therefore command that the cedars of Lebanon be cut, and he imported guest labour, immigrants, to do it, in the form of the Sidonians (1 Kings 5:6). Another way is via job-creation schemes or food-for-work projects – something outside of the normal system of voluntary or paid labour. It began with the ethnic minority groups. They weren’t actually the immigrants. They were in the land before the Israelites made their Great Trek through the wilderness and over the Jordan. So all those who had survived of the Ammonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites were forced into labour gangs – 70,000 to bear burdens, 18,000 to quarry in the hill country and 3,600 to oversee them, or as it says in 2 Chronicles 2:18, ‘to make the people work’.
Subsequently, when even this source of labour proved inadequate, Solomon went so far as to inaugurate the corvee in Israel itself; labour gangs were levied and forced to work in relays in Lebanon felling timber for Solomon’s building projects (1 Kings 5:13ff). This was both a severe drain on manpower and a bitter dose for free-born Israelites to swallow. Where now the proud rally of the clans? Instead, slaves manned the refinery at Eziongeber and the mines of Arabah. Working conditions were so murderous that free labour would never have stood for it and the mortality rate must have been appalling.
Solomon’s financial predicament drove him to yet one further measure of desperation. He mortgaged 20 cities in the land of Galilee to the King of Tyre for 120 talents of gold (1 Kings 9:11). But even there he tried to do a bit of cheating because when Hiram, the King of Tyre, went to see them ‘they did not please him’ and as recorded in 1 Kings 9:13 they were called ‘Cabul’’ which means ‘sterile land’ to this day.
The result of all this was that tribal independence was ended. Tribesmen who had once known no central authority and no political obligation except to rally in times of danger (which could itself be compelled, if at all, only by religious sanctions) were now organised in government districts, liable to heavy taxes and conscription, not only for military service but for manual labour. The effective basis for social obligation was no longer Yahweh’s covenant but the state. An agrarian and pastoral society became commercial and industrial, hundreds migrated to the cities, including ethnic minority groups who knew nothing of covenant religion, and the growth of a wealthy class increased the gap between rich and poor.
In short tribal democracy was weakened and there was the beginning of a schism in Israelite society. It was a period of rapid social change, just as acute as that which is going on in many parts of the world today in the face of globalisation, and that which went on during the Highland clearances in Scotland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The rest of the 1st Book of Kings makes sorry but all too familiar reading. After Solomon’s death, things fell apart with great complaints about the heavy yoke laid on the people, but Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, instead of accepting the advice of the older generation to ‘speak good words to the people, and become their servant’ (1 Kings 12:3-7), turned to the New Right,the young Turks, the yuppies of his day, who advised law and order and discipline. Thus Jeroboam declared: ‘Whereas my father laid upon you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions’ (1 Kings 12:11). So, then came the riots. Adoniram, who was the taskmaster over the forced labour, was stoned to death (1 Kings 12:18). The people in the North, that is Israel, revolted, the North-South divide became a reality with the great Schism of 922 BC – and only the tribe of Judah followed the House of David and they were the people in the south.
So, there is nothing new under the sun, is there? The wonderful vision, the glorious vision, of making POVERTY history, of a roof over the world, of everyone under their vine and under their fig-tree, was soon forgotten. During the next two hundred years things got worse and worse. Jerusalem, down there in the South, was ruled by money and the market-place. The rich got richer and the poor became poorer. Vast sums were spent on armaments. There were gross miscarriages of justice perpretrated by those dedicated to the upholding of the Law, and all this was carried on, as it often is, in an atmosphere of false religiosity.
Eventually what was happening was challenged by Isaiah and by his younger contemporary, Micah, who recaptured the vision which had been there at the beginning of Solomon’s reign. ‘Come let us go to the mountain of the Lord – and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, and none shall make them afraid.’ So said Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4). Likewise Micah (4:3-4) who called on North and South alike, Israel and Judah, Samaria and Jerusalem, to return to their covenant obligations and to begin to take them seriously once again. For Micah this meant that the justice, which characterised the very nature of God, must be reflected in a similar state of affairs among the people of God. He castigated the rulers of Israel, the government of the day, for the social injustices perpetrated upon the small landowners, farmers and peasants and warned them that God would allow the nation to be destroyed because of it and, like a Highland seer, he foretold the invasion by Sennacherib in 701 BC. But they took no notice of him and in 701 Sennacherib came – ‘The Assyrian came like a wolf on the fold' …… and so it went on until in 587 those in Jerusalem itself were carried into exile, so that by the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept.
And it still goes on. Jerusalem, the city of peace knew no peace, a situation which has continued to the present day. The Children of Israel, the 12 tribes are scattered in a diaspora, across the ghettoes of the world, as city slickers rather than pastoral nomads, and a Berlin wall divides Israel and Palestine. Is it any wonder that Jesus said: ‘You cannot serve God and mammon …. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not neither do they spin. I tell you Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ But then, Jesus, though he was of the House of Judah, was brought up in Galilee. He was no city slicker, born in a stable, not in a palace. He died outside the city wall, outside the square mile, at which moment the veil of Solomon’s Temple was torn in two, which, quite literally, administered the kiss of death to all that Solomon stood for.
At that precise moment Jesus reconsecrated covenant religion,which is what we are here to celebrate this morning around this table. ‘This is the new covenant in my blood’, the covenant of justice and of peace for those who are far off and for those who are near, (Ephesians 2:13-14) who now can gather together and kneel down at the place where three streams meet to seek first, not mammon, but God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, knowing that everything else will be theirs as well (Matthew 6:33).
Therefore let us remember that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). Let us keep the Covenant through this covenant feast not with the old leaven, the leaven of greed, malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, of justice and of peace.
Amen. And to God be the glory. Amen.
Murdoch MacKenzie
|
HYMN CH4 710
‘I have a dream’ a man once said, ‘where all is perfect peace; Where men and women, black and white, Stand hand in hand and all unite In freedom and in love.’ * But in this world of bitter strife The dream can often fade; Reality seems dark as night, We catch but glimpses of the light Christ sheds on humankind. Fierce persecution, war, and hate Are raging everywhere; God calls us now to pay the price Through struggles and through sacrifice Of standing for the right. So dream the dreams and sing the songs, But never be content; For thoughts and words don’t ease the pain: Unless there’s action, all is vain; Faith proves itself in deeds. Lord, give us vision, make us strong, Help us to do your will; Don’t let us rest until we see Your love throughout humanity Uniting us in peace. Tune: REPTON *The last line of each verse is repeated |
