A Sermon Based Upon 1 Kings 17: 17-24
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Proper 5: 3nd Sunday After Pentecost, June 5th, 2016
Elijah said to her, "Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.” (1 Ki. 17:13 NRS).
I’ll never forget how an east German friend of mine once commented to me how he just couldn’t fathom how American’s live happily in a country where there are so many natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes. “Don’t you always live in fear?” he asked. Hearing that I almost blurted out, “How can you live happily live in eastern Europe once dominated and nearly destroyed by the ideologies of Hitler and Stalin?”
For humans, having to deal with misfortune or hardship, both natural and political, goes way back. It even goes back further than today’s Bible text from the first book of Kings, set in the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th century B.C. It’s strange that we would even be looking this far back in biblical history; but we wouldn’t be, were it not that the ministry of Jesus, which was greatly rooted in the Hebrew prophets.
When Elijah abruptly appeared and began his prophetic ministry, as happens in today’s text, it’s as if he came out of nowhere. We have already been told about the big, bad King Omri, who ‘did what was evil…more evil than all who were before him’ (16:25). We also have been told that his Son Ahab is much of the same, but has gone even further in wickedness, erecting an altar to the foreign deity named Ba’al, in Israel’s capital city Samaria(16:30). The spiritual situation in Israel was going downhill fast, when unannounced and unknown, Elijah comes on the scene annoucing a natural disaster, a drought, was to come upon Israel during Ahab’s rule. Don’t you just hate it when a whole nation faces ruin and rot because of the irresponsibility of a few bad apples? It did happen and, unfortunately for us, it still does.
GOING HUNGRY WITHOUT HOPE
When bad things happen, either when they have a cause, or sometimes even when they don’t, people suffer unnecessarily. People suffer when Hurricanes or Tornadoes hit, just like they suffer when bad political leaders are in office. People also suffer when they themselves do very stupid things. But most unfortunately, as in our text today, those who end up suffering the most are not those at the top of the social or economic ladder, but those at the bottom. It is right here at the bottom, where ‘word of the Lord’ told the prophet to go next, after he left the King’s palace. Elijah, “Go now to Zarephath…and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you” (17:9).
At first, it doesn’t seem fair that God sends his prophet to live off the offerings off the poor and needy, like this widow. Elijah entered a town and encountered this poor widow picking up sticks and began to make demands on this person who already had a very demanding life: “Bring me a little water, so that I may drink”. And while you’re at it, Elijah adds, “bring me a morsel of bread” with your other hand. “Men!”, she must be thinking! It does sound harsh and cruel, but just hang on, this was just the beginning of the story.
The widow speaks up, blessing the Lord with her lips, politely apologizing to the preacher, saying she has ‘nothing baked’ and only ‘a handful of meal in a jar, and little oil in a jug’ (17:12). You can underline the words ‘handful’ and ‘little’ to clearly see her situation, visualizing again just how cruel all this seems. Why is Elijah doing this? Why has the Lord sent him to make such demands on this poor woman? This very selfless widow must make the preacher understand just how impossible his demands are. She adds that she would be willing to oblige him, but her situation is so dire, she needs a last meal for her and her son. That’s how grim the situation is. Why can’t this preacher understand?
Perhaps you’ve never been in a situation like hers. I hope you haven’t been this hungry, or down to your last morsel. Most people in their working years here in the U.S. have never known a time of so little. Yes, we’ve all known some kind of heart break, or have been close to it, but few of us have been in situations where we are hanging on to our last penny or last bite. But situations like this still happen in our world. On the news recently were pictures of starving children and adults in Syria. These people were starving not because there was no food, but because the government was preventing them from obtaining food because they were families of the rebels who were fighting in opposition to their rulers.
We know that situations still exists like this, and perhaps always will, where innocent and sometimes not so innocent people suffer due to war, conflict, or poor decisions of government leaders. The world can be cruel place. People can be cruel to each other. Sometimes people end up suffering hunger and hurt from natural disasters too. Other times it’s no one’s fault at all. We really don’t know who this widow was or whose side she had been on. What choice did she have in a monarchy that had no democracy? What we do know from this story is that she was a widow, she was poor, and she, along with her child, were suffering from a drought, which the Bible says ‘the Lord’ had implemented.
I told you about once corresponding via email with Dr. Bart Ehrman, a professor of New Testament at Chapel Hill, who has lost his faith. He still teaches the New Testament as a historical scholar, but he no longer believes. His wife is also a professor, but she still holds on to her faith and goes to church. Ehrman says he can no longer agree with his wife or any other believer because he can't imagine how a loving God, who is all powerful, could be loving if he still allows the pain and suffering of the innocent observed in the world. In an article he wrote:
“We live in a world in which a child dies every five seconds of starvation. Every five seconds. Every minute there are twenty-five people who die because they do not have clean water to drink. Every hour 700 people die of malaria. Where is God in all this? We live in a world in which earthquakes in the Himalayas kill 50,000 people and leave 3 million without shelter in the face of oncoming winter. We live in a world where a hurricane destroys New Orleans. Where a tsunami kills 300,000 people in one fell swoop. Where millions of children are born with horrible birth defects. And where is God? To say that he eventually will make right all that is wrong seems to me, now, to be pure wishful thinking...” (From www.beliefnet.com/)
There is no greater threat to faith in God than the suffering widows and their children just like there is no greater threat to a civilization than motherless or fatherless children. We all know this to be true. It was true in biblical times, and it’s still true today. Because there is always great pain, hurt, hunger and suffering in the world, now, and at any given time, God’s goodness remains in question. You can always find as many reasons not to believe in God, as you can find to believe. If all you have is a clever argument to convince yourself or to invite others to have faith and believe, then faith realty doesn’t have a prayer.
LEARNING TRUST
So how does one proceed to have faith, when there seems to be so much to be thought or said against it; when logic is not on the side of faith or when history also speaks against it because churches have been instruments of war instead of instruments of peace? Though most of us have not had more negatives than positives in our lives, we could envision that our own faith could be at risk because there are no guarantees. Blessed Assurance does not mean Blessed Insurance. Even Scripture suggests no one is absolutely safe because ‘the devil is like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” or as Scripture states, Hell is still enlarging ( Isa. 5:14-15). Most people in this world do not have the truth we confess. So, the question comes to us, in our problems and pains, just as it once came to this widow in her struggle and suffering, how will we keep trusting in this Lord who, through the preacher, and sometimes without him too, can seem to be against us rather than for us?
As one theologian once said, there may be enough evidence to believe a power behind all that is, but there is not always enough evidence to know it is good. Can we know that?
The challenge became even more focused in this widow when the prophet started making even more demands. Why didn’t Elijah just go and find another family to feed and care for him? Why did he insist on raiding her cupboard? If you ‘ve already started to think that something else is going on here, your right. This is really not ‘just’ about paying or feeding the preacher, but it's about teaching this woman and all Israel the importance of trusting God even when it's hard to do so.
Part of the reason King Omri, King Ahab, as leaders of Israel, have left the Lord for other, lesser gods is because is can be hard to believe and trust God For whatever reason, sometimes when times are easy and others times when times are hard, people start drifting away and before you know it, God has been replaced with a shiny new god who promises to give whatever you want whenever you want it. Isn't this what Ba’al represents? He’s the God of convenience, of opportunity, and of getting it now. As the God of guaranteed fertility, he offered Israel bumper crops, and a new ox in every stall and worshipping Ba'al could be full of surprises and very entertaining too. There was always the promise of a full house at the very popular church of Ba'al. Did you know they had pole dancing in church? How could the church of Yahweh compete? Of course, faith in the true God never stands a chance, unless, there something the prophet knows that others don't. And of course, there is.
Before we get to that, in his book, Tokens of Trust, the archbishop of Canterbury wrote to encourage Christians, and other spiritual seekers to find and keep faith in the God of Israel who has been fully revealed through Jesus Christ. Even in a secular world, where God has much less sparkle and shine than other spiritual or secular options and opinions Rowan Williams affirms that we still need to believe in and trust God. He labels the Christian Faith ‘tokens of trust’ because in order to have life, real life, we will all have to learn to trust in something or someone. Williams reminds us that the word for ‘belief’ in the New Testament does mean ‘believe in’ (like believing in the Loch Ness Monster), as much as, it means to trust or have confidence in this God we have already experienced through trusting Jesus Christ. God is proven trustworthy, he suggests, through the test of love—‘love was (and is) God’s meaning in everything’. And still, when you look straight into the heart of Jesus in his compassion, you see exactly what the world still needs most---a faith that teaches and commands us to trust love. Only love will get us through the lean days of life, and only love has an answer for our human bent toward sin that leads to death (See Rowan Williams in Tokens of Trust, WJK, 2007, pp. 3-20).
When this widow trusted the prophet to ‘go and do’ (17:9) what love demanded of her in that moment, something amazing took place---she and her family, seemed to always have enough. She may not have had everything she wanted, nor did she have more, but when she responded in faithful trust, obeying the word of God’s prophet, the text says ‘The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah’ (1 Ki. 17:16 NRS). But this did not happen, until the woman ‘went and did as Elijah said’ (17:15). This means she also had to take some ‘responsibility’ in the matter of actively trusting, even when her cupboard was still empty.
Of course, you won’t trust when your cupboard or life is empty, unless you see or know some way or someone who has proven to be trustworthy. Putting trust in God can mean responding in trust even when all seems lost. Another woman who serves as an modern example was Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish girl in her twenties, who acted in trust during the nightmares of the Nazi occupation of Holland. Interestingly, before this time, she was not a pious person with great religious commitment. But when things became difficult, instead of becoming skeptical of faith, she became more and more conscious of God’s hand on her life. Imprisoned in the transit camp at Westbrook, before being shipped off to Auschwitz, where she would die in the gas chambers, in her diary dated November 1943, at the age of 29 she wrote, “there must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?” Even in that dark moment, she went on to explain how her life became an ‘uninterrupted dialogue with God’ and her vocation even in the camp was to ‘simply proclaim’ and ‘commend God to the hearts of others’ because it was necessary ‘to clear the path’ to God’ in them (As quoted in Tokens of Trust, p. 22).
FINDING LIFE
Trusting God is not easy, but it always remains possible to us, no matter what happens, because God is a living, personal, and present God. He is a God who comes close to us, even in a world bent on death and destruction. While this story of a widow and her child, trusting to ‘go and do’ even ‘against the world’, similar to that Helen Reedy song, “It’s You and Me Against the World’ this is exactly the kind of trust and faith, the Lord is calling her to respond with, through this prophet, which lies at the heart of this very strange story.
But now again, move to us: Why should we also need to trust God like this widow? Why should we ‘go and do’ the demands of faith and life, even in difficult times? The answer came to this widow when the worst thing imaginable happened. Her only son became deathly ill and then he dies. How will she go on? How will she survive in a world without social security or welfare? With her son dead, she is also as good as dead.
Elijah knows how serious this is, because we see the drama in his own desperation ("O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?" (1 Ki. 17:20 NRS). When he pounces on his chest, as if giving him CPR there times, and cries out for God to ‘let the life of this child come into him again’ (17:21), we are told that “The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived” (17:22). While Ba’al may promise to bring rain and fertility to crops and people, raising up the dead, is something only the true God can do. You certainly don't hear people crying to Ba'al to raise the dead. The god of distraction has no lasting attraction when you face death. When it comes to dealing with death, the gods of this world have their hands tied behind their backs, their tongues are tied, and their allure is lost. Ba’al power proves sterile when it comes giving any kind of lasting, living hope of life.
As the Old Testament scholar, Walter Bruggemann has written, Elijah and this widow, living in the midst of drought and scarcity, learn a valuable lesson: “life comes to those who eat thin, and pray hard. Life is a gift only given by God” (Collected Sermons, WJK, 2011, p. 249).
Recently, the History Channel presented the findings of a well-respected researcher, a professor of Jewish studies in London. Searching for what happened to the lost Ark of the Covenant, featured in the Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, after going through all the theories of what could have become of it, Dr. Tudor Parfitt, concluded in 2008, that the Ark was taken away by a group of priests, who fled the first destruction of the temple by the Babylonians in 687 BC.
The professor’s theory rests on the traditions of an African tribe, the Lemba. Parfitt has been studying this African tribe, because they had an oral tradition which said they were descendants of a lost tribe of Israel. Their tradition was not believed until recently, when DNA tests were taken in 1999, pointing out that they did have genetic markers common among Jewish men of families named Cohen, a name which means priests. Along with their DNA, the Lemba also had oral traditions concerning a ‘drum-like’ box called the ‘ngoma’ once used to store objects of worship, carried by priest on poles. They even believed that it once emitted a ‘fire’ that protected them from enemies which came from the temple in Jerusalem. This tradition of being ‘priests’ who once protected the Ark finds support in other oral traditions which suggests that the Ark was moved to the Arab desert before the Babylonians arrived, and that the Lemba were the priests who moved from the Arabian desert to Yemen, and then to Africa, as a lost tribe of cohen or priests. Of course, the Ark, made of wood, had long rotten away, but the Lemba continued to make replicas shaped for their own use and tribal needs (http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2008/05/The-Lost-Ark-of-the-Covenant-Still-Lost.aspx#Article). .
What moved me most about this documentary was not that he found the lost ark, or a replica from it, but what moved me was this lost tribe, most of whom are Christians today, continued to witness to who they were, even when no one believed them. Even when the scholars of the world had doubts about who they were, they kept on going and doing, practicing and living out their faith, no matter what experts said. When the proof finally came back to them, they sang, they danced, they celebrated and then they went back to to being who they were and trusting, just like they always had, except that now, they were followers of the flow and promise of eternal life, from the life-giver, Jesus Christ.
So, when death threatens, or when life gets hard, and there is little you can measure as prosperity or wealth, just ‘go and do’. Because God is the source of life and all we have had or will ever hope to have, no matter what happens, just keep going and keep doing, what needs or should be done. We don't have to be over-burdened about running out, nor do we have to allow death or fear to gain the upper hand. The God of Israel may not promise us the moon, or always the sunshine, or even the ‘showers of blessings’ whenever or wherever we want them, but through Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, is the only living God, who is the God of the living, promising to restore and raise the dead to life, as Jesus was raised from the dead. We don’t have to worry about ‘our life’ because God is our life. And when God is our life, we know we can trust enough each day, in both small and big ways, to go and do what only faith gives us strength to go and do. Amen.
No comments :
Post a Comment