1 Kings 17: Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, 9 Go now to Zarephath, which

Transcription

1 1 Kings 17: Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, 9 Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you. 10 So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink. 11 As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. 12 But she said, As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die. 13 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. 14 For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth. 15 She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. 16 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. 17 After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. 18 She then said to Elijah, What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son! 19 But he said to her, Give me your son. He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. 20 He cried out to the LORD, O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son? 21 Then he stretched 1

2 himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the LORD, O LORD my God, let this child s life come into him again. 22 The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. 23 Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, See, your son is alive. 24 So the woman said to Elijah, Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth. 2

3 A Little Is Enough Elijah is one of the most fascinating people in the Bible. He s the original wild man in the wilderness. Before John the Baptist, there was Elijah. He s described as having a hairy appearance. This is probably due to all the time he spends in the wilderness hiding from Israel s kings. He has a knack for making them angry with his frequent prophecies of God s judgment against them. Israel s prophets are often linked with the reigning king, and the king for much of Elijah s life was Ahab [SLIDE]. As kings of Israel go, they don t get any worse than Ahab. The Bible says of him that he did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him (1 Kings 16:30). That s pretty bad, and that s just his introduction! We haven t even heard the bad stuff yet. Ahab s first sin (of many) is that he worships Baal, a foreign god. Baal is the god of Phoenicia, a nation to the north of Israel that is roughly equivalent to modern Lebanon. One of the main Phoenician cities is Sidon. Sidon also happens to be the hometown of Ahab s wife, Queen Jezebel, who in many ways is no better, and in some ways is even worse than her husband. But Jezebel is not the only woman from Sidon in this passage. In a little while we ll hear about another woman from Sidon who is the opposite of Jezebel. Elijah is first mentioned 1 Kings 17:1 just before today s reading. His first prophetic act is to tell Ahab that because he has built altars to the Phoenician god Baal, God is going to punish Israel with a long and severe drought. After issuing the prophecy, Elijah flees into the desert to escape the wrath of Ahab and Jezebel. That s where we pick up the story. The word of the Lord comes to Elijah and tells him to go to Zarephath, which belongs to whom [SLIDE]? Sidon the hometown of the queen whom Elijah has just upset. Yes, God is sending Elijah into the heart of 3

4 enemy territory. God assures Elijah that there is a method to this seeming madness. Don t worry, Elijah, there s a plan. God tells him that there is a widow in Sidon who will feed him. That s it. That s the plan. Elijah isn t told anything more than where his next meal will come from. In a time of drought and famine, knowing where your next meal is coming from is actually a blessing. So Elijah goes to Zarephath. He finds the widow at the town gate as she s gathering sticks to build a fire. He asks her for a cup of water and a piece of bread. In the widow s response, she immediately identifies Elijah as a foreigner. As the Lord your God lives, she says to him. The Lord is Elijah s God. He is not the god of Sidon Baal is. Anyway, she has no bread to give him. In fact, she s gathering sticks to build a fire and bake a small loaf of bread with the last of the flour and oil that she has. She and her son will share one last meal together and then they will await a slow and painful death due to starvation. The situation is so bad that she s not even desperate to live. She knows that she s going to die. She s accepted it. Elijah then does something shocking. He says to the widow, Before you make the bread for yourself and your son your last meal on earth first make some bread for me. It takes a lot of [SLIDE] Jews would say chutzpah, or nerve [ 당돌함 ] to make such a request. This widow, who is starving to death, is getting ready to prepare the last meal that she will ever eat, and this stranger this foreigner is asking her to first bake something for him. Who does this guy think he is? Israel s prophets are known to speak boldly, and Elijah makes a bold prediction to the widow the flour and oil will not run out until the Lord sends rain to end the drought. Amazingly, against all common sense and good judgment, she does as Elijah says. She trusts him this stranger, this foreigner, this prophet with the wild appearance. She s willing to share with him what little food she has. 4

5 Let s not underestimate how miraculous this is [SLIDE]. First of all, Elijah is the one who s responsible for the drought that is killing the widow and her son. He is the prophet who proclaimed the drought. Second, this woman is a widow. She is among the most vulnerable members of society. Without a husband or a grown son to care for her, she is at the mercy of society. So it s no surprise that she is resigned to eating her last meal and then dying. What is surprising, and yes, miraculous even, is that she shares her last bit of food with a complete stranger. This radical hospitality is no less miraculous than the replenishment of the flour and oil that enables the widow, her son, and the prophet to live. Of course, that too is miraculous--this little amount of flour and oil that is enough to continually feed three people. It sustains them, but it does something else as well it forms these three people into a community. Yes, a community is formed! Elijah doesn t stay for one meal and then leave. He eats with the widow and her son for many days. This little amount of flour and oil is enough both to sustain life and to form community even amid the threat of death. If the story ended there, it would be a heartwarming tale of faith and fellowship, of welcome and inclusion, of God miraculously sustaining life in the midst of certain death. But the story doesn t end there. In fact, we re only halfway through. Just as the widow, her son, and Elijah are celebrating God s life-sustaining grace, tragedy strikes the widow s son becomes ill and dies. In a flash, all the good feeling that had been built is gone. The widow no longer sees Elijah as her savior but as her accuser [SLIDE]: What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son! (1 Kings 17:18). She now believes that Elijah s presence far from saving her life and that of her son is there to punish her for some past sin. When tragedy strikes, we also want, and look for an explanation, even if we have to reach for one, as the widow does here. What did I do? Why is God punishing me? we ask ourselves. Of course, sin has real consequences. I m not disputing that. We do 5

6 often suffer as a result of our sins. We pay the price of our bad decisions and our impulsive actions. But often bad stuff just happens. It happens for no good reason. It doesn t mean that we deserved it, that we had it coming to us for something that we did. We don t need to go looking for a reason to explain why we suffer. The widow s son died, but it wasn t God s punishment for some sin that she may have committed. Elijah, wisely, doesn t try to tell her this. That would ve been the easy answer for him to give her. It would ve gotten him and God off the hook. Imagine Elijah telling the widow, God didn t do this to your son, you did because you sinned! God is only giving you the punishment that your sin deserves. What an awful, unsympathetic answer that would ve been! Yet that is what we sometimes hear from the church. We hear things like, God is fair, so if you re suffering you must ve done something to make God angry. No, no, no! Let me say again no! God doesn t need us to come to his defense. Elijah doesn t try to justify or rationalize the death of the widow s son. In fact, he is just as perplexed and upset as she is. The boy s death doesn t make any sense to him. In a fit of emotion he takes the child from his mother, carries him upstairs, and lays him on the bed. He then cries out to God in anguish [SLIDE], [H]ave you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son? (1 Kings 17:20). This is a lament. It s a cry of despair and confusion. Elijah is the prophet of God. He is the means through which God makes known God s will, but even Elijah can t explain why God has saved the child from starvation only to have him die of some illness instead. It doesn t make sense. It seems cruel. Some might argue that this is all a test of the widow s faith. God wants to see whether she has enough faith to believe that God can restore her son. We often hear the same thing. In times of suffering, well-meaning Christians tells us that God is testing our faith, wanting to see whether we believe or believe strongly enough. The suggestion being that if we do, then God will reward us with a miracle [SLIDE]. 6

7 I have a big problem with this way of thinking. I don t like the portrait that it paints of God as a spectator who watches human events unsure of what will happen. That God is neither all-knowing nor all-loving. If God knows everything, then God shouldn t need to test the widow. He would already know how she would respond. Nor is that god all-loving if he plays with the widow s emotions by killing her son! Don t worry, poor widow. I only allowed your son to die because I needed to know whether you really believe in me. What an insecure god that would be! If this is how God acts with human beings, then this is a tiny god. It s not the God of the Bible but a god of human imagination. That is the god we create when we talk of God testing us to see how we respond. God is not testing the widow; God is forming her [SLIDE]. God is preparing her, a worshiper of Baal, to have faith in the Lord, the living God. God saved her and her son from starvation, now God will save her son from death. God will show her that God alone has power over life and death. What God does in helping this widow is shocking. Think of what it says about the character of God. Where is God s favor found? Not with the king of Israel but with a poor, starving foreign widow. This is not an insecure god who tests people to see how strong their faith is, but a God whose grace is surprising and extravagant, reaching beyond Israel, even to an enemy of Israel. In extending grace in this way, God reveals himself to the widow. This is just one instance in the Old Testament of God extending grace to foreigners. There are many others: Rahab the Canaanite who is spared along with her family; Ruth, the Moabite, another foreign widow; the people of Nineveh, Israel s enemy, who respond to Jonah s call to repent; and all of the aliens who reside within Israel and for whom God makes provision. All of these are recipients of God s wonderfully generous and surprising grace. All of them come to express faith in the Lord. At the same time that God is forming and preparing the widow, God is doing the same with Elijah [SLIDE]. Immediately after this encounter with the widow, Elijah 7

8 will return to Israel to face off against 450 prophets of Baal. You can read about it in chapter 18. Four-hundred and fifty to one! Elijah would have to be crazy to go up against such staggering numbers! Or maybe not crazy, but he would certainly need to trust in the power of God. But the Elijah that we see here in chapter 17 isn t there yet. He s not ready. He s crying out in anguish over the death of the widow s son. He s hurt and confused, unsure of himself as a prophet and unsure of God. For Elijah to be up to the challenge of confronting 450 rival prophets, God will need to prepare him. How? By raising the widow s son and by showing him that the Lord God alone has power over life and death. When Elijah sees that, he will be ready to face all the prophets of Baal, even though they outnumber him 450 to one. This is a story of God using a little to do a lot [SLIDE]. God uses a little bit of bread to sustain the lives of three people. These three people, who were strangers before they shared this little bit of bread, God forms into a community. They are God s community, which is to say a community of insiders and outsiders Israelite and non-israelite. They are, to say the least, an unusual community, for they are a community of the vulnerable and the despised the vulnerable widow with her son and the despised prophet. This is the kind of community that God forms. Individually, they are of little significance, but by bringing them together, God does great things through each of them. God uses Elijah to reveal himself to this foreign widow. Whereas she once thought that the Lord was Elijah s God, when she sees her son revived, she professes her newfound faith. She says to Elijah, Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth (1 Kings 17:24). In bringing together Elijah and the widow, God uses the widow and her son to transform Elijah. By witnessing God raise the widow s son, Elijah now fully understands that God has power over life and death. He is now ready to take on the prophets of Baal all 450 of them. 8

9 This entire story takes place within the context of a drought. As the passage reminds us, in times of drought, both water and food are scarce. Nourishment is hard to find. The same applies to spiritual drought that sometimes prolonged period when, as with the widow, God seems to be a stranger to us someone else s God, not ours. In the midst of spiritual drought, nourishment is hard to come by. We feel spiritually starved. We hunger to be fed. I hope you re hungry because I have good news. In a few minutes we will gather around the table to celebrate the Lord s Supper. We will share together the bread and the wine. I know it doesn t look like much just a little loaf of bread and a cup of wine. It s not really much of a meal at all. You ll probably still want lunch afterwards. Yet the Lord s Supper is for us nourishment. The bread and the wine, symbols of Christ s body and blood, sustain us in times of spiritual drought. They sustain us by bringing us together and forming us into a community. As the foreign widow and the Israelite prophet were brought together into community by sharing a little bit of bread, so are we. By sharing in this bread and wine we become Christ s community, his community of insiders and outsiders, vulnerable and despised, disciples and apostles, sinners and saints. Through this meal the Spirit of Christ is forming us and preparing us to carry out Christ s mission to the world. It may not seem like much, this little bit of bread and wine, but by the grace of God, a little is enough to do great things. 9