SERMONS FROM THE HEIGHTS

Transcription

1 SERMONS FROM THE HEIGHTS by Randy L. Hyde, D. Min. Senior Pastor Pulaski Heights Baptist Church Little Rock, AR June 5, 2016 THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL 1 Kings 17:8-16; Luke 7:11-17 Who s your favorite local weather person on TV? We re blessed with four local stations, all of which consistently tell us what the weather is going to be, using the latest technological advances. It s hard to go wrong with such prognostications any more, what with the computer telling them specifically what is going to happen. Why, they can predict several days out what we can expect, and for the most part they re usually correct. Since they re all good at what they do, and the forecasts are generally the same, it basically comes down to which personality you most like, doesn t it? Do you prefer the folks at KARK, channel four? KTHV may be your station of choice. That s channel 11. Ed Buckner seems to be a fairly likable fellow. Or you might like Ned Perme on channel 7, maybe his cohort Barry Bryant, who once, by the way, was a member of our church. I certainly have my favorites, as well as those I m not quite enamored with, but won t talk about them publicly. That wouldn t be very nice. If you re interested, see me later and I ll tell you who I like... and who I don t particularly care for. But none of them have anything on the prophet Elijah. Elijah not only predicted the weather and without access to Doppler radar! according to the way the story is told, he actually controlled the weather. Elijah had an ongoing feud with Israel s king Ahab. Ahab, you may recall, was the weasely husband of Queen Jezebel, otherwise known as the wicked witch of the

2 north. The prophet informs the king there is going to be a drought in the land, neither dew nor rain these years, he says. And then he adds, except by my word. Elijah will inform King Ahab when the drought will end and not a minute before. How bout that?! But truth be told, Ahab was the least of Elijah s problems. Once he told the king what was going to happen, he knew the first thing Ahab would do was run to his shrewish wife and whine to her about what the prophet told him. Elijah knew, when that happened, there would be you-know-what to pay. If Elijah was going to be afraid of anybody in the king s mansion, it would be Queen Jezebel, not her toady of a husband. So he does the only sensible thing in a situation like that. He lights a shuck and gets outta Dodge, with God as his travel agent. Go now to Zarephath, the Lord says to Elijah which, by the way, is Gentile territory and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you. And she does... practically out of nothing. When Elijah encounters the widow, in addition to a cup of water, he asks her to bring him a morsel of bread. Not a loaf, not even a slice. Just a morsel. And this is what she says: 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. A couple of things. First, notice she says,... the Lord your God... Yes, she has heard from the Lord just exactly how we are not told but she hasn t been converted. Remember, she is a Gentile, living in a land that does not worship nor recognize Elijah s God, the God of Israel. Yet, somehow God has communicated with her to let her know she is going to be used as an instrument of God s grace. She has listened, and she has obeyed, but she still does not think in terms of Elijah s God being hers as well. This may very well be a simple case of her not wanting to muddy up the waters. And having heard from Elijah s God has not exactly filled her with optimism about the future. 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.

3 When it comes to finding and using people to do his will, as far as this story goes, God has really scraped the bottom of the barrel. Rufus Watson loved this story. You haven t heard of Rufus Watson? Well, let me tell you about him. He lived to be ninety-nine years old. Born in Texas, he was the son of former slaves. He served his country in the military, was a great athlete and played in the Negro professional baseball leagues. Afterwards, he made some money investing in real estate. He also witnessed lynchings, and spent a lifetime wondering how people who commit such horrible acts could still go to church and call themselves Christians. But he found comfort in this story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Why? Well, he said that if his life was not proof enough, this story showed that God meets people at the bottom of the barrel. God meets us when we ve gone so low that all we can do is look up. 1 I never prepare a sermon without considering you as the ones who will hear and receive it... especially those of you who are consistent in your attendance. In other words, when I choose my words I think of you. Preparing a sermon is not just an academic exercise on my part, and it s not just because it s my job. I try to picture your faces and conjecture as to what might be going on in your lives. For some of you, I am aware of the issues with which you are dealing. With others, I can only guess as to what you might be experiencing, the feelings you have brought with you to worship, the concerns that are on your heart. That is where I have to depend on God to know your deepest feelings, so God might then direct my thoughts and words with the hope that somehow they might connect with you and inspire and encourage you in the journey of life and faith. Chances are, to a stranger who might just wander into our sanctuary on a Sunday morning, collectively we would not look like a congregation of people who are struggling. And, in truth, some of you may not be. Life may be treating you well right now and you d like for things to keep going pretty much as they are. I mean, look around you. We re all fairly well-dressed. The order of worship itself implies that, for the most part, this is an educated community. We may not be what would be characterized as a country club church, but we hold our own when it comes to 3

4 the average income and educational level of our community. And whatever issues we have would no doubt be considered, as they are called, first-world problems. But that doesn t mean there aren t individuals in this church who don t find themselves struggling... whether it s financial or personal or spiritual or physical or otherwise. My guess is that there s not a person in this place who has not known sorrow on some level, and have not, like the widow of Zarephath, been tempted to give in to despair. That is simply a part of the human condition, whether you live in the first world or the third or fourth. In other words, there may very well be someone here this morning who is standing hip-deep in that proverbial barrel wondering when the water will get so deep that you re going to drown in your myriad problems. If that is true of you, does this story have a word for you? Do you believe that God the same God who commanded the widow to feed the prophet Elijah has the willingness to reach down and bring you up from the bottom of the barrel, just as God did with her? For awhile I wondered why this story is coupled in the lectionary with the account from Jesus ministry in Luke s gospel where he raises the son of the woman in Nain. Both women are widows, to be sure. There has to be a connection there. But is that the only reason? As you probably know, it was a tough world for widows. Women were wholly dependent on their husbands, and when the spouse was no longer there, they found themselves at the mercy of their male children... if, that is, they had male children. Both widows in our stories do, but one is young and the other has died. The widow in Zarephath is filled with such despair she believes that both she and her son will soon die from starvation due to the drought. The widow Jesus encounters has lost her only son, her sole source of survival, so her future has died with him. What binds these two stories together? That both women are widows? Perhaps. But I think the real common denominator here is despair. 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. I still remember clearly the day Ernest Campbell came to my seminary to preach in chapel. As a student of preaching, I considered him to one of the homiletical giants 4

5 of that day. But it wasn t just his preaching that attracted me. I appreciated his courage. He was pastor of a large church in Ann Arbor, Michigan in He got word of the terrible manner in which the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, President John Kennedy s assassin, was being treated in Dallas. He and his congregation made arrangements for her to come to Ann Arbor where they took her in and provided her the means to re-establish her life. He once published a book, based on a sermon, entitled Locked in a Room with Open Doors. The sermon had to do with our tendency to self-impose restrictions on how we live. We lock ourselves in a room with open doors. He said this: Jesus came to preach release to the captives and since it is not recorded that he very frequently went to jail to physically liberate people we are permitted to conclude that he was intent on liberating men (and women) from the fears and hang-ups of their own hearts. 2 You may be here this morning suffering from the fears and hang-ups of your own heart, and you may feel quite honestly that outside forces, beyond your control, have brought you to your knees, to the bottom of your barrel. If you believe in the good news of Jesus at all, on any level then you should be able to believe this with all your heart... if you feel locked in, whether the doors of your life are open are tightly closed you need not stay where you are. To escape the bottom of the barrel, you cannot do it by yourself. You need a Presence and a Power beyond your own. Read the rest of the story that is told in 1 Kings of the relationship between the prophet Elijah and the unfortunate widow of Zarephath. Look at what Jesus did for the grieving mother from Nain. Do not consider that these stories are ancient myths from another time and place where things happened differently than they do today. Consider that the same God found in these pages is the One who loves you and guides you even today. Ernest Campbell says something else in another sermon that I would like for you to consider. He reflects upon Jesus command to his newly-called disciples to follow me. He says that... anyone who says, Follow me, is obviously more interested in the future than the past and we need a loyalty to the future. 3 5

6 The bottom of the barrel does not have to be your future. The future is found in the overwhelming and loving guidance and presence of the One who has called you to eternal life. Despair is not the final word, grace is. And in that grace you will find the hope you need to escape the bottom of the barrel. Give hope to the hopeless, O Lord, purpose to those in despair. And find us following ever more closely the One who shows us the way to the life you want us to have. Through Christ our Lord we pray, Amen. Notes 1 H. James Hopkins, Feasting on the Word, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p Ernest T. Campbell, Locked in a Room with Open Doors (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1974), p Ibid, p