Hungry Amy Starr Redwine June 9, 2013 1 Kings 17:8-16! A group of Trappist monks sat down one evening to dinner in silence. Finally, one of the monks became so overcome with delight in the fresh-baked bread he was eating that he blurted out, Hey, did we make this bread or did somebody give it to us? One of the older monks smiled and answered, Yes. 1! Everything we have comes from somewhere. Everything we do has a history. Every apple we eat, every shirt we wear, every task we accomplish. Everything has a story, and that story always involves many other people.! What s your story? More specifically, what do you know about your family s story? Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know of an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth?! If you know the answers to some or all of these questions, then you would score well on the aptly named Do You Know? scale. This scale was developed by two psychologists who used it to assess the emotional health and happiness of children. These psychologists discovered that the more children knew about their family s history, the more they felt in control of their lives, the higher their self-esteem, and the more they felt their families functioned well. It turn out that the Do You Know? scale is a great predictor, not just of happiness and well-being, but also of resilience, how easily children will recover from set backs big and small. 1 Willimon, Will, Stanley Hauerwas, and Scott Saye, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord s Prayer and the Christian Life. Abingdon Press, 1996.
! When parents teach children about their family s stories, they usual choose one of three narratives. Some families have an ascending narrative: when we came to this country we had nothing, but because of your grandfather s hard work at school, and your mother s business, we have become successful. Others have a descending narrative: we used to have it all -- then we lost everything. But the best kind of narrative for families is what psychologists call the oscillating narrative : one that involves ups and downs, good times and bad. There was the successful family business, but then grandpa was injured in the war. Your father went to college and got a good job, but then he got laid off. But no matter what, we stuck together as a family.! This kind of oscillating narrative gives children enormous self-confidence, because it teaches them that they are part of something bigger than themselves. They can expect good times, but they can also weather the bad. 2! What is true for nuclear and extended families is also true of faith families. Maybe one of the reasons that Christianity has persisted for more than two thousand years is because, as a family of faith, we have an oscillating narrative: God created the world and everything in it; then Adam and Eve were disobedient. God chose Abraham to be the father of a nation, then Abraham s progeny, God s chosen people, ended up slaves in Egypt. God sent Moses to free the Israelite slaves and take them to the promised land, where the people fell once again into disobedience. God sent Jesus to show us God s love and he ended up crucified. Jesus was raised from the dead and his followers shared the gospel faithfully until Christianity became one of the world s dominant religions.! Our religion, our denomination, our church -- all of these families have oscillating narratives of challenges and successes, good times and bad. 2 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html? pagewanted=all&_r=4&
! Today s story lands us smack in the middle of what looks like a steeply descending narrative. Just before today s account of Elijah and the widow of Sidon, Ahab has become king of Israel, and he is not a good king. He married the evil Jezebel, who encouraged Ahab to worship the Canaanite storm god Baal. The Bible tells us that Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord...than all the kings of Israel who were before him. Things were definitely on the descent for God s people.! And so the Lord appointed the prophet Elijah to announce God s punishment against Ahab: an extended drought -- a death sentence for a people dependent on agriculture. After Elijah announces the drought, God tells him to go and hide himself by a stream bed that would be a source of water. But of course, without any rain, the stream quickly dried up, and that s when God told Elijah to go to Zarephath, a town in Sidon. God sent Elijah to a region outside of Israel, in fact into the very heartland of the cult of Baal, and the home country of Jezebel. And there, of all places, God says, Elijah will be fed by one of the locals -- a widow -- who, against all the odds, and by the grace of God, will provide for Elijah for during the drought.! Like the Israelites, the widow was in the midst of her own descending narrative -- her husband dead, a small child to support, a terrible drought. It was never a good time to be a widow in the ancient world, but during the drought, already scarce resources were now practically nonexistent. The widow had already figured out where her story was going to end: she and her son were going to die.! Writing about the death of his mother after a long illness, Tom Long recalls how every day in hospice care, she would beckon one of the loved ones who kept vigil at her bedside and whisper the words, I m hungry. She had a feeding tube and she was getting as much broth and pureed foods as her dying body could handle, but still she kept telling them, day after day: I m hungry. The hospice staff assured the family that her body could not feel hunger pains, but it still upset them. One day, Tom entered the room and found her restless in her bed.! What s wrong, he asked. Are you hungry?
! Very, she whispered. Tom felt helpless. He didn t know what to do. He tried to give her some soft food, but after a couple of bites, she shook her head. No more.! Slowly it dawned on me, he writes. I m hungry was her way of describing the totality of her circumstance. She was not asking for food; she was saying that everything was slipping away, her personal history was closing down, coming to an end. Her days of breath and food and light and family and the touch of love were ebbing, and she was hungry, hungry for more, hungry for the life being taken away from her...very hungry. 3! This widow of Zaraphath was hungry -- hungry to the point where she had accepted that she would soon starve to death. But also hungry the way Tom Long s mother was hungry at the end of her life -- hungry for a better life for herself and her son, hungry for community and support, hungry for respect and dignity.! Did you notice what Elijah says to her after she tells him her sad plan to make a final, meager meal for herself and her son on the eve of their death? This stranger says to her: Do not be afraid...because a God she s barely heard of has promised to care and provide for her until the rain falls again. And that is exactly what happens.! Despite all the signs that pointed to a descending narrative, theirs was a story on the rise.! The writer Anne Lamott once took a vacation to Lake Tahoe with her two year-old son, Sam. This area near Reno is a hotbed of gambling, which means that all the rooms in hotels or condos have curtains so heavy and thick that the rooms can be dark as night even in the middle of the day.! One afternoon, she put Sam down for a nap in his crib, closed the curtains, and went into the other room to work, pulling the door shut behind her. A few minutes later, she heard Sam calling to her. Sam had climbed out of his crib and gotten to the door. But when he had grasped the doorknob, he had depressed the button lock. Try as she 3 Thomas G. Long, Easter -- The Extra Scenes? Journal for Preachers, Vol. 23, No. 3, Easter 2010, p. 36.
might, Anne could not get him to unlock the door. When it became clear that his mother couldnʼt open the door, Sam cried and screamed while his mother, in a panic, called the rental agency for the condo and left a message, then called the building manager and left another message. Finally, not knowing what else to do, she lay down next to the door, reached her fingers in the small space underneath it and told Sam to reach down and find her fingers in the dark. He did. And as the reality of his motherʼs love and presence sunk in, Sam gradually calmed down. Mother and son stayed like that for a long time, lying on the floor side by side, a locked door between them, taking comfort in the touch of their fingers. 4! Today s story, like so many Bible stories, reminds us that God provides, that the bad times never have the last word for God s people. This is our tradition s oscillating narrative, also known as the gospel. Yes, there have been bad times, but it is often at the worst times, just when we think things can never look up again, that God meets us and provides for us. Because that is what God does. God provides. God loves. God finds the crack beneath the door and does whatever it takes to be with us. What God provides may not be much more than a scant handful of meal and few drops of oil, or the barest touch of fingers underneath a locked door, or a look of kindness from a friend or the strength to get through one more moment, but it is enough. God provides.! After reading about the children who scored well on that Do You Know? scale, it struck me: those kids only scored well because someone in their family took the time to tell them not just their family s successes, but its failures as well.! In our faith tradition, and in this church, we do a great job of telling the Bible stories that define our faith. But don t stop there. Tell your stories of God s provision. Share with one another how you have encountered God in both good times and bad. Those are the stories we need to tell our children and each other, because they are God s stories as well. They are sacred stories. 4 from an illustration in the sermon, Belonging, by Mark Ramsey, in Journal for Preachers, Vol. 23, No. 1, p. 23.
! It took great courage for that widow to share her meager provisions with the stranger Elijah. It takes great courage for us to share our stories with one another. But when we do, we all gain the capacity to remember how God has worked in the past, to receive God s provision in the present, and to trust that, whatever the future holds, God will provide. Amen.!