1 Kings 17:8-24
June 9, 2013
This story about
Elijah troubles me. Does it trouble
you? If not I think it should. The
first part is the kind of story that makes the Bible seem to be a book of fairy
tales. A destitute widow lived in a port
city, a commercial capital known for exporting wine, grain and oil. It was outside of Israel, where the people
don’t know the Lord, but worship Baal.
The people inside Israel were worshipping Baal too, the god of the
harvest, and the Bible says the Lord sent a famine caused by drought to punish
them. The people in Zeraphath were
suffering from the famine too.
The widow Elijah met was about to use her last bit of flour and oil to make the one more meal to share with her son before they died of starvation. Then Elijah came along, asked her to share her food with him and told her that his God, the Lord of Israel would make the flour and oil last. So she took him up on it, shared her last pizza with Elijah and her son, and like magic there was still flour and oil enough to make pizza the next day, and the next day, and the next.
The widow Elijah met was about to use her last bit of flour and oil to make the one more meal to share with her son before they died of starvation. Then Elijah came along, asked her to share her food with him and told her that his God, the Lord of Israel would make the flour and oil last. So she took him up on it, shared her last pizza with Elijah and her son, and like magic there was still flour and oil enough to make pizza the next day, and the next day, and the next.
As I just told the kids this part of the story is about compassion, and about the value giving to others even when it seems that we won’t have enough, and about God’s providence for us – helping us to be free from fear of not having enough so that we can share what we have.
This part of the story does seem like something from the Brothers Grimm where the magic bowl is always full of stew. But this doesn’t bother me so much because I’ve seen it in practice. My grandfather started his ministry during the Great Depression. My grandmother was determined to marry him, in spite of her mother’s warning that as a minister’s wife she would always be poor. One little church in Maine was so poor they could hardly pay them. Live chickens, and a standing woodlot served to supplement their salary. Poor grandma, a city girl, had no idea what to do with a live chicken, while grandpa had to use his ax both to chop off the chicken’s heads, and fell the trees and burn them green to keep the parsonage warm. Like many who lived through the depression, my grandparents never stopped hording old nuts and bolts, wearing clothes decades after the fashion had changed and saving the water from cooked vegetables to put into their homemade soups. They shunned debt, waiting 8 years after marriage before trying to have children – my mom is their only child. At the end of their lives their frugal ways had provided enough that they could give me all the money I needed to attend seminary and come out debt free. But they were also generous giving to the church and other charities all of their lives. And they always had room at their dinner table for guests – oh how they loved to invite others to dinner.
I have seen this financial principle of abundant life in God’s care practiced in many churches too. Though people new to the process of adopting a church budget might be shocked, it is very common to pass a projected budget where the expenses significantly outweigh the income. And usually when churches are living faithfully by the end of the year such a budget comes out ok even without eating into endowment funds. This is considered financial success.
Our church lives like this. Last year we had to cash in some money salted away for a rainy day to pay the last $3,000 worth of bills. This year has been looking even tighter. But just when the Church Council heard the alert and I started worrying we got news that dear Barbara Baldwin, long time member here, who died a year ago today, left 10% of her estate to this church. This is not a coincidence, it is a god-incidence – God’s providence for his people. Plans are underway to invest most of her gift, but our treasurer and I can rest more easily knowing that God is providing for us, just ask God provided for Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.
But the next part of the scripture passage for today is the one that really troubles me. For just as one crisis was met by God’s providence another crisis occurred Zarephath. While Elijah was still living as a guest in the widow’s home her son, who not only gave her comfort after her husband had died, but also served as her only health insurance and pension in her old age, this boy got sick and his “illness was so sever that there was no breath left in him.” A euphemism like “passed away” to buffer the cold hard fact that he died.
In her grief the
widow looked for someone to blame.
Surely a God who can keep oil jars and flour canisters filled could also
make a sick boy well. If Elijah didn’t
offer any prayers to let her son live, maybe he had something against her. If
Elijah’s God let her boy die, perhaps the Lord, the God of Israel wanted to punish
her for some sin she committed.
When the accusation left her lips Elijah didn’t argue – “oh no, ma’am, the Lord isn’t like that.” Instead he took the boy upstairs, put him in bed and made the same accusation to God – “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” He then performed a kind of healing ritual three times until the boy came to life. When the woman saw the miracle of her son brought back to life she came to believe in Elijah’s God, the Lord of Israel.
At first glance we might want to say this story shows how Elijah is a man of power, called by God to act with that power to save even the widows of the world, and give life to those who have died.” But there is an assumptions here that really troubles me. It is a common belief even today, that God rewards the good with life while all death is God’s punishment for our sin. The widow assumes that she has done something sinful for God to punish her with the death of her son. And Elijah doesn’t argue with her.
Elijah’s actions make it worse as he prays for the boy on his bed. “In effect Elijah implies, ‘Look, God. You sent me to this widow in the first place, and now will you add insult to injury by having her blame me for the death when in fact it is you who have killed him?’ It all comes back to this belief, shared by the widow and Elijah, that the Lord is the culprit here, a God who spends divine time evaluating human behaviors and doling out nasty punishments for that behavior, even to the death of innocent children.”[1]
When the Lord listens to Elijah and gives the boy back his life, the widow’s response seals, “the theological mess we find ourselves wallowing in. ‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.’ Because Elijah has brought the child back from death, he has proven himself to be a man of God and all he utters can be trusted to be true.”[2]
I was glad to find Professor John Holbert’s
reflections on this passage which he titled Love Your Bible but Watch Out! Holbert argues with the conclusions of this
Bible story saying, “God is not in the business of finding ways
of punishing human sin by slaughtering loved ones. Nor does God send messengers
to announce such terrible claims. If God is like this, then I want no part in
such a God or in such a way to view the world in which I live.”
Holbert is daring enough to propose that in this story, Elijah and the widow have not told the truth about God. His voice comforts me when he claims that, “God can’t be boxed into a simple reward/punishment nexus, not even by the Bible itself.” He notes that the search for blame when something tragic happens bubbles up naturally when we are in despair. But the results of this frame of mind can’t be trusted. Those who create theology in this frame of mind, Holbert concludes, “make God ultimately responsible for cruel acts that ought to lead to prison time rather than worship.”
It has been
curious to me as I read accounts of people’s conversions. Events such as death threatening thunderstorms
were often at the beginning of a conversion story. People seemed to become more aware of their own mortality and the
choice of eternal punishment or the way of salvation offered by preachers
served to motivate many to join the Methodist church. If the tragedy led people to God should we say God caused the
tragedy?
This is where
reading the Bible in context – holding one passage up against another – can be
so helpful to our faith. The scripture
assigned to us for next week speaks to this troubling problem presented in 1
Kings 17 today. In chapter 19 we find
Elijah running away from danger, hiding in a cave, feeling dejected and wanting
to die. While in the cave, God told Elijah
to stand on the mountain. First there
was a great wind breaking rocks into pieces. But the bible says, the Lord was
not in the wind. After that an
earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. Finally, all was still. The sound of sheer silence, a still small
voice. That quite calm was where Elijah found God.
I do not believe
that God causes tornados that devastate whole towns in Oklahoma, or severs
storms like Sandy, or famines, or deranged people with automatic weapons to
open fire in public places full of civilians.
God doesn’t cause birth defects, or cancer to make people faithful. What I do believe is that after such tragic
events many people enter into a new spiritual state of awareness. In their trauma their spiritual antennae are
raised, searching for comfort and solace and strength to push through their
grief into life.
When we are in
need we are more likely to lift our empty cups and ask God to fill them. When we are hungry we are more likely to ask
the Bread of Heaven to feed us. And when we experience God’s providence our
faith is strengthened. I believe God provides for us, even when we think we
don’t have enough. Knowing God can help
us to set down our fears of scarcity, and life a life of abundance. I invite you to lift up your hearts to the
Lord so that your soul may be quenched, and you find yourself filled with the
Spirit of Jesus, the Bread of Heaven until you know you have enough and are
ready to share God’s gifts with others.
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