Third Sunday After Pentecost
1 Kings 17:8-24
Emma Dobson
She
was just trying to make some bread. She
was hungry. Starving really. Not the kind of “starving” we feel when
dinner is too long in coming, but real starving. Dying of starvation. She didn’t have enough money to buy food to
eat. There was no to take care of here
for her. So, she was going to make one
last bit of bread with the oil and grain she had left, and then, she and her
son were going to starve. She wasn’t
exactly in a happy mood. And then, this
man showed up. She could tell from his
accent that he wasn’t from Zarephath. And
she could also see that he had been eating and drinking. He wasn’t starving to death.
And then, he has the nerve to ask
her for water. This man from a strange
land who clearly had been able to eat and drink just fine while she had next to
nothing. Maybe she just didn’t have the
energy to protest. Wordlessly, she turned to get him the water he wanted. But then, he asked for more. For bread.
She didn’t even have enough for herself and her son, let alone for herself,
her son, and this man. As tired and
hungry as she was, she was also angry. And
she couldn’t be silent any more. “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."
To paraphrase, I have nothing. You
and your God should know this. I’m dying.
Go away. Stop bothering me. But the
strange man—Elijah-- has the audacity to stay.
Feed me first he says, even though you and your son are starving to
death. God will provide more than
enough. You will not be dying of
hunger. God has other plans for you.
Maybe this is when the widow
remembered what God had spoken to her.
We don’t hear in the text how it happened, but we read that God had
already told this widow to feed Elijah.
And, amazingly, she does. She takes
the little bit that she had and she gives it to this strange man. She had planned to die. God had planned for her to live.
An interesting portrait of the
Divine is painted here. God as provider
of life is something with which we’re pretty familiar. But the way God goes about providing life
sustaining bread for this woman and her son is a little unexpected. God provides through miraculous interruption. Like we read in the text—she had plans. She was going to gather sticks, make bread,
and die. God interrupts these plans,
with plans of God’s own.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a
planner. I like to plan, and to go about
my plan and get to my goal. And if
you’re a planner too, you know that we tend to fall in love with our
plans. They’re the perfect way to
accomplish whatever it is that needs to be accomplished. You know-- plans are good, interruptions are
bad. Except I get the sense from this text that it might not be as cut and dry
as that. There are good plans and bad
plans. There are God’s plans and our
plans. And sometimes they overlap. Sometimes
they don’t. And when they don’t, God can
break in, and interrupt us as we try to accomplish something that go against
what God has planned.
For example, the widow had a plan. It was to finish her store of grain and oil,
and then to die. Clearly, this is not
what God planned for her. And, in the person
of Elijah and the miracle of grain and oil replenishing themselves, God
interrupted her plan. But maybe it’s a
little unfair to say that the widow planned to eat and then die. She didn’t really
have much of a choice in the matter. Her near starvation was part of a larger
plan, not of God, but of the empire in which the widow lived.
Society at the time this text was
written was structured hierarchically, in terms of how useful those in power
deemed people to be. Women had two main
ways to be useful. First, women’s usefulness was to provide money for their
fathers through being sold to their husbands.
Then, while property of their husbands, their usefulness was in
providing children and labor. Since
widows were doing none of these useful things, they ended up at the bottom of
the patriarchal social structure. They had no governmental, social, or
financial structure to support them, and they were among the most vulnerable
people in society.
So, when we come into the story in Kings,
the land in which the widow lives is experiencing a drought, and an
accompanying famine. Rather than caring
for the vulnerable, who were the first to feel the hunger pains of the famine, the
rich were hoarding all they could to take care themselves. God had a problem with this. When God fed the widow and her son, God did
more than interrupt the plans of a widow with no real options. God interrupted the
plans of an empire with no compassion.
And in our scripture passage, God
shows us how much of a problem God has with this lack of compassion. And God does this through interruption. God interrupts the plan that the empire has
to let her and her son starve. But then we get to the middle of the scripture
passage, it seems like God’s interruptions didn’t even matter. Though not of starvation, the widow’s son dies
anyway.
Elijah realizes that this is not
part of God’s plan. If we learned
anything from the miraculous bread, it’s that God wants life for the widow and
her son. Knowing this, Elijah asks for
one more interruption. And God
responds. God gives life back to the
child, as if to say that God’s plan is never for death and destruction. Once again, God interrupts certain death to
give life when it seems impossible. Death
does not stop the power, the plan, and the love of God.
But here’s a really tricky thing
with these miraculous interruptions. They
don’t fix everything. The widow and her
household ate, but there were still starving people. The boy was raised from the dead, but other
people still died. The boy himself eventually died again and didn’t come
back. So though God interrupts the plans
of neglect, marginalization, and death, even God’s miraculous interruptions
didn’t make everything better. They don’t
make everything fit into God’s plan. They
are simply an enactment and a reminder that empire, or any powers of sin and
death, do not have the final word. They
show us that nothing will ultimately stop God’s will from being done.
We know that hunger, death, and all
kinds of other problems and pain surround us.
As one small example from the text, we know that hunger is still a
problem. People still go hungry and even
starve to death, even in this country.
While the rate of hunger has remained about the same in the rest of the
world in the relatively recent past, it’s been increasing in the U.S. About 35 million people in the U.S. are food
insecure, meaning they don’t know where their next meal will come from. And, like the widow and her child in the
scripture passage, the rates are highest among female-headed single parent
households. All of this, while we still
have money for tax-breaks on corporate jets, music videos for the IRS, and
subsidies for multi-billion dollar corporations. We are still living in a culture that lets
the vulnerable languish, while a few live in incredible luxury. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that God
still has a problem with this.
We
need the reminder that this scripture give us. Hunger is not God’s will, and God
is still with us. God was with the starving
widow and her son before Elijah came on the scene with the miraculous promise
of bread. God was with the grieving widow and the dead boy before Elijah asked
him to be raised. How else could God
hear and respond to the needs of the people?
More than being with us in difficult times, this scripture also reminds
us that God cares about the pain we experience. And pain, hunger, death, marginalization,
oppression of any kind—these aren’t what God wants for us. These aren’t part of God’s plan.
Unfortunately, we don’t get any kind
of rhyme or reason for why God sometimes interrupts with miracles and sometimes
doesn’t. But we do get this. As God’s people, we do have a role in holy
interruptions. It’s not just Jesus and
the prophets who get in on this part of the game. We, too, can participate in interrupting
plans that lead to hunger, pain, and death.
It is by Elijah’s role in interrupting hunger and death that the widow
recognizes him as a man of God. And when
we participate in holy interruptions, we too fill our role as people of
God.
So how do we participate in holy
interruptions? Elijah helps us out with
this. Elijah talks to the widow. He crosses a bit of a social boundary to do
this in the first place. And then, in
talking to her he brings out in the open what is wrong—that this woman and her
son are starving to death because no one is caring for the most vulnerable
people. We too, can do this. We can cross barriers, talk to those in pain,
and refuse to let stories of oppression, marginalization, and pain be
silenced. We can cry out, too, like
Elijah did when the child died. We can
cry out against what we know goes against God’s plan of abundant life for all. We can pray.
We can ask for those holy interruptions that seem impossible. And we can keep the faith that God is with
us, and God cares, and God has better plans for us and for all.
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