June 10, 2007

by The Rev. Constance Jones

I Kings 17:17-24 and Luke 7:11-17

I hope that just because it’s early in the morning,
or because we are worshiping under a bright green canopy,
you haven’t lost your capacity to be amazed by what we read in the Bible.
Here on an “ordinary” Sunday in June,
we have not one but two stories of little boys,
each the only child of a widowed mother,
being raised from the dead in the name of the living God.

The Old Testament lesson needs a little backstory.
It’s the time of kings in the land of Israel, and they’re bad kings.
The prophet Elijah had the risky task of proclaiming
that God’s punishment was a three-year drought,
which of course also means famine and hunger and suffering
for people who aren’t even close to being kings.
Even Elijah was short of food and drink.
But God sends him to a certain widow in a place called Zarephath.

Elijah arrives to find the widow gathering a few sticks for a fire.
Give me a little water he says, and while you’re at it, some bread.

The widow is at the end of her rope.
I have only a tiny bit of flour and oil, and these few sticks, she protests.
I’m taking them home to make a tiny supper for my son and me.
It will probably the last bite we eat before we die.

Elijah insists and the widow listens
almost as if she knows he’s speaking God’s words.
Maybe it’s that he says what angels often say, Do not be afraid.
Go home and make a little loaf, he says, but bring me some of it.
Really, do it. For God promises you this:
your oil jar and your flour bin will continue to fill up,
until the day that the rains come.
And as Elijah promises, so it comes to pass.

But the story is not over.
Some time later, the woman’s boy falls ill and dies.
She cries out to Elijah, What have you done?
Give me your son, Elijah says gently, ignoring her accusation.
He takes the lifeless child to the guestroom the widow has given him,
and he prays for the boy three times.
God hears him, and the boy wakes up.
The prophet carries the child to his mother and says,
See, your son is alive!
And she sees the hand of God a second and more powerful time.

Now, if this story doesn’t send chills down your spine, what will?
Me, I want to know more.
What comes next for the widow and the boy, for example?
And what does the story mean?
But the Biblical narrative leaves us haning.
It returns to kings and droughts,
and Elijah’s career as a spokesman for God.

So we turn to the rest of Scripture,
and to what you and I know of life and reality.
We invite the Holy Spirit to be at our elbow all the while.

I will tell you, for instance, that just a few pages along in the Bible
there is a nearly identical story about Elijah’s successor, Elisha,
at whose hand another woman’s only son is restored to life.
We Christians are inclined to pair these stories
with those where Jesus brings the dead to life.
Indeed, we hear Luke’s account in today’s Gospel
of the widow of Nain and how Jesus saves her son.
Early Christians, with us, were expected to see in these stories
a foreshadowing of God’s victory over death in the Resurrection of Christ,
and a promise of our own eternal life.

It is as if on first reading, every story in the Bible sounds first like a single note,
until you listen closely.
Then you hear harmonics, overtones and undertones,
and it isn’t one note at all but a whole symphony.
Surely the Holy Spirit resides in the harmonic binding of all truth and promise,
Old and New Testament, and life in Christ as we know it now.

And here is one truth that vibrates in me now.

Our world quite often seems to be made
of the material of sorrow, deprivation, and loss.
We may feel that only a thread holds us to anything worth clasping or hoping in.

When we reach the end of our rope,
we may be presented with a risk to take.
Like the widow of Zarephath, we are asked to give away
even more than the apparent nothing we have,
to trust a stranger like Elijah, or some strange hope
that might reveal our desperation to everyone.
And we have a choice.

The widow cannot receive God’s abundance until she takes the step –
consenting to a relationship, a risk,
but that’s not until her hands are utterly empty.
She gives up her last food. Her reputation. Her boy.
And all for an itinerant beggar with the words of angels on his lips.

I might say that the widow is rewarded for her act of faith.
Jesus often said someone’s faith makes them whole.
But I think that miracles can’t be earned.

Rather, I believe you must give everything away
even while you don’t yet know God can be trusted.
It is only then that the abundance,
which has been there all the time, will come.
Or, to say it another way,
your faith does not produce the miracle,
but you will not know the miracle until your hands are empty.

Faith is a narrow gate of risk,
which when all our resources are gone,
brings salvation.
For some people this narrow gate
may be merely crossing the threshold into a church on a Sunday morning,
or taking Communion after years of spiritual drought.
For others it may be choosing to stay in a marriage,
or blessing a child on their way to adulthood,
or facing up to a psychological reality,
or living with hope despite all facts that seem to point to the contrary.
It is only in crossing the threshold that the miracle of God occurs.

Yesterday I attended the ordination of four new deacons
in the Episcopal Church. It was glorious.
The lessons and the sermon and the hymns, as you might imagine,
were about God’s call to all of us to service.

But I was particularly moved by a hymn we sang that says this:

Will you come and follow me, if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know, and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown in you, and you in me?
Will you leave yourself behind, if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind, and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you, and you in me?

Life for the widow of Zarephath and her son
cannot possibly have ever been the same again,
for as she stepped over that certain threshold of inviting Elijah into her home,
trusting him with the shreds that were left of her life,
she discovered the totality of the abundance of God.

Read the Bible from cover to cover,
and say your prayers.
There is a persistent invitation from God who says,
I am calling your name, and asking you to trust me.
Trust me with what is most dear in your life, with your life itself.
Be not afraid. Step closer.
All will be well, all manner of things shall be well.
Come to me. Amen.

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