“The Miracle of Generosity”

I Kings 17: 8-16

Second Sunday after Pentecost + June 6, 2010

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

One of the stories I remember my Grandmother Fish telling me as a child was about her mother’s unfailing hospitality. Great-grandmother and Great-grandfather Adams lived just across the North Street Bridge from the railroad yard. Time after time my Grandmother told me there would be a knock at the back door. Her mother would go to answer it and find a dirty, smelly hobo seeking a handout of food. And what did Great-grandmother Adams do? Invariably, she would invite the bum to come in and sit at the same table with her family and share their meal. This even happened on one memorable Thanksgiving Day to the consternation of some visiting family members. But Great-grandmother Adams – though poor and I mean poor – was a Christian woman and to her way of thinking that meant sharing the little you had with those who had less. As charming, as touching, as this story is, my Grandmother told me that later she discovered that the hoboes had put a special recognition mark outside her home so that their fellow “knights of the road” would know that the Adams’ family was always good for a meal!

I wonder if that poor widow woman in our story this morning wished she might have discovered some way to discourage people calling on her for help. There she was, outside the gates of the city, in her poverty an outsider even in her own community. She stoops to pick up a bit of twig from the dusty roadway, and then stoops again and again, a wide-eyed and solemn child following at her side. She is a woman defined by death, by the death of her husband and provider, which has made her a scavenging widow. She is also marked by the shadow of impending death for herself and her son. The chill of poverty runs through her stiffened body as she carefully gathers the sticks for the fire which will warm and feed her and her son one last time.

At first she doesn’t notice this man Elijah as he approaches the city. He, too, is an outsider having traveled all the way from east of the Jordan to Zarephath in Sidon, on the Mediterranean coast. He, too, in his own way is living on the cutting edge of need. The only reason he is going to Zarephath is that he is convinced the Lord told him, “Arise, go to Zaraphath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” A long way to travel for a precarious promise, we might say, except that Elijah is fresh from the experience of being fed in the wilderness at the Lord’s command. He is full of the heady confidence of those who are convinced that God will always take care of them. Surely it is a confirmation of God’s promise that the first person Elijah sees when he approaches the city gate is a widow gathering sticks.

“Hello there!” he calls out. “Bring me a little water in a vessel that I may drink.” The woman lifts her eyes, slowly straightens her back, and with only a moment’s hesitation turns to fetch a cool drink for the thirsty traveler.

She has already determined to live out the last days of her life with dignity, sharing what she has to offer with another in need. But then Elijah calls to her again”. . . and some bread as well!” That is a different and a harder request. The woman stops and turns to face Elijah: “As the Lord, your God, lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a cruse.”

There is unconscious irony in her first words: “As the Lord, your God, lives . . .” We need to remember that wicked Queen Jezebel, Elijah’s bitterest enemy and Baal’s champion, is also from Sidon. The controversy between Jezebel and Elijah as to whose God – Baal or the Lord – will be supported as the true God of Israel is foreshadowed here. And how ironically! Baal is the supposed god of fertility, of vegetation, of rich and bountiful harvest, but Baal is no god at all and has no power to help feed this woman who worships and serves him. Perhaps, in some dim unknowing way she already “knows” this and so her words are almost an affirmation of faith, “As the Lord, you God, lives . . .” I think it was Luther who observed that God sometimes gets more credit from those who doubt than from those who believe.

There is another, even more poignant, level to the woman’s words. At first, her words sound like a kind of conventional humility – “I really don’t have anything in the house” – but she is not finished. “And now, I am gathering a couple of sticks, that I may go in and prepare bread for myself and my son that we may eat it and die.” The bitter reality of the woman’s situation breaks through the polite formulas of social convention. If ever words were calculated to silence, these words certainly would. “Go your way, prophet. Go tell your God who lives that two of his human children are about to die. I’m just collecting a couple of sticks here so that I can bake the last of our meager supplies into a loaf which won’t be enough for one, let alone three. When we’re finished doing that it won’t be long before we die because we will have nothing at all left to eat. And you’re asking me for bread?! For your God’s sake, leave us to die in peace.”

The tone of the woman’s words makes me wonder if she has known all along who this prophet is. If she knows he is Elijah she may also know he is the one who has called down the drought and famine as a way of teaching wayward King Ahab that God really is in charge of things. That’s one of the great injustices we see over and over in human history, isn’t it? The sins of political leaders are paid for by the suffering of innocent men, women, and children. If she knew Elijah was the source of her misery I can well understand her anger. “Why have you come asking me for bread, prophet of the living God? Are you here to gloat over the result of your prayers?”

One might have expected Elijah’s face to color with shame at this point as he remembered his over-eager and thoughtless demands. “Bring me some water! Oh, and while you’re at it, bring me some bread as well.” But no. Brashly confident he sticks his neck out once again. “Fear not!” says Elijah. Fear not?! Who’s afraid? Isn’t it Elijah himself? Who will feed him if not this woman? If she has no food Elijah doesn’t know where he’ll get any. It’s as simple as that. So he hastens to reassure himself and her. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Just go make your bread and bring it to me and you can make some for yourself and your son afterwards.” Then he adds, “For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of meal shall not be spent, and the cruse of oil shall not fail, until the day that the lord sends rain upon the earth.’”

If we have given the widow woman credit for touching a deeper level of meaning with her words, let’s credit the prophet, also. His words, “Fear not . . .” are the familiar prelude to God’s saving action in human life. All of us have moments when we fear the unknown and uncertain future. In that moment, how comforting it is when someone reminds us to “Fear not . . .” Franklin Roosevelt knew that when he spoke to Americans at one of the darkest points in our history and reminded us that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That is why I think Elijah’s next words can almost be read as an afterthought, “For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of meal shall not be spent, and the cruse of oil shall not fail, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’”

Whether the woman responded because Elijah had touched some depth of faith in her or because she had so little left to risk she was willing to take the chance he might be right, I do not know. I do know that she went and did as Elijah said and she, and he, and her household ate for many days.

A happy ending to the story. In T.S. Eliot’s words, “It was (you may say) satisfactory.” But I cannot help but think the woman’s feelings toward Elijah would have been mixed at best. Her gratitude for the food mysteriously provided to her and her son must have been enormous for it restored to her the dignity of being able to care for her family. And yet, did she ever wonder why the supplies had been made to last? Was the miracle of generosity just for her sake? Had she somehow managed to say or do the “right” thing? Was it sheer chance that she had gotten mixed up with this foreign prophet whose God had determined, for some reason unknown to her, that the prophet should not hunger but be fed? This was Elijah’s God, not her’s.

And what about Elijah? His blustery confidence is no less grating at the end of the story than at the beginning. Here is a man who glosses over his human fears with bravado and buries any doubts he may have had about his vocation. In his religious exuberance he lacks sensitivity to those around him. He clings with wild abandon to God’s promise, believing not only that God will fulfill God’s word and provide for his needs, but also that God’s promises will be fulfilled in a way that accords completely with his own expectations. Elijah is a very familiar type of religious leader in every human age, the person who is so enmeshed in his or her own spirituality that they have lost the capacity to be self-reflective and sensitive to others. Though I am sure that Elijah thought he was the giver at this moment his own needs were as real as hers. He, too, needed to experience the miracle of generosity so that he could have a larger vision of life and God.

What wonderful good news this story is for all of us. If we are like the widow and have suffered much at the hands of life and found it hard; if we have come to be cynical and doubt that we may put our hope in anything or anyone; then in our moment of need and emptiness we are sustained by the miracle of God’s never-failing generosity.

If we are like Elijah, people of power and privilege and prosperity, people who are afraid of hardship and doubt, who fear the unknown, and who shout the loudest for God’s assistance, then we, too, in our own emptiness are sustained by the miracle of God’s generosity.

Elijah, you are so much like us, so sure that we are the priests and prophets and people of God, so sure of our place in God’s world, so sure that it is we who are always the benefactors of humankind, so sure we are the generous givers and seldom the grateful receivers, so sure of the importance of who we are and what we do. Elijah, prophet of God, come to us and grant us the miracle of generosity. Give us also a jar of meal which is never spent, a cruse of oil which does not fail, that we may eat and be nourished and learn that God is the source of blessing for every person on the face of the earth. Elijah, come and inspire us with a new humility and a new generosity so that we may share what we have received with all God’s hungry children, then we, too, will be blessed.