3 Pentecost C/ Ordinary 10 June 5, 2016
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
1 Kings 17: 8-24 + Galatians 1: 11-24 + Luke 7: 11-17
Grace and peace to you from God who creates us, Jesus who saves us, and the Holy Spirit who comforts and strengthens us. Amen.
Wow. Wow. Wow. It is good to be home. It is very good to be home. The sermon is not the place for a travelogue of what I did on my sabbatical, and I promise you that this summer’s sermons won’t be a re-cap of that time. But there was no other way to begin this morning’s sermon than by sharing with you how good it is to be back with you and how grateful I am for the months of rest and renewal and listening for and to God. And how eager I am to see what God has in store for us, together, in the time ahead.
Our readings assigned for today offer us two stories of widowed mothers whose children, in these cases their sons, have both died. This is both the beauty and the hardship of having assigned lectionary readings….the beauty is that we can’t shy away from the hard texts and the hardship is….well, we can’t shy away from the hard texts. But I have to tell you, I wouldn’t have chosen these readings….these stories of grieving mothers….for my first Sunday back. After all, losing a child, no matter how old they might be, is every mother’s worst fear….every parent’s worst fear.
The story of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath in Sidon that was our first reading this morning and the story of Jesus and the widow in Nain from Luke’s Gospel are tied together to remind us of the healing power of God in our lives. But like so many stories, like so much in our lives….the truth of the story… the nitty gritty if you will (that’s a deep theological term, isn’t it? Nitty gritty) But the nitty gritty lies in the details. Between the lines.
One of the things that has always bothered me about the story from the first reading is the way that Elijah has all of the power in the story. I mean, here is a widow….so a woman who would have no agency of her own in this culture….and she is literally down to her last meal. She is about to take the only meal and oil she has left and fix one last meal for herself and her son before they die of starvation. And Elijah saunters in and says: “Bring me some water….I need a drink” and “Instead of making YOUR last meal make ME a cake with your very final provisions.” And meekly, without question, the woman does as he asks.
I need the nitty gritty here. I need to understand this woman who feeds a stranger ahead of her own son.
One of the first clues we have is that Elijah finds the widow at the gate of the town. She is not in the town, where we might imagine there would be a community to help. She is at the gate. She is literally on the edge of town, on the edge of starvation and on the edge of life. Without a man to provide for her, a husband or a healthy son, she would be without hope. Without a community to be a part of, she is alone.
So that’s the first part of her story and we’ll leave it there for a minute as we look at the second half of her story. Verse 17 says that “After this, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.” After there was enough food and water to sustain life for the widow and her son and Elijah, something changes. Suddenly, we no longer have the mild mannered, obedient widow who had given up hope. Gone is the mother who is willing to acknowledge that her son is about to die because there’s inadequate food and water. In her place is a bold, outspoken woman…lashing out at Elijah because of her son’s illness. “What have you against me, O man of God?” she cries out “You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!”
I give Elijah credit for not pointing out to her that he had not brought her sin to remembrance. And for not mentioning that her sins did not and would not cause the death of her son, although that was the logic of the people of the time….that the sins of the parents would be visited upon the next generations. Instead, the widow cries out and Elijah takes action.
So what has changed? How did the widow at Zarephath in Sidon go from accepting passively what Elijah asked of her….to the point of giving up her last meal….to being the bold woman demanding that Elijah give an accounting for her son’s life? Something has happened to this woman.
What moves us from passively accepting what is happening in our lives or in the world around us to being bold enough to cry out for mercy and justice?
Very recently I read the book “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson is an attorney who was brave enough and bold enough to work tirelessly on behalf of those who had been imprisoned in wrongful ways. To my dismay, most of his work has happened in the south and much of it in my home state of Alabama, where he eventually located his offices. What moved Stevenson from a young, green around the gills law student to a champion for those without a voice were his repeated encounters with injustice.
What has moved us as a congregation to commit to and advocate for housing for families experiencing homelessness were repeated encounters with those families. In our garden, at our lunch window, in our parking lot, sleeping in their cars….we could no longer passively accept that this was the best that life in the kingdom had to offer them.
What moves us when it is time to speak up? How can we be transformed like the widow at Zarapheth into a bold voice and a strong witness?
This is where we need the nitty gritty. Where we need a close reading of the text. Notice that at the beginning of the Reading from 1 Kings, when the word of the Lord came to Elijah, the Lord said that the widow at Zarephath had been commanded by God to feed Elijah. Sisters and brothers, she had already had a word from God! She was expecting Elijah! And she did the very thing that was absolutely the hardest thing to do…she fed him before she fed herself or her son.
Later, Elijah told her that her meal and oil would not run out until the drought and famine were over. And they did not. The widow and her son lived. She was transformed by her part in God’s plan, by her encounter with Elijah, and by the food that God provided for her. When all hope seemed lost, when she was preparing her last meal, she found a way to believe in God….to believe that God was active and living and present in her life and in the lives of those around her.
When our hope seems lost….how do we find hope? Oh we clean up really good for Sunday morning and we put our best face forward and when people ask us how we are we say “fine, fine….and you?” Or at least I do. But in every pew….in every pew….there sits a heart that is breaking or a heart that has broken and is just mending.
And this is exactly why it matters that we come to worship and that we gather together. Because it is here that we hear the stories that heal us…..of widows whose sons are healed, and of sins that are forgiven over and over again, and of second chances. It is here that the songs of the faith remind us over and over again that the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light…..that those who hunger can come to a table and taste and see that God is Good!
The same hope….the same power….the same mercy….the same grace….the same love that transformed a hungry widow is living and active in us and in the world around us. Beloved community….when all seems lost, take hope….death, even when it comes, does not have the last word. Love wins the day. Life wins the day….life abundant and everlasting life in the kingdom here and in what is yet to come.
Thanks be to God….and let the Church say…