Christ Episcopal Church
June 9, 2013
5 Proper C
Some years ago now, Christ Church was privileged to participate in the London Prison Work program. Two or three times a year, for a week or two at a time, a work crew from the London prison would come to Christ Church and paint, plaster, scrub, or anything else we needed them to do. Other than the walls in this worship space, they painted pretty much every other flat surface in this building. All we had to do was provide tools, supplies, and food-lots of food. The men were always grateful for the food, and over time, we learned what they liked to eat. They loved anything where they had a choice as they had few choices to make in prison. The luxury of choosing whether to have a hamburger or a hotdog, or what to put on the hamburger, or what kind of pizza they liked or sub they wanted was almost overwhelming to them. We never knew what crimes had been committed, but all the men had served significant time in jail. From our perspective, the men worked hard and were so pleasant and respectful that, aside from the institutional shirt, we would never guess the guys were in prison. One time, one of our parishioners got wind of the fact that one of our guests had a birthday that week. I am not sure who was more delighted-the parishioner who got to provide the birthday cake, or the person who had not had a birthday cake in 8 years. Before we started having the workers at Christ Church, I knew in theory that, as Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel, when we feed the hungry, visit those in prison, or welcome the stranger, we feed, visit, and welcome Jesus. But having welcomed the prisoner at Christ Church, I know for a fact that Jesus shows up here in some of the last places I would have thought to look.
We hear a curious story in today’s reading from I Kings. Elijah, the prophet of God, is told by God to go to Zarephath because God has commanded a widow to feed him. Right away, there are two odd things about this turn of events. First, God sends Elijah, an Israelite, to Zarephath. Zarephath is not in Israel and the widow is not an Israelite. Secondly, God sends Elijah to a widow who will give him something to eat. Widows were on the margins of society, with few, if any resources, and would be unlikely to have any food to spare for a total stranger.
So, we are just one sentence into the story, and God already has our attention. Elijah finds the widow and asks, or more accurately demands, a morsel of bread. The widow’s reply is that she has only a little bit of meal and oil. She is going home to cook it up so that she and her son may lie down to die. At that point, a word of encouragement from Elijah would be nice. But no, he tells her to go and do what she said, which, remember, involved going home to lie down and die, but first make him a little cake and bring it back to him. A little sensitivity training would be in order here!
Then the widow is promised a miracle: the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the drought, caused the by the evil actions of King Ahab, has ended. And sure enough, the starvation of the widow and her son was prevented. And one would hope that they all lived happily ever after.
But then the widow’s son becomes deathly ill. Somehow this is Elijah’s fault, even though Elijah just saved both the widow and her son from starvation. "What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son." Someone seems to have a guilty conscience! Elijah then blames God for the child’s death, but God hears Elijah’s prayer and the child was revived. Two miracles in these 16 verses of scripture, and the beneficiary of those miracles was not an Israelite.
In our lectionary, this story is paired with a similar story from Luke’s gospel in which Jesus raises the son of the widow of Nain. However, earlier in Luke’s gospel, there is a direct reference to the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. In that story, Jesus has just read verses from the prophet Isaiah that echo our psalm this morning. Psalm 146 praises the God who executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, and lifts up those who are bowed down. In chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel, Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah and says "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free." Everyone thinks Jesus is the greatest hometown boy ever, until Jesus reminds the crowds that about the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. That widow, the non-Israelite, was the only person to whom Elijah was sent during a time of great drought and famine. A non-Israelite, who didn’t even believe in the God of the Hebrews, was the one whose prayers were answered in time of grave hardship. The crowd is furious. They are livid at the thought that their long awaited salvation, their miracle, for which they have prayed so hard, might go to someone else. In their anger, the people drive the very author of salvation out of town and want to throw him off a cliff.
We all want our miracles. We pray for healing for ourselves or loved ones. The crowd’s reaction to Jesus may have been a bit extreme, but I can resonate with feelings of jealousy, frustration, and grief when my prayers don’t seem to be answered for my loved ones and someone else’s prayers do seem to be answered. A part of me can understand those who said "The widow of Zarephath? Seriously? What does she have that we don’t?"
As I look back at that story, I think there is an overlooked miracle. The first miracle in the story may well be that the widow welcomed Elijah at all, that she was willing to take the risk and make him a little loaf of bread with her small amount of oil and meal. Certainly Elijah was the last person one would mistake for a person of God if one was looking for such a person, which the widow of Zarephath . He had been hiding in the wilderness from King Ahab and was no doubt dirty, smelly, unkempt and clearly lacked the social graces. Think John the Baptist, only worse. But the widow had no preconceived notion of what a person of God would look like, or act like, and certainly no expectation of a miracle. Her small miracle allowed God’s miracle to work. In the story from Luke’s gospel which recalls the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, the people had a pretty well conceived idea of how God was supposed to work, and when it looked like God might work some other way, they were angered. We want God to do what we want God to do so badly, that perhaps we miss what God is doing before our very eyes. The sheer delight in something so simple as a hot meal or a birthday cake conveys the grace of God in a way more powerful than words, even if they don’t commute a prison sentence. Strangers and loved ones show up to walk a journey with us that they cannot fix, but can make more bearable. An gesture of hospitality made turns out to be a gesture of hospitality received. An encounter with a worker from a prison turns out to be an encounter with Jesus. Perhaps the widow’s blessing, which we sometimes lack, is that she had absolutely no idea, much less a fixed idea, of what God was supposed to do in her life, but was willing to offer hospitality to a stranger. Through that act of hospitality, God created a miracle.
Amen.
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