Eat It and Die
A sermon based on 1 Kings 17:1-16 and Luke 4:24-26
Watch here.
Good morning again, everyone. I’m thankful that Pastor Sara asked me to fill in for her this morning, and I’m very grateful for everyone who’s helped prepare us and lead us so far. I’d like to do the best thing you can do at the start of a sermon, which is to begin by apologizing. See, when I was a kid, I tried everything at church. It’s how I got to be a part of the chime choir, the bell choir, the children’s choir, the youth choir, the adult choir, and the brass ensemble, and ad council. I used to say that I’d do anything besides liturgical dance until one day a friend asked me to do that and I had to come up with a new wacky thing to say no to. Maybe church acrobatics? My knees aren’t great. Still, I’d probably give it a try.
I was a kid who tried everything because I loved new things, but I also tried everything because doing everything at church gave me SO MUCH ATTENTION, which my poor middle child heart craved. Now that I’m no longer a child and have set (most) childish things aside, I do my best to not turn the worship service into the “Jo Show,” which is why I cringed real hard when I realized that I had volunteered to preach on the same Sunday the bell choir was ringing. But here we are. I will be preaching, and then, like the biggest diva, I will be playing handbells for the postlude. Sorry.
Would you pray with me?
God of the humble and of the try-hards, you remind us through your gentle insistence that every thought we think is a prayer, because you hear it, and everything we do is an act of worship because you see it. Be with us in this moment, God. Make us aware of you. Fill our prayers and worship, every thought and deed, with your abundant life, for it is by the power of your Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus the Christ we pray. Amen.
Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead. Our passage this morning is actually Elijah introduction in the scriptures: it’s the beginning of a chaotic time and, if we’re honest, a chaotic prophet. Elijah lived in the 9th century BCE, when Ahab was king in what was then called the northern Kingdom of Israel. Elijah did not like Ahab, who was married to Queen Jezebel. Elijah especially did not like Queen Jezebel. We don’t know where Tishbe is, exactly, but if it is really in Gilead, then it’s in the east of what at that time was the southern kingdom of Judah, so Elijah must have been passionate enough about his cause to travel from somewhere south of Jerusalem up to Samaria to tell the king what’s what.
Now, 1 Kings tells us that there is tension in the kingdoms because of worship. Because worship wasn’t centralized in the temple in Jerusalem, temples and altars to Baal and other Canaanite gods and goddesses could be found everywhere in Israel. And Ahab’s father, Omri, his solution to the religious tension in the area is to have his son, Ahab, marry Jezebel, a princess of the Sidonians, who worshipped Baal.
And Elijah does not think that this is the right solution. 1 Kings tells the saga of Elijah and Jezebel, a queen who puts on her full armor every time she goes toe-to-toe with this prophet, even to the end of her life. If you’ve never studied Jezebel, you are in for a treat this week. Read from, like, 1 Kings 16 to 2 Kings 10 and read it like a novel. You are in for Game of Thrones levels of intrigue.
But! Jesus doesn’t focus on Jezebel in our gospel passage this morning, so we won’t either. (In fact, Jesus never mentions Jezebel at all, even though he definitely knew about her and knew the entire story of 1 and 2 Kings. From what we learn in the gospel texts, it doesn’t seem like political calculus and palace intrigue were Jesus’s focus.)
I tell you all this context so you can understand what a BIG RISK Elijah took in declaring a drought to Ahab. Elijah went up to the king and said, “Hey, you’re married to the literal Jezebel, and she’s brought in all these prophets of Baal, and this is not the solution to our problems. A drought upon you!” Elijah ran his mouth in front of the king so hard that God told him to run away. God says, “Go from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan.” I’ll make sure the ravens will take care of you there. And a wadi is just a river valley, or what we might call a gully in some cases. God says, “Go. Hide in a valley. I’ve got you covered.”
So Elijah does, and the birds bring him food in the morning and at night, like God providing manna and quail in the wilderness, and Elijah drinks from the wadi, and things are fine, until the wadi dries up. Because of the drought. That Elijah called down.
So God tells Elijah to go to Zarephath in Sidon, and find a widow, and she’ll feed him. Now Zarephath in Sidon is… not close to where Elijah has been. In order to reach it, he has to go back up through Judah, through Israel, up to Tyre and Sidon, which are Phoenician cities in what is today Lebanon. So, to recap Elijah’s journey, first, God, presumably, tells Elijah to go from southeastern Judah to sass off to the king of Israel, then run back home to Judah to hide in a valley, then back up past the territory of this king he’s made angry to go find a widow who will take care of him. And this is part of Jesus’s point in the gospel: a prophet isn’t welcome in his hometown, sure, but also, sometimes we have to leave our safety in order to see God’s wonders.
And Elijah will see a wonder, but not without encountering one of my favorite women of the bible, the widow of Zarephath. If I think Jezebel is due for reconsideration, man, the widow of Zarephath is due for the spotlight.
Because I know women like the widow of Zarephath. Women who have had to learn how to handle this life on their own. Women who love their kids fiercely. Women who, when everything seems lost, still go out and gather the sticks, because this bread isn’t going to bake itself. Women who see a holy man coming a mile away and go about their day, because they’ve seen holy men before.
And the widow of Zarephath has Elijah’s number. He asks her for water, and she goes to get it, but then he asks for bread. And she is having none of it. “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,” and I am “gathering a couple of sticks” so that I can go home and bake it “for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” If you were from where I’m from, you could see the wad of chew in her cheek and picture the exact sound it makes when she spits at his feet.
Because that’s the thing about the Bible. Scripture most often gives you the information the writer thinks you need and nothing more. Parchment isn’t cheap. You get what you get. But the art of reading the Bible, the art that has been practiced by teachers, rabbis, prophets, priests, and pastors throughout the years, is learning how to understand what’s between the lines, what’s in the empty space between what the text tells you and what you are meant to understand. It’s infuriating, sometimes, that the Bible gives us this leeway. I, for one, would like for Jesus to be much more specific about a great many things. But faith isn’t the sight of things seen, and we have not been called together by a God who gave us a complete instruction manual for life on this earth. We have to learn to read the blank space.
So I choose to see this widow as one of the strong, no-nonsense people I know, and I think there’s a hook in the text to hang that interpretation on. And I choose next to see Elijah, this chaotic prophet who has travelled from river to city to valley to Zarephath in Sidon, as someone who gets it. He’s someone who holds the commandments close to his heart. He knows that he must care for the widow and the orphan, for that is what the Lord commands. But more than that, he gets it. He understands what’s behind the widow’s distain. And so, with a voice much softer than the one he reserved for the king, he says, “Hey. I get it. Don’t be afraid. Don’t worry about this. But… I am going to ask you to do something strange. You’ve got your sticks. Go home. Get out that meal and oil and make some bread. Feed yourself and your son. But first, bring some to me. Because I’m here to tell you that the Lord my God is going to make sure that jar of meal and jug of oil doesn’t go empty. At least, not until this drought ends.”
So many holy people tell us what to do. So many holy people have told us what the answer is, from their comfortable homes with their smart investments. So many holy people have read the blank space in the Bible and declared who belongs to God and who doesn’t based on who they’re comfortable being around. And hey, maybe that’s who Elijah is here. The bible doesn’t tell us. But I choose to see Elijah not as commanding, but as asking. He’s asking the widow of Zarephath to choose to try.
And so, she does. She chooses to try.
Now, we know how the story goes from here. Wonder of wonders, despite it all, the meal and oil don’t fail. People in the widow’s household, including Elijah, ate for many days from that meal and oil, until the rain began to fall on the land again. Elijah would go on to try to hold Ahab accountable for the problems in Israel, and he would eventually go back home, leaving the widow behind. But in this moment, in the moment where Elijah asks something absurd of a woman who has nothing left, the most important thing anyone could do is choose to try.
Because the widow of Zarephath doesn’t know how things are going to turn out. She thinks she’s got a clear picture of what’s ahead, and it’s devastating, but she doesn’t know that for sure. Here, at the end of her life, the end of her story, as she’s collecting sticks to cook her last meal, is a holy man, asking her to choose to try.
Friends, you may be feeling like the widow of Zarephath right now. You may be at the end of your rope. You may have had one thing after another after another after another piling up in your life, draining you of the energy and strength that you had, and that was all on you before the recent national events. You are not prepared for the road ahead. You can’t see past tomorrow. You are out at the town gates, picking up the last of your sticks.
But what I want to ask from you today is to choose to try. Don’t mishear me. I’m not asking you to try everything like a desperate, overarching middle child who can’t say no. But there will be something for you to try. I mean, Ahab’s on the throne and there’s a drought in the land, but choose to try. There are tensions and disagreements and the moves people in power are making are leaving the least of these behind, but choose to try. You have seen holy men come and holy men go, but I want you to keep your heart open for the ones who are the real deal, the ones who come with a metaphorical miracle in tow, the ones who only ask you to choose to try.
Because here’s the thing: we do know how the story ends. We know that at the heart of the universe there is an undying love that will not let us go, and that no matter how worn down we are and how bleak things look, we are not alone. We are never alone. No matter what may come, no matter what we may expect, we live surrounded by a love that, as Rainer Maria Rilke said, is being stored up for us like an inheritance, and we have faith that in this love there is a strength and blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish, from the Wadi Cherith up to Zarephath in Sidon, without having to step outside of it. Today, and in the days ahead, let’s us live like that divine love is real and active in this world, so that when Elijah the Tishbite wanders into our town, we are free to choose to try.
Amen.