Towards Sunday, July 3, 2016

Reading: 2 Kings 5:1-14 (The army of Aram, a neighbouring kingdom to Israel, has defeated Israel in battle and killed King Ahab -- seen in the story as God's will, because of Ahab's wickedness.  The commander of the army of Aram is Namaan, who is a great warrior but also suffers leprosy.  Namaan's wife has an Israelite slave girl who tells Namaan of Elisha, a prophet of God in Israel who is able to heal, so with the permission of his king, Namaan goes to the new king of Israel to ask for healing.  The new king knows nothing about healing, so he is afraid this is a trick to start even more battles against Israel, but when Elisha hears about Namaan he sends a message for Namaan to come and see him.  Namaan does, but when Elisha does not treat him with the respect Namaan feels he deserves as a great commander of a victorious army, he refuses to do what the prophet tells him to do, to be healed -- until his own servants talk him into a little more humility, he finally does what Elisha told him to do, and he is healed.)

Great story!  And so true to life as we still know it:  kings and generals skilled at controlling armies and the world, prone to miscommunication, misunderstanding and misguided action ... non-governmental forces and personalities doing the real work of healing in the world ... little people of the world as the ones who really make it all happen.

Who is the hero of the story?

• Namaan, the commander of the foreign army who is used by God to help kill King Ahab and set things right in Israel?
• Elisha, the prophet who treats fellow-citizen and foreigner alike, who is willing to help heal even the man who killed his country's king?
• the slave-girl who cares deeply enough for her owner-mistress and master that she lets them know where he can go for healing?
• the king of Aram, who cares for his top commander enough that he risks losing him by sending him to an enemy's court on the off-chance he can be healed there?
• Namaan's servants who take the risk of calling him out on his pride, to try to talk him into doing what he thinks is beneath him? 

Lots of heroic behaviour all round ... a wide variety of characters who all do something to make the story turn out right.  Everyone, that is, except the king of Israel, who does little but quiver in fear and suspicion of others' motives.  Everyone else is either unexpectedly used by God to some good end, or acts in some way above and beyond the call of duty, and because of it the story turns out as it does.

So ... if you were casting this story as a movie, what role would you want your lead actor or actress for?  What character would you want to draw most attention to, and most sympathy for?

If you could be a character in the story, whose role would you most easily or naturally play?

Sermon / Story from Sunday, June 26, 2016

Reading:  2 Kings 2:1-14

This is a story of Elijah.  But it's not really a story of Elijah.  It's a story of what Elijah was able to do, say and be in spite of being Elijah.  Because of a mantle he wore.

It really is about the mantle, because Elijah as Elijah was just Elijah.

There was some good about him, like in all of us.  Like the way he loved God and the stories of God and what he could learn of the ways of God in the world.  Like the way he kept in touch with the news of the day, and of how things were going in the kingdom.  Like how he really wanted to do right and for things to be right.  Like how he was not afraid to say and do what he thought was right and needed.

But there was also some bad about him, like in all of us.  Like his temper, and how violent he could be.  Like his ego, and how sometimes he was really full of himself.  Like his tendency towards manic-depressive disorder.  Like his pride, and self-importance, and how sometimes it seemed to him that it was "all up to him" -- maybe he was obsessive-compulsive as well as manic-depressive.  Like all of us, he had his issues.

And if the story were just about him, we probably wouldn't remember it and still be telling it today.  Like us, he would have come, made his little ripple, and then been gone.

But there was that mantle -- the mantle that Elijah wore.

It was an animal skin.  Not anything human-made.  It was from the wilderness.  Not anything tame.  It was big -- big enough to cover him, bigger than you might imagine, big enough to protect him when need be.  Big enough to cover his faults and foibles.  And it was something he was given.  Not something he made.  Or made up.  Or chose.  Or even earned or deserved.  It was something he was given.

And that he was willing to receive, and to wear.

And when Elijah wore it -- when he put it on, he really was protected.  And covered.  And he was empowered, somehow made bigger and other than just himself.  

When he put on the mantle, he was drawn into something bigger than himself.  Something other than himself.  Which was also, at the same time, somehow really the better part of himself.

Wearing the mantle was like wearing a uniform.  It connected Elijah with a story and a meaning and a history bigger than just his little life, and made his life part of that story all rolled up into his one life.  And the story he was made to be part of, and that became him when he wore the mantle, was a story for the good of the world.

With the mantle on him, and as he made it his own and began to live into it, Elijah was able to do great things.  He was able to say important, truthful things.  He was able to be someone who made a difference.  Who made the world a better place for his being there.  Who brought some light into the darkness of his time.  Who helped the story the mantle made him part of, not to be forgotten, but to be remembered and told over again.

I wonder if the mantle is still around today?

I wonder who might be wearing it today?

I wonder how we might receive it, and wear it ourselves?
 

Towards Sunday, June 26, 2016

Reading:  2 Kings 2:1-14 (The prophet Elijah, the stories of his courageous, sometimes violent prophetic actions, and the swings of his slightly manic-depressive personality, are coming to an end.  The prophet knows his time is coming, and in the wings is Elisha, a disciple-prophet who is very close to Elijah and soon to be his successor.  Elijah makes a final circuit of the land of Israel and Elisha follows closely, knowing that as long as stays close and sees all that God does through and for Elijah, he will be in place to receive the same spirit and calling that empowered his master.  

And when finally on the far side of the Jordan, God's chariot swings low and takes Elijah home, that's exactly what happens.  Elijah's holy mantle -- sign of God's calling and authority. is left lying on the ground.  Elisha picks it up.  And thus begins the story and stories of Elisha, new prophet of God.)

The last of the Elijah stories, and I know some in the congregation may say, "At last!"  Elijah's manic-depressive rhythms, his ego, and the extreme violence of some of his actions can be hard to take.

Nonetheless, he is also a forthright and courageous prophet for God and God's way of being a kingdom in a time when it is politically dangerous to be one, and because of him a number of others are encouraged to maintain their commitment to God and God's way as well.  But "all good things must come to an end" and this story is about the passing of the mantle (literally) from Elijah to Elisha.

The story -- like most biblical stories, is absolutely dripping with symbolism and inner meaning.
 

Elijah is on a farewell tour of sites where he has acted out his prophetic message.  It's a kind of this-is-your-life and let's-recap-the-message kind of tour, and Elisha, following his master closely, is soaking it all in.

And where does the journey end?  At the exact spot at the Jordan River where the people of Israel centuries earlier first entered the Promised Land after their journey from Egypt through the wilderness.  In other words, Elijah has been the prophet to bring the people back to their first beginnings, back to Moses, and back to the God they knew and loved at the start.

Which means, of course, when Elijah crosses over the Jordan (on dry ground? between parted waters?  where have we seen that before?) and is taken to heaven by God, it happens at the exact spot where Moses also died and was buried by God.  (Wow!  What an end!)

Which means when Elisha, spellbound at all he has just seen, picks up Elijah's fallen mantle and re-enters the promised land on dry ground through the parted waters of the Jordan (again?), he is now the new Joshua.  Like Moses, Elijah has brought the people back into relationship with God; like Joshua, Elisha will now lead the people in renewing and building their life as a people and kingdom of God in the world.  (Wow! What a job description!)

A few questions: 

• How can someone as imperfect and with as many faults as Elijah be a strong, effective prophet for God?  How do we understand or reconcile the paradox of his imperfection and his ministry?  How do I -- how do we, understand and live out that paradox in our life?  What's the role of the mantle in all this -- for Elijah, for Elisha, for us? 
• Elisha gets to inherit the mantle of God's calling and power by staying very close to Elijah, and witnessing God's affirmation and blessing of Elijah at the end.  Who have you followed and felt close to in your life, who has helped shape your faith and sense of calling?
• When Elijah is taken by God's chariot to heaven, his ministry on Earth is over and the mantle is left behind for Elisha to pick and carry on in his way.  In spite of your own faults and imperfections, is there anyone who has inherited or is inheriting a mantle of faith and holy calling from you?  How do you go about sharing your mantle with them?

Sermon from Sunday, June 19, 2016

Reading:  I Kings 19:1-16

Sermon:  Leaving the comfort of our home cave 

Of all the Elijah stories, this one is a favourite.  It’s that “still, small voice” – or “the sound of sheer silence.”  It seems personal, close and safe.  It’s encouraging and affirming to know God can be so intimate and interior that any of us can hear God’s voice if only we’re quiet and still enough.

I worry, though, about people who hear voices.  John Hinkley heard voices telling him to kill John Lennon.  Or was it the man who shot President Reagan?  I wonder too if Omar Mateen heard voices eight days ago telling him to open fire with an automatic weapon on patrons of a gay night club -- leaving fifty dead and that many again severely injured.

And only two weeks ago in worship we read about Elijah slaughtering 450 prophets of Ba-al after disgracing them in a game of Whose-Sacrifice-Will-Be-Accepted.  Was it God who quietly told him to do that?  Or was it his own prophetic ego-mania – the religious projection of his own very human solution to the problem in front of him?

Even believers like us – willing to question what we think, and open to what others believe – when we make decisions, take action, and pray that it be God’s will, is it really?  Or is it just what people in our position do, without it being really of God at all?

With Facebook and other social media that can open us up to the world but all too easily just entrench us in habitual ways of thinking and in self-enclosed niches and virtual neighbourhoods, how do we know if what we are hearing is the voice of whole truth, or just the repeated echo of our own little cave?

I wonder sometimes about discernment of spirits – and what it is discern the full mystery of God's voice from other and lesser voices in our life.

In today’s story Elijah makes 2 journeys that open him up to the voice of God.  Twice he leaves behind a particular kind of prison to be opened to a voice and a vision beyond.  I’d like to think about these journeys for a bit this morning.

The first is what may be called the journey out of the world – the journey away from, and beyond what’s wrong about our time and our culture.  It’s the journey of 40 days and 40 nights through the wilderness beyond Beer-sheba to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 

It’s a journey of escape from Queen Jezebel.  It’s also a journey of liberation from the idolatries and evil of the kingdom.  It’s a re-enactment really of the first exodus of the first people of Israel under Moses from the empire of Egypt – except this time it’s not a foreign power, but the evils of his own kingdom and his own people that Elijah has to be free of.

It’s a journey God’s people make and remake, undergo and re-undergo all the time and we all have made at some point in our lives.  We walk away from what’s wrong in our time and our culture, to be available and able to live in a way more in keeping with what we know of God’s way. 

We wouldn’t be here in worship otherwise.  In fact, just coming to worship is part of it – part of the life-long journey of leaving behind the way of the world week after week, to let the Word and Spirit of God guide us week after week in a different way of being.  The first journey to be able to hear the voice of God is the journey away from the world.

And then there’s the second journey – a journey I didn’t even notice in the story for the longest time.  It’s that subtle, but it’s also so critical that without it the first journey maybe never really succeeds.  It’s the journey away from, or beyond the self – beyond the self we are used to, and used to being.

Remember Elijah.  He’s escaped and left behind what’s wrong in his time and culture and he’s on the mountain of God.  He finds a little cave there, and when night comes – when the night-time of his own aloneness and despair surround him, he crawls into the little cave and once inside there just surrenders to what he’s feeling – to what he is, in and by himself.  It’s something he’s done before in almost every story we have about him.  It’s just who he is.  It’s his accustomed and familiar way of being and doing in the world. 

Then the Word of the Lord comes to him:  “Go out.  In other words, come out of your cave and stand on the mountain, Elijah, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

And then that part of the story we love so much:

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.  Then there came a voice to him  …

Do you notice the order in which things happen?  And the second journey Elijah has to make really to be in the presence and really to hear the voice of God?

The wind comes, and the Lord is not in it.  The earthquake comes, and the Lord is not in it.  The fire comes, and the Lord is not in it.  Then, there is nothing left but the still, small voice – the sound of sheer silence, that is God.  At which point finally Elijah comes out – makes the journey out of his cave – out of himself, to be in the presence of God.

All the big, noisy, fearsome things Elijah encounters while he’s in the cave are not of God, but are of his own making.  They are the products of his own fears and anxieties.  They are the projection upon the world of his own demons and ego.  They are the echo of his own personality and of his own imperfect and broken humanity, repeated over and over and magnified in the cave he inhabits.  They are signs of what he would do if he were God.

And is only when all this is done – only after the sound of his own little cave and the fury of his imperfect self are spent,

• that the sound of sheer silence can be heard 
• that the stillness of God is able to draw Elijah out from himself 
• that Elijah is able to be truly in the presence of the holy One 
•  and that God, who holds all things together for good, is then able to send Elijah back into the world to do one last good thing, more good and more lasting than he’s yet been able to do.

We know the first journey – I know we do, the journey away from the ways of the world, to gather at the mountain of God. 

I wonder, though, sometimes – how we undergo the second journey out of the caves and little niches we all inhabit. 

How do we come out from the cave of our selves?

Towards Sunday, June 19, 2016

Reading:  I Kings 19:1-18 (Elijah is on the run from Queen Jezebel's vow to avenge his publicly disgracing and murdering 450 prophets of her god, Ba-al.  He flees to the wilderness and is ready to give it all up and just die.  In response, God leads Elijah to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God, where Elijah is promised he will see God.  Elijah witnesses a wind great enough to break rock, an earthquake that shakes the mountain, and after that a great inferno -- but God is in none of these.  Then there is sheer silence -- the sound of silence -- a still, small voice -- the exact translation of something so eerie and unusual is difficult.  And it is in that silence and still, small voice that Elijah knows he is in the presence of God and is hearing God's voice telling him what to do next and giving him hope for the future.)

I wonder -- and sometimes worry, about people who hear still, small voices.  Didn't John Hinkley hear voices telling him to kill John Lennon?  Or was it the man who shot President Reagan?

I wonder if Omar Mateen heard voices inside the silence of whatever space he inhabited, telling him to open fire without warning with an automatic weapon on patrons of a gay night club -- leaving fifty dead and that many again severely injured.

I wonder at times about myself.  I don't mean I hear voices telling me to murder.  But what does my brain at different times tell me to do and to see as the best or only thing to do right now.  What addictive or habitual urges do I simply listen to?  Or even things that my conscience seems to tell me are the good and right thing to do or say, which later I come to see as gravely mistaken -- even hurtful and destructive?  I know enough now about the brain not really to trust everything it sees and says to me.

I also don't really trust folks who are super-confident about God and God's will.  They just seem too sure for my liking.

And you don't even need to bring God and religion into it.  With more and more people getting news and their perception of the world from Facebook and other social media, because of the way the algorithms work it's easier and easier to be more and more reinforced in one habitual way of seeing everything.  There are so many little self-enclosed caves for us to inhabit now, that it seems harder, rather than easier, to know what is the voice of whole truth, and what is just the echo of our own little cave.

• So how do we know, what ways do we have of testing what we hear?  Of doing what faith traditions call the discernment of spirits?  
• Do you have a way of knowing God's voice from lesser voices in your life?
• Is there anything in the story, or in your experience, that helps provide a way of being truly open to God's voice, to the silence that is truly holy?

 

Sermon from Sunday, June 12, 2016

Reading:  I Kings 21:1-11a, 15-21a, 27-29
Sermon:  Maturing as church

Thirty years ago King Ahab – in this case, the Moderator of the United Church of Canada and the majority of commissioners to the 31^st General Council left the halls of Laurentian University in Sudbury where they were meeting.  They walked through the rain towards a tipi erected nearby.  Almost 200 First Nations’ leaders and people were gathered there around a sacred fire.  They were waiting to see how the General Council of the United Church would respond to their request a year earlier for an apology for the ways they had suffered over many generations at the power of the Church, because of the way the Church had understood and acted out their calling from God.

Arriving at the sacred fire, the Moderator spoke these words on behalf of General Council and the whole of the United Church:

Long before my people journeyed to this land your people were here, and you received from your Elders an understanding of creation and of the Mystery that surrounds us all that was deep, and rich, and to be treasured.

We did not hear when you shared your vision.  In our zeal to tell you of the good news of Jesus Christ we were closed to the value of your spirituality.

We confused Western ways and culture with the depth and breadth and length and height of the gospel of Christ.

We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel.

We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were.  As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred and we are not what we are meant by God to be.

We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God’s creation healed.

The Apology did not and does not fix everything.  It doesn’t make everything right.  It doesn’t absolve of guilt.  But neither does it entrench guilt, nor require perpetual self-flagellation. 

What it does is open the door to a new future, by inviting new relationship, dialogue, learning and spiritual growth.  And that seems to be happening. 

The United Church and First Nations people have been in dialogue about all kinds of things over the past thirty years, as equal partners in conversation.  The Church shared in, and supported the Truth and Reconciliation Project.  The people of the First Nations have a place at the table, and the Church has learned that there is a table to sit at with others – instead of a throne from which to dominate others, or an altar on which to sacrifice the best part of both ourselves and others.

Sitting at the table we’ve learned things like humility and confession of sin, truth and reconciliation, and restorative rather than retributive justice.  We’ve learned from the First Nations to express deeper respect and responsibility for the well-being of creation, and in 1996 added to our Creed the line “to live with respect in Creation” which was not there when it was adopted in 1968.  In 2012 we changed our official Crest to include the four colours of the First Nations medicine wheel, emblematic of the wholeness of life and of healing; and, along with the Latin words “Ut Omnes Unum Sint” – “that all may be one,” the Mohawk words “Akwe Nia’Tetewa:Neren” – “all my relations” – a traditional way of ending Mohawk prayers by remembering the web of relationships we live in – human and natural, and that we forget or violate at our peril.

The apology and the shared journey that it opened up, have helped us mature as a church and to understand and live out in deeper ways than we did before, the good will, grace and blessing of God for all of Earth and all its people.

One can only wish the same might have been said of King Ahab – the first King Ahab whose story is told in I Kings. 

Ahab – as bad a king as he turns out to be, started as good as any.  He was king by God’s good will over a kingdom God gave to the people for their well-being and for the blessing of all the world.  But Ahab does not understand or remember that this kingdom is a blessing only if in particular ways it is willing to be different from other kingdoms. 

Perhaps this was due in part to Ahab’s father who came to the throne of a disorganized and depressed kingdom, and who over his reign built things up by making alliances with rich merchant cities outside Israel, building comparable cities within Israel, and nurturing in Israel the cult of fertility that other kingdoms practiced.  In other words, his way of serving God and saving God’s kingdom was to make it more and more like other kingdoms.

And so it is with Ahab.  He too builds cities, makes alliances, enlarges his property, and imprints his sign on everything and everyone under him, to be a king like other kings with a kingdom like other kingdoms.

Not surprising that all through the story Ahab is restless, obsessed and depressed in one way or another, and oppressive, unjust, self-centred and immoral.  Because when you live by others’ expectations, and measure your worth by external stuff, the demand never stops. 

What Ahab really wants, though – more than he understands, is what Naboth has.  It’s the vineyard, because it’s a good piece of land right next to Ahab’s winter palace and Ahab can’t imagine not having it.

And it’s also what the vineyard represents and speaks of.  The vineyard is in the land of Jezreel, and Jezreel means “God plants.”  The people of Israel at their best understand land as a gift of God for the blessing of all the peoples of Earth.  It’s not something you own, or buy or sell; nor can you give it away, because it’s not yours to give.  Rather, it’s an “ancestral inheritance,” as Naboth says of his vineyard – something God has given to his family long, long ago for their use and their place in the goodness of the world, and it is not anything he can ever rightfully give away or let go of. 

And I wonder if this moment – the moment when Naboth stands up to Ahab and out of the depth of his faith and his anguish at what he’s been asked, says to the king, “No!  You cannot take from me, and I cannot give away what God has entrusted to me.  This is my and my family’s inheritance from God, alongside and within your kingdom, our part of the blessing of God for all the world” – I wonder if this is the critical moment in Ahab’s story, the moment that reveals his heart and determines his fate?

At that moment, the story says, Ahab chooses to do just what he is practiced at doing.  He goes home and sulks, because he cannot imagine not being in charge.  He continues to obsess about what he will do to prove himself a king.  He grows depressed.  He never lets go of the need to dominate.

I wonder, though, if he ever – even just for an hour, a minute, or a second, ever thought

·         of apologizing to Naboth for asking such a thing of him,

·         of coming down from his place of familiar power and putting to one side his need to prove himself by being in control,

·         and of asking Naboth to maybe join him on a journey of learning once again the way of really living in, and really living out God’s blessing of all the world – to do it together, as equal people of God.

And if he did – if he felt that kind of nudge and urging of God, I wonder what stopped him and made him unwilling to be God’s king and to serve God’s kingdom in a new and different way?

 

Towards Sunday, June 12, 2016

Reading:  I Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a, 27-29 (Near King Ahab's palace there is a fine vineyard that Ahab would like to turn into a garden for his palace household.  Ahab offers to but it from its owner, named Naboth -- either with a trade for a better vineyard somewhere else, or with the full cash value.  Naboth refuses, saying it's an ancestral inheritance.  Queen Jezebel -- she of ultimate allegiance to the the narrow cost-benefit logic of Ba-al, is upset that such a sensible transaction has been blocked, so she plants evidence falsely accusing Naboth of treason and has him murdered.  With Naboth dead under a cloud of suspicion, Ahab takes over the vineyard -- at which point the prophet Elijah feels stirred up enough to come out of hiding and confront Ahab with the evil he has done.)

What's the issue here?  

Is it just Jezebel's libelling and murder of Naboth, and Ahab's complicity in it, putting this royal crime in the same field as King David's arranged murder of Uriah the Hittite, one of his own generals, to get to Bathsheba? 

Or is it also Ahab's lusting after Naboth's vineyard and his refusal (or inability?) to honour Naboth's ancestral inheritance?  The way Ahab boiled everything down to economics, good business, and cost-benefit analysis?

It happens all the time.  

Homeowners in Mississauga will be moved from their homes to make room for a new transit line; homeowners along the Red Hill in Hamilton lose backyard developments to Hydro right-of-way clear-cutting.  

Every time there's an Olympics or a World Cup or a G-whatever summit, poor people are relocated from inner-city streets and neighbourhoods to make room for meeting and security infrastructure and to make the city more attractive to visitors.

Multinationals buy up traditional sustainable farm-land in Third World countries and turn it into cash-crop plantations.

And how much "ancestral land" of the First Nations of Canada has been taken for economic development, with either a cash settlement or re-settlement of the people on reserve land elsewhere?

It happens all the time.

And as we celebrate the 91st Anniversary of the founding of the United Church of Canada this Sunday, what do we feel stirred to say?  

Easy enough to point a prophetic finger at all those "evil" expropriators.  But I wonder if the point might be for us to learn and show in our own behaviour a little bit about the value of ancestral inheritance, of valuing the treasures we have been entrusted with, of letting our lives be grounded in what is given rather than be driven by what we can make, earn, accumulate and aggrandize?

Sermon from Sunday, June 5, 2016

Reading:  I Kings 17:8-24
Theme:  The kingdom in our time

Neither one had – or was, much, in a time that was not good for people like them.

                                  

The kingdom of Israel was in decline – had been for some time.  Over some generations there had been a succession of weak kings and with poor leadership at the top, corruption, abuse, mismanagement and injustice became the norm.  The rich – the few at the top got rich; the poor, all the rest, got poorer.  The kingdom was in a moral and ethical slide away from the founding dream of being a kingdom that would live out and reflect God’s dream and way of mercy, compassion, justice and well-being for all, and a slide into being just like all the rest.  The fact that when Ahab married Jezebel of Sidon he carried the kingdom hook, line and sinker into the realm of ba-alism and worship of Baal was just the icing on the cake.  And then came the drought.

It was not a good time for people like Elijah and the widow who are the main characters in the story today.

Elijah was a prophet – sounds good, a good job – but only in hindsight.  Usually not a good job at the time – not something you’d want your son or daughter to grow up to be.   Walter Brueggemann calls Elijah someone who was “completely unexpected, uncredentialed, and uninvited” to the flagging party that was the kingdom of Israel – that was the royal court and the halls of power.  He came out of nowhere, told the king and his court what they were doing wrong, quickly found the door, and knew he’d better find a safe place to be.  So like many other prophets, he went to the wilderness where God would take care of him with a little stream and wild ravens would bring him food.  But after a while even that dried up, and God told him to go find a certain widow in a town of Sidon named Zarepath, and she would feed him.  That’s how desperate things were for Elijah – going to be fed by a widow who was one of the enemy, a pagan, a subject of Jezebel.

And the widow was no better off.  She was poor, the story says, and being a widow meant she had no one to take care of her and her son.  She was outside the circles of support and care.  She was not important enough to be listened to, not valuable enough for anyone to care what really happened to her.  And, from the point of view of the biblical story – or at least of some of its interpreters and the people of Israel at the time, she was an outsider to God’s care as well because she was not of the covenant community, she was pagan, she was not one of God’s chosen.

And yet, God brings them together – the prophet and the widow – and between the two of them they do together what all the other people of God, all the leaders and important people of the kingdom, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not do – they find a way in to the kingdom of God in their time – they create in their little corner of the world the kind of world God desires – and they live to tell the tale.

How?

One, they make room in their life for the prophetic word of God, regardless of the cost. 

Elijah for his part lets the prophetic vision shape his entire life and way of being.  In fact, in the biblical story, he has no story or identity until he shows up out of wherever he came from, with a word of God for the people of his time.  And surely he knew the cost – he knows as he opens his mouth, he’s putting it all on the line – he’s risking what little he has – but he goes ahead anyway – he is a prophet … or he is nothing

And the widow – she has just enough for her and her son.  How can she take in another mouth to feed?  Shouldn’t she take care of her own home first before taking on strangers?  And yet, she takes the chance.  She trusts what Elijah says about God providing day by day what will be needed – sounds like it’s something he’s learned from experience.  So she takes him in.  She, like him, makes room in her heart, her home and her life, for the prophetic word of God.

Two, they accept the call to strange and unholy alliances, and are open to plan B. 

The way things start out for Elijah is normal for a prophet.  Show up out of nowhere, preach to the king, run for your life, find a place in the wilderness where God and the wild animals take care of you until you are able to return in even greater strength.  Plan A, and Elijah follows it to the letter.  Except it runs dry.  The little creek that’s been hiding beside literally runs dry, and with it the ravens that have been bringing him food also disappear.  So … God tells him plan B – forget the holy creek and the heavenly ravens, go find a widow in Zarepath, and let her help you – the enemy territory, the home of everything that’s wrong in Israel, a pagan woman … but Elijah accepts it.

And likewise the woman – her plan A is to make one last little cake for her and her son so she and he can die in peace and with some dignity.  Not a bad plan, all things considered.  Then Elijah shows up with a plan.  This was not a partnership she would ever have imagined, and probably would not have asked for.   Elijah was that Israelite prophet who’s causing problems for her queen and her people.  He doesn’t even like her and her way of life.  Surely he’ll only be trouble.  Nothing good can come of this for her and her son.  But she swallows her fear of what this means, and takes him in.  A strange and unholy alliance, and plan B.

Three, in this unfolding and constantly evolving narrative, they both take on another’s sorrow as their own.  Even not knowing whether really they can fix it, or offer a solution, they take on what the other is suffering, and make it their own.  The widow has her own problems and no one would blame her for closing her door to a needy stranger, but she sees and feels Elijah’s hunger as though in her own bones – she identifies with his need, and even though at first she doesn’t have his faith that God will provide, and can’t see how this will turn out good, she agrees to feed him and take him in.  And Elijah, for all his holy separateness and sense of who is right and wrong in the world, when the widow’s son dies, he feels within himself the anguish she feels, and as though the boy were his own son, he takes the boy’s body into his arms and he lifts the boy’s life up to God in angry and sorrowful prayer, asking God to do what God can do.

And I wonder if that’s the point … if that’s when the heavens opened and the grace of God flowed more freely than ever before, and that little place where Elijah and the widow were was flooded with light and joy, and between the two of them they found themselves entering and being the kingdom of God in a way that God desires for all the world.

Neither one had – or was, much in a time that was not good for ordinary, poor, divided people like them.  But between them, because of the choices they made, the calls they answered, and the way they were willing to accept, the kingdom of God came to be in the little corner of the world that they inhabited together.