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.
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