Mark 12:38-44
1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews
9:24-28
There was no
reason that the prophet Elijah should know or be concerned about a Gentile
widow from over the mountains. They
couldn’t have been more different, Elijah and the widow of Zaraphath—different
races, different cultures, different religions, different genders.
But God commanded
Elijah to go to her. Why? He had the people of Israel to instruct, to
grow, to bless. I think Elijah was
instructed to go to her because she had something to teach him about faith and
something to teach all of us who get to hear this story, thousands of years
later. God commanded her. She didn’t know God, yet she listened to God,
and was obedient. She used the last of
her resources, flour and oil, and the skill she had to make that something
edible, and she made it and shared it. I
admire this widow*. I admire her
resourcefulness, the way she keeps going despite the growing knowledge that
she’s going to run out. I look in my
cupboard and if I’m missing one ingredient, I’m in a tizzy. It must be time for take out. But over these weeks, she rations what she
has, stretches it, and finally on the last day, as she shakes out the last
whisper of flour from her jar and after leaving her oil container upside down
all day, she hopes she has a teaspoon full, enough to make a last meal for her
and her son. She is teaching us to value
every little bit, and isn’t this last bit the most valuable of all, a last
supper, a family communion that they will remember until they fade away from hunger
and are no more. She is this flour, this
oil. She is the forgotten, the nothing
at the bottom of the jar. Her neighbors
don’t know or care, or maybe they also hunger because of a famine upon the
land.
Now, along comes a stranger, Elijah, a prophet of
God. Elijah has stood in God’s presences,
suffered persecution from God’s people, brought difficult, challenging words to
God’s people, a food they just couldn’t swallow, something that would have
nourished them, if they hadn’t been so distracted with their own
self-importance. So here he comes to a
nobody according to what this world values.
However, she is more faithful than any of the widows in Israel. So Jesus says when he almost gets himself
killed in his hometown of Nazareth. She
listens to God. She cooks this meal for
Elijah. She treats him like her own son,
better than her own son. She teaches us
and Elijah about family, how to ask for help, how to tell the truth about our
own need, how to come together in community and work together, who to trust
when we cannot trust the powers of this world to feed the hungry, who to look
to for resourcefulness and faith and obedience.
There was no reason that the Scribes at the Temple
would see the woman put in her last 2 coins, but there they stood not 10 yards
from each other. He was strutting
around, making sure everyone was listening to him, seeing him, blessing
him. She went unnoticed, as she put in
her 2 coins and a prayer. He would take
those 2 coins and it would mean nothing to him, even though it meant everything
to her. Would she, like the widow of
Zarapheth, go home and cook her last meal and starve unnoticed? What would the scribe do, when he got
home? Would he eat his fill and still
feel empty? God brings these contrasting
people together to teach each other something.
They are a few feet away from each other, but they may as well be on
different planets. They don’t know the
same people. They don’t live by the same
truths. They don’t have the same
priorities. And yet they affect each
other. He affects her because he devours
her last 2 coins, all she has to live on.
He doesn’t seem to be affected by her, because what she offers seems so
small compared to everything else he has.
However, Jesus says, he will eternally be affected by how he has treated
her. He receives the greater
condemnation.
The other contrast that the Scribe and widow teach us,
is about acting out of fear and acting out of faith. Why is he strutting around like this? It is because he is afraid that he isn’t
enough. He’s put his faith in his position,
and his wealth, and his importance, and it isn’t fulfilling him. If he doesn’t have the reassurance and
recognition that he gets from long prayers and even longer robes, he is afraid
he isn’t enough. He is acting out of
fear. She is acting out of faith. She has put her faith in God. She knows that robes and recognition don’t
give satisfaction. You’re always going
to need more. But she gives her last 2
coins, knowing that money isn’t everything, having experienced miracles before
and knowing that God can make something out of nothing, trusting that her coins
will be valued, if not by the scribes, then by God. And she’s right. She knows God made us good. She knows that God values every contribution
no matter how small. She gives out of
her faith, rather than her fear, and she becomes an example to us.
There was no reason that a poor family, driving an old
white Ford 1-ton van the mom a childcare worker and the dad an insulation
installer would fit in at the local Lutheran congregation full of teachers and
nurses and doctors. But that’s where we
found ourselves. My mom with 4 kids, dad
staying at home. We did our best to fit
in, but I know we stuck out. They gave
us their hand-me-downs, and we were thrilled to get them. We shared our friendliness. My mom took on the Sunday school
superintendent job. We couldn’t afford
$10 apiece for the Mother/Daughter banquet, that would have been $40, more than
my mom made in 2 days work. We stood up
and said it was unjust. We were
heard. We changed our community. And we were changed by our community. They were examples of professionals, of how
life could have many choices with an education, so they helped me with my
college applications, and paid for my books in seminary. They changed me. Mom took piano lessons, started a mom’s
group, started a support group for people struggling with depression. Two groups of people who should never have
come together, did for the betterment of both.
A little babe is born on a cold night in a barn. His cry pierces the night. God made flesh, come to us. So many unlikely combinations: The Christ
child and the shepherds, the son of God and the magi, the shepherds and the
angels, God and humans together, Jesus and the lepers, Jesus and the Samaritan
woman, Jesus and the Roman Soldier, Mary and Elizabeth.
There is no reason that God should come here to us,
people of no importance, who struggle, who are weak, yet Jesus came to share
our experience and know us, and to give himself as a living sacrifice that we
might have life abundant in communion with him and the whole people of God and
all of Creation. He came to us to make
us family, to make us strong, to heal the world.
A little Spanish-speaking church is looking for
space. A little bigger Lutheran
Congregation finds an opening as a preschool vacates the building. There is no reason that we should come
together, but 5 years later here we are, friends, working side by side for the
Gospel.
There is no reason that any of us should be here,
except we felt the pull of the Spirit calling to us, inviting us at different
times from different places, to participate in something messy but beautiful
and at times frustrating, but to be part of something bigger than ourselves and
our needs.
There is no reason to think that a church is needed or
welcome out there in our county offices, testifying at city hall, or relating
to neighbors, but somehow God keeps bringing us together to teach us something
about ourselves and to help us open our ideas of who we are and who matters in
God’s Kingdom wider until we truly all are one.
And I can’t help but wonder what unlikely pairings and
combinations of people we will find ourselves in in the coming weeks and
months, how we will be challenged and stretched as we reach out to our
neighbors, how we might be surprised by the person or people that God places in
our hands, that when we thought we were the ones helping, we find ourselves
helped, stretched, learning, growing, valuing life differently, seeing people
instead of problems, awed by the complexity of our systems that keep people
down. There are neighbors right next door that we
don’t even know their names even though they’ve lived there 10 years or
more. God has placed them here not for
us to overlook the or assume we don’t have anything to offer each other, but to
show us that we are all related, we need each other, and everyone has something
to offer, gifts from God for the good of the whole and that we are stronger
together.
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