"When elephants fight, the grass suffers." So goes an old
African proverb.(1) The elephants in question here, Yahweh and
Baal - gods competing for a nation's allegiance with the original
weapons of mass destruction: drought and disaster; the grass,
this widow and her son, caught in this cosmic struggle between
fertility and famine.
We meet one of faith's greatest heroes as this story begins.
Elijah - no question whose side he is on; his name means YAHWEH
IS MY GOD. He gets no introduction other than the fact that he
is from an obscure northern village called Tishbe. "As the LORD,
the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve," Elijah announces to King
Ahab, "there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years
except at my word." Not a welcome word in the arid Middle East.
The prophet high-tails it out of there at God's instruction and
takes refuge in the country, where he drinks the cool, clear
water of the nearby brook and is provided for morning and evening
by some divinely-appointed ravens, an interesting choice in
itself since ravens were considered "unclean." Go figure.
All is well for awhile, but with the passage of time, the
drought took its toll on the brook and Elijah is given
instruction to travel north to Zarephath, a Gentile city, along
the Mediterranean coast near the mighty cities of Tyre and Sidon,
and close to the ancestral home of Ahab's Queen Jezebel - no
doubt, a little divine "in your face" business going on here.
God says, "I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you
with food."
Hmm. A foreigner? A woman? A widow? Can you go much
lower on the totem pole, Lord? But Elijah does as he is told,
meets the widow at the gate of the town where she is gathering
twigs for what she says will be a fire to prepare a last meal for
herself and her son - the food is about gone, and there is no
likelihood of anymore. This is it.
Elijah is Mr. Pastoral Sensitivity here. He immediately
inquires as to the poor woman's situation and offers to provide
needed assistance through the food pantry of the local synagogue
plus money for other expenses from the prophet's discretionary
fund. Uh-huh. No. He just says bring water...and some bread,
while you're at it. He hears that this is ALL they have, but it
makes no difference to him. As to why the woman did not simply
tell him to take a flying leap, we have to recall the Middle
Eastern culture that holds hospitality high, even today, as the
most solemn of obligations.
But Elijah does more than ask for food. After he hears her
dire straits, he offers this surprising promise: he says, "first
make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it
to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For
this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'The jar of flour
will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the
day the Lord gives rain on the land.'" Then we read, "She went
away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day
for Elijah and for the woman and her family." Hmm. A miracle.
I wonder if the widow in our New Testament lesson recalled
this famous story as she put her last two pennies in the offering
at the Temple. She was down to the bitter end as well. Perhaps
some prophet approaching the Holy of Holies would see her
predicament and come to her rescue.
Suddenly, I notice the calendar and find that these wonderful stories are joined at the lectionary hip
precisely at the time of year when many churches, including this
one, are engaged in their annual stewardship campaigns. Are these
really good stewardship texts? I mean, we say good stewardship
is the tithe, ten percent. These ladies gave it all,
the last little bit. I swear to goodness, this sounds for all
the world like "What the Hell?" stewardship. In other words,
things can't get any worse, so, what the hell, why not give it to
God? And the way our economy has gone over the past several
years, some of you may be feeling that. How is that for a
sermon? [I asked Christie that at breakfast yesterday - she
said, "That's why YOU are the preacher!"]
As I read both scripture and history, one of the things that
continually strikes me is God's penchant for using the unlikely
to accomplish divine purposes. There were those ravens. Now a
destitute widow. I mean, if you were God and Elijah were your
prophet, and you had to provide for him, would you send him to a
woman who only had a hand full of grain and a little oil in a
jar? Noooooo. I would send him to Bill Gates, somebody who was
loaded. After all, as Goethe said, "Giving is the business of
the rich."(2)
But then again maybe that would not work. A survey done by
the Gallup folks shows that almost one half of charitable
contributions come from households with incomes of less than
$30,000. Perhaps God knows we do better as givers if we have
less to start out with.
Consider this: economic downturn notwithstanding, all of us
live in a society vastly richer than the one our grandparents
inhabited. This has been documented again and again, so many
times and in so many ways it cannot be questioned. Yet even as
our income has gone up, our spending has gone up even faster. As
income has climbed, many people's giving to others has decreased;
it may perhaps have stayed the same in dollars, but it has not
kept pace with inflation. One recent study indicated that
churchgoing Protestants in America give an average of 2.5 percent
of their household income to the church. Now that may sound OK,
as an average [although still not what it should be] - until you
consider that in the depths of the Great Depression, Protestants
gave an average of 3.3 percent of their income. As a people, we
are earning more but giving less.(3)
But not everybody. Somewhere in your travels you may have
heard the name Gordon Cosby (no relation to Bill that I know of).
This one is the founder and pastor of the Church of the Savior in
Washington, D.C. Gordon tells of an incident that occurred when
he was a young man, minister to a small Baptist congregation in a
railroad town just outside Lynchburg, Virginia. As he tells it:
My deacon sent for me one day and told me that he
wanted my help. "We have in our congregation," he said,
"a widow with six children. I have looked at the
records and discovered that she is putting into the
treasury of the church each month $4.00 - a tithe of
her income. Of course, she is unable to do this. We
want you to go and talk to her and let her know that
she needs to feel no obligation whatsoever, and free
her from the responsibility."
I am not wise now [writes Gordon]; I was less wise
then. I went and told her of the concern of the
deacons. I told her as graciously and as supportively
as I know how that she was relieved of the
responsibility of giving. As I talked with her the
tears came into her eyes. "I want to tell you," she
said, "that you are taking away the last thing that
gives my life dignity and meaning."
I tried to retrieve the situation. I was unable to do
it. I went home and pondered the story of Jesus in the
temple watching the people put their offerings in the
collection plate. Jesus' attitude amazed me. He had
the audacity to watch what people were putting in the
collection plate. Not only did he have the audacity to
watch, he had the audacity to comment. Of the rich who
put in large sums he said, "They put in what they can
easily afford." Of the poor widow who dropped in two
coins, he said, "She in her poverty, who needs so much,
has given away everything, her whole living."
I knew I would have said to her, "Let us take this to
the council. We have a sensible council that always
makes exceptions and I know that they will relieve you
of your discipline of giving."(4)
In my files I have something intriguing I saved from a
pastor in Bellingham, Washington some years ago. Donel McClellan
writes, "In downtown Seattle a few years back (though it could
have been any city in this land) a man was out walking one day,
just before Christmas. He came upon one of those Salvation Army
kettles. As he approached the volunteer ringing the bell, he
felt an unaccustomed spirit of generosity wash over him.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out all his change. He
dropped every last coin into the kettle with a smile.
The man turned to leave, but then he stopped. He reached
into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and emptied every
last bill into the kettle as well.
Grinning like an idiot, he walked away with a bounce to his
step. But about two blocks later, the bounce wore out. Suddenly
it hit him! "What have I done?" he asked himself.
The man turned around, walked back to the old woman and
asked for his money back. He got it, and left again, walking
very quickly this time, head down, looking neither to the right
nor the left.
"For two blocks," writes Donel McClellan, that man walked in
the Kingdom of God. For two blocks he was free of the burden of
his possessions. For two blocks he put other people above
himself. For two blocks he was self-giving and generous. For
two blocks he was blessed...but, like most of us, he could not
stand the uncertainty that goes with that much blessing. He
wanted to continue to think that he is in control. He walked
back, out of the realm of God and back into the well-worn grooves
of his weary world."
You have heard that old fund-raising admonition, "Give till
it hurts." No. This one is better: "Give till it feels GOOD!"
If as you came into worship this morning and wondered about
Christmas being in the title of the sermon six weeks too early,
it is not. My hope is that, as we move through this stewardship
season, we can capture one of the most precious features of the
Christmas celebration.
Remember Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol?
Here was a man so stingy he would not even let Bob Cratchet have
the whole of Christmas day off from work, but who through insight
into the hollowness of his own life and heart is changed into a
person who gives out of joy and discovery that it is indeed more
blessed to give than to hoard.
You know what I am talking about. We all love the feeling
of discovering just the right present to give to someone we love
at Christmas or for their birthday. Who has not felt the great
sense of pleasure and excitement you first felt as a child, when
you made or carefully saved money to buy a present for a parent?
All of us find joy in giving to those we know and love. As the
little poem has it,
I love the Christmas-tide and yet,
I notice this, each year I live:
I always like the gifts I get,
But how I love the gifts I give!(5)
Perhaps our widows can attest to that. Do you want that
feeling 52 weeks a year? A Year-Round Christmas? You can have
it. Right here in the place you learned the verse that taught
you, "It is more blessed to give than to receive,"(6) or the prayer
of St. Francis that concluded, "For it is in giving that we
receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in
dying that we are born to eternal life."
A Year-Round Christmas. You can have it. Yes, indeed. And "God bless us, everyone."
Amen!
1. Quoted by Carlos Wilton in "The Immediate Word" commenting on the texts for today,
via internet, http://www.csspub.com/tiw.lasso, the source for several streams of thought herein.
2. Denn Guptill, "But First You Obey," sermon,
http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon.asp?SermonID=57613&ContributorID=1399
3. Henry G. Brinton, "Faith and Numbers," The Washington Post, 10/10/99, p. B2
4. Elizabeth O'Conner, Letters To Scattered Pilgrims, (San Francisco : Harper & Row,
1979)
5. Carolyn Wells, "A Thought"
6. Acts 20:35
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