I had thought about calling
this sermon “How To Know a True Minister” but I thought better of it. I don’t think it would look good for me if I
said a true minister is one that comes from a foreign country that thinks it
has a monopoly on all things God and comes saying God is causing your hard
times because you are idolatrous. Then,
he demands your last dollar all the while saying God says your resources won’t
run out. You do what he says and seem to
keep going while others perish, but you just can’t shake the suspicion that all
he’s doing is making his way on pointing out your sins and taking a huge chunk
of what’s yours. All the while, he
spends all his time in prayer blaming God for everything that’s goes wrong in
your life because it makes him look bad if they don’t go right. The only thing that will make those suspicions
go away is if he raises your dead.
Well, humour aside, I won’t
go that route because it hits to close to home especially that coming from a
foreign country part. I think it might be more prudent to spend some time
talking about this widow of Zarephath and her struggles and what she discovers
about the kind of god the one true God is, the God of Israel, Elijah’s
God. This God, our God, is
life-sustaining in the most hopeless of circumstances and life-restoring when
it appears that death has won the day.
Our God isn’t the punish-you-god who is the head of the ministry of sin
maintenance and behavioural modification.
Rather, our God is head of the ministry of life who cares for us and
especially for the most insignificant and vulnerable among us in this
sin-broken world.
A good place to start this look
at the widow of Zarephath is with doing a comparison between her and Queen
Jezebel. They are both from the land of
Sidon (Lebanon). Jezebel was the
daughter of a king married off to King Ahab.
She brought the gods of Sidon into Israel – Baal, the god of the storm
and Asherah, his fertility-goddess wife.
They were key gods of agriculture in the Land of Canaan. Baal gave the rain and Asherah made your
crops grow provided you regularly visited with her temple prostitutes. Jezebel brought the seductive promise of crop
fertility to the burgeoning agricultural society of ancient Israel and the
people lustfully welcomed her. In
response to her, Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh, proclaimed Yahweh’s power over
these false gods and his judgement upon the people by declaring a drought that
affected both Israel and Sidon. In turn,
Jezebel and Ahab wanted Elijah dead.
Yahweh sent Elijah to Zarephath
where God said he has called a widow to provide for him. Elijah went and immediately he came upon this
widow, a young mother of a young boy. As
you know, widows back then were at the bottom of the social ladder because generally
it was the husband or the father who provided while the wife or daughter looked
after the home. This widow did have a
house, but she would have had to be very creative to find a source of income. Add to that the effects of the drought. The likes of Jezebel, the wealthy and
powerful, would not have been too drastically affected, but this widow…well, when
Elijah found her she was collecting sticks to build a small fire to cook a meal
for herself and her son, their last.
For this widow, it was
fortuitous that Elijah came her way; Elijah, the man of Yahweh the God of
Israel who was proving himself more powerful than the gods of Sidon, Baal and
Asherah. It was the belief back then
that if you showed hospitality to a prophet, you were in effect showing
hospitality to the god whom that prophet served…and here was the prophet of
Yahweh asking for a drink of water and a loaf of bread. Hallelujah…but feeding him would come at the
cost of her family’s last meal. This
wasn’t adding up.
At Elijah’s almost magical
assurance that God will keep the jar and the jug from going empty she follows
through on the hospitality. And
how! You would think she was following
the teachings of a 1980’s vintage health-and-wealth TV preacher. She gives all she has. She gives to him first. She serves him. She even gives him her “upper room” to lodge
in. And indeed, her hospitality to this
“man of Yahweh” seemed to work magically.
The jar and the jug do not fail.
But, then her son died. To a young widow back then a son was
guaranteed income in the future. In a
crass way of saying it, not only did her son die, but she lost her retirement
too. Regardless of her hospitality to
the man of Yahweh, the widow now had nothing to live for or look forward to. Hopeless.
One thing you notice when
reading this passage is that this widow is wiley enough to stay suspicious of Elijah. Is he really a “man of Yahweh”? What’s his true motives? Having a prophet in your house is like having
a nuclear reactor in your backyard. He
leaves you always wondering when “judgement day” might come. When are things going to melt down? So, the widow goes to Elijah and accuses him
of only coming to bring her guilt to the fore and “wrath” her for it.
But, Elijah is just as
confused as she is. So, he took the dead
boy and carried him upstairs. In Old
Testament Hebrew the word for “to forgive” is the same as for “to carry”. I find that interesting. Elijah touched the dead body incurring ritual
uncleanness upon himself which means he took upon himself the boys iniquity. He offers hospitality to the dead boy by
taking him to his own room and laying him out on his own bed. He cried out and accused Yahweh at the
injustice he was doing to this hospitable widow by killing her son. Then, he tried to take the place of the dead
boy. Three times he stretched himself
out upon the boy. Then, in a futile
effort he begged God to return the boys life to him.
Here’s the good part. Yahweh gave the boy’s life back. Raised him.
Elijah takes the boy back downstairs and says to the widow, “Behold,
your son liveth.” (Got to love the KJV here).
She says, “Now I now you are a man of Yahweh and that the word of Yahweh
in your mouth is truth.”
Step forward to Luke. Jesus and his disciples are walking along and
come across a funeral procession. The
only son of a widow has died (a familiar tune this morning). Jesus is moved with compassion and says to
the woman, “Do not weep.” (Yeah, right.)
He touches the bier upon which the son was being carried. (Here again is
that concept of being carried.) He says,
“Young man, ‘I’ say to you, rise.” (That’s Easter language.) And the man sits up and starts to speak. There are suddenly a lot of people there thinking
about Jesus what the widow of Zarephath said about Elijah, “Now I know you are
a man of God and the word of God in your mouth is truth.”
The word of God by which he
created everything isn’t just in Jesus’ mouth. Jesus is himself the Word of
God. As Paul writes in Colossians: “He is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were
created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers
or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is
before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the
body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he
might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of
God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to
himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the
blood of his cross.”
Step forward to Galatians; Paul was a zealous Jew,
faithful even to the point of being murderous towards the church. He was dead in his sins until he met Jesus on
the Road to Damascus and the Word of God came to live in him. He says later in Galatians 2:20, “I have been
crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who
lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness of
the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” We’ll get into this passage next week, but needless
to say we all like Paul have Christ Jesus living in us. The Christian faith is not about blessings
and curses or behavioral management. It
is about Jesus Christ living in us and transforming us with his resurrected
life.
The Word of God is dwelling in us giving us
life. Like the widow of Zarephath, offer
Jesus hospitality. Give him your all, your
everything. Serve him without
reservation. Offer him an “upper room” in
your life. Like Elijah, don’t be afraid
to show hospitality to the “dead”. Touch
the “dead” and carry them in their “death” and cry out to God for them. Show this kind of hospitality, to Jesus and to
the broken. This is the way of those in
who the Word of God lives. Amen.
