Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, redeemer and the one who sustains us:
These are wonderful text today. The story of widows that we hear every three years in the lectionary cycle - stories that remind us of God’s love and abundance - stories that show us that God is able to give us a new lease on life.
Today on this church music Sunday, I considered preaching the psalm and talking about how many composers like Bach and Handel wrote songs of praise to God. I asked our music director who was his favorite composer and he said he had so many. So, I picked George Fredric Handel and I found out that through the reading of scripture he had an overwhelming experience of God and wrote the Messiah, barely leaving his room, in a little more than three weeks. Hundreds of years later we still sing it adding our voices of praise to Handel’s praise of God
But I will not preach about music because I could not deny the power of these stories. These widows both have overwhelming experiences of God. And these overwhelming experiences in my mind connect to the overwhelming devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
First the widow in 1 Kings: In this story, with a famine in the land and no possibility of rain it is hard to see God’s provision, yet God provides. If we go back just a bit we will read that God provides for Elijah as he runs from Jezebel. God provides for him as he sits under trees and is feed by birds. And as he runs out of provisions God sends Elijah to Sidon where he finds a widow and her son with barely anything. She is preparing to cook the last meal for her family and then she will as the scripture tells us “eat and die.”
But Elijah steps on to the scene in need yet bearing a promise from God that gives this widow hope --- desperate hope. That’s what Katie Huey a UCC pastor says. While other theologians say that her faith is awakened, Huey says:
“A reading like this one, in the midst of drought and famine, thirst and hunger, poverty and despair, provokes reflection on the phrase, "desperate hope," for desperation, or despair, paradoxically, suggests hope-less-ness. However, at the worst possible moments, hope can still persist deep within our hearts, no matter what God or god we have been raised to worship, and taught to place our faith in . . . the prophet bearing good news – and hope – arrives.”
At this point in her plight why would she have faith in anyone or any god, she was from Zarepath in Sidon. They do not believe in the God of Elijah so when she is approached by this prophet she doesn’t receive faith but manages this desperate hope.
Elijah asks the widow to prepare the food and feed him first to give him what is not nearly enough to share--what is barely sufficient for her and her son. Working out of this desperate hope she does it, she takes the meal and the oil and prepares a cake for Elijah and the meal does not run out, “her household ate for days.” It suddenly turns into enough.
Enough, why can’t we be satisfied with enough? The story is that the company once named British Petroleum (BP) cut corners to make profits… enormous profits. I read an article in the New York Times that implies that this is the same thing that happened with the current economic crisis. Those who were able to-- pushed the limits, sure that because a housing crisis had not happened that it was very unlikely that it would happen. Perhaps BP calculated the risk and thought that because a catastrophic drilling accident and oil spill had not happened in over forty years it was unlikely to happen. They kept on pushing the limits, increasing the bottom line -- until the bottom dropped out. Could it be that the quest for more, cutting corners, skimping -- cost the lives of eleven people and devastation all around?
What is it about us that despite all that we have we want more and more and more and more? When, is enough, enough?
For this widow and her son this little bit of oil and meal are enough---------------- but to add insult to injury her son becomes ill unto death. We hear in the text, “there was no breath left in him” and the woman though she sees how God has provided--- questions Elijah: “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” Again she feels helpless and all she has is a desperate hope that Elijah can do something. She wants back the life of her son.
Tony Hayward CEO of BP spoke up on national television saying no one wants this oil spill mess over more than me “I want my life back.”And while he experiences the ultimate inconvenience of having to manage a crisis partly of his own creating, the lives of the people along the Gulf are seemingly hopelessly altered. Shrimpers can’t shrimp; people who work the waters can’t work. Not to mention the environmental impact that this disaster will have for years to come. Have you seen the pictures? The state bird of Louisiana, the pelican soaked in oil, barely able to move. What we now see as we exceed 40 days of oil spilling out of that pipe in the bottom of the gulf is death.Death is also what Jesus sees in the seventh chapter of Luke’s gospel death. A widow, whose ability, in her patriarchal society to make it is already compromised, is now going to bury her son, her last means of support. She will be alone bereft of anyway to survive and now her destiny may be to beg on the street. She is beyond hope; more than empty her son is dead; all is done except for the burial.
That is probably how the people of Louisiana feel. They haven’t even fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina, five years ago and now this! They are beyond hope, more than empty, their lives and livelihoods threatened, massive amounts of oil washing up on shore. The wonderful cusine of the region depends on much of what grows and lives in the Gulf and now it is soaked in oil.
In both of our stories the sons are brought back to life. Elijah prays and calls on God and the breath comes back into the boy’s body; he is resuscitated. In Luke, Jesus steps in, has compassion; tells the mother “do not weep.” Perhaps Jesus offers her a desperate hope that something miraculous just might happen. Then Jesus dares to touch what is considered unclean and orders the boy to rise. And he does! The crowd rejoices and glorifies God. These two sons are given a new lease on life
So how will this happen in the gulf? We don’t know yet. But what we have seen in these texts is that God can overcome overwhelming devastation. God can breathe new life into the most lifeless things we have seen this over and over again. Sometimes, God works through direct action as in Luke and sometimes through the actions of God’s followers as in 1Kings.
How will BP, the government, how will we be partners in helping in the clean up so that the people most affected by this Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, this devastating environmental disaster have a new lease on life? We are not sure yet, but with the power of God, with God’s help, a new lease on life in that region that seems to keep getting hit so hard----- might be.
As people who through the waters of baptism are given a new lease on life that’s our desperate hope.
Today as we pour water over the heads of two babies- Henry and William, we know that as parents we do our best to protect our children, but know that we cannot keep our babies totally away from the messy stuff of life. What we can do is bring them to the font, place in their hands the scripture, teach them the creeds, and pass on to them what we ourselves know. We can keep on testifying to the overwhelming love and goodness of God. We can claim the overwhelming power of God to work in our lives.
” We can glorify God and tell them about the great prophet Jesus who has risen among us.”
What can we do? We can continue to pray, sing praises to God and to hold on to a desperate hope that despite disaster, or oil spill, or crisis, or sickness or death God is able.
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