When we hear God's demands, we are driven to despair by our helplessness. We see this in the Story of Elijah and the widow.
Elijah made two demands as he encountered the widow.
'Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’
‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’
Can you imagine the look on the widow's face when she heard him? I'm surprised that her outburst in response was so measured.
The prophet of God addressed her want, resignation and certain death with a demand for food, for himself.
She replied:
‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.’
We might think of her emphatically saying: "As the Lord your God, your meddling God who has caused this drought just because he's angry with your King Ahab, who just happens to have married our princess from Sidon Jezebel, as your God who is rash and brash and meddling and vindictive, as your God lives, I have nothing left for my son and I, so we will eat our last meal, lay ourselves down and starve."
Given the widow's response, according to today's therapeutic logic, how easy it is to judge Elijah as selfish, as failing to walk with the widow, as callous. Oughtn't he have commiserated with her? Oughtn't he have helped her find food? Oughtn't he have defied God and spoken out so that the drought that was causing so much misery would end?
His demand brought only sorrow, sorrow unto death, to the woman. Furthermore, Elijah's God seemed pretty shabby, capricious, jealous, and unfeeling, in the midst of Elijah's demands. After all, it was God who had declared the drought.
God's demands drive humankind to despair because in the midst of our human brokeness and our society's complexity and our individual sinfulness we are so often hapless when called upon to be saviors to our neighbors and cold when asked to love those whom God has placed in our lives. Even the most exemplary saints have been riddled with doubt, hear the words of blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who herself lived through the terrible famine in Bengal in 1946-47, in which 2 million people died:
Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.
God's demand to love our neighbors, God's demand to follow the divine will, bring us, even the most faithful, low. Thank God that we are always given a promise after a divine demand. Elijah spoke the promise to the :
'For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.’
In a single sentence Elijah passes on the word from God that starvation will not be the final judgment for the widow, her son, and her household. Death's power is snatched away with a promise. A fantastic promise, there was nothing magical about her particular jar of meal or her particular jug of oil. They simply were changed because God's promise was attached to them.
So why is it that promises always follow demands?
Why doesn't God just give us the promise in the first place? Why does God either allow or create woe and then have the gall to demand honest, fair and just behavior from us in the midst of it?
Why is the world so complicated we often don't even know what the best way to do good is?
Sisters and brothers, we can answer these questions by getting angry with God. As blessed Teresa cried out so can we. As our Lord called out so can we, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!" "How long will these bones which you have crushed be out of joint?"
But to get lost in such anger, while a temptation, is not an option for we who walk on the way. The widow's actions are instructive for us. Upon hearing Elijah's demand for water, she went to get him some. In the middle of a withering drought. It was only when he asked for a cake that she responded with despair.
We too must seek soothing water for our neighbors, even when we are overwhelmed, even when our own sin is calling us to self-satisfaction. Even when we're angry at God for the challenges and hardships of our lives. Such is Christian discipleship in this world that is, frankly, made complicated by human actions. Remember that it as King Ahab whose antagonizing compelled God to call the drought, and what was Ahab's sin? Idolatry and warfare. Just like his king-fathers going back to Jeraboam, who led the civil war of Israel against Judah, and back to David himself who, for the sake of lust had poor Uriah killed in battle.
We make the world a rough and tumble place. Not God.
Precisely because humankind is a live and let die community God does intrude with demands and promises. Demands that we let live and promises that he will let us live even after all our failures. Here again the widow is instructive. She did not offer a great show of loyalty to Elijah. She did not make any great claim of faithfulness, saying that she would get him water and was sure that her god would provide for her. No, she complained. But God made a promise to her through Elijah anyways. She resigned herself and her household to death but God made a promise that gave her life through limitless meal and oil. Not because she trusted, not because she earned it, not because she even wanted it.
God made the promise to give life because that's what God does.
God provides. God gives freely. God gives life to the dead.
Will the world, as we experience it from day to day, continue to be a place of drought and famine? Yes. Will the world continue to be a place of inequalities and sinfulness? Yes. Will we as humans continue to choose strife and idols over the peace of God that passes all understanding? Lamentably yes.
But while the world is and will continue to be all these things, we know that there is a world yet to come. We know that the beginning of the end happened 2000 years ago as our Lord hung on the cross, for God, like the new testament widow had given "everything she had, all she had to live on,’literally in the Greek 'holon ton bion,' Christ gave his whole life.
And so while our world may not be too different from the violent, misguided and hungry world of Elijah, we know it's coming to a close. And we know that on the other side of that close is the promised new Jerusalem.
In two weeks, we will witness something similar to what the widow witnessed in our story. When Samuel Newton is baptized, we'll hear a promised attached to the water at the font. We'll hear how this promise is going to give the gift of new life, of redemption. It's a promise that won't fail. And unlike the jar of meal and jug of oil, which only flowed freely while the famine lasted, the that promise spoken, as by God's own self, is eternal. A promise that will not just care for us in the changes and chances of this world, but will carry and care for us in the next world, when we shall sit at the banquet table with holy Elijah, with the widow, her son, and her household, and we will feast at the meal that will have no end, for we will celebrate the wedding of the lamb to his church for ever, world without end. Amen.
Sisters and brothers, we can answer these questions by getting angry with God. As blessed Teresa cried out so can we. As our Lord called out so can we, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!" "How long will these bones which you have crushed be out of joint?"
But to get lost in such anger, while a temptation, is not an option for we who walk on the way. The widow's actions are instructive for us. Upon hearing Elijah's demand for water, she went to get him some. In the middle of a withering drought. It was only when he asked for a cake that she responded with despair.
We too must seek soothing water for our neighbors, even when we are overwhelmed, even when our own sin is calling us to self-satisfaction. Even when we're angry at God for the challenges and hardships of our lives. Such is Christian discipleship in this world that is, frankly, made complicated by human actions. Remember that it as King Ahab whose antagonizing compelled God to call the drought, and what was Ahab's sin? Idolatry and warfare. Just like his king-fathers going back to Jeraboam, who led the civil war of Israel against Judah, and back to David himself who, for the sake of lust had poor Uriah killed in battle.
We make the world a rough and tumble place. Not God.
Precisely because humankind is a live and let die community God does intrude with demands and promises. Demands that we let live and promises that he will let us live even after all our failures. Here again the widow is instructive. She did not offer a great show of loyalty to Elijah. She did not make any great claim of faithfulness, saying that she would get him water and was sure that her god would provide for her. No, she complained. But God made a promise to her through Elijah anyways. She resigned herself and her household to death but God made a promise that gave her life through limitless meal and oil. Not because she trusted, not because she earned it, not because she even wanted it.
God made the promise to give life because that's what God does.
God provides. God gives freely. God gives life to the dead.
Will the world, as we experience it from day to day, continue to be a place of drought and famine? Yes. Will the world continue to be a place of inequalities and sinfulness? Yes. Will we as humans continue to choose strife and idols over the peace of God that passes all understanding? Lamentably yes.
But while the world is and will continue to be all these things, we know that there is a world yet to come. We know that the beginning of the end happened 2000 years ago as our Lord hung on the cross, for God, like the new testament widow had given "everything she had, all she had to live on,’literally in the Greek 'holon ton bion,' Christ gave his whole life.
And so while our world may not be too different from the violent, misguided and hungry world of Elijah, we know it's coming to a close. And we know that on the other side of that close is the promised new Jerusalem.
In two weeks, we will witness something similar to what the widow witnessed in our story. When Samuel Newton is baptized, we'll hear a promised attached to the water at the font. We'll hear how this promise is going to give the gift of new life, of redemption. It's a promise that won't fail. And unlike the jar of meal and jug of oil, which only flowed freely while the famine lasted, the that promise spoken, as by God's own self, is eternal. A promise that will not just care for us in the changes and chances of this world, but will carry and care for us in the next world, when we shall sit at the banquet table with holy Elijah, with the widow, her son, and her household, and we will feast at the meal that will have no end, for we will celebrate the wedding of the lamb to his church for ever, world without end. Amen.
