How desperate would you get if you had no way of feeding yourself? If you had no
money, if food was scarce, if you there was no work to be found, how would you
eat? All around the world, billions of people have to deal with this question
every day.
They make difficult, even heart wrenching choices about how to meet their own
basic needs. But one guy in the news has found a way to eat quite well without
paying for his food. His odd way of meeting his daily caloric requirements has
earned him the name, “the grim eater.”
Funeral directors at the Harbour City Funeral Home in New Zealand noticed that
they had a “frequent flyer” coming to their funerals. He attended four funerals
one week, and he was very polite and respectful to the families of the deceased.
He paid his respects and milled around the crowd.
But then he did something odd: when sampling some of the finger food that the
funeral home provides as part of their service, this unnamed man got out some
Tupperware containers and began filling them with food so he could take the food
home.
The funeral directors thought this kind of behavior was out of place. One of
them pulled them man aside and told him he could have some food, but that he
couldn’t take it home. But after he attended four funerals in week, they quietly
snapped a picture of him and began showing it to other funeral directors in the
area.
It soon became clear that this guy was not someone who had the tremendous
misfortune of losing four friends/relatives a week. He was showing up at
funerals instead of going to the grocery store like everyone else. Apparently
the grim eater has faded into the shadows for now. But if you see someone at a
funeral you don’t recognize, don’t be surprised.
That’s a kind of silly story, but it illustrates just how far some people will
go, how desperate people can get when they don’t see a way of feeding
themselves. What would we do if it didn’t rain around here for three years? How
desperate would we become?
The story we read for this morning explores that question, but it does so as a
way of talking about who God is. It asks the question that is still on the minds
of so many people in the third world, and to some extent in our recession
stricken economy: Does God provide for people in need? How does God do so? Why
does God do so? Why does God provide for some but not for others?
This story is set during a period of the history of Israel when the people were
divided into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Before
this the nation was ruled as one nation by three different kings. But after king
Solomon died, the nation split into those two kingdoms.
This story is set in the northern kingdom of Israel during the rule of a king
named Ahab. He ruled from 873-852 BC. Ahab was regarded as one of the worst
kings Israel ever had because, having married a queen from another country, he
began worshipping the gods of that other country and encouraging the people of
Israel to do the same.
The author of 1 Kings wants to show that the God of Israel is the only true God,
and that Ahab brought all kinds of misery upon himself and Israel when he
started worshipping this other god named Baal. God decides to use a prophet
named Elijah to confront Ahab and show him the error of his ways.
Elijah is one of, if not the greatest prophet in the history of Israel. And when
the followers of Jesus start writing about Jesus’ life 900 years later, they
describe Jesus’ life using images from the stories of Elijah. This story later
inspired Jesus’ followers to write about how he fed 5000 people with a few
loaves of bread and some fish.
God called Elijah to confront Ahab regarding his actions. God needed to make the
point that only God had power over the world, the weather, and nature. So Ahab
was wasting his time praying to some non-existent god like Baal.
God decided that the way to show Ahab who’s boss was to withhold the rain from
the land. They wouldn’t even have dew on the ground again until God said so. As
you might imagine, this drought made life terribly difficult for everyone, not
just for Ahab.
Now let me be clear: I’m not entirely comfortable with talking about God
withholding rain from people in order to show everyone who’s God. The kind of
compassionate God I believe in has too much value for human life and the health
of creation to cause such suffering just to make a point.
You walk down a dangerous path when you start saying that a natural disaster or
even a catastrophe caused by human meddling happens because God is ticked off at
someone. We really have no way of knowing that for sure, and there’s nothing in
the Bible that suggests we need to take an assertion like that on faith.
So let’s hear this story for what it is: it’s comes from a time when people saw
storms and droughts and plagues and earthquakes as the result of divine action,
whereas today we understand that most of these things occur naturally over time.
I want us to focus on what the story says about God, and how God was experienced
by God’s people.
Elijah goes to Ahab and tells him that there isn’t going to be any rain for a
long time, as a way of showing Ahab that the God of Israel is the only true God.
The problem is that Elijah himself has to eat. So when the river dries up in the
drought, Elijah is facing starvation himself.
God miraculously provides for Elijah by sending ravens to feed him bread and
meat. Again, here’s more evidence that we need to hear this story is symbolic
and not literal: the bread and the meat being provided to him in the desert is
meant to remind us of the way God provided for the people of Israel when they
were in the desert with Moses on the way to the Promised Land.
But when the river dried up, there were no more ravens to feed him. So God tells
Elijah to do something kind of scandalous: God tells him to go to Sidon, the
land of the evil queen Jezebel that Ahab married, and find a widow in a town
called Zarephath who will feed him.
The point of him doing this is to show that the God of Israel even had power
over things in Sidon. What better way to show Ahab that Baal was powerless than
to have Elijah go and demonstrate God’s power in Sidon? If Baal can’t stop
Elijah from operating in Sidon, he must not have any power.
Sure enough, Elijah finds a widow by the town gates in Sidon. She is gathering
sticks to make a fire. Elijah asks her to bring him a drink of water. Instead of
asking who he is, the woman goes to get him some water. So Elijah decides to
push his luck. He says, “Hey, can you get me some bread too?”
She probably rolled her eyes when he said that. “Doesn’t this guy realize that
there’s a famine? We’re just days from starvation, and he thinks I’m going to
wait on him like a server at Denny’s!”
She told him that the only food she had was some flour and some oil, enough to
make one more loaf of bread. That was all she had. When that ran out, she and
her son would slowly begin starving to death. There was nothing else left to
eat. So bringing a stranger a bite to eat was kind of an imposition.
Elijah probably had no idea just how desperate she was. If she could have shown
up at funerals for the food she probably would have. That would be kind of
ironic if people were dying of starvation, wouldn’t it?
Elijah said, “God ahead, make your bread. Just make sure I get the first piece.
Then when you go back, make some more for you and your son. If you do that, my
God will make sure that you have oil in your jug and flour in your jar until
this drought ends.”
Now think about what he’s saying here. She doesn’t know this guy. She doesn’t
believe in his god. And he’s asking her to give her last bit of food to him,
potentially bringing on her and her own son’s death. What are the odds that
anyone of us would say, “Yeah buddy. Here’s some bread. I wasn’t planning on
living very long anyway.”
But there was something convincing about the way he spoke to her. She must have
seen this guy as a true man of God. So she took all the flour and oil she had
left, made him a loaf of bread, and gave it to him.
And when she went back to make some bread for her and her son, she was shocked
to see that there was still plenty of oil an flour to make another loaf.
In fact, the longer the drought lasted, the more food she had. There was always
some left for her to make the next loaf of bread. She was one of the few people
in Sidon who always had enough to eat in that drought.
As I said before, when Jesus’ disciples told stories and wrote about Jesus’
life, they described him in terms of Elijah. Like Elijah, Jesus took a small
amount of bread and fish and multiplied it so that hungry people would have
enough to eat and then some.
But the difference in the New Testament is that whereas Elijah was being told by
God what to do and say, Jesus is described as God in the flesh, speaking
directly to the world and personally providing for people’s needs.
As I said before, one of the questions this story raises is, “Can we still talk
about God providing for us today? Does God still provide a way forward even when
it seems like we’re stuck? What do we have to do to get God to provide for us?”
That’s a tough question. In fact, all of these questions are difficult.
If we say that God always provides for those in need, then why are people all
over the world starving to death every day? If we say that God always provides
for people who have faith, then no Christian would every die of starvation.
But this woman in Sidon was not a person of faith in the God of Israel. She
didn’t believe in Elijah’s God. We have no idea whether or not she was a moral
person. She could have been a terrible person.
All we know about her was that she was a poor widow on the brink of starvation.
God didn’t take care of her because she was a saint. But the truth is,
Christians die of starvation in third world countries just like everyone else.
So does that mean that God doesn’t provide? Well, not really, because every
community of faith tells stories of how God has provided for them at the times
of their worst need. And they have always experienced God’s power at a time when
they saw no viable way forward in life.
What we can learn from this story is that Elijah was courageous for God at a
time when his life was in danger. He went forward in faith even though everyone
around him was desperate and depressed. He did not let himself get down, and he
didn’t give up on his faith.
There’s a temptation for us to give up when things are looking down for us. It’s
easy to have a lot of faith when things are going well. It’s tough to keep
strong in our faith when we’re going through a period of drought in our own
life. The experience of this recession has brought that reality home to all of
us.
God doesn’t seem to be so accessible when we’re looking at the last loaf of
bread and wondering where we’re going to get the next one. But this story
reminds us that it is often at the point where it seems like there’s no way
forward that God provides for us in unexpected and exciting ways.
I want to finish with a story by Clive Calver, former president of World Relief
who specializes in Refugee Resettlement. He tells the story about his mother,
back in England, five years ago. His father died in 1980. He died of a heart
attack, the first one. One moment he was there; the next minute he was gone.
As a dutiful son, Clive’s duty was to go with his wife, Ruth, and see his mum
and say, “Mum, would you like to come and live with us?” His mother was an
instructor in business administration in London. She only had one child, Clive,
and she loved her peace and quiet. She loved her profession.
She looked at her son, daughter-in-law, three screaming grandchildren and the
likelihood of more, and she smiled weakly and said, “Thank you for the offer,
but I’ll manage.” And she did. She looked after herself well and everything went
well until the day they found she had Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is desperate. First of all, you get confused. Then you start
to lose your judgment. Then you lose your identity and you lose the identity of
others. She used to think Clive was a pink elephant. She couldn’t remember words
any more.
Clive writes, “We were told that we couldn’t look after my mum because she might
be violent to the children, so we put her in a special home for her and other
Alzheimer’s victims. Either my wife, Ruth, or I would go and visit my mum every
week. One week I was away in the north of England speaking and so Ruth went.
My mum was crying, so Ruth went to one of the staff and said, “Why is my
mother-in-law crying?” They said, “Oh, Flora does sometimes. She doesn’t know
who she is or where she is, but we cheer her up. We tell her jokes and she
laughs.” Now that’s not the kind of thing that my mother would normally do, so
Ruth was very concerned.
She persuaded my mum to go to the lovely little private room she had. It took
about fifteen minutes to get her the twenty yards to her room, but when Ruth got
her there she said to my mum, “Would you like me to pray for you?” There was no
way that my mum could understand, but somehow something clicked for her and she
said, “Yes.” And Ruth prayed for her mother-in-law.
But then my wife forgot where she was and said, “Mum, would you like to pray?”
My mum couldn’t say anything coherent, but somehow a window came just for a
moment. This is what my mother prayed. It was the last coherent thing she said
in her life. She said, “Dear Lord, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am
and I don’t know where I am, but please love me.”
You know, it’s that kind of moment where truth comes, when your body is being
destroyed by cancer as hers was, and your mind is scrambled by Alzheimer’s
disease as hers was. You still have a spirit to know and love God. We’re still a
people who can travel to Zarephath and take our part of this world’s pain. We
can still ask God to come and do what we’ve never seen God do, because God
doesn’t leave us but stays with us.
That kind of hope is still available to us through the person of Jesus, who gave
us what we needed while we were still estranged from God and still comes to us
like Elijah going to that widow in her time of desperation.
We serve a God who promises that the jar of meal will never be emptied, that the
cruse of oil will never run out. And just as Elijah stayed with that poor widow
in her darkest hour, God will always be with us, showing us a way out.