1 Kings 17:8–16
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:24–28
Mark 12:38–44
Year B
I.N.I.
We are in a different world than twenty years ago. It used to be that concerns over career satisfaction in your job and meaning in your day to day affairs was called a midlife crisis, and probably still is. Now high school students are encourage to choose a career track, college graduates are measured for their success. The pressure applied to young people is so compounded that the anxiety in middle age about vocational comfort and the nagging question “is this all there is” has given rise to a new name for those in their mid 20’s: the quarterlife crisis.
The days are all but gone when you work for the same company until you retire. While I have served four congregations, as a pastor since I was 26 years old I consider myself a bit of an anomaly. Let me ask you who are post high school or post college. How many of you are on the same track that you started with, which you might call Plan A? How many of you have started over, gone to a different company, gone back to school, begun work after caring for kids, or seen your job or business dissolve, which you might call Plan B, C, or D?
In the story from the First Reading, you must know that the prophet Elijah was living on borrowed time. He had successfully demonstrated God’s power over the hapless prophets of Ba’al, but ran away after Jezebel’s fury prompted her husband Ahab to seek his head. Meanwhile the drought that Elijah interpreted as God’s judgment made it difficult to stay in Israel, so Elijah holed himself up in a cave called the Wadi Cherith, and was given food by unlikely critters, crows bringing him provisions. Then the Wadi ran dry, and Plan B was put into effect. From his hideout, Elijah was sent by God to an even less viable place, a remote Canaanite village, like Dixville Notch. And it goes from bad to worse. Elijah, God says, will be fed by none other than a widow. Widows were not given the right to an inheritance, so in the vagaries of ancient society were themselves beholden to the welfare of the community unless she remarried or found recourse from her grown sons, neither of which emerges in the First Reading. But with Plan A off the table, and the word coming from God to go to Zarephath, Elijah has little choice. Here’s how the story is told in The Message:
As [Elijah] came to the entrance of the village he met a woman, a widow, gathering firewood. He asked her, “Please, would you bring me a little water in a jug? I need a drink.” As she went to get it, he called out, “And while you’re at it, would you bring me something to eat?”
She said, “I swear, as surely as your GOD lives, I don’t have so much as a biscuit. I have a handful of flour from a jar and a little oil in a bottle; you found me scratching together just enough firewood to make a last meal for my son and me. After we eat it, we’ll die.” (Colorado Springs: NAVPRESS © 2003, 2006)
Well, she was wrong. God provided enough for the woman, her son, and Elijah, all out of her empty storehouse. In the encounter between Elijah and the poor woman from Zarephath, both widow and prophet were satisfied, you might even say enriched. From Plan B, C, or D.
Widow stories today show God’s abundance for a world stuck on its limitations, and complacent with its assets.
In both of today’s widow stories, these poverty-stricken women by scale were the most generous. Put another way, their giving toward God was the most extravagant, the most costly.
By their example, the widow at Zarephath and the widow in the temple, what is it that demonstrates the lavishness of God?
Is like Christ who became poor for our sake?
Is it that Plan B broke open an awareness of God’s abundance: the widow of Zarephath giving herself over to Elijah’s promise that her handful of flour and drops of oil would be sufficient; the widow in the temple so caught up in her sacrificial act that all she had left was reliance on God?
This is how the gospel concludes, again in the version called The Message: Jesus says “All the others gave what they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.”
The version I’m used to reading says she gave “out of her poverty.” I’ve always been intrigued by that.
I don’t think that I have ever known true poverty. I remember scrimping by a student. It seemed like I lived off macaroni and cheese. I remember living on one-income in early marriage while Kari was still a student and feeling like we never had quite enough, always in debt accrued through purchasing appliances or fixing a car.
I can’t imagine sacrificing my livelihood or disposing of my assets as a way to show my generosity. But I do wonder if what I give is enough, and how that giving really impacts hunger, how my recycling contributes to the greening of society, how my tithe is reflective of my love toward God.
I think I could risk more. I think that if everyone truly believed that out of their own generosity, there would be enough, and acted on it, God’s intention to provide for the world would be realized.
And this is what I do know. When I have risked something out of love, I have felt more loving. When Kari and bought our wedding bands that were not hugely expensive but required us to stretch ourselves to buy them, it said something in our young lives that made our commitment to love one another more deep.
Last year, when as a family we spent some inheritance money for a trip to connect with brothers and sisters in Palestine last summer, we felt stronger about our advocacy for Lutherans who give witness to the gospel in our companion synod.
Whenever I have risked saying something, doing something, giving something out of my passion for Christ who himself became poor for our sake, even if it results in failure or falls short of what I hope, I feel that God can do something with it. God can use manna. God can use a few loaves a bread and some fish.
God can even use the cross as a gate to life.
What do you think?
As a community we are stronger when we risk generosity to others, which flows out from the abundance of God’s storehouse of mercy, and is planted by the tree of life upon which Jesus died.
As a community and individuals we are enriched when we consider Plan B, C, or D as a way to open ourselves to God,
Unlikely ravens were sent to Elijah.
One little widow from what seemed a bare cupboard like made survival bread. Another from what seemed like her poverty gave an endowment.
God uses who we are and what we have, in quarter and midlife crises, in financial stresses, in career shifts and congregational poverty, and provides for us.
God risks the world by Christ emptying himself on the cross. We are marked by that cross and commemorate that death as if it breaks open God’s abundance, in survival bread and communal eating and drinking.
God bless widows. God, make abundant life in Plans B, C, and D. God give us generous spirits, and continue to risk your love in us, because of Christ.I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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