June 6, 2010

“It Ain’t Necessarily So”       San Williams

I Kings 17:8-16

George and Ira Gershwin’s musical Porgy and Bess contains the hit song, “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”  The last line goes “I’m preaching dis’ sermon to show, it ain’t nece—ain’t nece, ain’t necessarily…so!”  Well, that phrase, “It ain’t necessarily so” would also serve as a fitting title for today’s episode about the prophet Elijah, the widow and her son.   Every element in the story contradicts conventional wisdom.  Elijah finds help in the most unexpected place, and from a most unlikely person.  In a situation of utter desolation, there is suddenly abundance.  People struggling just to stay alive give and receive hospitality, kindness and compassion.  This story, like so many in the Bible, challenges our assessment of what is possible.  Whenever we think a situation hopeless, the resources insufficient, the task impossible, the prophetic word says, in effect, “It ain’t necessarily so.”  

In the Coen brothers’ film “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?” the escaped prisoners find themselves in a barn that is burning down.  The authorities have the building totally surrounded, and there’s no way to escape.  At that moment, the George Clooney character turns to his companions and utters a line of comic understatement when he says, “Gentlemen, we’re in a tight spot.”  In today’s story, Elijah, the widow of Sidon and her son, are in a tight spot.    After telling King Ahab that there would be no rain in the land, Elijah heads across the Jordan to find water, and for a while the small river Cherith sustains him.  When it dries up, he heads northwest toward the coastlands of southern Syria, to a village named Zarephath.  By the time he reaches Zarephath, Elijah is desperate for water and food.  When he sees a widow gathering sticks, he begs her for a drink of water.  The widow graciously starts to bring him the water.  But before she leaves, he makes yet another request.   Can she provide—note the desperation in his words—even “a morsel of bread?”  But the woman tells the prophet that she and her son are at the end of their ability to survive. Every word she utters is filled with exhaustion and resignation. “I have nothing…a handful of meal…a little oil...so that my son and I may eat and die.”  They were, without a doubt, in a very tight spot.

Thankfully, we have not known such extreme lack of provision, such life-threatening desperation as Elijah and the widow faced.  But maybe we do sometimes feel like the world is increasingly imperiled and operating in a crisis mode.  Just in the last year, we’ve had the financial crisis, followed by the health care crisis, then the immigration reform crisis, and now the environmental crisis as oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Add to these national and global concerns, and many of you may feel trapped by what seems an intractable personal situation—financial, emotional, vocational.  No, we’re not pushed to the very brink of survival, as Elijah and the widow were, but like them, we’re not totally unfamiliar with what it feels like to be in a tight spot.  

And in those times when we feel stuck, on the verge of exhaustion, helpless, without hope, the prophetic word whispers, “It ain’t necessarily so.”  Look at Elijah and the widow. Can you imagine a more unlikely place to experience an abundance of God’s mercy than Sidon?  Sidon is an area beyond Israel; it’s foreign soil.  Not only that, but Queen Jezebel, Ahab’s wife—the very one who had stirred up so much trouble with her worship of Baal—was from…guess where?  Sidon!  This foreign territory filled with Baal worshippers would be the last place to expect to find an outpouring of God’s grace.

And could there be a more unlikely person to be of help than the poor widow who lived in Sidon?  The widow as an agent of divine mercy is almost ludicrous.  Far from having the ability to offer Elijah help, she represents the poorest of the poor, the least of the least, a nobody who has nothing.  The great prophet has been reduced to relying on the kindness and generosity of a stranger, a poor widow, a foreigner who, presumably, is herself a worshiper of Baal.  What irony!

But of course the Bible is full of just such irony.  Especially the stories of Jesus’ ministry often echo the themes and events associated with Elijah.  For example, this story of Elijah going to Sidon reminds us of the story in the seventh chapter of Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus goes to the same area and meets the Syro-Phoenician woman, another foreigner driven by love for her child, who opens up the compassion of Jesus to share God’s mercy with Gentiles such as herself.  Then Luke chapter 4 tells of the time when Jesus shocked and infuriated his hometown audience by bringing up this very story about the widow of Zarephath in Sidon to illustrate how God is at work in the most unexpected places, with the most unlikely people.  Like Elijah, Jesus kept moving the focus of God’s activity away from the centers of power and extending it to the foreigner, the outcast, the sick and the desperate. Even Elijah’s words to the widow, “Do not fear,” are the very words Jesus says to the frightened disciples in his resurrection appearance to them.

Given these similarities, it’s no wonder that when Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” Peter answered, “Some say you are Elijah.”   There is much about the two men’s ministries that is similar.  Both Elijah and Jesus teach us that God’s  goodness is at work in out-of-the-way places and often through out-of-luck people. To all those who felt themselves to be unworthy of God’s love, Jesus and the prophets respond:  “It ain’t necessarily so.” 

So think with me:  What are the implications of the prophetic word for our life together in this congregation?  Imagine a congregation, our congregation, not just listening to the word of the prophets, or studying the lives of the prophets simply out of intellectual curiosity, but imagine a congregation that is embodying the prophetic word in its own life and ministry, a congregation living as a prophetic witness in the world today. 

Now that would be a congregation that refuses to accept scarcity as the defining reality of our lives.  This would be a congregation that refuses to stay put, but rather takes God’s welcome into the world.  Imagine a church transcending the boundaries of insider and outsider, a church going, as did Elijah and Jesus, to the margins and the marginalized. I’m picturing a congregation where compassion, love and justice are not parceled out, but shared in abundance.

Just look around you at all the signs of God’s unending abundance right here in our Sunday assembly.  Here is the font, the sign that God’s love is like an ever flowing stream.  And here is the place where the Gospel of God’s justice and peace is proclaimed in the eternal Word, Jesus Christ. And look at the Table set with bread and wine, enough, in fact, to feed the whole world.  All these are signs of God’s abundant mercy, and they are offered to all. 

Friends, our world is in a tight spot.  We often find ourselves in a tight spot.  We wonder if there is a word from the Lord, help on the horizon, grace and new life anywhere to be found.  Such fears are countered by the prophetic witness to God’s enduring faithfulness.  So whenever we find ourselves thinking that hope is gone and the provisions for life seem to have run out—hear and heed the good news: It ain’t (say it with me)  “It ain’t necessarily so!”