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A sermon on Elijah & the Widow at Zeraphath (1 Kings 17:1-16):

On any given Sunday, you leave the bills on the counter, the to-do list undone, and get the family together for church. You come with more prayer requests than you'd care for, all the predictions of doomsday ringing in your ears, and the pastor climbs up in the pulpit to say something like, ‘Do not be afraid.’

Here you are, doing everything you can just to tread water, and the pastor dares to tell you, don’t be afraid?!? On those days, it’s hard not to think, “how can (s)he say that to me?”

As scripture says, though, there’s nothing new under the sun. In our passage for today, the prophet Elijah finds himself in the same spot. 

The Bible doesn't say much about Elijah. Just that the word of the Lord came to him instead of anyone else. His first assignment was to go and pick a fight with a king that was as wicked as he was powerful, Ahab. Of course Elijah wondered, how God could say that to him.

If he thought that assignment was godawful, though, it only gets worse…

After picking the fight, the word of the Lord comes to him, not with words of assurance, but words of warning! The word of the Lord tells that Elijah he’d better run! “Go east and take cover by a brook,” says the Lord.

Elijah is reduced from standing up to kings to hiding by a stream and getting his food from birds! No doubt he was thinking, “how could God say that to me?”

Before he can even finish the thought, though, the brook dies-up. It was a drought, after all…

The bottom just keeps falling out for poor Elijah, though…

The next thing God says to the poor guy is, he’s to go and find refuge in enemy territory! If that weren’t enough, he’s to get his daily bread from a widow!

If hiding by a brook and getting fed by birds was a dubious plan, this one threatens to fall apart before it’s even out the the Lord’s mouth!

You don’t run from the enemy by going to their turf! And you don’t get your next meal from someone who can’t even provide for themself!

How could Elijah not have wondered, “how God could say that to me?” 

But there he is. At the enemy’s gate, begging from a woman who’s in even more of a bind!

Because here’s the thing, if Elijah’s plight was abysmal, the widow’s was worse! There she was, raising a child by herself, when the rains failed. That summer, she watched as her crops withered. And her only child right along with them…

 

After a week she’d just as well forget, she goes out to prepare one final, meager meal: her and her son’s last supper. Then, out of nowhere, a foreigner comes along, asking for a free lunch!

No doubt she was thinking, “how could you say that to me?”

…Well, before the widow can tell Elijah exactly just where to go, he tells her the last thing she wants to hear, “do not be afraid.”

She’s starving, her only child is wasting away, and this guy tells her not to be afraid?!?

Elijah goes on to tell her, her 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. 

Until?!?

Deep down, we want more than until. Don’t we? We want God’s provisions to come super-sized. We want our assurances to come from the big-gulp, bottomless cup. God, however, provides from, not our abundance, but our scarcity! 

This is the way God always works. The way God prefers it, in fact.

Isn’t that true of your own life? Or our life together? Of the witness of scripture? 

Well, it’s certainly true of this passage. When Elijah needs safety, God sends him to a brook with a flock of ravens. When the brook dries up, God sends him to a widow! When the widow’s making her last supper, God won’t let that jar of meal hit “E’” or the jug of oil run out until there’s rain again.

This is how God works. God takes our scarcity, and provides from it! 

Isn’t that what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 12:9 when he said God’s power is made perfect in our weakness?

Our need, weaknesses, and shortages are the ingredients of God’s power! The raw material God uses to make you and me into witnesses. Witnesses of God’s deliverance, provision, and mercy!

…On any given Sunday, you come to church as the life you’ve been building threatens to come apart. And the pastor dares to say to you, “don’t be afraid.” And just like that day at the gate, when the widow’s life was unraveling and Elijah’s career had hit bottom, it’s hard not to think, “how could (s)he say that to me.” But, here’s the thing, with the way God works, what else is there to say?!?

What held the widow and Elijah’s stories together—what holds our story together—what holds every story together, is the one who’s at the center of them all. The one who keeps turning up at the margins. The one who makes a way out of no way. The one who provides when all that’s left is the bottom of the barrel, God!

God, who would send a messenger to the likes of a starving widow, with a word like ‘do not be afraid.’ God, who would use that starving woman to feed that fleeing prophet!

God, who would take the likes of you and me and make us into a people who would be witnesses of God’s power. The same God who would take our humble assembly and use it to reveal God’s provision!

On any given Sunday, after a week you’d just as well forget, you leave the dreadlines in the paper, come to church and hear the pastor say something like ‘do not be afraid.’

It’s hard, on those days, not to think, ‘how could (s)he say something like that to me.’

With the God we have, though. With what God is always up to. With what God can do with just a little oil and even less meal, what else is there to say?!?

So it bears repeating, “Do not be afraid.”

You who read these words with the gas gauge on E, “do not be afraid."

You who read these words after a week of hearing about an election gone off the rails, “do not be afraid.”

You who read these words, wondering how your family is going to hold together, “do not be afraid.”

You who read these words with the news from the doctor still ringing in your ear, “do not be afraid.”

How could God say this to you, you wonder?

Well, let me tell you, this cup of God’s mercies, this bread of God’s goodness, they will not fail you. They won’t. God promises you, they won’t.

So I tell you again, do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not.