Sermon — November 10, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Today’s sermon began with a bit of an extended preamble about prayer in challenging times, followed by a prayer; you can listen to this all in the audio, but there is not a written text. The text of the sermon proper is included below.
I don’t have much to say about the scribes, who like to wear long robes, and have the best seats, who tend—if we’re being honest with ourselves—to say some rather long prayers. I just might risk hypocrisy with that, today.
And I don’t want to say much about the poor widow who comes, and puts her last two coins into the Temple treasury. It’s too easy, on the week before our Stewardship Ingathering, to make this one about giving money to the church; and that’s not really what I want to do today.
But I do want to say something about what to do when you’re at the end of your rope; when you’ve worked as hard as you can, and done everything you can, and it hasn’t worked; and it feels like hope is lost.
Because that’s exactly where Elijah finds this woman who lives at Zarephath, in our first reading today.
It’s worth saying that, throughout the ancient Near East, we have evidence of laws that tried to provide for widows and orphans, that tried to establish some kind of social safety net for those who didn’t have the property, or labor, or the family support to provide for themselves. And it’s not just that this woman and her child have fallen through the cracks; there’s been a drought, and food is scarce, and there simply isn’t enough to go around. She has nothing prepared to offer Elijah. Her pantry is empty, just a cup of flour or so, and a little bit of oil, and there’s nothing else.
We can assume she’s prayed for rain, and so has everyone else. We can assume she’s asked for help, and there just isn’t enough to share. And so here she is, at the end of the line, and her story is deeply sad. Her plan is just to go, and cook what she has left; and then that’s it for them.
And this strange man, this man she doesn’t know, comes to her and says, “Do that; but give me some as well.”
And she does. And that is an extraordinary thing. He’s not her son. He’s not her neighbor. He’s not even her fellow-citizen, because she lives in Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, in Phoenicia; and he’s an Israelite. He’s crossed the border to her, and the only document he has is the word of God telling him to go. And I can tell you, because I have studied these two tongues, that she could understand his words, but she could hear it in his voice that he was not from here. And yet she took a quarter-cup of her last cup of flour, and baked a little bread for him, as well.
And that’s the generosity of desperation, because this is all they have, and then their lives will end; so why not give a little bit away?
And “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.”
Now—Miracles are not a great answer to the concrete problems of the world. Faith alone cannot solve the problems of world hunger, or of drought, problems that have plagued humankind throughout history, however hard they’ve prayed or not. Such concrete miracles are rare. But every day, God works miracles of the heart. And so I don’t exactly want to give you any advice. But I want you to tell how I used my flour this week, and I want to invite you to think, when you find yourself at the end of the line, about how you might use yours.
So like I said, I was up for about half of Tuesday night—which did give me some valuable sermon-writing time, as I lay in bed—and then Wednesday is a day when I’m home with Murray for the day and Alice is at work. And so I got up, on Wednesday, after a couple hours’ sleep, and spent the rest of the day with a child whose sleep had been blissfully undisturbed. We read a chapter of our history book about the Alaric the Goth and the fall of the Roman Empire, and did some single-digit math—this is a humanities family, to be clear—and we went out for a walk on a beautiful, warm day. And at the end of this long and high-energy day, I found that I was not as exhausted as I sometimes am. I was feeling better than I had when I woke up. In fact, I was feeling better than I had the last night when I went to bed.
I had very little left in me on Wednesday morning, and I gave some of it away; and I found that “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail.” And I know exactly why. Not only had I not spent the day entirely in my head, as I had for those sleepless hours at night; but I had spent my day loving someone, in a very concrete way.
I don’t know what it is that has you at the end of your rope today. If it’s not the election, it may well be something else. But I do know that sometimes, when you’re all at of flour, paradoxically it can help to try to give some of it away. Not to give more of yourself away to whatever it is that has you drained. But to spend some of your energy, in a very concrete way, on something else that’s fueled by love.
Because while miracles of bread and oil are rare, miracles of the heart are not, and you just might find a new abundance at the very moment that you give what you have away.