Plymouth Congregational Church of Fort Wayne, UCC
June 6, 2010

Scripture Lesson:  I Kings 17:8-16

The Blast from Heaven

"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."
 (I Kings 17:16)

Prelude

Jesus knew this story.

He knew it well. 

And his use of the story was explosive.

He told the story to a people who appreciated his eloquence,

but neither his interpretation nor his application of the

story's core message.  In fact, the story almost got Jesus killed.

Those who heard it were enraged.  Filled they were, "with wrath,"

so reads the King James.  The synagogue crowd, to whom Jesus

was preaching, rose up, seized him, and dragged him to the edge

of a cliff that they might cast him down, throw him out.

So much for winning the hearts and finding favor

with the home town. The audience at Nazareth

proved to be an unstable fan base.  Initially amazed

at the gracious words they heard, they turned.

The story employed by Jesus incited

their violent reaction.  

The prophet was not welcome at home.

It was a raw, rude awakening - for all involved

(see Luke 4:16-30).

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In the lesson from I Kings 17:8-16,

the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath,

I see three critical issues that

relate to our lives and our time.

But first, please - permit a comment or two

on the prophetic dimensions of our faith

and the role the prophet plays

in keeping faith honest and real.

The question that haunts me is this:

is there room in our religion for the

prophetic element?

A number of years ago while serving in Michigan,

I preached some sort of sermon on some prophet -

who or what the occasion was, I've long forgotten.

What I remember was a member of the church

passing through the line in the narthex at the end

of the service offering comment.  "John," he said,

"it took me the longest time to track along with your

message this morning.  You kept talking about

prophets, and you were making no sense to me

at all.  And then I realized you were talking about

prophets, p-r-o-p-h-e-t-s, and I was thinking profits, p-r-o-f-i-t-s."

That church member was a corporate exec, a person

whose decisions literally impacted the interests

of investors, as well as the labor force in both the office

and factory that fueled the corporate enterprise.

He was also dedicated to the church and ministry.

But there was this huge gap in his frame of reference.

His mind was fixed on profits, not prophets; he knew

a lot about making profit, he knew little about the

makings of a prophet.

The year, 2008:

The drama - a man running for president attends a church in

Chicago, Trinity UCC, whose pastor preaches in a manner with

a message that is offensive.  A large portion of our land -

Bible-believing, God-fearing, daily-praying people -

were offended and indignant at the sound bytes that played

again and again.  The church, our UCC, was literally under

assault from forces both from within and without the church,

who had no inclining, much less appreciation, for the

prophetic role that is necessary for the attainment of a

well-rounded life of Christian faith.

So stilted was the negative portrayal, we had major media outlets

scrambling to offer rudimentary instruction in the prophetic

dimensions of preaching in African-American church culture.

"That's just something they do." 

The year, 2010 -

When a pundit like Glen Beck tells his listeners that if you hear

your church, your preacher, speak of social justice, you best get out,

he is revealing either his ignorance or his rejection of

a prophetic dimension to saving faith.

When a congressman from Indiana,

having resigned from office, offers a

summary of biblical faith in the newspaper,

and here I quote: 

"The whole Old Testament, from an evangelical

perspective, is to show that man can't be perfect.

And the whole point of the New Testament is to

show that Christ sacrifices for it."

We are dealing with faith expression that has

amputated the word of the prophets from its

witness and corrupted the biblical revelation

so as to miss "the whole point"

that is meant to save.

Now - let me be clear (as much as I can be!),

not all religions affirm or accommodate the prophetic

dimension or what we might call the prophetic personality.

But a Bible-based Christian faith most certainly does.

Under instruction of the church, I learned that Jesus is

Christ, the Anointed, and that he serves a three-fold office:

(1) our chief Prophet and Teacher;

(2) our only High Priest;

(3) our Eternal King (Sovereign Lord), whose word and spirit

governs us (Heidelberg Catechism, question 31).

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How best might we understand the prophet?

W. Brueggemann writes of the strange character of the prophet,

whose utterances are best understood as "subversive rationality" 

(W. Brueggemann, I Kings, p. 79).

The best work on The Prophets that I know of by Abraham J. Heschel,

which we should probably study in adult education.

Characteristics enumerated by Heschel include:

(1) an impatience that strikes others as hysteria (p. 4);

(2) the prophet is seen as "strange, one-sided, an unbearable extremist" p. 16);

(3) the prophet places a "strain on the emotions, wrenching ... conscience from the state of suspended

animation" (p. 7);

(4) prophetic language is urgent, alarming;

(5) the prophet is intensely aware that religion could distort divine demands; so there are rants against complicity

existing between church and state; and awareness that institutional loyalty within the church could often trump

fidelity to the God the church purports to serve; priests ... committed perjury by bearing false witness, condoning

violence, tolerating hatred, called for ceremonies instead of bursting forth with wrath and indignation at cruelty,

deceit, idolatry, and violence" (p. 11).

It was Heschel who said:

"While the world is at ease and asleep,

the prophet feels the blast from heaven"

(A. Heschel, The Prophets, p. 16).

And,

to be a prophet was both

a distinction and an affliction

(A. Heschel, The Prophets, p. 17-18).

I take this to mean,

the prophet stood out;

the prophet suffered

for the subversive

rationality that governs life.

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The story of Elijah and the widow.

Elijah had stood toe-to-toe with Ahab, ruler of Israel,

and declared, "you may think you are in control, you may think

you have all the power, but you don't!  You do not control the weather,

the wind, or the rains.  And there will not be any of these in the land

except by my word."  Elijah blasted the administration.

And the drought came.  No rain.  For a year, and another, and yet another. 

It was a crisis.  A calamity.  The land and the people suffered.

Jesus knew this story - 9 centuries after its first telling.  It was a horrible

time - a time of famine.  No resources.  Scarcity.  Daily doubt and wonder,

will I receive today what I need to survive and carry on.

Elijah was not spared the suffering.  He initially had taken refuge in a wadi,

an oasis, known as Cherith.  But even the Wadi Cherith dried up.

That's when he received word to get to Zarephath and find the widow

with whom the Lord had had a word.  She will provide for you, so Elijah

was instructed. 

Now here we note the drama.   There existed in the time of Elijah, at least

among the faithful, what we might call an angry mood of anti-incumbent

feeling.  Life within the beltway of Israel was brazenly out of control,

and it was complicated, for the King was the politician of the day to hate,

the Queen, Jezebel by name, worked to

legitimize it all by her spirituality.  She

had zeal, commitment, resolve; and she

had her own prophets whom she paid

and promoted.  Into the land from whence

these all came, Elijah was directed,

to a woman, widow, with whom God had spoken.

And there, Elijah discovers, God was at work

for his good, for her good, providing resources.

Curious exchange:  I'm about to die here,

the cupboard is bare, freezer has been emptied,

and you want my last? 

Do not be afraid, Elijah states.

Do not be afraid.

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The three lessons mentioned earlier:

(1) The prophet, in this specific instance, Elijah, is giving serious attention to

living in a way that is compatible with the God's presence in the world.

There's a lot going on that is incompatible with God in this world.

The faith community is called to a life of compatibility.

(2) God is at work on the margins; in fact, God works within those we might consider "enemy;"

God works within those

the scripture identifies as "least" -

the widow, the orphan, the poor, the oppressed;

Gospel work requires awareness, information, understanding; church work

de-stigmatizes those the world would demonize

(3) Grace does come, God serves us well, providing for our needs in times of crisis,

help comes amidst the calamities

of life; God provides unexpectedly; Jesus put this to prayer:

"Give us this day our daily bread."

For Elijah and the widow:  the jar of meal was not emptied,

the cruse of oil did not fail, according to the word the Lord

spoke by Elijah.  Together they formed an odd alliance of grace

and mercy.  Together they forged a friendship in which they

both were able to praise God from whom their blessings flowed.

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I wonder:

who was more surprised?

Elijah, that God would speak to some

foreign widow; or the widow, that

resources would come from an unseen source

to meet both her needs and the needs of her

child?

Who was more in awe at the wonders of God,

so evident, in times so conflicted and stressful?

I don't know.  Both, I assume, were left to marvel

and wonder in their own unique ways.

I revisited this past week the document issued two years

ago calling upon the church to engage in sacred conversation

on race.  It includes the statement:

"we have a high and holy calling to interrupt our nation's historical

amnesia by passing on to our children a history of our church and

our nation that is authentic and complex, a history that neither

demonizes nor sanitizes our ancestors ..." 

This is prophetic ministry, I believe, a "high and holy calling"

to tell the story - to our children, for our children, for their good,

our salvation, to break down the walls of hostility that are an affront

to the very foundations of our faith. 

May fear not cause us to swerve.

May faith so fill our hearts and minds,

that we serve with courage the God

whose will is that love prevail both now and forever.