10-7 Sermon

1 Kings 17:8-16

The Widow of Zarephath

 Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’ As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’ 

But she said, ‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.’ 

Elijah said to her, ‘Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The 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.’ 

She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. 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.

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I'd like for you to think about bread for a moment. How many of you have made bread by hand at some point in your life? How many of you still do? When making bread by hand, there's a very important step in this process—you have to let it rise. You need to give the yeast time to work—otherwise your bread won't be light and fluffy. The entire loaf will be two inches tall and it will be as dense as a hockey puck. There isn't enough butter in the world to make good toast out of such a loaf. Just trust me on this one.

So you put the bowl with the dough in it someplace, drape a towel across it, and then come back a few hours later. Suddenly, your small ball of dough has become this huge ball of dough. In your absence, it has multiplied, as though it were waiting for you to turn your back and then suddenly start growing. This is what yeast does. We expect for this to happen—in fact, we're disappointed if it doesn't.

But do you ever remember a time in your life when this was something wonderful, when this was an amazing thing that happens—you put dough in a bowl, mix in little tiny grains, and then end up with a lot more dough than you started with? When we stop and think about it, isn't that extraordinary that it happens at all?

Know what's even more incredible?

Bread machines. I remember when my mom got a bread machine—it was amazing. You didn't have to do anything other than throw the ingredients in the pan, push the start button and then come back four hours later. Fresh, hot perfect loaves of bread, every time. Incredible.

But pretty soon, it was just habit. It was expected. It ceased to be amazing. We have a bread machine now. The only time I stop to think about the mysteriousness of the process is when it doesn't work properly. I don't give the machine a second thought. It simply does its job, and the magic is gone. For all I know, the Keebler elves have given up hope of my noticing their presence in my kitchen. It's ordinary. After all, it's just bread. Nothing special.

It is in our nature to lose our ability to wonder at the miracles of life when they happen day after day. Perhaps it would all be too overwhelming if we were captured by each and every miracle that unfolded around us. Can you imagine what life would be like if you spent time in awe each morning that God granted you another day? Or if you stared out the window at the sunrise, unsure if you've ever seen something so extraordinary, so magical, in your life? What would life be like if we heralded every flower, every tree, every person that we encountered as the absolute miracle of life that they are? We'd get some strange looks, but I don't know if it would be sustainable. To a certain extent, we have to become accustomed to these extraordinary things that occur around us. They have to become ordinary so that we can function as normal people, rather than spending our days staring in awe at some flower that is in bloom in the backyard.

But I can't help but wonder at what point that widow stopped being in wonder at the fact that her jar of meal never ran out. I can't help but wonder if that jug of oil that always had enough was a source of constant awe in her life.

Think of her situation—it is one of the most pitiable situations in the Bible. Elijah has been out in the wilderness getting fed by God through the ravens. It's odd and not enviable, but it beats starving to death, right? From there, he travels to Zaarephath, which to us is just another unpronouncable word in the Bible, but to Elijah is the heart of pagan country, the seat of the worship of Baal, the false god whom the worship of started this whole mess. God is sending Elijah into the heart of enemy territory to do something extraordinary.

So Elijah sees this widow and asks her for something to eat. She replies that she is gathering sticks so that she and her son may eat the last of her food, lay down and die. This woman has absolutely no hope. This is the face of despair—a woman who has no hope and has no pretense of finding any. She's not expecting a deliverer—she isn't expecting a Savior. She isn't expecting anything other than a painful death for her and her beloved son. As a father, I cannot imagine anything more painful than knowing that I cannot provide enough food to keep my son alive. I would be despondent, and then I would fight. This woman probably fought for a time, but that fight is gone. There is no fight left in her, not for herself, not for her son. So she is going to lay down and die.

But first, Elijah asks her to feed him. She has enough food for one last meal, and Elijah asks her to give a little up.

There's a message in here about faith not being easy, about us having to give something up. If all that our faith ever does is add things to our lives, we need to examine our faith, because God always asks for something from us, to give something up to make room for the blessings he wants to give us. This woman has to give up quite a bit of what little she has.

But this woman, living in the heart of a place that worshiped Baal, stepped out in faith that Elijah's God could provide.

Sure enough, it says, that jar was not emptied, and there was always oil in that jug, just as Elijah had said.

At what point, I want to know, did the sensation of peeking in the jar and finding still more grow old for this woman? When did she tire of finding out that there was still more, that Elijah's God had still more grace, still more love to give, for this widow, who would have been forgotten by the rest of society? At what point did it cease to become novel that God loved her enough to sustain her through this trial of her life?

I don't know what the answer to that question is, but we each need to examine our own lives to make sure that we are sustaining a sense of worship, a sense of awe, at what the almighty God is doing in our lives. Each and every morning, you wake up because God has chosen to give us the gift of another day, to sustain us by his hand. It's all a gift.

And God doesn't just do enough to keep us alive—no, God pours out grace upon us, grace upon grace. He covers our lives with his love, but we're often so busy, so caught up in the everyday, that we fail to see, to recognize his love. But he still pours it out.

Today, we gather around the communion table. It's just ordinary bread, ordinary grape juice, but through the grace of God it is transformed into a powerful reminder, a sacrament, of God's love and provision for us. God uses these ordinary things to communicate something extraordinary—that he loves us enough to sustain us, to feed us, to nourish us that we might grow into the people of faith he longs for us to be. Jesus left the church with this symbolic meal so that we might be constantly reminded of how God takes the ordinary, the routine, and does the miraculous through it. Every time we sit and eat a meal, be it breakfast alone or a Thanksgiving feast, we should be reminded of God's provision for us, of how God loves us, of how God can use the ordinary and do something extraordinary. We lose our sense of wonder, but we need to hold onto it.

Because God has done something extraordinary for all of us. We gather around this meal to remember that God sent his Son, his only Son, to die for us on the cross. And in so doing, he has claimed us back from the pit of death, from the despair of our own hopelessness, and he has given us eternal life. We aren't called to lead ordinary lives—we are transformed into extraordinary individuals, called by name by the God of the universe, claimed by his love through the power of the cross so that we might live forever as his children. God delights in us because the power of his love has transformed us. We do not lead ordinary lives—but as disciples of the living God, we are extraordinary, and we need to remember that. We need to remember to be caught up in the awesome grace of God, to let ourselves be soaked in his grace, to worship in all that we do. We need to marvel at how wonderful God is, at the amazing fact that he has saved us, sinners all, from death. We need to not lose our sense of worship, to get accustomed to coming to church, to growing used to the talk of resurrection and salvation, words we've heard many times. Each time we should get caught up in the wondrous victory of life over death, of hope over despair, all of it made possible by one extraordinary man—Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, our hope.

Let us pray