Sharing in a Time of Drought

1 Kings 17:8-16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44.

A poor widow came and put two pennies into the Temple treasury. And Jesus called his disciples and said to them, “This poor widow has put in more than anyone else. Out of her poverty she put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” In the original Greek, literally it says, “She put in her whole life.”

I know that many a sermon has been preached that holds up this poor widow as an example to all of us inour stewardship, for our willingness to support the work of the church. We all can look to this widow and say, She gave of everything, and so shouldn’t that be an example to all of us?

The problem with that sermon, however, is that it doesn’t quite work with the whole gospel passage that we have today. Because Jesus begins the passage by telling us to beware, to watch out for, to not be like the scribes who are going to get the greatest condemnation. They do everything for show, they want people to see how much they give, they devour widows’ houses. And here’s this poor widow whose whole house, whose whole livelihood is being devoured. You can almost see Jesus gathering his disciples together and saying, “Look! You see what I’m talking about? I’m not making this up. Look at her! Look at how they’re taking everything from her! And for what?

So it doesn’t really work for me to say, You should be like the widow. That makes me to be like the scribes who take away from those who are in need and those who are vulnerable.

And yet, I don’t think that’s the whole story either. Because Jesus does not point out this woman as some pitiful victim of people who are unscrupulously taking her money like a modern televangelist might. There is something noble and admirable in the way that Jesus speaks of this widow. Jesus doesn’t spare the temple that robs this poor widow and the system that oppresses her, and yet at the same time he wants to hold her up as an example.

How can we hold these two things together? I think both of our other readings today help us with this. Let’s start with our first reading, the Old Testament story of Elijah and the Widow. Here, too, we have a widow who has nothing. Elijah comes to her asking for help.

The background to this story is that there has been a severe drought for the last three years. And why has their been a drought? Well, according to Elijah, it’s because the people have forsaken God, led by their wicked king, King Ahab, and especially his wife, Queen Jezebel. Jezebel was the daughter of the king of Sidon, in what is now Lebanon. Jezebel was the princess of an even more important and richer country than Israel, and Ahab thought he was marrying up by marrying the princess of Sidon. And therefore, she brought with her, and Ahab promoted, the worship of the god of Sidon, Ba’al. Ba’al was a god who demanded human sacrifice, and Ahab willingly gave it. Ahab, as part of his moving up and making progress in the world, started grand construction projects, and he dedicated them by sacrificing his own children. That’s what the Bible records. But this is the price you have to pay if you want to move up in the world.

Elijah said: This is why we have a drought. It’s not like God sent a drought to punish the people. It’s more, This is what happens when we are taken over by a system, a belief, that we have to grab for ourselves, and do noble things at the expense of other people. When we do that, we are abandoning the covenant that God made with us. The God who set us free from slavery in Egypt and gave a bountiful land as a free gift, if only we would be God’s faithful people in return. Elijah says, when we turn our backs on God, the Promised Land will turn its back on us. And then for all our grand construction projects and upward mobility, the world becomes a bleak and dangerous place.

Now, you can say, “God sent the drought to punish the people.” The Bible says that, Elijah says that. But I think to modern ears we often hear that and say, That’s the way pre-modern, non-scientific people explained droughts. We know where rain comes from and why rain doesn’t come, and I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical scientific explanation for the drought that doesn’t have anything to do with God being angry. And theologically, the idea that God would punish everyone for the sins of the king and some other people, that has problems as well. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. If we could go back and bring Elijah forward in time to our own day and ask him, Did God metaphysically cause the drought, or is this a poetic way of saying that the dead and dry religion of human achievement at the cost of the blood of others just leads us to deadness and dryness? After we taught Elijah enough English to understand the question, I bet he’d look at us funny and say, what’s the difference?

This is why there is a drought, because people have lost faith in God, and everything has dried up. So what does Elijah, one of the few people in Israel still loyal to the true God, what does Elijah do? Well, first he goes to the river where there’s water to drink, and there are birds that come there who apparently give food to Elijah. I guess he eats bird food. But then the river dries up, and the birds stop coming.

And Elijah is inspired to go, not to a nearby place, but a faraway village. A village that belongs to Sidon. He’s going to a village in the home country of the evil Queen Jezebel. If Jezebel has brought the life-crushing ways of Ba’al the god of Sidon to Israel, Elijah can bring the life-giving ways of Yahweh the God of Israel to Sidon. Elijah knows that even if all of Israel has lost faith, he’s told there will be a poor widow in Sidon whom the God of Israel will inspire to create a community of the true God. How does Elijah know this? Elijah knows how God works, this is how new life sprouts up in the middle of a drought – with human connection in an unexpected place. So Elijah goes.

As Elijah arrives in the town, he sees a widow. Is this the person God sent him to? He asks her first for water, then for a piece of bread. And she says, I have no bread to share with you. There’s a drought, you know. I have only enough oil and flour to make one biscuit, for me and my son, and that is all we have left. I’m telling you the truth, she says, I swear by “the Lord your God.” In the name of Yahweh your God, this woman of Sidon, this woman of Jezebel’s people. She says to Elijah, in the name of Yahweh your God I swear I’m telling you the truth. And Elijah smiles. He has found his kindred spirit. In this town of strangers, he has found his people.

In the name of Yahweh our God, Elijah says to her, there is enough for everyone if we don’t keep everything to ourselves and are willing to share and sacrifice for one another. Ba’al the god of Sidon and Jezebel demands blood, demands sacrifice, demands death, but Yahweh our God is a God who gives life and who is found when give life to one another. How can I give, you ask? I have only enough flour and oil for one biscuit for me and my son, I don’t have enough to share with you. I have only five loaves and two fish, what good is that for so many? It takes trust and faith to give when you don’t think you have anything to offer … but I’m here to tell you, Elijah said to the widow, if we here in this little God-forsaken village of Zarephath can start sharing with one another as God has shared with us, we’ll discover that the living God is a God who gives life. And so it happened, and as long as Elijah stayed there was flour and oil did not run out. There was bread and water, enough for all.

Was that a miracle? What other explanation could there be? And yet there are people who pray for miracles and don’t receive them. There were lots of other people down to their last biscuit in that terrible drought, people who were good people and who were generous and who shared with their neighbors and who prayed as best they knew how, and we’re not told that they get a miracle. Who gets a miracle and who doesn’t – we can get hung up on those metaphysical questions too.

But the story that Elijah was inspired to tell in the depths of a terrible drought and famine was that God is acting here, deep in the midst of enemy territory, in the heart of Sidon the land of Jezebel, in the land of the bloodthirsty god Ba’al, the real God is here bringing people together into life-giving community where people have the faith to give their whole lives to one another and then discover the incomprehensibly life-giving power of God. Is that a miracle? Is that a parable of how grace works? I think Elijah would say, what’s the difference?

The widow Jesus sees putting her whole life, all two pennies of it, into the treasury of the Temple, this widow is another one of the countless nameless saints throughout the ages. Another one of the many who lived in evil days, in days of great material progress that comes at a cost in human life and humane living, who trusted that God can be found in communities where people give their whole lives to one another and discover life together.

Remember where we are in Mark’s gospel, that we’ve been reading all this year. We’re getting to the end, Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem and come to the Temple. And he is not impressed. His gesture of cleansing the Temple is a sign of all that he teaches there in Jerusalem, including the short passage we read today. It seems to Jesus that the Temple has again become a place to worship Ba’al of Sidon, not Yahweh of Israel. It’s become a monument to all that human achievement can create, where scribes take the last penny from the weak and the vulnerable, where hypocrites squeeze the last drop of blood out of their victims and expect to be rewarded for it.

Yet even here, Jesus says, in this dry, spiritually barren, and Godforsaken place, even here – look! There are still widows who are willing to give their whole lives in search of the communion of the life-giving God. There are still nameless unknown saints who have the faith that the life of God can still be found if we will have enough trust to share, not just our excess but everything. This same system, these same hypocrites, will in a few days demand that Jesus give his whole life – and he will do it and do it gladly for the sake of others, because that’s who God is. God gives God’s whole life, God’s entire being, for the sake of others. And that’s who God’s people have always been and where God’s people have always found life.

That’s what our other reading today, from the letter to the Hebrews, is also trying to say. Hebrews is one of the most sophisticated books of the Bible, and I haven’t tried to bring it into sermons the last few weeks we’ve been reading it because it’s complicated, but today it’s pretty clear. You know, the unknown author says, you know how on Yom Kippur the high priest goes into the Temple to perform the ritual of atonement, to ask God for the forgiveness of sins, to offer the blood of sacrificed animals. It pleases God that we seek forgiveness, and God is always ready to give it – but this ritual doesn’t solve the problem of sin and evil. That’s why Yom Kippur comes every year, because we need forgiveness every year. And God gives it, but that’s not what fixes the problem of the world.

What fixes is the problem of the world is not the high priest going into a human temple, a mere copy of the real one where God dwells, to offer someone else’s blood. What fixes the problem of the world is Jesus, the perfect image of the fullness of who God is, offering his own blood, his own life, for the sake of others. That’s how God deals with sin. And if that’s who God is, if that’s God solution to the sin and the evil and the drought of our world, that’s how we can find life when we find ourselves in a world of drought.

Trusting that God has already dealt with sin, waiting eagerly for the fulness of the Kingdom of God to appear, and in the meantime giving our lives and selves to one another, sharing our bread with one another here at this table – remembering here that this is who Jesus is, who God is, one who shares life with us, so that we will be able to share with one another our own bread and our own lives. Even, and perhaps especially, when it seems impossible.