A Contagious Faith

November 1 2020

1 Kings 17:1-24

         As many of you know Jennifer and I are finding out what a full blown empty nest experience is all about. All of our children have flown the coop and quite naturally we are asking, what next? Well, it seems like kind of a waste just to let those areas we fixed up for our kids just sit empty collecting dust. So, we decided that we should at least try to rent out the basement out through this service called Airbnb.We became familiar with Airbnb when our daughter Sarah used this service to find a cheap place to stay when she visited New York City. Through Airbnb people offer up a room or several rooms in their homes to people who are looking for a cheaper alternative to motels or hotels. This is what we are hoping to do with our basement. We had fixed it up for our daughter Elizabeth so it has a bedroom, bathroom and a large living room area and it just made sense that we should do something with it.

         Now, when we tell people that we are thinking about opening up our home to let total strangers sleep in our basement we get a lot of wrinkled up noses and weird looks. The biggest consensus is just why would you want to deal with the hassle of dealing with having strangers invading your home. Yet we don’t see it like that. I guess it is that we have have opened up our house on numerous other occasions that we have a whole other take on it. One of the most memorable times we had people stay with us is when a local church was having a choir from South Africa come and perform and they needed a place for the performers to stay. We told them we had room for a couple people and we invited these travelers from across the globe into our home. It was so enjoyable hearing them tell of their life in a place we will probably never get to visit. They also gave us beautiful placemats and an embroidered cloth bag as tokens of their appreciation. There have been others in addition to them, the friend of my daughter Sarah who ended up living with us for nine months, and another friend of hers that we helped out for a while to get established after college. While it wasn’t always easy to share our home with them, in the end, the memories we have are always fond ones that bring us joy. So this adventure of opening our home once again we do so in hopes of having more fond memories we can one day look back on.

         Our experience of opening our home taught us that welcoming people is a two edge sword. Yes, there is always a risk involved anytime you invite people into your home or your life. It takes work and effort to get ready for them and then once they arrive you have to care for them which isn’t always easy to do. But the other side of it is that sharing life with others can also be joyful, a positive experience which reinforces this idea that ours is a good world created by a good God and we are more alike than we are different. It is no surprise then, the welcoming others is a spiritual thing, a holy idea. Paul writes in the fifteenth chapter in his letter to the Romans, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accordance with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” An important word in what Paul has written here is the word “therefore” which tells us that our living in harmony with one another, our having a unity between us, this all begins by being open to welcoming others.

         This theme of welcoming others, especially strangers is so evident in our scripture that we read for today. Now we normally think that it is us, those who have faith in God who are the ones who are to be the ones doing the welcoming however as we consider this story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath what we discover is that it is the widow, who is not one of the people of Israel who opens her home to Elijah the greatest prophet of the people of Israel. This in itself should make us wonder just what is going on here. As we look at the background of this story what we find is that it has its roots in the reign of King Ahab. In the sixteenth chapter of the the first book of Kings, we are told that King Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him.” Now it was bad enough that he himself was evil but to make matters worse Ahab also married Jezebel, the daughter of the king of of the Sidonians. Ahab most likely had married Jezebel in order to secure peace between Israel and the country of Sidon but the price of this peace was the high cost of the worship of idols that Jezebel brought with her. We are told that after his marriage to Jezebel that Ahab went out and served the idol Baal and worshipped him. Ahab erected an altar to Baal and built a house for Baal there in Samaria.Now, the connection between this worship of Baal and the declaration by the prophet of Elijah to Ahab that there would be no rain except by the word which Elijah would speak is found in the eleventh chapter of Deuteronomy. There God warns his people, take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.” So, God had given his people a warning, a promise even before they had ever even lived in the promise land that their idolatry would have severe consequences. Elijah merely served as a holy reminder to Ahab of God’s warning which was now going to become a reality just as God had promised. The coming drought was punishment for Ahab’s blatant worship of the idol Baal.

         Our story then tells us that God’s word came to Elijah that he was to go and hide himself by the brook Cherith. It was there he could drink from the last remaining water and be fed by ravens that would bring Elijah bread and meat morning and evening. The sanitized folklore of Israel tells that the ravens brought the meat from the slaughterhouse of King Ahab but common sense tells us ravens much like the crows we’re familiar with probably found the meat in the carcasses of the cows that were dying from lack of water. What we see in the life of Elijah is that the sins of the king affected him even though Elijah had not committed any idolatry.Here was Elijah, not living in the comfort of his home but instead camping out by a murky little stream being fed God knows what by ravens all because the king and his wife Jezebel had turned from God to worship the idol Baal.

         Well, as the drought kept getting worse, the little stream Elijah was living by eventually dried up yet their was no need for Elijah to panic because once again the word of the Lord came to Elijah. The Lord told Elijah to go to Zarephath which belongs to Sidon and dwell there. As you read where God was sending Elijah did you catch the connection in the address to other parts of our story? Elijah is being sent to the town of Zarephath which belongs to Sidon. Earlier in our story we found out that Jezebel is the daughter of the king of where? Sidon, the same land where Elijah is being sent. So, it is not hard to think that God is up to something when he sends Elijah to the same land where the king’s wife is originally from, a wife who had led God’s people astray.

         Well, Elijah ends up in Zarephath but he has no idea just where he will end up staying all he knows is that God has commanded a widow who lives there to feed Elijah. We are told that when Elijah gets to Zarephath he sees a widow there at the city gates gathering sticks. That she was gathering sticks indicates that she was poor and had no one to provide for her. Elijah called out to her and asked her to bring him a little water so that he could drink. This also was very unusual because men did not often speak to women in that day let alone a man who was a stranger. Perhaps Elijah did so to see what mattered most to her, the caring for conventions or the caring for others. The woman seeing that Elijah was quite thirsty having traveled through the drought stricken Israel hurried to bring him some water. As she turned to go and fetch the water, Elijah cried out to her to bring him some bread as well because he was hungry after his long journey. Her response to Elijah is rather profound, and rather tragic. She tells him, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering some sticks that I may go and prepare it for myself and my son, so that we may eat it and die. It’s very interesting that she begins by stating that the truth of what she tells Elijah is founded on the premise that the God of Elijah is a living God. The living God is the God of Elijah but not necessarily her God. Well, Elijah upon hearing the woman tell of her tragic fate does not give her sympathy but rather Elijah gives her hope. Elijah tells her, “Do not fear.” This is one of the most common phrases of the Bible. Over and over you find God telling his people be strong and courageous, do not be terrified, do not fear. These are not just some nice platitudes that we can we hang on the wall; no, these are the truth of the reality that we live in. We do not have to fear because we know a living God whose perfect love casts out our fear. This is what Elijah knows and this is what Elijah wants this woman trembling in fear to know, that his God, the one true living God is a God who can be trusted. Yet, Elijah also knew that it wasn’t enough for him to merely tell her to suck it up, to go and trust God. No, instead he tells the woman to go ahead and bake that bread but bring it to him to eat. Imagine how that woman must have felt when she hears this strange man tell her to take her last loaf of bread and bring it to him so that he could eat while she goes hungry? But Elijah quickly continues, telling her that after she baked him some bread to keep the fire going and bake her and her son some bread as well. By this time this woman has to have a strange look on her face because she knows that all she has is enough flour and oil for one loaf and this stranger is telling her to go ahead and bake two. Elijah explains to her that the Lord God of Israel declares that the jar of flour will not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth. You see Elijah is sharing his faith with this woman by allowing her to experience for herself the faithfulness of God to be true to his promises. This is what makes our God a holy God because he is a God who is faithful, a God with whom there is no shadow of turning with him.But the only way to really know that this is true of God is for us to experience it for ourselves. This is what Elijah knew. It was when Elijah used his vulnerability as a stranger to touch the heart of this woman so that even though she wanted to welcome him knew that her reality would not allow her to do so. In order for this woman to act on her impulse to welcome Elijah she would need to have faith, a faith Elijah would help her experience by merely accepting her welcome and eating her food.

         Well, it is one thing to trust God’s promise that he would provide the flour and oil for this woman and her son to survive but can she trust God to be the God who can raise the dead? Our story tells us how the woman’s son becomes gravely ill, so ill that there was no breath left in him. This is not hard for us to imagine in these days of Covid. Of course, the woman is grief stricken and in her anger she cries out to Elijah, “What have you against me , O man of God? You have come to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son! This woman’s sentiments are very typical of people who may not really know God so that when bad things happen they begin to believe that God is getting back at them for the sins that they have done. Jesus addresses this attitude in the ninth chapter of John where in an encounter with a blind man the disciples wonder who had sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind? And Jesus answers them, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Isn’t that a much better way to look at the world! Our problems are not indicators that God is getting back at us because of our sin but rather they are opportunities for the world to see the works of God displayed in them. This is what we find with this woman’s son because Elijah takes this boy’s lifeless body and carries it into his room and lays the boy upon his bed. Elijah fervently cried out to God asking God to let the child’s life be given back to him. Three times Elijah stretched himself out upon the still and lifeless body and then suddenly life came back into that boys body. God had answered Elijah’s prayer.Elijah took the boy to his mother and her response is rather profound. She tells Elijah, “Now I know you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” You see the truth of God is not just some statement found in the Bible that we defend as being true. No, the truth of God is something we are to know is true because we have experienced the presence and power of God and the truth of God has touched us in an amazing way.

         Now when you stand back and look at what has happened in this story of Elijah can you see what has happened? The land of Sidon represents the world, a world apart from Israel and God’s people. Ahab brought Jezebel into Israel and allowed this representative of the world to influence Israel so that in the end God’s people turned away from God to worship and serve the dead and lifeless idols. Elijah, the representative of Israel, God’s people, went to Sidon, into the world and as a stranger asked a person of the world, a person far from God, to welcome him in and give him food and drink. This woman apart from God could only know the world as a place of scarcity and fear and Elijah challenged her to be not afraid. Why? He told her to not be afraid because there is a God who lives, a God who loves, a God who one can never out-give yet the only way to know this about God is to experience it, to give even when giving means staring down death. This is what the woman did when she welcomed Elijah in to her life because she trusted in the promise of God and found out in real time the faithfulness of God.  Yet as wonderful as her trust was, this widow, who had already lost her husband , struggled mightily when her son became ill and died. Elijah cried out to the Lord and the Lord heard Elijah’s prayer and the life of her son came back into him. You see, it was this woman’s welcome of Elijah into her life that began her journey of faith in the one true living God. Then because Elijah was in her life, when her son died, she was able to see first hand the power of prayer and her faith increased so that from then on she would have no doubt that the word of the Lord in the mouth of Elijah was truth.So this woman from the same country as Jezebel, the worshiper of the dead idol Baal, became one who trusted in the word of the living God. I believe that God in this story is telling us that the experience of Elijah was always supposed to be the norm, that the people of God were to go out into the world, into the places of idol worshippers and by allowing themselves to be welcomed into that world, their faith in God could be experienced by those who did not know him.

         We know that this story of Elijah and the widow from the town of Zarephath is to be a story of how faith in the living God is to be shared with those who do not know him because this was Jesus take on it as well. In the fourth chapter of Luke we read of how Jesus after his first and only sermon to his hometown synagogue crowd, found that people who had heard his message lacked faith in God’s ability to do great works in him a guy from their hometown of Nazareth. In response, Jesus reminded them that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah but Elijah had to go to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon in order to find faith. Needless to say, his audience was not impressed by the response of Jesus. All Jesus wanted of them and us is faith, for us to know and experience the faithfulness of God. Jesus with his arms spread wide upon the cross welcomes us in to his life, a life of trusting our Heavenly Father with our life so we can be people who can then by faith, welcome others into the welcome of Christ. In this way we can go into the world and and challenge those far from God to place their trust in God so that the world will have no chance of influencing us to worship the dead idols that govern the world. I pray that our faith can be a faith that can be given away. To the glory of God. Amen!