Time after Pentecost
Time after Pentecost Proper 5, Series C
June 6, 2010 St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran
Keith Olstad
The texts:
The first lesson: 1 Kings 17:17-24 NRSV
Psalm 30 NRSV
The Gospel: Luke 7:11-17 NRSV
Children’s lesson:
Good morning! I’m so glad you are here. I always look forward to this time with you.
Look up at the ceiling. Do you see that light that is out. I think we should change it, don’t you? How can we do that? Can you reach it? May I could toss you up in the air and you could just change it quickly in mid-air! Or should we get a ladder? Will you climb up a ladder that long, with nothing to brace it against? Do you think you might be just a little bit afraid to be up there on a thin, wiggly ladder?
Actually, we have some people who go up there to change the lights. I think that’s really impressive, don’t you. I couldn’t do it. Pastor Anita used to do it, but I’m not sure that even she still could do it. But they do it by crawling through a tiny little door way up in the top floor, and then they crawl on their tummies all the way to where the lights are, and then they have to reach in to unscrew the old bulbs and screw in the new ones, with hardly any space to work in and without dropping anything. I’d be scared still about being up there, and I’m REALLY impressed by anyone who does!
Those two feelings, being afraid and feeling awe, are sometimes two sides of the same thing. I feel in awe of anyone who can crawl through the tiny spaces to get to those lights, and I would be really afraid if I had to do it.
In our lessons today, we’re going to hear about some miracles. When people experience miracles, we’re going to hear that that feel both of these things. They are going to be very afraid of what happens, and they are also going to feel great awe, and that will make them want to praise and thank God.
So listen for these things, and know that sometimes to be afraid can teach us what can impress us—give us awe—and show us what to appreciate, so that we can thank and praise God.
The sermon:
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Creator, and from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our first lesson tells us that “the son of…the mistress of the house became ill;” so severely “that there was no breath left in him.”
A common conviction in Biblical times was that things go bad because someone has been bad. Injury is a consequence of foolishness. Sickness is the result of guilt. Death is brought on by sin. The logic has a nice cadence to it. Whatever happens is someone’s fault, and if we can locate the fault quite precisely—especially if we can put the blame on someone else—then we can avoid being implicated or being vulnerable to the same result. Or so folks thought in ancient times.
That’s what happened with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. We cherish this ancient fable for explaining how things went wrong with the world. We explain sin in light of Adam’s temptation. The guy wanted God’s knowledge and power, and the snake said it was available in the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. There you have it. He was the start of everything that’s gone wrong.
What doesn’t work in that ancient story—what doesn’t quite fit—is why an all powerful, loving and wise God would respond to so common and human a longing for wisdom and power by inflicting unspeakable suffering and tragedy on the whole human race. The fable of the Fall proposes, basically, that all bad things happen because originally one person did something bad. Frankly, when you get down to it, that proposal reflects badly on God.
Yet is also seems somewhat intuitive—sort of naturally right. After all, we do it all the time. When we experience bad things—things we have a hard time accepting—we want to figure out why they are happening. We want to have a reason for our suffering.
In this morning’s first lesson, a widow’s son dies, and this desperately grieving woman blames herself. Her first guess is that her son’s death has come about because of some unresolved sin she committed in the past. “You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance,” she wails. But taking responsibility all by one’s self is a tough thing to swallow. She quickly decides that can’t be the whole answer.
So her second guess is really familiar. Because blaming herself is too much for the woman to bear, she goes after someone else, and Elijah is an easy target. Let me explain. This morning’s text is actually the second half of a truly intriguing tale. Elijah has been fleeing from the henchmen of the wicked queen, Jezebel. God tells him to go to a poor gentile widow in the remote town of Zarephath. The widow is a single parent with only one meal left, but she shares what little she has with the prophet. To her amazement, by sharing what she has, she finds that she never runs out. So when we meet her today, though the widow of Zarephath has in her house a total stranger—a Jew and a foreigner—she also knows that something miraculous has been going on.
Nevertheless, the widow’s son dies. So she blames the stranger, the foreigner, the illegal immigrant. She blames Elijah. “What have you against me, O man of God?” she cries at him. “You have come to bring my sin to remembrance.” You, you did this. It’s your fault!
Frankly, I find her blaming Elijah totally typical. After all, even in that ancient fable about how sin began, Adam blamed Eve for making him eat the forbidden fruit, and Eve blamed the snake. And isn’t that our temptation too? It’s always someone else’s fault! Surely it is!
So it is in our first lesson. The widow begins by blaming herself. Then she blames Elijah. Then Elijah, in turn, blames God. Elijah cries out to our God, “O YAHWEH my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow…?”
Then comes the turn. Elijah prays to God to make things better. He prays that God let people live, that God restore thing to the way they truly should be. Elijah takes the dead boy from the widow’s bosom and carries him up into his own room, stretches out across the boy with his own live and breathing body, and prays to God, “O YAHWEH my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”
Isn’t that the way it should be. When a family learns that a son or daughter has been killed or wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq, wouldn’t they long to go back to the way things were before? When a child playing in a neighbor’s yard is terrorized by neighborhood bullies, wouldn’t her family ache to have her free of such trauma? When my wife and I almost lost our second son during the first hours after his birth, I would have given anything—anything at all—to have him survive.
And so would God! This morning, we come face to face with God’s desire that people and all creation be the way God wants things to be. God wants children to live, and families to thrive, and all that is broken and lost and dead to be restored. When we consider goals for our congregation’s ministry in the year ahead, perhaps these criteria are the most important measures of our faithfulness.
So, our lesson says, “YAHWEH listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.” God’s interest is not in unpacking the events that led to the tragedy, or in pinpointing blame on culprits. Rather, YAHWEH restored the life of the widow’s son, and that poor Gentile widow was able to say that the word of the Lord is true.
In the same way, we find Jesus in our gospel lesson encountering a widow grieving the death of her son. Only in this account, there is no prior relationship between Jesus and the woman—no explanation for the poor boy’s death, no guilt and no blame. All we have is a clear statement about Jesus being moved with compassion for the poor widow’s loss, and his holy desire to put things right.
Both of these accounts are miracle stories, and miracles of the highest order. Both stories involve dead people being brought back to life. Not only are they stories about miracles, but about miracle being done for the least of the least important people of that day and age—for the undervalued children of even more worthless widows. But the point, I propose, is not whether these miracles can be explained or whether they are even truly miracles. Nor, in the end, is the point about who was affected by the miracles. Rather, I believe, these stories come together today to tell us something about God, and about God’s desire for our lives and for God’s whole world.
In our version of the psalm this morning, we repeat the psalmist’s words: “I cried to you, O YAHWEH, I pleaded with my Lord, saying, ‘What profit is there in my blood…? Will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness?’ Hear, O YAHWEH, and have mercy upon me; O YAHWEH, be my helper.”
When God responds with life-giving help, the psalmist sings, “You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have…clothed me with joy. Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing; O YAHWEH my God, I will give you thanks forever.”
So dedicated is God to making life good—to turning sadness into joy, to turning defeat into celebration—that God will confront even death and return the widows’ sons to life. The truth about God, to paraphrase the widow of Zarephath, is that God’s delight is in abundant living, in joyful praise, and in wholeness and health for even the least of God’s people.
That is God’s delight. It is not in casting aspersions, or in fixing blame, or disparaging those who make mistakes. Rather, God’s longing is that—like Elijah—we use the capacities of our own beings, that we share our own living and breathing, that we take our own responsibility for what can be done for life. God’s call to us and God’s eager longing is that we and all our neighbors live long and well in the fullness of God’s good creation.
So be it. Amen.
1 Kings 17:17 NRSV
Ibid. v. 18b
Ibid. v. 18
Ibid. v. 20
Ibid. v. 21b
Ibid. v. 22
Ibid. v. 24b
Psalm 30:8-9a,10 ELW
Ibid. vv. 11-12
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