Miracles in Zerephath
06/06/10
Scripture:
I Kings 17:8-24Let us pray: O God of miracles, help us to trust that truly, all things are possible with you, that we might come to believe in your never-ending grace, and in your never-failing provision for all our needs. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
An overweight business executive decided that he needed to lose some excess pounds, so he went on a strict diet, and took it very seriously. He even changed his route driving to work in order to avoid the temptation to stop at his favorite bakery.
One morning though, the man arrived at work carrying a gigantic Danish pastry. Everyone scolded him, but he just smiled blissfully and explained, “This is a very special pastry. I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning, and there in the window was a display of these luscious goodies. I felt this was no accident, so I prayed, ‘Lord, if you want me to have one of those wonderful pastries, let me find a parking space directly in front of the bakery.’ And, sure enough,” he smugly continued, “the eighth time around the block, there it was!”
As Christians, we are called to trust in God’s abundant provision for all our needs! But we know that God knows the difference between what we want and what we need!
Jesus was thought by some to be the new Elijah, and it is evident, as we think about Elijah’s story, that there are a number of parallels. They both spent time alone in the wilderness and were attended to by God’s generous provision: Jesus, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism, and later was ministered to by angels. Elijah fled there, at God’s direction, after delivering a message of doom to the evil King Ahab, and he was fed by ravens!
Elijah restored life to the widow of Zerephath’s son. Jesus restored life to the son of a widow from Nain, and also to Jairus’ daughter, and most impressively to his dear friend Lazarus, who had been in the tomb three days! Soon after that, Jesus himself was resurrected form the dead!
We are introduced to Elijah at the beginning of the 17th chapter of the history book called 1 Kings, when God sent him to King Ahab to proclaim a drought that would last until God was ready for it to end. Ahab was the king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom with its capitol in Samaria, and he was not the first king of Israel to disobey God, but we’re told that he was the worst. At the end of 1 Kings16 it says,
“…Ahab took as his wife, Jezebel, daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. Ahab also made a sacred pole [an Asherah pole.] Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel,” it says, “than had all the kings of Israel who were before him.”
Baal was a fertility god, the one who was relied upon to bring the storms that watered the crops. God was showing God’s own power, and Baal’s powerlessness by sending a drought on God’s people to show them who was the true Lord of Life, with power over the forces of nature.
Elijah put his life in danger when he gave Ahab the gloomy forecast of “neither dew nor rain these years, except by God’s word.” So God instructed Elijah to make a hasty retreat: “Go from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the Wadi Chirith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”
Well, that was a leap of faith! Elijah did as he was told, and the ravens, which, by the way, were unclean animals to the Jews, brought him meat and bread morning and evening, until the wadi, (what we’d call a “wash,”) dried up. That’s when God sent Elijah to Zerephath, which in good times, was a center for the exporting of crops like wine, grain and oil, and there usually would have been a plentiful supply of food. Zerephath was in the evil Jezebel’s home country of Sidon.
And thus began a remarkable relationship that only God could have imagined. Elijah was told only that a widow in Zerephath, was commanded to feed him, a surprising turn of events since, a Sidonian woman was obviously not an Israelite, and widows were notoriously poor. Jesus later referred to the uniqueness of this relationship in Luke’s gospel when he said, “the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah…yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but to a widow at Zerephath in Sidon.” This shows us that God cares for all people, not just a chosen few; and Jesus ministered to Gentiles too.
I’d like to see a dramatization of that first encounter of Elijah with the widow at Zerephath. He had the gall (or maybe we should call it faith!) to insist that she bake him a roll out of that last bit of flour and oil she had left, even after she admitted that it was to be the last supper for herself and her son, before they succumbed to starvation and death.
Elijah responded with all the confidence of a prophet of God, “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 the Lord sends rain on the earth. ” That woman had every reason to refuse: he was asking her to put the comfort of a perfect stranger before the very life of her little son, and to believe this prediction of provision by a deity she didn’t even know. Talk about “trust and obey!”
I can just imagine today’s equivalent answer. “I have trouble making ends meet already.” Or, “I can’t help you. I’m on a fixed income.” Or, “I have to think of my family first.” A traditional tithe comes off the top of our income: we give first and best to God, then see if God doesn’t provide for our needs out of what’s left. You hear occasionally stories of people who prayed when they had an unexpected need, and the exact amount appeared “out of nowhere!” But how many of us have the faith to give our last dime! Jesus pointed out a widow who put her last two coins in the offering box, only a penny, and we still remember her gift today!
Evangelist Barbara Brokhoff tells of a pastor with whom she was a staying on a preaching engagement, who came home all smiles from a visit with a parishioner. “What’s so funny?” she asked, and he answered, “I just visited with Aunt Mattie, a woman in our church. She’s 103 years old today. I asked her how she had managed to live so long, and she said, ‘That’s easy Preacher, I just trust and obey, drink ice water and crochet.” We should all trust and obey, and then we can add our own ending to the formula, as long as it rhymes! (Carrot juice and fish fillet!)
In our society, it’s very risky to trust: Barbara Brokhoff also tells of a client who asked an attorney in Louisiana to research the title to a piece of property he was considering buying. He told the lawyer he needed a very complete report before the finance corporation would grant a loan. The attorney came back with this description of the land:
“Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France in 1803. France got the title by right of conquest from Spain. Spain came into possession by right of discovery in 1492 by a sailor named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by Queen Isabella. The Queen had taken the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope of Rome upon the voyage before she sold her jewels to help Columbus. The Pope, as you know is the emissary of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, made the world, including the property in question in Louisiana!” That’s taking a title search about as far as it can go!
Our attention and our prayers are focused these days, once again, on Louisiana, and the terrible destruction that is in progress there because of the failure of a deep water oil rig. So many people are looking for someone to blame, and finding a lot of candidates: the oil company, the construction company, the President and all the government agencies. Who can we trust? In the end, we can only trust God our Creator who made it all and called it good, and who weeps along with us to see the carnage. But God also instills human beings with creative thinking that we hope, in time, will help that region to recover. Instead of blaming, we all can pray for God’s inspiration to guide those who will be called to find those solutions. And we can try to forgive, and help wherever we can.
Kathleen Norris wrote in Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, “In the hardest situations, all one can do is ask God for mercy…One Benedictine friend, a gentle, thoughtful man who has been in constant physical pain for years and is now confined to a wheel chair, says of prayer, ‘Often, all I can do is to ask God, ‘Lord, what is it you want of me?’’” Kathleen Norris learned from him that “prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine;
to be more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given, instead of always grieving for what might have been. People who are in the habit of praying—and they include the mystics of Christian tradition—know that when a prayer is answered, it is never in the way that you expect.” Sometimes miracles happen!
Rev. Wesley Taylor imported a great miracle story from Guatemala, where there was a severe drought in 1965. People were leaving the city. Businesses were going bankrupt. Crops were perishing. Animals were dying. Special efforts were made to bring water in, but it was scarce everywhere. Catholics held special masses. Evangelicals held prayer meetings. There was no rain, and no water.
Then it happened! In a small Pentecostal meeting, where some believers from the Principe de Pas church had assembled for their regular worship service, the Spirit of the Lord moved in a mighty way. There was a message in tongues, followed a few moments later by an interpretation. The message was: “Dig a well in the pastor’s back yard. There you will find water.”
There was much opposition from other churches as the deacons, elders and pastor began to dig. They thought these people were hallucinating—especially when they saw the pastor’s back yard was a hill. A well could never be dug on a hill, because water runs down. But the pastor, deacons and elders all continued to dig. Soon, one of the elders became quite upset. “Why is it in the pastor’s back yard? Why couldn’t it be in mine?” he asked. Another elder thought that maybe the prophecy was biased. One deacon gave up. Another elder left. But there still remained a group ready to press on.
Because of the drought, the land was hard, so the digging progressed slowly. On the fourth day, they encountered a big boulder. It was so large they thought they had hit solid rock. The frustration and disappointment intensified as another elder left the shoveling team. But they kept digging around the boulder until finally, after two more days, they were able to remove it. As they did so, a gush of water came forth. It poured, and they began to drink and drink. It was a remarkable sign for the whole town. The miracle of the well brought many, many people to Christ that year, and that church grew from a few dozen members to over 900.
Most of us see only small miracles, if we see any at all. But God’s provision for us, like the water in that well, and the widow of Zerephath’s flour and oil, never runs out. We need only trust and obey, persevere and pray, and be open to receive God’s blessings in abundance. That’s God’s promise to us all. Amen.