Sermon: ‘His words in our mouth is truth’
Text: 1 Kings 17:8-24
God brings life. He is the giver of life. God often brings about life where it is unexpected. He brings life into unbelievable circumstances. How is it that God works his will for life in this world? In our text today, we get a glimpse of God working to bring life to Elijah and to a widow woman. But how?
Before I get into the text we just read, I would like to back up a little and give some history about Elijah and where he has been. Elijah breaks onto the scene just before he is sent to Sidon to find the widow there. Ahab has just taken over the reign of Israel and King Ahab does evil in the sight of the Lord. So, Elijah comes and throws out a declaration that there will be no rain for three years.
After this Elijah is quickly sent by God to hide in a river bed from King Ahab, thus preserving Elijah’s life, since this King is not happy about the impending drought. At the riverside, God commands some ravens to provide food for Elijah, which they do, and Elijah gets water from the river. God is giving life to Elijah. But, the river eventually runs dry because, well, there was no rain… Why would God send Elijah to the river knowing that it would run dry? Perhaps Elijah is learning that the words he speaks for God have power. These words do something.
God does not leave Elijah beside the empty riverbed. As we read, God commands him to go to Sidon to find a widow there. She will provide for Elijah in the same way that the ravens had. There is a sense of immediacy here that gets lost in the translation of this text. In essence God is saying “get there! I’ve just commanded a widow there to feed you.” So Elijah obeys and lo and behold, there is a widow woman gathering sticks right at the gate of the city when Elijah arrives. There she is! Just as God had said.
Elijah calls to her saying “bring me a little water” and with no hesitation or comment, she goes to get some. I’ve always wondered how it is that this woman knew she was commanded by God to provide for Elijah. She does not indicate that she has heard from God in any particularly specific way. In fact, as we will see, she is a little offended by Elijah’s God and Elijah himself. But, all the same, she goes to get Elijah some water and as she is walking away, Elijah adds “oh, and could you bring me some bread, too.” Well, here we go.
You know, I can just see this. Here she is, minding her own business. Gathering sticks to make her last meal and she gets asked for some water. Water? Okay. This she can do. But her reply when asked for the bread tells us more about her situation. She says to Elijah, ‘As the Lord your God lives (‘Good God!’), I have nothing baked. I only have a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug. Just now I was gathering sticks, so that I could go home and prepare that last little bit for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die!’
I know people that have a flair for the dramatic like this. And it is easy to chuckle, but in reality, her situation is pretty dire. She probably isn’t far from the truth. With a drought going on, there has been no wheat crop. And as her and her son’s only apparent source of food, the lack of flour means starvation.
But, God is up to something here. There is good news for her! Elijah remembers his lesson in the wilderness. His words do something. He says, ‘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. 14For 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.’ And we see that Elijah is provided for as God had promised him and the woman and her son are provided for as Elijah had promised. God is working life here. He uses Elijah and the widow to provide life for one another.
The widow goes and does as Elijah says and her flour jar did not run out and her oil jug did not fail. This life that has been given to her produces faith. It does not say that God filled her jars, but only that they would not be emptied. Each day she went to the jars. She took out that last handful of flour and small amount of oil. She made bread for Elijah, her son and herself and they were sustained for yet another day. And each day she believed again that it would be there and it was. God has given life through Elijah’s words and this life has created faith in this widow. She has gone from being offended to being obliged. Providing for Elijah as God had commanded her.
In the next scene it doesn’t say how much time has passed, but we know that Elijah has been there a while. After the widow and her son have been saved from starvation by Elijah’s proclamation to her, the son falls ill and has no more breath in him. Now, according to my reading of the story, everyone is doing as the Lord commanded. Elijah has gone to Sidon and the widow is providing for him. But death still comes.
Sometimes, even after good news has come to us, our circumstances get the better of us. And here, salvation had come with Elijah and his words telling her to not fear, that the jar of flour would not go empty. But her circumstances change. While the flour and the oil are sustained, her son is not. So she is faced with death again. Not only the death of her son but her own death as well for as a woman in this culture with no male provider and where the human responsibility was regularly ignored, she would be left to begging. And in the midst of a drought, when everyone has sparse rations, having to beg would surely lead to death.
What do we do when circumstances change for the worse? What do we see her doing? Well, she turns and accuses the good news that has already come. This is what we do. We turn on the good news, we become accusatory and cynical, ‘I thought you said…’ The widow does this. She turns on Elijah and immediately becomes accusatory. ‘What brought you here? What do you really have to do with me, o man of God? Did you come here just to bring my sin to light so God could punish me by killing my son? Is that why you’re here?’
This is an honest question. This is how we’re bound to react. While she believed that her jars would be full she did not believe fully that salvation had come to her house. Elijah doesn’t even fully understand. He is after all in the midst of a process of learning what it is to be a prophet. But we see him respond to her. He takes her son goes to the upper room and prays. Two prayers. The first being a lament where he asks God the same thing that the widow asked of him. Elijah himself is praying this woman’s bad theology. ‘Is it true God that you sent me here just so that death would come to this woman’s son?’ But God does not respond. Elijah remembers then that the Lord is faithful in doing his will through the words that come through his prophets. So, Elijah prays ‘let this child’s life come into him again’ and the Lord obeys Elijah.
God works beyond our circumstances to bring life. He works beyond our understanding of what is possible and it is in this that faith comes. Elijah returns the son to his mother, alive. The widow who just a few moments before is accusatory and sarcastic responds, ‘truly you are a man of God and the words in your mouth are truth.’ She has gone from being sarcastic to being certain. Truly, God’s words do something.
Death had come to this woman’s house. But God brings salvation to her. Good news came to her and she did not fully recognize it. Yet, this is how God chose to work. To her the gospel looked like an inconvenience and was even offensive to her but what she could not see did not stop God from the work he was doing. He sent her life in the form of a man with human hands and human breath and spoken word. And that word is truth. And that word has power. This is how God chose to work and, yes, He still does. This is how God works his will for life in this world.
He is a God who brings salvation to us through the spoken word. This is how God has chosen to work and Elijah is beginning to understand this. We too learn about our God and about our call from this story. God has called us to preach the good news. He has called us to preach life in the midst of death. God gives us life through the good news sent to us and He sends us as men and women with human hands and human breath to speak his powerful word to others. This is how God brings life, and by God, His word in our mouths is truth.
Paula Lawhead
Seminarian