1
Kings 17:8-16
8 Then the word of the Lord
came to him, saying, 9 "Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and
live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you." 10 So he set
out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was
there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, "Bring me a little
water in a vessel, so that I may drink." 11 As she was going to bring it,
he called to her and said, "Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand."
12 But she said, "As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a
handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a
couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son,
that we may eat it, and die." 13 Elijah said to her, "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. 14 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 that the Lord sends rain on the
earth." 15 She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and
her household ate for many days. 16 The jar of meal was not emptied, neither
did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by
Elijah.
When her husband died, she wasn’t sure what she was going
to do. She was the mother to a young son, a woman without a job, without any
savings, without an education, without training. At the funeral, a friend would
come over, put his arm around her shoulder and say, “I’m praying for you,” while
another friend would give her a light hug and whisper in her ear, “If you need
anything, call me.” Back home there were casseroles, meat trays, rolls, pies,
and cakes, but she knew her and the boy couldn’t possibly eat all of it before
it spoiled, and even though she faced an uncertain future, she wasn’t afraid.
She would make it through this. Then, it didn’t rain.
When the rain lagged behind in its arrival, it didn’t
seem like that big of a deal…at first. For her, it meant she could still play
outside with her son, enjoy the long hours of sunshine, and get out of the
house where the memories of her late husband could consume her and drag her
down into that shadow of depression. At first, the grass was still green, the
flowers still bloomed, and everything seemed pretty normal. There were periods
like this before, when the rain was more patient than the people, but when the
rain didn’t come for weeks, then months, when the grass turned brown and the
shriveled blossoms fell from their stalks, when the sun became more oppressive
and less pleasant, when the weatherman said “drought,” she wasn’t afraid. She
could make it through this. After all, the rain has to come sometime…right?
When the drought stuck around and the farmers only dulled
their plows in the dust, and when the grocery store shelves carried fewer goods
for higher prices, she sat down at the kitchen table with a pen, scratching
numbers on the back of an old envelope, trying to figure out how she’d get by
this week. She was already buying the store brands, so she had to cut corners
other ways: she could buy whole milk and stretch it with water (but the price
of water had gone up in the drought too); she could buy more things in cans and
boxes instead of fresh fruits and vegetables; she could leave the meat and opt
for the more processed options; she could put a little less on her own plate so
that her son would have more in the days ahead. It was going to be hard, but
they were going to get through this. Then the bills started piling up.
When the bills came, she paid the ones she could afford,
the ones that would let her pay some, a little at a time. She paid the bills
that were important: electricity, water, rent, but those were (of course) the
most expensive bills, especially in the midst of the drought. Eventually, she
couldn’t pay them all, so she staggered them, paying one this month, another
next month, and another the month after. Before too long, though, the red and
pink envelopes came in the mailbox, and before the phone was cut off, every
call was screened (because for a widowed woman her age, in these tough economic
times, she wasn’t getting any social calls, just bill collectors). She sat at
the table, the stack of envelopes mocking her and the math that didn’t add up,
but she was determined. They were going to get through this. The drought had to
end, the rain had to come, the food had to grow, and the prices had to come
down. But they didn’t.
The one grocery bag she brought home from the store got
lighter. Soon, she’d have to walk to the store because she didn’t have money
for gas or insurance, and the bank was likely going to take the car any day
now. The phone was shut off, the cable gone, the gas line locked at the meter,
and the power company sent a letter saying they’d be there next week to
disconnect her from the grid. As she put the few groceries away, she nearly
cried at how lonely they looked in the cabinet, but this wouldn’t last forever.
It couldn’t last forever. Could it?
She wasn’t afraid—not just yet. There was still something in the cabinet, still
some food to put on the table, still some hope left. But the drought marched on
in its relentless theo-political lesson, and before too long, she was down to
her last sac of flour and her last jug of oil, just enough to eat simple cakes
of bread once or twice a day.
She tried not to eat, to stretch what was left for her
son, to quiet the rumbling of his stomach and ignore the growing, growling
violence in hers. The drought wiped out the farmers, the grocery stores, even
the food banks. Not even her neighbors—the ones who covered her kitchen
counters in casseroles—could help, for they too were suffering. She had seen it
and helped those she saw as worse off as best she could. She stretched those
last groceries as far as they could go, often going a day or two without eating
anything herself, until that one day…that one day when she went to the flour
jar and found only a small, handful of flour and just enough oil in the jug to
say there was some in it. That day, reality set in and it all came crashing
down.
She had buried her husband, and now the thought occurred
to her that she was probably going to have to bury her son too. She knew if the
drought continued, her son would go first. She already noticed the way his
clothes just sort of hanged on his boney shoulders, how his joints were sharp
and pronounced, no longer lost in the soft, healthy tissue of a growing boy.
She had rocked him to sleep every night for weeks as he cried from the pain in
his empty stomach. With the drought not letting up, with so many around her
cursing the gods they once worshipped, the gods that once were thought to bring
the rain when the people needed it, with so many she knew already losing the
fight against the seemingly endless dearth…she gave up. She knew she wouldn’t
make it even though she had fought so hard to survive. So she went out to
gather a few sticks to burn (because you don’t gather limbs or logs if you’re
not planning on staying around). Her plan was forced upon her: she’d make what
food she had left; she and her son would eat it; then they’d wait for death’s
slow, hungry hand to take hold. She was afraid. She was out of hope. Then
Elijah walks into town.
Now, at this point in the story, we may be tempted to
think of Elijah the prophet as some sort of hero, riding into town, into this
woman’s life to save the day. After all, if we skip to the end, Elijah has
promised her enough meal and oil to last through the drought and she and her
entire household have enough to eat. If we just get to the end, we see this
woman no longer struggling, no longer having to stretch to make ends meet. She
and her son have plenty; God has provided and that’s the lesson we’re supposed
to take with us. But why do we so quickly assume Elijah is the protagonist in
this short story? Is it because he’s a man? Is it because he’s an Israelite? Is
it because he’s a prophet? I mean, from the very beginning of this text Elijah
doesn’t sound like a hero: “the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘Go
now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded
a widow there to feed you.’" Elijah doesn’t stroll into Zarephath
to help this woman. No, he goes there because she is supposed to help him!
So right away, something not’s quite right. I mean, think
about this for a minute: before arriving in Zarephath, Elijah was being taken
care of by birds that brought him food where he waited by a wadi of fresh
drinking water. God had provided for the prophet in supernatural ways, but the
wadi dries up and God tell Elijah to go to this widow in Zeraphath. Now, why
couldn’t God just tell him to go to another wadi and have the birds meet him
there? Why couldn’t God have provided manna from heaven or water from a rock
for Elijah—God had done it for an entire nation of people, so what’s one,
single man? Why place more a burden on a woman whose spirit is already crushed,
whose resources have already been exhausted? Why tell the prophet to go to her?
I mean, I get that od is trying to teach Elijah something by forcing him into
the heart of a region known for the worship of Baal; I get that God is setting
Elijah up to confront the idolatrous queen Jezebel in the heart of her own
homeland (for Jezebel was from Sidon), but why—why send him to this widow who
already has nothing, especially when God says nothing to Elijah about helping
this poor widow? Maybe there’s something Elijah is meant to learn from this
widow, something we’re all meant to learn, and perhaps it’s more than what we
assume.
Look again at the way these two are introduced in verses 10 and 11: “When [Elijah] came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering
sticks; he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, so
that I may drink.’ As she was going to bring it…” Elijah walks through
the gate of the town and when he sees this widow picking up a few dried sticks,
he asks for a cup of water. Has he forgotten about the drought he prophesied a
few verses earlier? Can’t he tell by the cracked ground, the withered trees,
and the dusty air that water is a rare commodity in this part of the world? And
this woman, can’t he see in her tired, hungry eyes that she is carrying a
burden far greater than his own thirst? “Can you bring me a glass of water,
shug?” “Don’t you know we’re in the middle of a drought? Can’t you see I’m in
the middle of something? Look around you. Do you think water is so readily
available I can fetch a perfect stranger a glass just because he smiled at me?
Who do you think you are?!”
That’s what I’d have told him. After all, if I was faced
to face with the man who called this drought on the land because of some
theological and political hissy fit with the king over his wife, I believe I’d
have given him more than one of two of those sticks upside his head! Because
you know when your child is at home crying, when his stomach is empty, when you
know you’re going to have to face his death soon, the issues argued about by
politicians and clergy become meaningless if they don’t help your son to live. They
can argue over the right way to do worship, the wrong way to pray, who can and
can’t be allowed to do this or that, but if your children are hungry…none of
those things matter. Yeah, if Elijah had strolled up on me asking for a cup of
water in the midst of drought he called for, I’d tell him to turn right back
around and go back to wherever it was he came from. But this nameless Sidonian
widow is a better person that I am.
Did you notice what it said in verse 11? “As she was going to
bring it…” No words of protest are spoken. No excuses given. She
doesn’t even ask who he is. Elijah—this foreign stranger who just walks into
town—asks for a cup of water, and she’s off to get it for him. It doesn’t take
much to figure out she probably doesn’t have much (if any) to spare, but she’s
willing to share it with him anyhow. I think it sort of catches Elijah off
guard; maybe he thinks she’s better off than he realized, because before she
can even get started in fetching his water he asks for more: "Bring
me a morsel of bread in your hand." How is she still talking to
him?! Now he wants bread?! She swears to him (a sign of sincerity) that she
just has enough for a last meal for her and her son. You can almost hear the
pleading in her voice, can’t you? As if she wishes she could help this man, but
she can’t even help her own son.
Elijah could have said to her, “It doesn’t matter. God
called me here, and God told me you’d give me something to eat, so come off the
bread lady.” But that’s not befitting a prophet of the Most High. He could have
lambasted her about the necessity to prepare for difficult times, the need to
be frugal, the importance of hard work and the way she needed to “pull herself
up by her bootstraps.” Elijah could have pointed his finger at her and
criticized her lowly position, claiming she was just a drag on the system, that
she shouldn’t have had a child if she couldn’t afford one, that she should have
remarried, or that she should have done something to take care of her son and
herself (“after all,” he could have though, “if I was in her place, you better
believe I’d be doing everything I could to put food on the table for my
family!”). Elijah could have said those things, but he didn’t. Instead, he
promises this woman that if she would make him a small roll along with her and
her son, God would be sure to provide for her until the rains came again—and
God does.
It’s easy to walk away from this story with the
fable-like lesson of a woman who trusted the words of a prophet, the promise of
God to provide, but I think there’s a deeper lesson here, one closer to the
bone for us. You see, I know the Sidonian widow, and I bet you do too. I bet
you’ve seen her countless times, probably even know her name, and I bet (like
me) you’ve missed what God is trying to tell us.
I’ve seen the Sidonian widow as she pushed her buggy down
the aisle at Wal-Mart, kids hanging out of the buggy, running wild trying to
grab every bag of candy, box of cookies, or can of whatever they can get their hands
on. There’s four bottles of sodas in her cart, along with frozen fish sticks,
ramen noodles, and different cans with one form or another of “something-oni”
in them. There’s not a single fresh fruit or vegetable in that buggy, nothing
even remotely healthy, no wonder her kids are running all over like they’re
jacked up on adrenaline! Then again,
soda’s cheaper than milk, fish sticks are easier and cheaper than fresh fish,
chicken, or beef, and she’s got a lot of mouths to feed and bills to pay. I’ve
seen the Sidonian widow.
I’ve seen her when the rest of us celebrate holidays like
Veterans’ Day, when we have parades and services that celebrate those who’ve
gone to war, those who’ve served their country, only to forget about them the
other 364 days of the year, when so many of them struggle with mental illness,
with physical disabilities, with the haunting physical and mental pains that
come with witnessing the hell that is war. I’ve seen her in the faces of those
vets, like the ones outside the VA hospital in Waco, Texas, who are turned out
on the streets to scour for food, to stand in the midst of traffic, waving
their arms wildly because they’ve lost their minds. I’ve seen that widow in
those people as others who would want to say they honor such soldiers shoo them
away, call the police on them, or make fun of them in the midst of their
struggles. I’ve seen the Sidonian widow.
I’ve seen her as she comes back to school after being
gone for several weeks, when she gets sideways glances from her classmates,
when parents and teachers talk about her as “that girl that got pregnant.” I’ve
seen her as she’s tried to put right the mistakes she made only to be held back
by the judgement of those who find themselves more righteous.
I’ve seen her in the unwashed faces of little children in
trailer parks, in the shirtless youth who hang out on the steps of an apartment
in the projects, in the downcast eyes of the mother buying groceries with her
EBT card, in the forgotten, dark, cold room where an elderly man longs for a
phone call, a visit, any attention to let him know someone cares. I’ve seen her
in far too many faces of those who’ve been told they’ve got to fix what’s wrong
with them before they can be a part of the church, a part of God’s kingdom, a
part of a community of equally messed up people. I’ve seen the Sidonian widow,
and there have been times I’ve been tempted to tell her to fix her own
problems, to get her life figured out, to get a job, to make better choices, to
be better prepared for when things don’t turn out the way you hope. I’ve guilty
of thinking, “Well, it’s their fault they’re in such a mess in the first
place.” I pray God will forgive me, because if the Sidonian widow teaches me
anything it’s this: God chose a poor, foreign, widowed, woman to care for God’s
prophet, and even in the midst of her own lack, she did! So who am I to tell
anyone who may be different from me in any
way that God can’t use them for God’s glory and the kingdom? Amen.
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