SERMON
by Reverend Judith Alltree, delivered on Sunday June 6, 2010,
at the Church of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost II
Keep watch for “the amazing way God is at work in the most unexpected of places, with the most unlikely of people.” (Kate Huey, UCC, “Sermon Seeds”, Proper 10, YR C)
It would be too easy to look at the readings for today and draw a single line between the Old Testament, Elijah healing the widow’s only son, and Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, healing the widow’s only son, and we could all go home to lunch (or breakfast, as the case may be). Yes, God heals people, end of sermon! Unfortunately – or not, depending on your perspective – we would be missing the point if that is all we looked at in these passages. Certainly these are stories about healing, but they are more complex and yet as simple as that.
Have you ever heard of the expression “been down so long looks like up to me”? Have you ever been there in your own life? I have; it’s not been my favourite place to be, however in retrospect it’s always been the time I learned the most, and the time when I can see my faith was at its strongest. I would guarantee you that if you looked at your own lives, and found those times, you would see where God worked in your own life during those most difficult of times, in unexpected ways and places, and through the most unlikely of people, to bring new hope into your lives. And that is what these stories are about: transformation, the compassion of God, our response to God even in the most difficult and hope-less of situations. Our prayers are often answered, not necessarily in the way in which we expect them to be but generally in ways even more surprising and incredible than we might have imagined for ourselves.
Both these stories we’ve heard today concern widows. In the ancient world – and in many countries today for that matter – widows have no status. They are at the bottom rung of the power ladder. A woman without a male protector – a husband, father, brother or son – is a non-person. Notice how in neither case does the widow have a name. Naming someone was to give them status, just as taking the name away took their status away. When we read “Mary, mother of Jesus” or “Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus”, the mere naming of those women gave them special status, in addition to the protection offered by the men in their lives. The widows of our two stories belonged to no one, could expect no protection or justice from anyone. It is as if they had been abandoned and left in a wilderness to die.
The God sends two unlikely people into the lives of these two widows. The first, Elijah, was God’s prophet whose origins are very unclear. He is referred to as a Tishbite, yet no one has found evidence of a place called “Tishbe”. He is a stranger, an alien, also a person without status. His job, his calling from God, is to warn the evil King Ahab and his equally repugnant wife, Jezebel, yes, the one we have heard of, to stop committing evil and worshipping Baal or there will be consequences, which, in this case turn out to be a severe famine. When we meet Elijah, he is on the run from Ahab and Jezebel. At first, God sent Elijah to hide in the desert, where he found water, and the ravens fed him. When those resources were exhausted, he sent him to the poor widow, who he meets as she is gathering sticks in order to prepare a final meal for herself and her son before they die of starvation.
It is unlikely that she is feeling kindly towards Elijah when he demands she feed him; but he is a man, and her culture demands hospitality as a response to his request – but having seen to his needs, Elijah promises that her needs and those of her son will continually be met, even in spite of the famine. When her son dies, Elijah appeals to God to restore life to the widow’s child; God answers Elijah and the son is revived. The woman’s future, for now, is secure. Even a son will take care of his mother, and give her status and protection in the future.
Jesus is moved to compassion by the tears of another widow, 900 years later. He touches not the man but the platform his body is being carried on, the bier, and calls out to him, and he sits up, restored to life. Jesus is the Son of God, his special relationship is without question – but only to those who know him well. At the time of this healing, few know anything about this Nazarene carpenter, at the very beginning of his ministry. He is an artisan, but one of thousands, and no one in particular. In the first chapter of John’s gospel, when Jesus was calling the disciples, when Nathanael found out where Jesus was from he said Philip: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46) Even some of Jesus’ disciples thought he was an unlikely candidate for Messiah – at least, in the beginning.
Following this event in Nain, people declared Jesus to be a prophet, like Elijah, whose name means “Jehovah is God”. The healing of the widow’s son by Elijah is the first recorded miracle in Scripture of life being restored. Any healer was considered to be a prophet, and Elijah in particular was considered the harbinger of the Messiah. Thus, this healing and life restoration miracle of Jesus, so early in his ministry, would have been the first time that people asked the question: could this be the messiah?
And the most unlikely candidate for sainthood of all is St. Paul! By his own admission a “violent” persecutor of the church, yet called by God through a revelation of Jesus Christ to proclaim the very faith he once tried to destroy! How could this man be the one to bring such hope and transformation into the lives of countless millions of people throughout the generations, all in the name of Jesus Christ? Because of the grace of God working God’s own mysterious ways.
“God is at work in the most unexpected of places, with the most unlikely of people.” (Kate Huey, UCC, “Sermon Seeds”, Proper 10, YR C) including three seemingly ordinary men, one, a stranger in a strange land, and the other, an insignificant carpenter from the Galilee, the third a man, a well known, powerful Pharisee, who gave up everything in his life to become the greatest evangelist the Christian world has ever known. Because of these three men, the poor are given riches, the weak power, and hopeless find hope, and lives are transformed.
You can see, then, that these are not just stories of healing as much as they are stories of lives transformed through the power and love of God in Jesus Christ. It is important for each of us to keep watch in our own lives for “the amazing way God is at work in the most unexpected of places, with the most unlikely of people.” (Kate Huey, UCC, “Sermon Seeds”, Proper 10, YR C)
AMEN.