ABIDING ASTONISHMENT
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-24
For the next few Sundays we will be considering texts from the books of 1st and 2nd Kings, featuring tales of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha. Today we begin with the story of Elijah in the 17th chapter of 1st Kings. The books of Kings in the Hebrew scripture purport to be works of history, but clearly they are not history as we have come to think of history in modern times. These are more works of theological history, if there is such a thing. They are meant to tell the story of God and God’s people. They are an account of a sacred covenantal relationship – sometimes kept, but more often ignored over time. The collectors and writers of these ancient words were living in exile in Babylon or had just returned from that exile. They had seen their capital city sacked, their sacred temple leveled, their way of life decimated. How were they to hang on to their unique relationship with the great God of the universe? These ancient stories preserved home and hope and grounded them in a familiar way of life.
Now, if you remember history from your school days, it was most likely a record of famous men and their deeds of daring. History was shaped by the dates of elections, battles and treaties, with an occasional nod to significant economic events. 1st and 2nd Kings, which was very likely one book in its original form, starts out in a very similar fashion to tell the history of the Hebrew people during the period of the monarchy or monarchies. It begins with the death of David, the rise and fall of Solomon, the ensuing battle for the throne, the splitting of the kingdom into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The various occupants of both thrones are largely ineffective leaders and scoundrels, with only an occasional righteous figure standing out in the crowd. It sounds pretty much like history as we have learned it.
So Ahab, son of Omri ascends to the throne of Israel, ruling from his capital city of Samaria, and he is one bad apple! The book of 1st Kings says “Ahab son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). Among the evil things he did was to marry a gentile, Jezebel, a Phoenician princess from the city of Sidon, who was as bad, or worse, than Ahab. She managed to persuade her husband to turn his worship practice from God to Baal, one of the gods of her people who was responsible for rain and fertility. Ahab built a temple to Baal in Israel. “Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kings 16:33b.)
Now remember that this is theological history. That is, it is history written from a particular point of view. This is history written to tell the story of Yahweh’s activity in the world as this God, who initially may look like the tribal god of the Hebrew people, grows in their consciousness to become the great and only God of all life. Here we encounter a significant set of stories about the world’s growth in understanding God and God’s purposes in the world.
We find Ahab and Jezebel sitting on their thrones, surrounded by advisors, courtiers and, no doubt, a few court prophets, when out of nowhere appears one Elijah, the Tishbite. He is a total outsider, from a small, no-account village, with no pedigree, no credentials, no position – except that he has come to speak for God. We don’t know how he even manages an audience, but there he is standing before royalty, mincing no words, as he speaks for God, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word” (1 Kings 17:1.) The word is plain as day and right as rain. There will be none of that for many days to come. God has lost patience with the wickedness and idolatry of Ahab and Jezebel and will be plugging the waterspouts of heaven until there is repentance and right living in the land. With the exception of a few right-wing television preachers, we modern sophisticates no longer attribute natural disasters to the willful action of God, but these ancient scribes are trying to make the point that God is, nevertheless, the God of all creation. Both breaking and keeping the covenantal relationship has its set of consequences.
Elijah the Tishbite is one formidable consequence. The drought that comes with his prophecy is wide-spread and angers the royal pair. God warns the prophet to flee their wrath. God sends Elijah out to the Wadi Cherith, where he finds enough water in the creek bed to survive, and God sends ravens twice a day with enough food for him to survive – that is, until the creek runs dry. This brings us to today’s text in which God’s next instruction is to go the region of Sidon where he will be cared for by a certain widow in the village of Zarephath. There is much that could be said about what follows. There is delicious irony in the hospitality shown by this poor widow from Sidon compared to the drought-inducing wickedness of Queen Jezebel, also from Sidon. There are interesting questions about where real power lies.
There are many miles between the Wadi Cherith and Zarephath on the Mediterranean coast. Surely there were other villages, other sources of water, other hiding places. It should not be lost that God sends his prophet to seek help from a foreigner and a widow at that. Again, there is irony in God’s choice for the source of the prophet’s rescue. This woman is at the bottom of the heap, an “unclean” Gentile, a destitute widow with a child to feed and no man to provide for them (as the culture would have required.) Yet it is precisely here that God works God’s wonders. It is this desperately poor widow, literally facing death for herself and her child, who remembers hospitality and acts with grace. Something of the “fear of the God” remains in her consciousness, even in her hour of direst need, and she willingly shares what she has.
How can we explain the miracle of the jar of meal and the jug of oil? Do we need to? Is the miracle in the literal refilling of the containers or is it in the way God cares for God’s own and how they care for one another? Have you ever seen life sustained in the worst of circumstances as people rose to the occasion to provide for the sisters and brothers in need? Is this not God at work in the world?
Walter Bruggemann writes of these miracles that “The narrative does not explain. But it testifies to the wonder. We may imagine, moreover, that this story of testimony was cherished and restated many times, each time evoking a sense of amazement and gratitude, an awareness that daily life is invested with God’s inscrutable blessing.” He goes on to say that “Martin Buber, in a elegant phrase, has characterized miracle as a happening of ‘abiding astonishment,’ an event told in the life of the community with an enduring capacity in each rehearsing to reopen life to the gifts of God” (Walter Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, p. 211.) Is there any word in this ancient testimony that would reopen our lives – yours and mine – to the very real gifts of God that are available to us?
The story grows more complicated as the widow’s son becomes ill and dies, or at least seems to stop breathing. We find the widow is angry with God and God’s prophet, and, frankly, Elijah is not too happy with God either. She challenges Elijah, “‘What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!’” “You’ve taken me in with talk of your God and your magic tricks. Then you turn on me and take my precious child!” And Elijah is no more patient with God, “’O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?’” “How could you do such a thing to this poor woman who has offered only kindness to me by your direction?” “‘O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again’” is the prophet’s prayer, though, in truth, it’s more a demand than a plea. God responds by restoring the child to life. In this case, God hears and answers prayer, showing that God has no regard for death, that death holds no real power for God. So the woman says to Elijah, “‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.’” Her faith is complete but this sort of testimony always make me think of Jesus’ words to Thomas and the disciples in the upper room after the resurrection. “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’” (John 20:29.)
In a book on the prophets Elijah and Elisha entitled Testimony to the Otherwise, Walter Brueggemann has written about the ways in which prophetic stories break into the more traditional history of the kings to posit that God has different plans for the world, a different way of relating to creation. He says God’s history is “otherwise.” He contrasts the stories of the kings to the stories of the prophets, saying the latter stories "open to the listeners, in daring imagination, the claim that the world does not need to be perceived or engaged according to dominant shapings of power, to privileged notions of authority, to conventional distributions of goods, or to standard definitions of what is possible." He goes on to say that Elijah "enacts otherwise, showing that the world could be and would be different, concretely, decisively different." He urges us to enter “the land of possibility,” one in which the “practice of imagination…is sacramental.” Here he suggests we might "let the Bible, its words and its claims, make contact with the life-and-death issues of our own time and place" (Quoted in Kate Huey, “Courageous Compassion”, SAMUEL at ucc.org, June 6, 2010.) Could we ever embrace such an “otherwise”? How would such consciousness affect the vote we cast on Tuesday?
Abiding astonishment, are we capable of it? Do we have the capacity to wonder at God’s work in the world and in our lives; to consider a God who works through the poor and outcast, the marginalized and foreigners; to follow a God who inverts power, bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly; to give ourselves to a God who knows our every need and wipes away every tear; to enter into covenant relationship with a God who disdains death and showers us with life abundant? Could we open ourselves to such a God? Could we live like that? Could we yet write our own theological history, our own story of “otherwise,” our own tale of turning the world right side up? God helping us, I believe we can. Amen.