Pentecost 2 2007

1 Kings 17:8-16

Galatians 2:15-21

Luke 7:11-17

Great Expectations

I must confess that I put this sermon off until the last minute simply because I did not want to preach these texts. The story in Kings of Elijah intervening in the plight of a poor widow is more robust if you read the whole story, rather than the snippet in our lection. Once you read it all, you recognize the parallels in the two stories. No doubt the story of Elijah was widely circulated in Jewish circles at the time of Jesus’ ministry. Aligning Jesus with Elijah is important to Luke’s narrative. The expectation of the Jews is that Elijah will return as Messiah and any person claiming to be Messiah must be at least as great as Elijah the prophet. The parallels between the account of the widow with her minimal amount of flour and oil to bake a small cake of bread so that she and her son can eat it –it is their last bit of food and afterwards, without any prospect of more, they will die of starvation.

When we read about Elijah telling the widow to share what she had with him and the supply of food would not run out, we must wonder about the truth of such a claim. We might accept the miracle as the favor of God and rejoice with her and her son, or we might take a more cynical attitude and wonder if this is just the exception to the rule. Most of the poor people in our world are not getting enough and there is enough to share. The question we have to ask ourselves is why the piles are so high in some places and absent in others.

Luke’s gospel opens with Jesus teaching in the synagogue of his hometown, reading from the scroll of Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” (61:1). The inaugural sermon is the hypothesis statement about his work: to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. The events following the reading include the sermon on the plain: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God (6:22)”. Soon thereafter, John the Baptist is arrested and put in jail. John the Baptist sent word to ask if Jesus is the one or if they were to continue waiting, expecting another. Jesus replied “God and tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (7:22). Jesus is challenging John to see what the true signs are of God’s presence. The poor receive good news not only with a promise for the future, but also with action in the present.

The story of the poor widow whose son has died is the bottom of the social ladder in ancient times. The widows were notoriously poor and vulnerable and without her son, she is even more at the margin of society. One can only imagine her grief. When Jesus enters the picture, he has compassion on her and raises her son, giving him back to her, alive. No doubt this passage has meaning at multiple levels. First, Jesus like Elijah has the power of God and demonstrates it. Second, Jesus represents God and is full of love, grace, and compassion, regardless of the merit of the recipient. Third, the power of God to raise a person from death prefigures the coming death and resurrection of Jesus. At the first level the story represents the miraculous works of God. No doubt those who saw and heard this story were amazed and their faith encouraged. The widow was one of hundreds or thousands in the same plight, so that Jesus stopped and helped one raises an important question: why not all of them? The easy answer is simple: I don’t know. The more complex one is that our faith does not depend on a short-cut to human suffering, rather, the ministry we are given, exemplified by Jesus, is about addressing real human need and it is about compassion.

A cross stands in the road, which unveils reality for the care-givers and the world in need of care. In the midst of the complexity of human need is hope and the possibility of renewal and life. It is built on the foundation that all people are of value and none is to be dismissed – our world needs that kind of good news. Our challenge is to become the agent of taking the good news to the poor today!

Each of us is called to speak God’s word of love and compassion in a difficult, unjust, and hurting world. We too encounter those who are poor: if not for bread, for companionship, for meaning, for faith. There are many kinds of hunger: our workers who went to the Gulf Coast found many hungry for helping hands; those who went to Honduras found hunger for solidarity, for support in building a home for children in need; when I was in Kenya it was clear that hunger was a matter of daily reality as families tolled long hours to scrape together just enough to survive another day. We collected pennies for the playground in Ghana, and change for change in Mississippi, and now we are collecting again for Heifer International and ERD. Hunger is real and if our faith is as real, we will act. I looked at the HHS and US Census information on hunger, just in the US and found that there are many definitions of poverty. While many of us may ignore statistics or doubt their validity, I was curious enough to look at the US Census Department figures and then at those published by the Department of Health and Human Services. In short, the poverty rate in the US is 12.6%; that means in the last census data set, 37 million people lived in poverty in the US. The poverty rate for children under 18 is 17.6%. Looking at ethnicity the picture is more troubling: among blacks, 24.9% live in poverty and among Hispanics 21.8 percent are poor.

The Federal Register, vol. 72, Jan 24, 2007 pp 3147-3148 defines poverty for a household of 1 to be $10,210, for 2, $13,690; for 3, $17,170; for 4, $20,650. Programs using these guidelines includ3e Head Start, Food Stamp Program, National School lunch program, low-income home energy assistance program, children’s health insurance program. The Poverty guidelines, unlike the poverty thresholds are designated by the year in which they are issued. Basically the HHS 2007 poverty guidelines are approximately equal to the Census Bureau poverty thresholds for 2006. What does it mean to live in a country with enough wealth to fund a 522 billion dollar war and have so many people living in poverty?

Reading and reflecting on the story of Elijah and Jesus healing the son of a poor widow because it was the God-thing to do, tells me that God is about compassionate care for those who are poor!

Compassion requires that we see and hear and understand the realities of poverty in the US as around the world. Faith requires action on behalf of the poor. That is the message Jesus taught and exemplified. That is the work of the kingdom!