Biscuit
1 Kings 17:8-24; Luke 7:11-17
June 6, 2010
History is in the air today, full of years and dates and events of institutions long ago and still alive. The United Church of Canada is 85 years old today - or is it 85 years young? That, Hamlet, is the real question that should not only be studied, but engaged as well.
Indeed, if all we do is think about our age, remembering past accomplishments and dilemmas, we have decided to die. Resurrection is possible for institutions - even for the church - and we should decide to live, not by ignoring history, but by listening and paying heed to where it has brought us.
The years of the United Church of Canada are for the moment an interlude for us. We will celebrate by the beginning of September our 128th anniversary as a church in Regina - one of our partner churches, Ethel United, Ethel, Ontario, is celebrating today its 133rd! It was actually two of us, Knox Presbyterian and Metropolitan Methodist, who each entered the United Church on their own in 1925 and that’s the 85th birthday. And then, the two United Churches on Lorne Street decided to be married on November 18, 1951, so that will be 59 years this fall. We are old enough, but for what?
There really are no passages of Scripture that perfectly fit any kind of anniversary. The Biblical authors did take careful note of years and ages, but only marked the major events such as the Passover in Egypt, but lost precise count along the way. That frees us from getting stuck competitively on numbers and focus instead on how we can recreate and relive the long ago events. Our Lectionary readings are accidental for this anniversary day, but that is the way it’s supposed to work. We have to find our way into the Bible on a given day and listen carefully to what is being said, for in the first place we are a People of the Word.
Elijah’s flight from the wicked Ahab and Jezebel is just beginning, amid all too normal and then bizarre occurrences. He flees to a flowing brook Kerith and is refreshed by the waters in the midst of the drought he himself declared at the behest of God, and is fed by ravens. All was fine and comfortable, but then nevermore, the brook dried up and the ravens disappeared. Why did God turn on and turn off the mercy? We do not know, then or now.
But there was a new direction. Into Sidon, ironically the homeland of the most infamous of all Israelite queens, Jezebel, Elijah was sent to a particular widow in the town of Zarephath. He finds her scavenging wood and twigs to build one last fire. He asks her for a drink of water, a typical act of hospitality, and as she is going, he adds, “How about a biscuit, please?” She turns and answers him bluntly, “As the Lord your God lives” - she knew who he was - “I have no bread made and have just a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil. I have been gathering sticks so that my son and I may eat, and then with nothing else available, we will starve to death.”
A wonderful reply for a prophet to answer! Elijah knew there was another possibility, “Fear not,” he begins. “Go and make that bread, but first give me a biscuit and then make some for yourself and your son, for the Lord God is going to keep that bread and oil going until the drought ends.” And so it came to pass.
Does the United Church pay attention to the Lectionary? A couple of weeks ago every pastoral charge was mailed a package with starter mix for bannock, put together by Zarephath-ian citizens of Wilmot United Church in Fredericton, New Brunswick. In a modern way they have multiplied the loaves for the entire church nationally. Today we will share in a morsel of bread that unites us not so much in our 85 years of history, but in our current spirit as a uniting church of Jesus Christ in these particular places to which we have been called. The widow’s bread was going to last until the drought broke; I am not concerned about how long this bread lasts, but how long will this connection with one another remain?
This woman and her son were on their way relentlessly towards death until Elijah and God intervened. Yet just as the brook of Kerith dried up, death came back to claim the widow’s young son. “What have you against me, O man of God?” she said to Elijah. The word is recorded simply as “said,” but you know there are more descriptive verbs. This is the world we know, when tragedy makes no sense and appears to be divinely vindictive in fact. Elijah asks for the dead boy and takes him up to his upper room and demands impatiently of God pretty much the same bitter question, “Why?”
It is almost surreal as Elijah stretches himself out three times over the boy, pleading with God, and the boy revives. Is it too early in the history of our common faith to call it a resurrection?
Better part of a millennium later, a Gospel writer we call Luke heeded history and recounted the healing of the son of the widow of Nain using remarkably similar language and story line. It was different - there was no drought, but there were the Romans oppressing. There was a widow with a son, but he was an adult. Jesus too met them at the gate of the city, the son being carried out in order to be buried. “Do not weep,” were his words of encouragement to the widow, and he came up and touched the funeral bier, not actually the body. That alone would render Jesus unclean by the purity laws. “Young man, I say to you, arise,” and the young man sat right up and started to speak. Dead men never speak. He was, can we say it again with full Gospel conviction, resurrected. The first thing Elijah and Jesus do is give the son back to the mother, giving back the widows their own life, resurrecting them as well.
These are odd stories that in their realism become surreal and unreal. It is very true, as many have pointed out, that there were other people who died in Nain and Zarephath, perhaps on the very same day, and were not resurrected. There were most likely hundreds of blind and lame people who passed by Jesus and were not healed. Too many Christians strain to be the one out of a hundred, testing God’s validity. No wonder there are so many disillusioned.
Jesus was indeed human and was not able to cure the whole world, nor was that his purpose. It would have made for a very different history of this belaboured world if he had, and I am not certain it would have been a better one for you and me. What he was doing was giving those around him a glimpse, a taste of the kingdom of heaven. Someday, God will bring it all together like this, but for now it is like this - a world too often immersed in suffering and injustice and tragedy that cannot be figured out, but a world in which the grace of God penetrates through inexplicably to show us how to live a life of wonder and joy and love, not settling for a living death.
That’s what we have been trying to do for 85, 128, and 59 years. We have lost our way at times for we are all too human. Yet there is grace abounding even to the chief of sinners and each one of us is still given in the time of famine a biscuit to keep us together, body and soul. In the breaking of the bread, we know the risen Christ. Our calling in this world is to look out for resurrection.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan