Sermon: Feed a Stranger, Starve a Fear
Texts: 1 Kings 17:7-16, Psalm 146
Date: November 1, 2009
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
The story about Elijah and the widow is captivating, isn’t it? Is it a true story? What do you think?
Please don’t be hampered in your imagination about factuality. The most fruitful question about a story like this is not “Did this happen?” but rather “Does this happen?” That is, when it looks like you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of your resources, does an act of generosity allow or reveal God’s gracious provision of what you need? That’s a question that emerges out of this story for me.
It’s curious, isn’t it, that God would willfully send the prophet to someone who had so little to provide for his needs? This particular story follows on the heels of another miracle story in which Elijah has been camping by a stream, drinking the water and being fed by ravens that God sends with food. When the stream dries up on account of the drought, God instructs Elijah to seek out this widow’s house and ask her for bread. Why wouldn’t the Lord send Elijah to the mansion on the hill for help? Or at least to the local mule dealer or corner store proprietor instead? Someone in the upper or middle class, someone with more resources than this poor widow who was about to prepare the last supper for herself and her son out of the meager supply of food she had left?
One way to look at it is to say that sending Elijah to the poorest person in town spotlights God’s role in the story. It must be clear that the host has almost no resources so that it is apparent that it is God who is providing. God is teaching both the prophet and the widow to trust God, so there can’t be any question of relying on whatever she might have had stored in the cellar.
Another way of looking at it is that God needed to choose someone as a host for the prophet who was likely to respond with generosity to the stranger who needed food. The poorer the person was, the more likely it was that she would be generous and share what she had. God was gambling on the generosity of a Gentile, and knew from experience that the less a person had, the better chance there was he or she would share.
Is that true? It’s certainly true in our era. Take Jody Richards, who saw a homeless man begging outside a McDonald’s and bought him a cheeseburger. Nothing unusual about that, except that Jody is also homeless and that 99 cent cheeseburger represented more than 10% of the $9.50 Jody had earned from panhandling that day. As it turns out, that kind of generosity among the poor, though rarely noticed, is fairly common. America’s poor donate more in percentage terms than higher-income groups do, according to surveys of charitable giving. Furthermore, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of the richer givers does. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recent survey of consumer expenditure found that the poorest fifth of America’s households contributed an average of 4.3% of their incomes to charitable organizations. And even that figure no doubt undercounts remittances by legal and illegal immigrants to family and friends back home, a multi-billion dollar outlay to which the poor contribute disproportionately. By contrast, the richest fifth gave at less than half of the poor’s accounted-for rate, giving 2.1% of their income. The middle group hovered just below 3% in this survey. [1]
Journalist Frank Greve interviewed several poor people to write the newspaper story out of which I plucked these statistics. He asked them why they thought poor people were more generous. Herbert Smith, who tithes his $1,010 monthly disability check, thinks that poor people give more because, in some ways, they worry less about their money. “We’re not scared of poverty the way rich people are,” he said. “We know how to get the lights back on when we can’t pay the electric bill.”
Oh, we should have known that old bugaboo fear would show up when a spiritual issue is at stake. “We’re not scared of poverty the way rich people are.” We humans seem destined to wrestle with fear at every turn in our lives; it is one of the universal experiences that binds us together. Fear is certainly present in the story of the widow. She tells the prophet who has boldly asked her for bread that she is down to the last of her food, and is gathering a few sticks to make a fire so she can cook the food and then lay down to die with her son. She’s not just a little short of cash; she’s on the verge of starvation.
Do you recall what Elijah says to her? It’s what God’s messengers usually say first: “Do not be afraid.” And then he lays out this outlandish challenge—that she should feed him before she feeds herself and her son. Does that sound like a man of God to you? Doesn’t it seem more logical that he should give her assurance by inviting her to feed her son first, and then to eat and be satisfied before she offers food to the vagabond stranger? Why on earth would he ask her to do it the other way around?
I can’t say that I know. I don’t think it’s just because Elijah was hungry and wanted to make sure there was enough for him. I believe there is something more profound happening here than the provision of supper for three hungry people. I suspect it has something to do with refusing to feed her ravenous fear, because fear is what would stand between her and her more generous and trusting impulses. She would naturally be afraid, based on the resources she can see, that there would not be enough for all of them. He is gently insisting that she put that fear aside, trust that God will provide, and share what she has.
At what point does the miracle in the story happen? Is it at the point when the meal and oil does appear in the jars that don’t run dry for the duration of the drought? Or is it when she tames her well-founded fear long enough to serve the prophet the first cake of bread?
I am in awe of this woman. There she was, looking at the bottom of her meal jar. What do you suppose she could see in that jar? I myself would look in there and not be able to tear my eyes away from the little bit of food swishing around the bottom. I wonder if she could see herself reflected in the bottom of the jar? Could she see the person she wanted to be, even if she was living in her last hours of life? Could she see the deep blue sky reflected, which reminded her of the infinite and unfathomable grace of the God who had brought her thus far?
My jar isn’t nearly so empty. My store of provisions is overflowing.
Actually, I have somewhat less than I had last year or the year before at this time. Our resources have shrunk. I’m not anywhere near the bottom of the barrel but neither am I enjoying the size of the surplus I had not so long ago. So this empty space between the top of the jar, where my resources would overflow, and the actual pile of resources, seems to be the trouble area. That is, this “empty space” between the rim of the jar and the fill line of what I do have, is the breeding ground for fear and insecurity. It’s like a petri dish with perfect conditions for breeding bacteria, only what my spirit is brewing is fright. It’s hard to see a reflection of the infinite and unfathomable grace of God in all this stuff. It’s even hard to see a reflection of who I want to be in here. My attention is too often fixated on the empty space.
There’s a folk tale from India that in some ways parallels the story from 1 Kings but perhaps is more addressed to people like me whose jar isn’t so empty. It’s called “Two Misers.” You’ll recognize themes from other folk tales.
A miserly man married a miserly woman and they had a little son. They were such misers that they wouldn’t eat a betel nut; they would carefully suck on one and wipe it and put it away. They ate meals only because they needed to eat to keep alive. Still they complained and asked God why he had to make a stomach that they had to fill every day so many times.
They had a secret grain pit in the gods’ room, and their life’s ambition was to fill it with money by the time their little son grew up. The wife complained about the size of the cucumbers in their backyard: if only they could have been twice the size, the family could have dined on them for two more days. When her husband asked her to wear the one or two pieces of jewelry she had received at her wedding, she would say, “Are you crazy? If I wear them, I’ll wear them out. Who’s the loser then? You and me!” The husband would beam at his wife’s wisdom.
For years, no guest had ever entered their house for a drink of water or a morsel of food. One rainy season, the couple had shut all the doors when suddenly they heard someone banging on their door. The husband opened it and in came a holy man, grumbling, “What a terrible rain, what a terrible rain!” As soon as he came in, he shut the door behind him and praised them.
“You are such good people. I’d have caught cold in that rain and died. You took me in and saved my life.”
As he had come in like a wet dog, he wet the whole house with his drippings. The wife said, “That’s all very well. You’ve dripped water all over the house.”
The husband chimed in, “What shall we do if the house gets too damp and the walls crumble?”
The holy man was not worried. He said, “No such thing will happen. After all, a holy man like me is in this house. Why don’t you bring some cow dung and wipe the floor with all this water and make it clean and nice?”
The husband couldn’t bear this man’s intrusion. “We don’t yet know why Your Holiness is here,” he said, quite bluntly.
The man said, “What does a holy man do in his devotees’ house? It’s very hard these days to find real devotees like yourselves. You’re two in a thousand. Because of the likes of you, holy men survive in this world. Well, anyway it’s time for dinner. You could give me some dinner. Then you can spread a mat. I’ll lie on it and be gone in the morning. Anyway, good generous people like you are very rare. I’d rather get a glimpse of your sweet faces than go on a pilgrimage to Kashi.”
He didn’t seem to wait for any yes or no from them. The couple stood there with their mouths open. He didn’t notice them at all. He took off most of his wet clothes, wrung them out then and there, and hung them up to dry on the peg. He even took the dry shirt and dhoti of the host from the clothesline, put them on, and sat on a chair without a word of apology. He asked the bewildered host to sit down on the other chair, and asked the woman, “Will you finish cooking soon?” The husband sat down where he stood, his mouth still open. His wife went in to cook.
She had some leftover rice from the afternoon. She felt that wouldn’t be enough and made some more. She meant to serve the leftovers to the guest and the fresh hot rice to her husband. But she was too flustered to do so, and actually served her husband the leftovers and the guest the fresh rice. The holy man relished everything he ate and asked for more chutney and more ghee and more everything. She couldn’t help serving him whatever he asked for, to the great astonishment of her husband, who knew her very well. The guest talked ceaselessly through the meal and even afterwards as he relaxed in his chair and praised her cooking fulsomely.
“What a wonderful cook you are! It was like ambrosia. The spices, the proportions! Others may bring the whole spice bazaar to the kitchen but can’t cook one good curry.”
The wife ate the small scraps of food left over from this hearty meal, and came out of the kitchen, somewhat exhausted. The holy man addressed them both with great satisfaction.
“Look, as I said, we don’t get devotees like you every day. I’m very pleased with your hospitality. I’ll give you three wishes. Ask what you want.”
Now the faces of the miser and his wife blossomed. The man came and fell at the guest’s feet and said, “Sir, please, may whatever I touch turn into a heap of silver rupees.”
The holy man asked him first to let go of his legs, and when he had done so, said, “Done.”
The husband put his hands out and touched a couple of things around him, and they fell down in a clanging heap of rupees. His joy knew no bounds. He jumped up and down, touching everything he could see, turning things into heaps of rupees.
The wife now fell at the holy man’s feet, and thinking of the cucumbers in her backyard, said, “Swami, may whatever I touch grow as long as a yard.”
The holy man quickly said, “Let go of the legs first,” released himself, then said, “So be it.”
Whatever she touched grew at once as long as a yard. She went into the kitchen and touched the hot chilies. They became a yard long. She touched the cucumbers. They too grew a yard long. She touched whatever she fancied and made them all long.
Right at that moment, her little son was wakened by all this noise and began to cry. The mother ran in happily and touched his nose, saying, “My rajah!” And his nose at once grew long, a yard long. She screamed, horrified by her son’s bizarre looks. When the husband ran in, the child was howling, unable to bear the weight of his nose on his face. “O my poor son,” said the man and picked up the child, who at once crumbled into a heap of rupees. Then the husband and wife realized their blunder. They ran weeping to the holy man, who carefully kept his distance, and they begged of him, “Please, give us the third wish at once.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“We want everything to be as it was. Please see to it that our first two wishes are cancelled.”
The holy man said, “So be it.”
The child began to play in the cradle as before. The chilies and cucumbers shrank back to their normal size. The heaps of rupees vanished, and things returned to their original shapes. When the man and the woman turned around, the holy man was nowhere to be seen. They said, “Look, that was God himself, come down to teach us a lesson.”
From that day on, they gave up their miserly ways and lived happily. [2]
When God looks at us, even in those moments when we are captivated by fear, fixated on the empty space between the rim of the jar and the mound of provisions, I think God sees like this Indian holy man did—God looks at us and sees generous devotees. Who just might have a few issues. Who might need to be relieved of their fright so that we can be more bountiful, sharing-wise.
Holy One, visit us during this season of gratitude. Visit us during this rainy season. We’ll do our best to open the door, and we’ll try not to grumble if you drip grace all over our stuff.
[1] Greve, Frank “America’s Poor Are Its Most Generous Givers” Published 5/21/09 by the McClatchy Newspapers
[2] http://learningtogive.org/materials/folktales/CoupleMisers.asp