Eagle Harbor Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel                    

June 6, 2010


Bread Enough

1 Kings 17:8-24

We are the widow--we all get hungry.  We are her son--we all get sick.  We are Elijah--we are all ministers. 
When it seems that we have run out of oil, when there is only a sliver of hope left, in this vulnerable space we can be hungry enough to let God in.  The woman in the story had to gather enough trust to lay aside her own plan and bake bread for the stranger in her midst.  Poverty, whether by lack of resources of a poverty of spirit, has a way of opening us to God.  When we know that we cannot make it on our own, when we are scraping the bottom of the oil jar, when our plan doesn't have any grace in it--God is with us, offering that grace.  
We all get sick. We all need healing of some sort.  In the story of the healing of the widow's son, Elijah represents Christ.  No matter how dead we feel, Christ comes to us continually to resurrect us.  We are all in need of God.  Today you may especially be feeling curled up like a sick child.  God is going to keep a hand on your brow.  God will stay with you all through the night.  Tenderly, with compassion, God puts a cheek to your heart.  Grace abounds.  We all get sick, and we all die.  Yet even after death, we are with God.  
When we are given the strength from the feeding and healing that comes from God alone, we can be Elijah for others.  Like Elijah, we can trust God, allowing God to work through us to minister--to serve.  Ministry happens between the oddest combinations of people.  Holy moments occur in the unlikeliest of places.  Miracles surprise, unpredictable and mysterious and healing.  In God, we find our neighbors.  We discover that the one we thought was a stranger is a kindred spirit.  Enemies become friends.  Elijah would not have gone to the widow's home if he had not been listening to God.  Elijah trusted God to work through him.  We too are God's vessels,  conduits for the Holy Spirit.  Like Elijah, we can be the ones to offer reminders of God's grace.

I have a book on the practice of prayerfully examining one's life called, Sleeping with Bread: Holding what gives you life.  It begins with this story: 
During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of childrnen were orphaned and left to starve.  The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care.  But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night.  They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food.  Nothing seemed to reassure them.  Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace.  All through the night the bread reminded them, "Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow."
We give this bread to one another -- reminders, assurances, grace-sightings.  Holy Communion reminds us that God is the host, the one who provides.  We are not on our own, but it is God who supplies our sustenance.  Our ongoing relationship with God leads us to see our neighbors more like God sees them.  We see their needs more clearly than we had before.  We can offer friendship, support, understanding, access to resources, healing -- drawing from the never-ending reservoir of Holy Spirit in us in order to see to it that all are fed.  We can tap into this reservoir by honest prayer, and trust.
Elijah was transparent with God.  His honest prayer, trusting God to use him, led him to the widow's home.  His vulnerability before God, his constant communication with God led him to intercede on behalf of a grieving mother.  We can hear Elijah's frustration, and desperation as he cries out, "why did you bring me here, God?  How could you allow this boy to die?"  
In his book, Bread for the Wilderness, Wine for the Journey, John Killinger tells of a man who is in anguish over having a sick child.  He wrote in his journal, "it would be so easy to see the Lord's Prayer as being greatly out of touch with what really matters to me.  It might be more relevant to pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, why aren't you down here on earth, doing something about my present difficulty?  Who cares if your name is hallowed, or whether your kingdom comes,  when what concerns us most is what life is really made of--our big and little hurts. . . 
John Killinger wrote, the young man didn't pray that prayer, Instead, he tried to give thanks for his daughter and the joy she had brought into their home. Then, listening for the voice of the Spirit, he reviewed the world around him to see what he could be thankful for. At last, turning again to the Lord's Prayer, he asked himself how he could possibly pray it in relation to the situation that had weighed so heavily on his mind.  This is what he wrote:  Our Father, in spite of the present difficulty, you are still in heaven and the world is still ordered.   May my response hallow your name.  The coming of your kingdom is more important than my own difficulty--so may I not hinder its coming by my worry.  Cause this event to be an opening up of your will for earth which I can see as clearly as if I were in heaven.  I must recognize that you still provide the necessities of life: I have bread enough.  May this event help me to realize how much I need your forgiveness and to forgive those who have sinned against me.  And may this not be an occasion for temptation to lose faith or respond as a pagan. Deliver me from any evil response or action in this difficulty.  The overriding and all-important fact of life is that to you belongs the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, and this event is caught up in that fact. Amen.  
And then a miracle showed up, a healing, and grace.
Elijah began with an honest, anguished prayer.  Then he prayed a prayer of trust, and acted in trust, asking God to heal.  Elijah's prayer and ministry in this story are inseparable.  It is his life of prayer that enables him to hear where God is calling him, filling him with strength for the journey.   Our preoccupation with our own list of reasons why we are not the right person for the job can threaten to squealch our ministry, until we realize that our strength does not come from outside, but the Holy Spirit within.  We are transparent when we are honest with God, trusting God to work through us.  We can be God's healing touch for those who need it.  Transparency is scary, but it is when we are in that vulnerable place that the Holy Spirit shines through.  

We have times in our lives where we need to squint to see the grace, and times when it comes in torrents.  Annie Dillard compared the experience of grace to filling a cup under a waterfall.  That's how I've been experiencing grace lately.  I feel like I'm going to need a wet-suit.  Elijah did too, it seems, when he came to stay with a poverty-stricken widow and her son.  The grace kept flowing, the oil kept pouring, the flour kept filling.  Even when a shadow came over the house, and a child became sick--still, God's grace broke through, offering hope, offering life.  We have bread enough.  Can you see it?  Will you ask for it?