|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| 1 Kings 17:8–24
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Psalm 146 |
Galatians 1:11–24
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Luke 7:11–17
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Once before I shared a story from Jewish wisdom about a father who supported his son-in-law until he completed his education. Then the father said to his son-in-law, "up to now I have supported you, but the time has come for you to support your family on your own." "But what should I do?” said the son-in-law, "I know nothing abut making a living, remember I was a liberal arts major." "Go into the market place and observe what everyone else does and follow their lead", replied the father. So the young man went into the market place and saw that there were many stores, each with samples of their merchandise displayed outside. So he rented a store, bought a few pieces of material, and hung them outside. However when potential customers came into the store to buy, they saw that the store was completely empty, and so they left in disgust.
The young man went to his father-in-law and complained, "I did everything you suggested, and haven't even a penny to show for it," and he told his father-in-law the whole story. "Fool!" exclaimed the father-in-law. "What you saw hanging outside the other stores was simply a sample of what they had inside the store. People see samples outside and then enter to buy the merchandise inside. However if your store is empty and you have not invested in any inventory, what use are the samples outside?"1
Last week, Trinity Sunday reminded us that God is best understood in terms of relationships. We may have wonderful prayers, beautiful buildings, and delicious coffee hours, but if we eschew relationships with others and desire no living relationship with God, we are simply playing at religion and are as foolish as the young man who played at being a merchant. Our life is like beautiful samples on the outside swaying in the wind, but bankrupt of substance inside.
The larger Biblical record can be understood as a long saga about the creation and cultivation of relationships. It is a story of God seeking to establish a relationship with us and coaching us to seek a right relationship with one another In the ancient creation stories God observed, "It is not good for this human I created to be alone. I will create a helpmate." Then the Bible develops the relationship between Adam and Eve, and between them and God, continues with the sibling rivalry of Cain and Abel, and so on. After many, many years, the Bible then moves to God establishing a relationship with the tribes of Israel. Down through the centuries, the message is amplified and reiterated.
The prophets made an important contribution to faith by expanding the understanding of God’s intentions and emphasizing that widows, orphans and even foreigners are included in God’s design and deserve justice and honest dealing. Israel was reminded that its mission entailed bringing all the nations into a relationship with God. When people described Jesus as a prophet it was tacit recognition that Jesus taught his disciples in the tradition of the prophets like Elijah.
That is the connection between the first lesson and the Gospel this morning. In the prophet’s Elijah’s time, there was no police force or sheriff’s department. There was no 911 emergency network. People had large families for protection. A lone widow was in a very precarious position, and likely not to survive for very long. God however sends Elijah not to a person that could protect him or even offer him appropriate hospitality, but to a widow and a foreign widow at that who had no protection, no resources at all. She was on the verge of starvation, and Elijah shows up, and says, we will survive. Somehow their food supply lasts. Then the widow’s small son takes ill and it looks like he will die. The widow who as a foreigner worshipped different gods than the God of Elijah logically thinks that she is under divine punishment because she has helped Elijah. Elijah seems afraid of that too, but he intervenes and prays to God, and God brings the boy back to life. The lesson of the story is clear: God cares for the very desperate, and marginal, those at the point of oblivion, even those people who do not worship in the “correct way” This divine care is not for political reasons, it is not justified by best economic practices, rather, God posits this as how humanity is always expected to act.
There is nary a hint that Jesus ever gave explicit teaching about doctrines devoid of living examples. Like the prophets before him, Jesus emphasized relationships over outward and surface ritual. In today’s Gospel Jesus is more concentrated on the interaction with the poor mother than on the act itself of bringing the son back to life. Jesus would have hardly said, now look at the power of my miracles. Jesus might very well have said, as you go about your business, buying salt in the market place, gathering grain in the fields, sweeping the dust of the house into the street, do you somehow see God in the face of that sick woman off to the side or the poor laborer harvesting your grain. Where is a true prophet likely to reside, in the house of a rich comfortable palace, or out in poor shack with a family just scraping by? When do you think the reality of God comes the closest? How are things really between you and your less fortunate neighbor, between the poor and alien in your town, between you and God? Do the pretty samples on your outside match the commitment inside your heart? Good questions for all of us and why I doubt Jesus would ever see amnesty as synonymous with anathema.
1 Rabbi Yaakov, the Maggid of Dubno, adapted from Shavuos Treasury, Mesorah Heritage Foundation
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
