Wild Miracles

1 Kings 17:8-24

Don’t you just love how our scripture tends to start right in the middle of things? As though we all remember exactly who Elijah is and what he was up to?

By way of a little background on this story, Elijah was a great prophet, in the time of the kings of Israel, when Israel was an establish monarchy—no longer a roaming, nomadic tribe. Elijah had the uncomfortable job of telling the kings the truth. They would seek out his advice and he would have to tell them what God had to say, and when it wasn’t favorable, he might find himself hiding for his life.

The historian who compiled the book of 1^st Kings tells us that King Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he took as his wife Jezebel daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal” worshiped and built a sacred altar and did more to provoke the anger of the Lord than had all the kings of Israel before him.[1]

God is particularly displeased to see a king of Israel worshipping another god. Baal, it turns out is the god of storms and rain, and, by extension, life, death, and fertility. As punishment, Elijah informs King Ahab that there will be a severe drought for three years, to show exactly which god is in charge of the storms and rain, life and death.

And so Elijah, heads on out of town, to get out of Ahab’s jurisdiction, and goes to the Wadi Cherith, a marsh where he will still have some water to drink. God sends ravens to feed him bread and meat, twice a day. But soon, because there is no rain, the Wadi dries up and Elijah must move on.

Which catches us up to today’s scripture lesson, God sends Elijah to the land of Sidon, which also happens to be the birthplace of the Queen Jezebel and the heartland for Baal worship. No ravens this time, God tells Elijah that a widow there will provide for him.

In the Bible, widows are always of God’s special concern. Without husbands to provide for them or give them security and status in Israelite society, these women are vulnerable, with few resources and no power, not exactly the ideal caretakers for Israel’s great prophet. But Elijah has just relied on ravens, so the widow may seem like an upgrade. He finds her, by the city gate, gathering sticks for kindling, which cannot be a good sign that she’ll be able to provide a feast all on her own. Fortunately, God is with her, and after obediently fetching a drink of water for Elijah, she continues to listen to the word of God. She protests, but she does go and make bread and feed Elijah first, even though she only has enough oil and grain for one last meal for herself and her son. She tells Elijah that they are preparing to eat this last meal and then starve to death. It is a drought after all, so there will be no more grain until after it rains again. But she does it: maybe out of an act of faith, or out of a desperate hope that this man is right. In anticipation of the story of Jesus and the loaves and fishes, Elijah assures her that her jars of oil and meal will not go empty. And sure enough, God provides for the three of them, and the supplies hold and they are all able to eat for many, many days.

During the drought, God cares for those who are faithful. Elijah, the widow, and her child, are fed, even while the rest of the land starves. God does not give Elijah good news for the King and Queen, but does give good news to this widow and child who were on the verge of death, showing even more that God truly is in charge of the harvest, life and death.

In his book, Testimony to Otherwise, theologian Walter Brueggemann notes that the story of Elijah makes a break in the historical account of the kings of Israel. Among these stories of war, infidelity, punishment, and disgrace, we find the stories of the prophets that "open to the listeners in daring imagination the claim that the world does not need to be perceived or engaged according to dominant shapings of power, to privileged notions of authority, to conventional distributions of goods, or to standard definitions of what is possible."

These days, we find more and more stories that are told from unlikely points of view. Just think of Wicked, the story of the Wizard of Oz, told from the wicked witch’s point of view or of Wide Sargasso Sea, the story of Jane Eyre told through the eyes of the crazy wife in the attic. In our Postmodern awareness, we are more sensitive to other sides of the story: not just the winners of history, of the rich and elite, but the stories of the ordinary, of the underdog, of the slave, of the victim.

And so, in the middle of this litany of the kings of Israel, of their comings and goings, we find the story of a great prophet and a poor widow and her son.

Brueggemann says that Elijah "enacts otherwise, showing that the world could be and would be different, concretely, decisively different."

This whole business of good news for the impoverished and marginalized and bad news for the rich and royal will continue with Jesus, which is why so many people will call on stories of Elijah to help them process the reality of Jesus. It’d be nice sometimes, or easier at least, if so many stories of the Bible were not so uncomfortable, if they didn’t call on us to help feed the hungry and heal the hurts of the world—but the message of Elijah, of Jesus, is not self-fulfillment and satisfaction, it’s not prosperity and simple happiness,

Elijah spends a lot of time on the run, finding unlikely sources for meals and shelter. He interprets God for the people, he obeys God’s commands, and he challenges God. He and God have a full and rich relationship, sometimes harmonious, sometimes tense. When the widow’s son dies anyway, even with the abundance of food, Elijah cries out to God, asking what God has against him now that the son of his hostess would die anyway. And God hears these cries as Elijah stretches his own body across the child’s, and God answers Elijah by giving the child life again. This is not the sort of miracle we expect anymore. Who among us would expect to be able to stretch out over the lifeless body of a loved one and bring them back? Elijah raises people from the dead, Jesus will later raise people from the dead.

These are the sorts of wild miracles that God is capable of doing. God gives sustenance to those who have nothing, hope and healing to those who have none.

Thanks be to God.

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[1] 1 Kings 16:30-33