The Story of Elijah chapter 2 – 07/28/2024

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Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Heavenly Father,
We hide behind our egos and our anger and our postures of power
and even our anxiety and fearfulness
In truth we are fragile and frail people
Broken, wounded, flawed
Grant us the gentleness to allow ourselves to be loved
Loved by you who loves us perfectly and knows us completely.
Loved and known by our friends and family imperfectly
since they too are fragile and frail people just like us.
Keep us on this path, to love and to be loved.
Help us to never wander away.
And when we wander away fill us with the grace to return,
gentled again to love and to be loved, and wiser,
having learned in particular ways what love is like.
Take care of our friend Nancy as she attends to the work of love
as it presents itself in her life just now.
Add to her store of affection and devotion
and fill her with wisdom as she learns how to love more fully.
We know that true peace, true healing, true salvation
is found in your love.
For that we are full of gratitude and wonder. Amen.

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

After this the son of the woman,
the mistress of the house, became ill.
And his illness was so severe
that there was no breath left in him. 1 Kings 17:17

Picking up from last week, directed by the word of Yehovah, Elijah came to the home of a widow in Sidon, north of Israel’s border. She had helped Elijah when he was hungry and homeless. She let him stay in her home, in the small room upstairs. She hid him from King Ahab’s spies. And, now, this! Her son was struck down with an illness. Was this the reward for her hospitality and kindness.
Who is she? What is her name? We were never told, and now it’s buried in a history archeology cannot retrieve. Her son is nameless too. Nameless, and yet we know them. We know about widows, we know the sons of single moms. There were a mass of them in biblical times and hundreds of thousands more today. We may not know the specifics of their personal identities, but we know enough to draw us into their dramas.

If we give careful study to the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures, we will find running through several of them a single thread. Whether or not we’re aware of why our response to the story is positive, because once the plot has played itself out we sense that a proper balance in the universe has been restored. My label for this outcome and how we respond to it is: “that’s the way it ought to be.”

Doesn’t it feel satisfying when good wins out over evil. If the people who did what was right come out on top, and those who did what was wrong get what they deserve, don’t you feel that’s the way it ought to be? For instance, Joseph’s older brothers tortured him and sold him as a slave, but in the end they were terrified of him and bowed at his feet in obeisance. That’s the way it ought to be! Then there was the heroic Esther who becomes the queen of Persia and the villain who opposed her comes to his end swinging from the gallows. Then, especially in the stories of Daniel and his three friends at times when their enemies hatched plots to get them executed. But when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked out of the fiery furnace unscorched, or Daniel thrown to the lions survived the night, while the next day those same lions tore his enemies to pieces–well, that’s the way it ought to be.

To the extent that the Psalms represent the prayers of Israel,
they were convinced that it was God’s will,
to vindicate the righteous and condemn the wicked.
The people of Israel must have loved hearing these morality tales,
cheering the hero and booing the villain.

A central revelation of scripture is the clear picture of how circumstances should unfold in a perfect world. The letter of James assumes that we already know these things, when he says, “From the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?” (Jas. 3:10-11).

When we come to the end of the widow’s story, we’ll see the way it concludes is the way it ought to be.

One morning the widow’s son did not jump out of bed. When she came looking for him, his face was flushed and his whole body shivered. Placing her hand on his forehead, then cheek, then neck–not that she needed to check all three places–, her suspicion was confirmed. Her boy was seriously ill. An hour later, each time he inhaled his chest barely moved. By noon she couldn’t tell whether he was even breathing. She scooped up his limp body and went looking for Elijah.
Her eyes were desperate and rivulets ran down her cheeks. Her lips trembled as she spoke, but her voice was strong. “What is between you and me?!” she began. This was a familiar expression in that part of the world, and it could imply several meanings. “What links us together?” “What business do you have with me?” “What brings you into my life? Into my stuff?” In this instance, there is more than a hint of accusation.
“What have you against me, O man of God?” – she addresses him as a “man of God,” but her tone sounds more like insult than respect.
“I’ll tell you what you’re doing here,” she says, “you’ve come to remind me of my sin and for it, cause my son to die!”

In the ancient Mediterranean world, most everyone assumed every bad thing that happened to a person was punishment for a sin – a crime. So, she begins by blaming herself. Apparently she was guilty for having done who knows what? Whatever it was, it must have been very bad for God to kill her son with this illness. Perhaps she blames herself for letting Elijah into her home and bringing this retribution with him.
So she also blames Elijah. If this man of God had not approached her that first day, she may have been able to escape detection and continued to live in peace–even if on the verge of starvation. But then, if not Elijah, maybe God would have brought a reminder of her sin some other way–and she still would have lost her son.
So who is to blame? She blames God. He’s the one in control of all things. He’s the one who gives life and takes it away. He’s the supreme Judge, from whom no one can hide or get away with anything. He’s the One who makes impossible rules and exacts harsh consequences whenever they’re broken.

Fortunately, we have moved beyond those ancient ideas. Science and medicine have taught us the physics of cause and effect. The legal system informs us that there are laws to protect society; if you violate one of them and are caught, you will pay for it. But it is humans who make and enforce those laws, not gods.
We also know of good people who suffer and bad people who have great wealth and excellent health. We know that any number of random events can break in on a person’s life and ruin it. If something terrible happens to us or our family, it is not our fault.

But still, when tragedy strikes we instinctively find ourselves asking, “What did I do to deserve this?” or saying, “I should not have done this or that.” Our rational minds may be full of modern ideas about cause and effect, but there’s still a place in our heart that carries these primitive beliefs of justice, or someone’s fault, or karma.
For the woman, all it took was for this man of God to show up at her gate, and by doing so, bring her to God’s attention. Remembering that she did not have a clean record, God had brought judgment to her home. That is how she interpreted her son’s sickness and death.

When Elijah spoke, his words were gentle, but commanding, “Give me your son” – and he reached for the child was draped over her arms. Turning from the widow, leaving her behind, he headed up the stairs to his room. What was going through his mind? Was he thinking, “This kid is so small and light. He’s not moving at all. There’s no hint of life”? Although it may seem like Elijah knows what he’s doing, what will happen next, knows that this will soon be made right, he doesn’t know. Walking up the stairs, he is praying.
Elijah spreads the child out on his bed. He lights the lamp and cries out, “O Yehovah my God, have you brought tragedy to this widow who was kind enough to take me into her home, and now you kill her son?” Perhaps he paced the floor a bit, then went to the bed and stretched himself over the child’s body. Why do this? Did he think he might transfer warmth and the vital energy of life into the boy’s body? Who knows? Both Elijah and his protégé, Elisha, were masters in working odd cures and miracles. “O Yehovah,” Elijah cried again, “let this child’s soul return into him again.”
We may know more about the human body–its organs, their functions, the constituents of muscle, bone, and blood–all the way down to the molecules that float around in our brains, but life and death are still mysteries that we cannot fathom or control. The boy’s soul returned to his body, and he revived. He lived again, because Yehovah listened to the voice of Elijah.

Elijah walked the boy downstairs to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive.” That could be a beautiful and worthy end to the story, but there’s still one more resolve. The woman said to Elijah, “Now I know –that you are indeed a man of God.” This is not theoretical knowledge, it is experiential. She says, “I know that you’re a man of God, and that the word of Yehovah in your mouth is truth.” This time her tone vibrates with awe and respect when she calls Elijah a man of God.
Why don’t we hear people around our nation telling Evangelical Christians, “Now we know that you are men and women of God, and we can trust what you have to say about God”? It’s not because Evangelical Christians aren’t working miracles like Elijah’s, but because they’re not working any sort of Christ-like miracle. They’ve lost their vision of Jesus and so they’ve lost their way. The Christian witness to the world is fading–dying. “O Yehovah God, let the soul of dead Christianity return to it again.”

Do you see what I mean when I say, that’s the way it ought to be? Parents ought not to lose their children. The souls of children ought not to drift away from their mothers and fathers. The equilibrium of a perfect world ought not to be knocked out of balance permanently. But it happens. The world is not perfect, and we’re are not in heaven yet. Not every story has a happy ending in the real world of our everyday experience.
But we have a truth – let’s speak it.
We have a divine love – let’s share it.
We have prayer – let’s use it, work it, exploit it.
We have a God, who has us. Or who will have us, if were willing to surrender to him.

Yesterday my meditation was on Colossians 3:15, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”
I wrote, “Christ’s rule of peace is not something I must fight to attain, not a battle I must win. His rule of peace is something I must “let” happen. I must surrender to his rule.
“As long as I am gripping my weapons, standing my ground, preparing myself for the next skirmish, I will not be at peace. I might win a fight once-in-a-while, and fellow soldiers may reward me with lots of ‘likes,’ but I will be anxious and reactive. I will jump nervously at every sound and flinch at every movement.
“No, I will not win peace. I must surrender into it. In the world I will have tribulation, but in Jesus I can be cheerfully at peace, because he has overcome the world and offers me his peace.”

It doesn’t take that much to make a major turn in our lives. Of course, once we’ve made the turn it will take everything for the rest of our lives. But to begin the process, all we have to do is say, “I surrender”–and mean it.