PROPER 5C – 1 Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 30; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17 – 4 June 2010 – A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado
Faith and Feelings
INTRODUCTION – Themes of healing and action
The first thing I’d have you notice today is that right after Pentecost Sunday and Trinity Sunday, as we move into the longer season of Pentecost, we move into stories of healing, and – by definition – stories of action. We believing folk are called not just to pray and read our Bibles and be quiet with God, although all three of those activities are extremely important. We are called to be contemplative people, for without developing the disciplines of being with God, we rather quickly lose our way. But “Part 2” of the faithful life is to be out in the world, being the light of the world, and being agents of love and compassion, and – in the process – agents of healing and transformation. A balanced Christian life always contains both dimensions – the journey inward and the journey outward, contemplation and action. And so… after we have received the Holy Spirit and contemplate the mysteries of God, even the mystery of the Trinity, we are sent out to act and to speak of what we know.
ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW OF ZAREPHATH
I want to take a brief look at the story of Elijah, the widow of Zarephath (a foreigner), and her son. Let’s put ourselves in the widow’s place for a moment. This woman is clearly very poor, she has a son, and – according to what she tells Elijah – they are preparing for their last supper. You didn’t want to be a widow in those days, or in the time of Jesus for that matter, and you especially didn’t want to be a widow whose only son had just died. If compassionate folks around you didn’t take you in, you were basically left without any option except to be a beggar. A drought had come upon the land, and Elijah’s understanding is that it was because Yahweh had been forsaken, as the King of Israel – Ahab – had married Jezebel and begun to worship Baal. So, at the Lord’s command, Elijah left Israel and came to a town called Zarephath, along the Phoenician coast. And he sees this widow gathering sticks, and he says to her, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” And as she went to get it, he added, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” (1 Kings 17:10-11) She’s thinking the next meal might be her last one ever. She’s also thinking that she may have to watch her own son die of starvation. And here’s this guy – this foreigner whom she has never met – who sees her for the first time and starts giving her orders. How would you feel? Angry? I’m thinking so. But she must have also looked very scared, for after she responded with the line about preparing a final meal, that she and her son might eat it and die, Elijah responded, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” (1 Kings 17:13-14)
COMPLICATION – Do we let our feelings stop us from being faithful?
So right there, in that moment, the life of faith – or not – is presented to her. And in very similar ways, the life of faith – or not – is presented to you and me.
Something happens to us. We lose a job. Someone very close to us dies. A family member goes through a very serious illness, or a divorce – or we ourselves do. A son or daughter or sister or brother makes a decision that we think is the worst possible decision that he or she could make.
And we have a reaction. We have feelings that come up, and truth be told, they are God-given feelings. Most of them can be boiled down to either anger, sadness, or fear.
Who are you – a total stranger! – to tell me to feed you before I feed my son and myself?
I am scared out of my mind! Where is the next bit of food to come from, so that I may feed my son and keep him alive for another day, or another week?
I am so sad! How did my life get to this point? A widow in poverty, watching my son suffer like this – this is unbearably sad.
A few things that I have been learning about feelings in recent years: We need to feel them, not stuff them. Knowing what you are feeling and feeling it is often the first important step along the way… along the way to taking some action. And even if you don’t take some dramatic action, if you allow yourself to feel the feeling, it will dissipate – at least the feeling you are having in that particular moment – in 10-15 minutes. If you don’t feel it, it has a way of staying around inside of you, often to do much more damage later.
The other thing I’m learning is that giving the feeling expression is very important. To say, “I’m really angry right now…. I am feeling so sad… I am really scared….” – to another living, breathing human being – is a key step in the process of the feeling bubbling up, but then dissipating in a natural way.
Otherwise – and this is an important point – the feeling can become a stopping place, a destination. We sort of know we’re afraid, but we don’t share that with anyone, and we end up walking around being afraid, and the overall effect of that is we don’t move beyond the feeling, we don’t take the next important step – the one that God is calling us to, the one that is supposed to happen after we feel the feeling.
The step that is feeding Elijah first.
The step that is picking up the phone and calling someone you know, who can listen and perhaps give you some really good advice.
The step that is basically about you knowing you have some butterflies in your stomach, but the deeper truth is that God is calling you to speak the truth in the group, or to enter into a conflicted situation because God is calling you to be an agent of reconciliation, or to love or forgive someone that most people would find unlovable or unforgivable, or to bring a word of faith and hope to a small group of people that desperately needs to hear a word of faith and hope.
None of these steps of faith can happen if you let the feeling be a stopping place. What I’m saying is this: feel the feeling; you’re having it for a reason. God is giving you that feeling for a reason. It’s even good to wonder why you’re feeling that in the moment, because that wondering can lead to a big learning moment for you. But don’t let the feeling be a stopping place, in the sense that it keeps you from being a person of faith.
We hear so much in the Bible, “Do not be afraid!” Sometimes I think the real message is: “Of course you’re afraid. You’re a human being. Go ahead – feel mad, scared, sad. Feel it down to the soles of your feet.” But God or Jesus or Elijah or the angel of the Lord or the Holy Spirit – whoever it is… none of them encourages us to stop there. Because God is calling us to do something for Him in the world… something that needs to be done… something, in that particular moment, that God – in all His wisdom – believes that no one else can do but you.
I’m pretty darn sure that the widow of Zarephath was having big feelings of anger and sadness and fear – all rolled into one. I’m pretty darn sure she acknowledged them, in her own way, to Elijah. “Mr. Jewish man, whoever you are, my son and I about to eat our last meal together! There, I said it! Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
“Yeah, I hear you. But I still want you to feed me first.”
Listen again to the first part of verse 15. “She went and did as Elijah said…”
That, my friends, was an act of faith, and no less an act of faith than Moses raising his staff at the shore of the Red Sea, as Pharaoh’s army was closing in. This was no less an act of faith than Jesus comforting the widow of Nain and then putting his hand on the bier, where her dead son lay, and saying, “Young man, I say to you arise.” The widow of Zarephath cooking up a little meal for Elijah first was no less an act of faith than what Elijah did a number of days later, when her son got ill and died, and Elijah cried out to God and then stretched himself upon the child three times and yelled at God some more, and brought the child back to life, and gave him to his mother, and said, “See, your son is alive.” (1 Kings 17:17-24)
What I love is the remainder of verse 15 and also verse 16, for you see, verse 15 doesn’t end with “She went and did as Elijah said…” Listen to it all: “She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.” (1 Kings 17:15-16)
See what can happen when we don’t allow our big feelings to become a stopping place? We can act. And in our actions, God can do things through us that we can’t even begin to comprehend. What I know is that when you step out in faith, God looks on what you are doing, and thinks about how amazing and wonderful it is, and then God does His part, too – and being God, it is even more amazing than what you or I do – and somehow the jar of meal is never emptied and the jug of oil never fails.
The writer of Lamentations described it like this:
“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21-24)
CONCLUSION
Great is the Lord’s faithfulness indeed. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases – indeed. And great is your faithfulness, when you don’t let your big feelings become a stopping place, when you don’t allow them to paralyze you, but instead – take that next step of faith, the one you know that God is asking you to take, and the one you do take, precisely because you trust in the faithfulness of God.
Remember: the widow of Zarephath was no less faithful that Moses, no less faithful than Elijah, no less faithful than Jesus. Remember also that the meal which she thought was going to be her last supper ended up being a life-transforming meal – a life-transforming meal shared with the prophet of the Lord, the Most High, the Great and Faithful One.
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