The Border of the Big

A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California, based on the lections from A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year C.

The Widow of Zarephath wasn’t always a widow, of course. Years back, she married and made her life. Nothing remarkable or surprising.

She made her home. Gave birth to a child. And, along with her spouse, watched that child change and grow. They weren’t well off. Hardly comfortable. Things were not easy. But it was … good. Doable. Okay.

But the confines of their little “okay” family in their little “okay” house in a little “okay” town existed on the border of the Big. Between two countries; two countries in the midst of a climate disaster. A severe drought, leading to a severe famine. Two countries experiencing rapidly decreasing access to the resources required to sustain life. A dangerous setting in any time or place.

And so, the Big crossed the border into her small life. And “not easy” and “okay” became “near-impossible” and “tragic.”

Somewhere along the line, her spouse’s body gave out as they struggled. But this woman went on living. Or, at least, surviving. Somehow providing enough for her child to keep growing and learning. Day by day. Hour by hour.

And then, one early morning before dawn, she woke up and felt a presence in her midst. A presence that was fearful and strange but also, somehow, deeply familiar. Like her own heart.

And this presence spoke to her. Gave her a command. “You will meet a stranger,” God said. “When he comes to you, feed him.”

After the sun rose, the woman, perhaps not sure whether what she experienced was real or a hunger dream, set out to gather the fuel necessary to prepare bread from the last shreds of sustenance she had. And as she did so, a man — a foreigner — approached her and, just as she had been told he would, asked to be fed.

And in that moment, something broke wide open in the woman. The weight of all the “Big” that had intruded into her small life; the anger and dread and sorrow and despair and fear just .. spilled out. “If I had cake!” she pronounces. “Actually, my plan for the day was to go home, make whatever crumbs I can from the pittance I have left, serve them to myself and my child, and lay down to die. I am, simply, finished.”

 And Elijah responds with those words that echo through scripture again and again and again: 

 fear not. fear. not.

And so, she feeds this man. This stranger and foreigner. She feeds him all that she has. A fearless act if ever there was one. And, as Elijah foretold, she goes home and finds that there is more. And more and more. Enough for her, and her child, and Elijah. Enough to survive. Enough to live.

This story is not about magic. It is not a fairytale with a fairytale ending, and our prophet is not a wizard. The vulnerable and the marginalized continue to suffer, the earth continues to be exploited, as the powerful benefit; and nations continue to war against one another. Right up to this moment.

This story is, I think. about living on the border of the Big. About living our small lives when the whims of the powerful and the consequences of their practices hang so heavy in the air.

Jesus of Nazareth, recalling this story half a millennium later, tells us to pay close attention to the detail that Elijah crosses the border from his homeland Israel into Phoenicia. That it is this widow — a foreign non-Israelite women — that God sends him to; when She could have sent him to so many widows of Elijah’s quote “own people.”

Jesus tell us it matters that God sent God’s prophet to a woman he is supposed to see as “apart.” As “enemy,” even. It matters that they met one another. Spoke to one another. And, in the end, fed one another.

On the border of the Big, God encourages relationship and mutual aid across boundaries that have been drawn by human hands. Revealing that of course, these boundaries do not exist in God’s realm.

It seems almost foolish, or perhaps an act of despair for this woman to give everything that she had to a stranger offering wild promises. But we know that she did this in response to a call, to God’s call, to fear not. Fear can and does preserve us. It is a part of our brain chemistry and biology for a reason. But it if we let it, fear can prevent us from even noticing opportunities for radical acts of hospitality, collaboration, and even sacrifice, that can and do and will, in big ways and small, change the world.

As Jesus quotes this morning from the Prophet Isaiah: God has anointed me to proclaim good news to those who are poor. God has sent me to preach liberation to those who are captives and recovery of sight to those who are blind, to liberate those who are oppressed … ”

On the border of the Big, God encourages us to adopt a whole new scale of measuring power, revealing that those little lives made most impossible and tragic by the whims of the powers of this world, are, in God’s realm, the most powerful. Encourages us to live looking through that lens.

 So as we move forward, with our little lives, as the consequences of the practices of the powers and principalities of this world loom, I wonder if we might absorb something of the Widow of Zarephath, who I hope might come to be known instead as the Fearless Woman of Zarephath. The one who formed relationship and fed across boundaries. The one who lived, and gave life. The one who overcame fear, and risked it all. The one who inspired a movement. At the border of the Big.