“God’s Care” Sermon by Pastor Betsy Perkins

Sermon:  “God’s Care”

November 1^st, 2020                                                                                                   Rev. Betsy Perkins

Scripture passage:  1 Kings 17:1-24; Luke 4:24-26                             First Baptist Church, Delavan WI

The context for this story is a battle of superpowers, a demonstration of who really controls the earth and all that is in it.  God withholds rain, making it clear that it is God who ultimately provides what is necessary for life, and not the earthly rulers and the idols and the false gods of wealth or power or fertility.  It is by the grace and mercy of God that life is sustained. 

In that dance of time, time to be still and time to act, Elijah has opportunities to do both as he follows God’s direction.  He acts by delivering God’s message, by being God’s voice.  While his message to the widow in Zarephath was “Do not be afraid”, his message to the corrupt leaders was in essence, “Be afraid; be very afraid!”  Elijah took action as God directed him, speaking against those who were disregarding God’s ways and seeking their own gain, warnings them to change their ways and acknowledge God as the source of all good things.

Then, as the showdown played out, God invited Elijah to be still and to know God’s care and provision.  In the extreme drought, God provided water in the Kerith Creek for Elijah, and food brought by ravens.  Ravens are a scavenger birds, resourceful but also somewhat ruthless.  The choice of ravens is surprising because in Old Testament Law, ravens are considered unclean since they peck at dead roadkill and steal eggs and babies from others’ nests.  But God used the despised bird to preserve Elijah’s life.  Yet, after a while this provision runs out, and God directs Elijah to act again, leading him to another unlikely source of food.  This time, God directs Elijah to go to Zarephath in Sidon, about 50 miles away.  That’s the country where King Ahab’s wife Jezebel is from, the region at the heart of the false religion she is promoting in Israel.  And again, in that despised place, God uses an unlikely person to preserve Elijah’s life. 

We are not given the name of the woman that God says He has directed to provide for Elijah, but we know a lot of other things about her.  One thing is that she has apparently not gotten the message from God, and has to be told by Elijah.  We know she is a citizen of that land, not an Israelite like Elijah.  She is a widow – not elderly, probably in her 20’s, maybe early 30’s, with a young son.  Widows were seems as disgraced and shunned socially.  While she may have retained her husband’s assets of land and home as a trust for their son, they were not considered hers.  She was vulnerable, had few rights, and is suffering from the drought and famine, one of many innocent people caught in the collateral damage resulting from the bigger power showdown. 

We might try to imagine her situation and her thinking, as food supplies dwindled and prices soared.  She has rationed the flour and oil as much as she can.  When Elijah finds her, she is out scavenging for sticks, the fuel to cook a last meal.  Is she shaky from hunger and thirst?  Is she ready to make the last loaf of bread and then wait to die out of hopelessness, giving up on any help?  Or is she bravely realistic, facing the fact that she and her son have run out of choices? “I am gathering a couple sticks,” she says to Elijah, “so I can cook the last few bites of food for myself and my son.  We’ll eat that – and then die of starvation.”

The powerless, the weak, the vulnerable, are the first to suffer in any disaster.  We have certainly seen that in our current pandemic disaster; how it has exposed who the weak and vulnerable are: the elderly and those fighting other illnesses who are the most likely to lose their lives when infected; the lower-income, lower-educated folks who have been most likely to lose their jobs or feel compelled to continue to work in unsafe conditions; the mentally ill who are more likely to be homeless, or to have run-ins with the police; small farmers between a rock and a hard place with rising costs, dwindling income, and disrupted supply chains; people of color, immigrants and refugees in cramped, inadequate housing; and the children – the children who have fallen into poverty at a greater rate than others.  1 in every 4 children in this rich nation now lives in poverty.   All these are the vulnerable people who live at the margins and who the world treats as expendable. 

But not God!  Throughout scripture we learn about a God who does not align Himself with the rich and powerful, but rather with the poor and vulnerable.  When God gave His people a guide, a Law to live by, God told the people: “Look, the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it belongs to the Lord your God. Yet I chose you and set My love and affection on you… The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a mighty and awesome God, One who doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t accept bribes. The Lord enacts justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the immigrant and foreigner.” (Dt.10:14-18) 

Over the last several weeks we have listened to some of the stories that reveal this aspect of God’s nature – how God worked in Joseph’s life despite his trauma of domestic violence and injustice, how God heard Hannah’s prayer for a son to bring hope to her and to a beleaguered nation, how God took David from the pasture and gave him a palace, from being sheep farmer to being king.  God saw them.  God acted on their behalf, despite their being young, or childless, or from the lower levels of society.  God still loved them and heard them and cared for them. 

That is still true today.  God cares for all people – not Israel first, not America first, not even Christians first, but all.  God sees the girls at the Agape House in Walworth, just as God sees the girls in  the New Life Center in Chiang Mai.  God loves the children without parents in a Bethania Kids Home in India, just as God loves the 545 children separated from their parents here in the US.  God cares about the young men learning constructions skills through the Youth Build program at the Milwaukee Christian Center, just as God cares about the women learning to sew at the Widow’s Might ministry in Mozambique.  God does not play favorites.  We see it in our story today – God has seen this desperate woman and fatherless child, in this foreign land during a devastating drought, and included them in His loving care.

The widow in Zarephath is not one who has sat still, waiting for divine intervention.  In general, accusations against the poor, that they are lazy or unwilling to work hard, are simply not true.  It’s a fabrication to try to justify the unjustifiable, to excuse ourselves from having to share.  The widow in Zeraphath has scavenged and been as resourceful as she could.  And then in the moment of her deepest need, she is asked to bring a thirsty Elijah a glass of water and share with him the last of her bread.  And she does.

I have experienced the kind of selfless, amazing hospitality that this woman extends to Elijah.  I remember one Christmas when David and I lived in India, when an elderly woman who had helped care for me and my family when I was a child, who had washed my clothes by hand and cleaned our house, knowing I was far from family at Christmas, brought me a gift.  It was a large platter heaped with fresh fruit – a pineapple and oranges, pears, mangos, bananas, things that she probably never ate because they were too expensive on her meager income, and yet she brought them to me as a gift.  I remember walking through a very isolated village in the mountains of Nagaland in India with a group of American college students on a mission trip.  It was a hot day, and a family invited us to sit in the shade of their one-room home and offered to us the only food they had to share, a cucumber from their garden.  

I believe God calls us all to that same kind of selflessness and generosity.  In that same passage I read earlier in Deuteronomy 10, where God shares His special concern for orphans, widows and, immigrants, God goes on to say, “Therefore, change your hearts and stop being stubborn. You, too, must show love to others, to outsiders.”(Dt.10:16, 19) 

That message was key to Jesus’ ministry.  The Sunday Jesus announced his mission statement, he read words by the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for prisoners, restored sight for the blind, and release for the oppressed.”  Jesus then reminded them of the story of Elijah and the widow in Zarephath, how God showed special love for her and how she responded.  But confronting the me-first mentality, with the reality of God’s love embracing all, especially the forgotten, left out and excluded, was not a popular message.  The congregation got furious and tried to throw Jesus off a cliff! 

It’s still not a popular message today.  It is still a struggle to advocate for the poor, the marginalized, the ones without health care and without jobs, the ones who are hungry or homeless, the grieving or traumatized.  Yet that is what we are directed to do.  Ephesians 5 says, “Be imitators of God, therefore, like dearly loved children. Live your life with love, following the example of Christ.  He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us and to God.  Love like that.”

That is the kind of love that we can trust, the kind of love that will bring us through it all!

Communion Song:  “Through It All”