Enough to Eat

Delivered November 11, 2012

1 Kings 17:8-16; Mark 12:38-44

Our two scripture passages this morning center on women. Interestingly they also center on poverty and hardship experienced by these women. This situation is as true today as it was in biblical times. For all the talk of the economy in this recent election, it is women who continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing hard economic times. I heard one third party candidate say in a presidential debate that the poverty rate in the US is the highest since 1965. During an election you never know how accurate candidates statistics are. The most recent figures I could find were from the US Census Bureau for 2011. A report based on that data written by Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reports that the overall poverty rate in 2011 was 15.0 percent. This represents 46.2 million people living in poverty in 2011. The data indicates that there were 16.1 million children (persons under 18) living in poverty in 2011. The child poverty rate was 21.9 percent. For African-American children, the poverty rate reported today was 37.4 percent for 2011. The rate for Hispanic children was 34.1 percent. For non-Hispanic, White children the rate was 12.5 percent. Children living in female-headed families with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6 percent, over four times the rate of children in married-couple families (10.9 percent). The poverty rate for people age 65 and over was 8.7 percent. In 2011, 6.6 percent of all people, or 20.4 million people, lived in deep poverty (had income below one-half the poverty threshold.

What all those statistics add up to is that many more women are living in poverty, compared with men. As usual, things are worse for older women; twice as many women over 65 are living in poverty, compared with men. Single mothers are having the hardest time.

The reason I start this message off with these figures is not to continue the political banter over whose fault this economic situation is and who has the better plan to fix it. We are all tired of that political blame game, and I for one am glad the election is over. I mention these figures to illustrate the fact that our scriptures lessons are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. Both of them focus on women; both are single women. Both are widows. Both were living in poverty. Furthermore both exhibited extraordinary courage, virtue, and faith in extraordinarily difficult times. This morning I want us to look mostly at one of the stories – the Widow of Zaraphath, and what it has to teach us today. I will make mention of the other story as it illustrates this one.

The prophet Elijah was instructed to go north of Israel to what is present day Lebanon to a widow who lived in a town named Zarephath, which is on the coast about 35 miles from present day Beirut. The important point here is that this woman was not a Hebrew, and yet Elijah was instructed to go to see her. For the Jews she was an outsider, a minority group, and as such experienced much harsher poverty, as do minority groups today according to the census figures. In Israel Hebrews tried to make a provision for the poorest, but many people fell through the social safety net. Outside of Israel – as in Zarephath near Sidon, there was no provision for the poor, especially for widows, since the economy as in most societies focused on men, even as they do today.

The woman in our story was a widow with a young son. She was at the end of her economic rope when Elijah walked into town.  Our story says, “So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a cup, that I may drink.” And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” So she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”  She was literally down to her last meal when the prophet approached her. She was gathering firewood to prepare a last supper before laying down with her child in her bed and waiting to die of starvation.

This is exactly when Elijah appeared. v. 13-16 “And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.’” So she went away and did according to the word of Elijah; and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke by Elijah.” There are three points that this story presents.

1. First is the face of Poverty. This poor woman’s face has the expression of despair. Desperation exudes from this bible passage. The woman is in a pitiable situation. Repeatedly the account stresses the small portions that she had. When Elijah arrives, he asks for “a little water in a cup” and “a morsel of bread.” He is asking for tiny amounts, even though he must have been quite thirsty and hungry after making that journey from Judah to Sidon. But even this request was more than she had. She replied that she only had enough flour to hold in one hand and a little oil in a jar. She only needed to collect a couple of sticks of firewood to build a fire small enough to prepare this tiny meal. The food was not enough to keep them alive. She was going to prepare the meal and then lie down with her son and die. As we read this story, our hearts ache for her situation.

There are people today all over the world in exactly this situation.  According to Bread For the World, “The world is facing a hunger crisis unlike anything it has seen in more than 50 years. 925 million people are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. That's one child every five seconds. There were 1.4 billion people in extreme poverty in 2005. The World Bank estimates that the spike in global food prices in 2008, followed by the global economic recession in 2009 and 2010 has pushed between 100-150 million people into poverty. We face a hunger crisis unlike anything seen in more than 50 years.”  I don’t know about you but one of the things that bothered me about this recent election and especially the four debates was how little talk there was of the poor. There was a lot of talk of the middle class as both parties positioned themselves to get their votes – our votes. If you believed the debates and commercials, you would think this was all about the middle class and taxes. There was also talk of the wealthy, but usually scornful talk. But there was little talk of the poor, either in our country or around the world. Yet the poor are the ones most in need and most mentioned in the scripture when it came to economics and morality. That is why it is so good that we are observing Blanket Sunday next Sunday which raises money for the poorest, for those for whom something as simple as a blanket can make a real difference.

What this portion of scripture does is focus our attention on the poor - not by giving us figures and statistics, but giving us one example of one woman and child living in poverty. It communicates the sense of despair in their lives. Probably all of us at some point in our lives have been in a position when the lack of money was very stressful and worrisome, when we did not have enough to pay the bills and we wondered about our financial future. But I for one have never worried about starving to death. I have never been done to my last cup of flour or worried about watching my child starve to death. Imagine being in that situation. According to the United Nations about 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes. This is one person every three and a half seconds. This Bible story puts a face onto that.

2. Second, this story talks about Sharing Resources. These three people who have nothing are sharing with each other. The story starts off in verse 8 “Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” Elijah was told to go to this poor widow and that she was going to provide for him! That is a crazy idea when seen from a purely material point of view! This woman could not provide for herself and her child, much less another mouth. How was she going to provide for this wandering Hebrew prophet? Didn’t God know she had nothing to share? Of course God knew she had nothing. That is the whole point.

A lot of people in this country think we don’t have enough to share. I know people – not in this church by the way - but I know people who give nothing to charity of any type. I think we might be surprised how many people give nothing – or almost nothing – to charity. Why? Because they do not feel like they can afford to give. They feel like they do not have enough for themselves even though they may have tens of thousands of dollars in the bank. Compare that to the example of this woman in our story. She literally had next to nothing. Yet when she was asked to share with someone who had even less, she did! What an extraordinary story! It shames me and challenges me.

We find the same type of woman in our gospel lesson of the widow’s mite. 41-44 “Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much. Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans. So He called His disciples to Himself and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.” It says she put in her whole livelihood – all she had to live on. Most people would say that she needed to get herself a good financial advisor. That is was being duped by those greedy religious leaders to give what she could not afford. Perhaps we feel like quoting Ben Franklin’s famous saying (often mistaken for scripture) “God helps those who help themselves” or perhaps Charles Dickens’ proverb, “Charity begins at home.” But Jesus did not scold this poor widow for being financially careless or foolish or a drain on society. He praises her! He calls his decuples together and uses her as an example of how they are to give! I will be honest with you – this is beyond my understanding. But it is clear that both our OT and NT lessons challenge us to share, to reach beyond our fear that we won’t have enough.

3. Third, this story teaches that the Lord will Provide. The Lord told Elijah that the Lord would provide for him through the poverty of this widow of Zarephath. And the Lord told the woman that the Lord would provide for her through the prophet. It sounds like circular reasoning, but it works in this story. The question is: does it work in the real world? Does it work in our lives? Or is this no more than a religious fairy tale, no more likely to happen in real life than Jack & the beanstalk’s magical beans? I pride myself on being a realistic person. So I say, “What about those 25,000 people who die every day of hunger? Does the Lord provide for them? Maybe Ben Franklin is right! Maybe it was a stupid thing for that widow to throw in all her money into the temple treasury when she needed it more. She obviously could use it better than the temple ministers! That is where my mind goes, and I suspect I am not the only one who has a mind that wanders in that direction.

But when it comes down to it, I have to respond to these biblical stories based on where I am and not based on where other people are. I am not in the situation of Elijah or the widow of Zarephath or the Jerusalem widow with the two mites. Neither am I in the situation of a person in Somalia desperately hungry. I am in my situation right here in Sandwich, NH, with my financial reality. You are in your real life situation here. You know what your resources are. So let’s put aside the theoretical scenarios and ask, “Will we trust that the Lord will provide for us in our situation here now?”  Is the Lord calling us to provide for others who are in much more desperate situations? I think the answer to both of those questions is clearly, “Yes!”

The Lord will provide! The Lord provided for Elijah and the widow and her son in their situation. I am not going to get into the issue of miracles and how the bin of flour was not used up and how the jar of oil did not run dry. It is a story! Don’t dissect it as if it were a newspaper account or a scientific experiment! The point is that the Lord provided in his own way. And the Lord will provide for us in his own way in our circumstances in our time. We can either trust that the Lord will provide for us or we can live in fear that we will never have enough. I choose to live in faith rather than fear. I choose to believe that one of the main ways that the Lord provides is through other people like in this story, and I am one of those people. The Lord has provided for me through other people – through you actually and other churches I have served - and I pray that the Lord can provide for other people through me. And if everyone in the world – even if everyone in the Western world, maybe even every American did that – there would no longer be 25,000 dying of hunger every day. There would be enough for all.