When God Listens...

Sermon prepared by Gregory S. Kaurin, pastor
for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA, 6/6/10

Text 1 Kings 17:(8-16) 17-24, & Luke 7:11-17

When God Listens…

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

If you had the choice, how many of you would name your daughter Jezebel? She was the daughter of a Phoenician King from the city of Sidon, a foreign princess who became wife of the king of Israel, King Ahab. Jezebel’s name meant “Ba’al is god.”

The Bible says that when King Ahab came to power in Israel he did more evil in the sight of the Lord than any king ever before him. After marrying Jezebel, King Ahab joined her in worshiping Ba’al and raised a pole to worship Asherah, a goddess of fertility. What is the first of the Ten Commandments? “I am the Lord your God… you shall have no other.” Things were not good in the land of Israel.

Enter the prophet Elijah. Elijah came to King Ahab to warn him that, in the face of these gods, Ba’al and Asherah, gods of rain and fertility, the land of Israel was going to become dry and desolate. After he said those words, God sent Elijah into hiding first to the east to an oasis where he was fed by ravens. Then, of all places, God sent Elijah to stay with a widow in the little town of Zarephath on the outskirts of Sidon, Jezebel’s home. In other words, while Queen Jezebel was down south with King Ahab causing trouble in the palaces of Israel, God sent Elijah up north to a modest little house in Queen Jezebel’s home country where there was a poor widow with her only son.

When Elijah finds her, this widow was getting ready to bake the last of their grain and oil, preparing the last loaf of bread, but Elijah promised that as his God lived, she and her son would not go hungry. It’s hard to believe that, in such desperate times based only on Elijah’s word, she would do such a thing, feed this strange man first. This was more than good hospitality.

Usually we think of desperate people as being without hope. But there comes, if you can imagine it, a kind of desperate hope, willing to try just about anything, especially for her son’s life. Miraculously, the grain and oil was replenished, and never ran out until the drought was over. There was always enough for one more meal. Sounds like a happy ending to our story, but it wasn’t. The story took a very strange turn.

Let’s page back to our first lesson. 1 Kings 17:17 says, “After this,” (after all the back story I’ve just told you about Jezebel and Ahab, the drought and miracle of the grain and oil) “after this the son of the woman… became ill…There was no breath left in him.” The widow turned pretty harsh on Elijah, but I totally get her reaction, and so did Elijah for that matter. Just when he had restored a little hope to her life that something could go right, that something was good in the world, just when she had a glimmer of faith and joy, her greatest treasure, only son was taken from her.

Then what was the point of the miracle with the grain and oil, if this was the result? Elijah didn’t scold her, didn’t try to defend himself. “Give me your son,” he said. And what makes this so real for me is verse 20 when Elijah got to the upper room, carrying the boy’s body, he cried out to God, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity upon the widow” our translation calls it a calamity. The Hebrew word was more like a ruining, or literally a breaking, “have you ruined this widow, have you broken her, by killing her son?” In other words, Elijah yelled at God with his frustration and pain; but there is, in that prayer, a desperate hope and faith. “God you can’t, don’t leave it here. She’s already been hurt at every other turn in her life. Do something different.”

Verse 22 says that God listened to Elijah’s voice, to his cries, and he did as Elijah asked. In the last verse, the widow herself is finally convinced, not only that Elijah is a man of a true living God, not like the ba’als and asherahs of her land, and that this living God worked through Elijah’s mouth and words.

God listens. God has compassion. These are the promises of prayer. And with the Holy Spirit living within us, working through us, we are also promised that God listens and acts… through us.

This past week, one of our members lost a baby grandson. Many people with all degrees of faith were praying for the little baby boy…and he died. Wasn’t God listening? Did God lack compassion? It is painful and wrong to try to figure out what went wrong with us, or with our prayers, or what might be wrong with God, or to try to make something so sad into some kind of blessing. It’s not. Only this: God listens to us, and weeps just as Christ did; his Spirit is present, his promises remain. In the meantime we are sent to each other to comfort, to listen, to be vessels of compassion, healing, and hope.

There is a book out that is titled, Letters to a Bullied Girl. It is a story and a collection of letters about a young girl named Olivia. After she had an epileptic seizure, classmates who didn’t understand began to bully Olivia, and others joined in. The bullying got worse, even in a new school because they put it on the web to make sure it followed her. Olivia’s mother loved her, reminded her that she was a child of God, but was forced to watch as her daughter began to sink away into a deep dark place, depression and suicidal thoughts.

But finally, word of this got to two sisters in a nearby town, Sarah and Emily, and they thought it was horrible, so they wrote loving and supportive letters to Olivia, but they didn’t stop there. They told others about it, and their friends and others started to write to Olivia, more and more from further and further away. Some told her about their stories, how they survived, found happiness again. Slowly, Olivia began to heal, quite literally from the edge of death, just when all her breath had nearly gone. Now, Olivia is helping others.
[I am grateful to the Kate Huey's entry "Courageous Compassion" in the "Weekly Seeds" of www.i.ucc.org for highlighting the above story and its application to this text.]

At the worst possible times, thrown into darkest depressions, and worst losses, hope can penetrate our hearts. Empty broken hearts somehow can find room to cling to God, even when everything else has been taken. What it takes is the compassion of a few loving hearts, to insist and act on the belief that the world can be different, as Walter Brueggeman says, “concretely, decisively different” (in A Testimony to Otherwise). The world can be different. Let thy Kingdom come; thy will be done: on earth just as in heaven.

We are in this living conversation, and what we do or don’t do changes the world. God listens to us. It is probably the first most loving thing he does. And then he acts through many ways; you might miss them. Usually it’s by sending people or small signs that help us through to the other side, out of darkness to a new life.

It tends to start in small homes and towns like Zarapheth outside of Sidon, or when two young girls decide to counter bullying with their blessings, or when someone sits down to listen to a grieving mother. Or, whenever young or old Christians decide that their title, as a child of God, means something; whenever we decide to forgive, or reach out, or hold, or pray, then dark powers must give way, and we prove once again that God listens. He hears. God is in our ears first, and then in our mouths and words, our hands and actions.

We, as Christians, have been given grace, the 100% free gift in which God gives himself to us, God gives us forgiveness and a relationship with him forever, so that we are freed from worrying about ourselves, our place, or our future. We have been freed for one reason, so that we can start showing others that there is a new way to live, a new hope, a greater force than desolation. Kingdoms pass. Politics come and go. Theology and wise sayings will fall silent. After a lot of hard work, money, blame and time, oil slicks will be dissolved. But love and loving actions, these never end.

[Insert prayer at 8:15 / Speak off-the-cuff to Affirmands at 10:45]

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.