A Sermon for Pastors to Use in Response to Hurricane Katrina
"What do you when there is no bread?"
I Kings 17: 8-16
George Eliot is quoted as saying "We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what we imagine might have been." The widow of Zarephath found herself facing such a duty. She was face to face with the possibility that she would not only fail to provide for her needs but the needs of her son, as well. It is extremely difficult to face a situation that threatens our very existence and conclude that you have no answers to the challenge that is in front of you.
Life often forces us to seek answers to challenges that prove to be too great for us to conquer. We citizens of the United States find it particularly difficult to accept that there are some circumstances, conditions, and challenges that will come our way that we can not conquer, overcome, solve by and through our own strength. It is frustrating to us because, after all, we are citizens of the greatest and most powerful nation in all human history and somehow we should have answers for this. Tragedies like Hurricane Katrina often expose this aura of invincibility that we like to portray to the rest of the world and to ourselves. We hate to feel insecure and are often filled with anger and are aggravated with ourselves and those in authority when they can not protect us or provide for our need. We have witnessed this in the aftermath of Katrina as we did after the tragedy of 9/11. Katrina has affected our national psyche and we are in a search to ensure that somehow this will never happen again. But, despite our best efforts we are vulnerable, we are not protected, there is no security and no assurances that anyone can give us that will guarantee this will not happen again. I remember watching Oprah as she toured the devastation and screamed out, "This can't happen!" She spoke for all of us who felt somehow someone had failed us. The widow of Zarephath had no one to blame, but she also had to try and make peace with the conditions and circumstances she was now facing. Hear her response, "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." (NKJV) Her answer was surrender to the circumstances. It was more than she could face or bear. She had lost her hope.
So how do we respond when our resources are depleted? What do you when you are lost and there are no directions? "What do we do when we have no bread?"
I believe that this story of this widow offers some answers to us.
First, we must guard our hearts against fear. Listen to Elijah, "Do not fear..." Elijah is actually saying to the widow "Do not worry, do not be filled with apprehension, do not allow this loss of resources to make you panic." It is this dependency on our own resources and abilities as the source of our deliverance that causes us to panic. If there is ever a time when the church needs to hear Elijah's words to the widow, it is now. Not only as we face how we can assist those devastated by Katrina and the aftermath of her visit, but as we face a world where all the institutions we have trusted in are undergoing changes and challenges. We live in a very anxious time. People are afraid to trust the education of their children to the systems we have set up in our communities to do that. We fear that our police departments can no longer protect us; we fear another attack from terrorists. We fear that we will lose all our financial resources or at least enough that our lifestyle will have to change. We are afraid of friends, neighbors, and strangers. We don't trust our pastors or the hierarchy of the church. We have become obsessed with security. But, we must remind ourselves that we have never been the source of our security. The Lord time and time again seeks to reassure us that God will protect us. Hear the scripture that speak to our insecurity, "No weapon formed against us shall prosper. I am more than the whole world against you. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not your life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ...So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of them." I watched a small excerpt of a scene from the Houston Astrodome as the evacuees clapped, sang, and praised God in the midst of their displacement because somebody thought that instead of getting busy dying that the evacuees needed to get busy living. And real living is found only in the arms of God. Let the anxiety go!
Secondly, Elijah tells her, "...go..." I believe that when we are threatened, the worst thing we can do is to quit. We are on a journey. God is always carrying us forward. The prophet is saying to the widow, "Move!" There is an old saying, "Active evil is better than passive good." The tendency that many of us have is to shut down when we are threatened. We withdraw and often we just plain give up on life and on ourselves. There is an old military maxim: "If you don't know what to do, do something." It is a good rule, because in a time of danger, doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. We are called to be the friends of Christ, and the best friend Christ can have is active, vibrant, energetic, and full of life friend. We were not delivered from our personal and corporate darkness to sit down in despair because of a challenge, catastrophe, calamity, disaster, debacle, disappointment, tragedy, misfortune, hazardous duty, or Hurricane Katrina.
A small boy in church with his parents listened to the pastor describe his visit to a poor home. The pastor drew a picture in words of a home with bare rooms, people wearing ragged clothes, empty dishes on a barren table, the look of pale hungry children. When he had finished describing this home of his visit and told the story in such vivid terms, he simply announced the closing hymn. The people in the church all stood to sing, but before the organist could begin playing the tune, the little boy – with tears in his eyes – grabbed his father's coattail and cried out to him, "But, Daddy, aren't we going to do anything about this?" Elijah instructs us to not wallow in despair but to move out.
I am reminded of that scene in the movie The Shawshank Redemption when Morgan Freeman has explained to Tim Robbins that he has given up hope of ever being paroled from prison. Tim Robbins stands and looks at him and says "The choice is yours. You can either get busy dying or get busy living." When there is no bread, go! When there is no bread, get busy living. And so Elijah tells us that when there is no bread, we must not panic and, secondly, we must get busy doing.
Thirdly, the prophet tells the widow and us, "...first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son." Elijah was seeking to help her recognize the need to prioritize the needs of our lives by putting God first. Jesus puts it this way, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness and then all these things will be added to you." It is in giving that we receive.
Elijah turns the economics of the world upside down. In this world we are told to get all we can and can all we get. In this world we are told, "Get them before they get you." In this world we are told it is alright to be selfish. We are led to believe that we are the real arbiters of life.
Author Jerome Ellison writes to us, "...Religion, as it has filtered down to us, speaks a great deal about forbearance and restraint, self-deprivation and self-sacrifice, and hardly at all of wants, or of their prompt gratification. ...We are rapidly advertising ourselves out of the spiritual treasures of our culture. We have all but sold our heritage for a mess of plumbing. Help us rediscover the rewards of voluntarily going without!" It is so difficult in today's religious and secular society to call people to seeking the kingdom of heaven, first. We are often tempted to bow at the altar of the new religion of "Me, myself, and I." Could it be that we have bought into a philosophical way of life that tells us that our needs, our gratifications, our desires, our success are dependent upon us? Elijah tells the Widow of Zarephath that taking care of God's business first is like a deposit in the Bank of Heaven in which the dividends derived from it will be a greater blessing than what you gave away.
The writer of Hebrews seeks to encourage us to do for God first. He writes of the faith of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthae, David. Then he ends it all with this, "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."
Elijah tells the widow in so many words, "You are God's property and life is not over until God says it is over."
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