Give Them Hope

1 Kings 17:8-24

Harvey Milk, the slain gay rights leader whose 80th birthday we commemorated last weekend, is often quoted from various of his speeches as saying that you’ve got to give them hope, “them” being any number of disenfranchised people.  He’d end his speech, though, by saying “and you, and you, and you…you’ve got to give them hope.”

Though Harvey was not Christian, hope certainly is a Christian value.  Paul’s famous chapter about love from 1st Corinthians ends with “faith, hope and love abide” ranking hope right up there with faith and love as enduring parts of our religious life.  Hope certainly isn’t confined to Christianity, but Christians who do not have or promote hope seem somehow lifeless.

Thus is it through that lens that we can read the passage from the Hebrew Bible this morning when we are introduced to Elijah and his time with the widow from Sidon.  But before we get to that, let’s look at what got us to this point.

Elijah was one of the great prophets of Israel.  He was a particular thorn in the side of Ahab, one of the kings of Israel, the northern kingdom.  As Frederick Buechner puts it: “If, generally speaking, a prophet to a king was like ants at a picnic, Elijah was like a swarm of bees.” (Peculiar Treasures, p. 9) Don’t forget that after Solomon’s rule, the kingdom that his father David has built up, broke into two parts: Israel in the north and Judah in the south.  There followed a succession of kings in the two countries who ruled with varying degrees of ability and were faithful to God to varying degrees.  Particularly in the northern kingdom, there was court intrigue after court intrigue as murders and abductions occurred to alter the line of succession. 

Into this Ahab came along as king in the north, in Israel.  He took for his wife one whose name lives on to today as a symbol of a suspicious and wanton woman--Jezebel.  Jezebel was not Jewish; Ahab married outside the clan and the faith and Jezebel brought with her her own particular god, Baal.  She even persuaded Ahab to erect shrines to Baal in Israel so that Baal could be worshipped, there in the midst of God’s land.  You can just imagine how well that went over in some quarters.

Now Baal was a storm, rain, and fertility god who allegedly controlled the precipitation in those parts.  So when our prophet Elijah comes along and says that because of all the worship of Baal that’s going on in Israel there’s going to be a drought, it’s a double whammy.  First because a drought is not a good thing and is coming as punishment and second because Elijah is pointing out that this storm god Baal can’t control the weather over what the Hebrew God decides.  Of course, a drought ensues.

This, to put it mildly, doesn’t make Elijah a popular man in the seat of government.  Prophets usually aren’t very well-received by those against whom they are prophesying, typically those in power and rulers.  But Elijah gets a special award for making himself unpopular in Israel by proving the queen’s god to be a false one. 

God, being wise, decides to relocate Elijah until things cool down and sends him on the lam.  At first Elijah spends some time in the wilderness where ravens come with food to care for him.  Then we pick up the story where we jumped in today, in 1st Kings as God calls Elijah to Sidon. 

Now the interesting thing about Elijah, the great prophet of Yahweh, being called to Sidon is that that’s exactly where his nemesis Jezebel came from.  That’s right, she was a Sidon girl from way back and that’s where she learned her Baal worship.  So we have a switch going on--Jezebel, the infidel from Sidon stirring up trouble with Baal in Israel while the holy man from Israel, Elijah, brings his God to godless Sidon.  Truly poetic, don’t you think?

By the way, Sidon shows up again in the Bible, in the gospels.  Sidon is where Jesus meets the Syro-phoenecian woman who argues with Jesus about the crumbs beneath the tables.  It’s another instance of a woman from that region who is doing all she can for the good of her child.  Jesus is out away from his own territory here, just like Elijah.  Surely the early hearers of the gospels would have known this story from 1st Kings and heard the echoes through the centuries of the similarities of the stories.

But back to our story.  So here in the region of Sidon, the town of Zarephath to be specific, Elijah engages a nameless widow.  Of course she wasn’t nameless then, but the author of 1st Kings didn’t think she was important enough to give her name so we can only refer to her as the widow of Sidon--mostly because “widow of Zarephath” is too hard to say.  This widow of Sidon, when we meet her, is filled with despair;  the drought has hit her, being a widow, hard and she has a small amount of flour and oil left to prepare a final meal for her and her son before they die.  She’s out in fact collecting some firewood for this sad last supper when she and Elijah come upon each other. 

Elijah asks her for some bread and water whereupon she recounts the doleful tale of her and her son.  Elijah says something that we should always remember; his first words are “Don’t be afraid.”  He then tells her to go use up the grain and oil to bake him some bread because there will be more provided.

“Don’t be afraid.”  Easier said than done but the widow follows Elijah’s instructions and indeed there continues to be food enough for them to survive on.  And then the twist in the story comes along: the son, the only thing the widow has, dies.  She blames Elijah, essentially, and I imagine the whole thing leaves Elijah just a bit stunned.  Elijah however rises to the occasion and takes the boy to his own room where he expresses some anger at God but then goes on to bring the boy back to life.  The widow rejoices and proclaims Elijah to be a “man of God.”  Happy ending.

Twice in this story though we find the widow in despair; desolate even.  We would think that there wasn’t room within her for hope at either time in the story.  It’s just in those times of despair, of utter and complete desperation, that sometimes hope creeps in.  We sometimes need to get down to rock bottom before the possibilities of transformation occur to us.  Logic doesn’t enter into it.  If the widow had been logical she would have said that there was only enough grain and oil for her and her son and that was that.  She would have never agreed to feed this strange man from a foreign land.

Hope sneaks up on you when you least expect it usually.  It’s transformative; it transforms that despair into possibilities, maybe even probabilities.  Against all logic, hope works.  Sometimes it’s astounding, sometimes it’s rather ho-hum.  But it comes when it’s needed. 

Mind you, not all hopes are fulfilled; some hopes remain dry as dust.  Hope in the midst of despair though provides life at the time, even if the hopes remain unfulfilled.  As I said, hope often runs counter to logic so hope gets us to shed the equation of if X then Y and think of new possibilities.

Where in your life do you need hope.  Perhaps it’s right here, in this church where hope is needed.  And in some ways, hope has taken a hold here.  The youth rally this week, for instance, is definitely a sign of hope that defies logic.  Logic would say, “We have very few youth so have no need of a youth program.”  Hope says, “Let’s have a rally to invite youth into our midst.”

Between our two congregations, certainly we are in need of hope and there are signs of that hope hereabouts.  Don’t be among those who would deny the hope.  Live into it instead, doing whatever you can to promulgate the hope that all of us need.  As Harvey Milk would say, “and you, and you, and you...you’ve got to give them hope.”