Sermon 1 Kings 17:8-24 What Real Players Do <\/p>\n
By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker<\/p>\n
The First and Second Books of Kings
in the Old Testament
might be more appropriately named
“First and Second Kings?” 1
The recital they provide
about rulers of Israel and Judah
takes a back seat to the exploits
of the prophets Elijah
and his successor Elisha.
It turns out that prophets
are the real players
in the history of this people.<\/p>\n
If so,
what is it
that these real players do?
Today’s reading from First Kings
offers us some answers.<\/p>\n
The story begins
with a lengthy time of drought
due to the injustices of King Ahab.<\/p>\n
The Lord directs the prophet Elijah
to go to Zarephath,
a coastal city belonging to Sidon
and known for its glassware, wine, and purple dye.
He is to seek refuge with a particular widow there
who will help him.
The Lord says
that he has commanded her to feed Elijah.<\/p>\n
This is unusual!
The ruler of Sidon is the father of Jezebel,
who is married to King Ahab
and becomes Elijah’s sworn enemy.
Sidon is a center for the worship of Baal,
the god introduced into Israel by Jezebel
and denounced by Elijah.
Thus the Lord sends Elijah
straight into enemy territory.<\/p>\n
Moreover, he is sent to seek help
from a widow.
Why should she help him?
Widows in that time
are generally short on resources.
Elijah may be more of a burden
than this poor woman can sustain.
And he is a stranger
from an alien place.<\/p>\n
When Elijah arrives at Zarephath,
the widow is collecting sticks
to use them for fuel.
Despite the drought,
his first words to this woman
are a request for water.
The woman gets water for him.<\/p>\n
He then asks her for a little bread.
She does not comply.
All the poor widow has
is a handful of meal
and a tiny amount of oil.
She plans to use them and the sticks
to bake a little bread for herself and her son to eat
before they finally succumb to the famine
brought on by both the drought
and her poverty.<\/p>\n
Elijah then consoles and challenges the woman.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says.
“Do as you have said,
but first make a little cake for me.”
Then he speaks
a promise from the Lord:
her supply of oil and meal
will not give out
before the drought is over.
This promise is unconditional;
it does not depend on any action
on the woman’s part.<\/p>\n
The poor widow provides Elijah
with bread.
And the Lord’s promise comes true.
Although the drought continues for many days,
the supply of oil and meal remains enough
to feed the woman and her son
as well as the prophet.
What looked for all the world
like scarcity leading to death
becomes abundance leading to life.<\/p>\n
This is what the real players do.<\/strong> Look around in our society, In the United States of America In this country Our nation’s farmland produces We embrace the lie of scarcity, Today we heard a second story The widow’s son takes sick The boy’s death shatters Elijah as well. This is what the real players do.<\/strong> A prophet’s opponents are not Look around our society, The problem lies with how The prophets of our time, the real players, Only as we heed these prophetic voices There is a place in Scripture Jesus reads aloud a passage from Isaiah Throughout his ministry, Just as Elijah plays a part As Elijah restores the Zarephath son to life And as Elijah shows concern Thus prophetic voices bear witness On April 24, This structure was not built for factory use. Garments like those made in that factory Jim Wallis of Sojourners presents the case At Georgetown University, for example, This is what the real players do. They disclose the abundance They struggle against the powers of death They announce that everybody matters, To borrow from a popular hymn,<\/p>\n “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, You can meet them also The work of prophets 1. Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks to Power: The Countercultural Nature of Scripture <\/em>(Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 87.<\/p>\n 2. Luke 4:16-30.<\/p>\n 3. Jim Wallis, On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good <\/em>(Lion\/Brazos Press, 2013), 102-104.<\/p>\n 4. From Lesbia Scott, “I sing a song of the saints of God” with “saints” changed to “prophets.”<\/p>\n Copyright 2013 Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sermon 1 Kings 17:8-24 What Real Players Do By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker The First and Second Books of Kings in the Old Testament might be more appropriately named “First and Second Kings?” 1 The recital they provide about rulers of Israel and Judah takes a back seat to the exploits of the prophets Elijah … Continue reading “1 Kings 17:8-24 What Real Players Do (Hoffacker) – Bible study”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
This is what prophets do.<\/strong>
They disclose the abundance<\/strong>
God provides.<\/strong><\/p>\n
and you will find many places
where an attitude of scarcity
prevents us from accessing
the reality of abundance.
Time and again
we choke off the blessings of God.<\/p>\n
we have a remarkable network
of hospitals and medical professionals.
Yet many people lack access to this system,
while many others struggle with
high insurance costs and unhelpful bureaucracies.<\/p>\n
we have colleges and universities
practically past counting.
Yet qualified students often shoulder
a heavy burden of debt that continues
for decades after graduation.<\/p>\n
a tremendous crop, a bountiful harvest,
yet some urban areas
have become food deserts
with no grocery outlets for miles around
and people dependent on convenience stores.<\/p>\n
while God wants abundance for us all.
The prophets of our time, the real players,
are those who disclose the abundance
that comes from God.<\/p>\n
that features Elijah and the Zarephath widow.<\/p>\n
and ends up dead.
The grieving mother blames her child’s death
on the prophet living under her roof.
She fed him at risk to herself and her son,
she proved faithful,
and now he has betrayed her
by letting her child die.<\/p>\n
He cries out through words and ritual action.
And as he has obeyed the Lord,
so now the Lord hears his heartfelt plea
and brings the boy back to life.
Elijah returns him to his mother.<\/p>\n
This is what prophets do.<\/strong>
They struggle against the powers of death<\/strong>
and in time they prevail.<\/strong><\/p>\n
people of flesh and blood.
They are spiritual forces,
what the New Testament calls
principalities and powers.
Chief among them is death itself.<\/p>\n
and you will see spiritual forces
that prevent life from flourishing.
One area where this is manifest
is the way guns are easily available, largely unregulated,
and used by a small minority to commit heinous crimes.<\/p>\n
a belief in redemptive violence
has taken hold of our society.
We have been seized by an idolatry
that values gun ownership above human life.<\/p>\n
are those who lead us in the opposite direction.
In place of redemptive violence,
they reveal a different energy:
the power of redemptive nonviolence.
They call us away from death to life.<\/p>\n
will our society stand a chance of recovering
from its self-inflicted gunshot wounds.<\/p>\n
where Elijah and the Zarephath widow
appear together again.
It is in Luke’s account
of the sermon Jesus delivers
in his hometown synagogue
during the early days of his ministry. 2
This incident at Nazareth
also helps us understand
what real prophets are about.<\/p>\n
then announces to the congregation
that this ancient scripture has just now
been fulfilled in their hearing.
The congregation is stirred up
in several ways.
He goes on to say
that no prophet is accepted
in the prophet’s hometown,
then cites a story familiar to them all,
Elijah and the widow of Zerephath.
Jesus needles them,
saying that there were many widows in Israel
in Elijah’s time,
but he was sent to none of them.
Instead, the Lord sent Elijah
to the pagan city of Zarephath,
of all places.
The congregation turns into a raging mob
and nearly throws Jesus off a cliff.<\/p>\n
Jesus builds on the prophetic heritage of Elijah
in multiple ways.<\/p>\n
in sustaining the widow and her son
with food during the drought,
so Jesus multiples bread and fish
for hungry crowds in the wilderness.<\/p>\n
after his illness,
so Jesus raises up the son of a widow in Nain
when he is carried out to be buried,
as we hear in today’s gospel.<\/p>\n
for this woman and her son,
So Jesus cites this story
as an indication of God’s concern
for people beyond the boundaries of Israel.<\/p>\n
to how God’s circle of concern
is wider than we imagine it to be.
This is what prophets do.<\/strong>
This is what real players do.<\/strong>
They announce that everybody matters,<\/strong>
whether insiders or outsiders.<\/strong><\/p>\n
an eight-story commercial building in Bangladesh collapsed,
resulting in a death toll of over eleven hundred people.
Among other tenants,
the building housed several garment factories
employing around five thousand people
and manufacturing apparel for several western brands.<\/p>\n
Inspectors found cracks the day before the collapse
and had requested evacuation and closure.
While some tenants complied,
garment workers were forced to return
the following day;
their supervisors declared
the building to be safe.<\/p>\n
can be purchased in many American stores.
The people who make them
are part of the supply chain–
our supply chain.<\/p>\n
that supply chains are now
the main roads of the world,
and that all of us have an obligation
to help those who fall by these roadsides.
He applauds how an increasing number of people,
especially younger adults,
serve as Good Samaritans: stopping to help those
beaten, robbed, or left for dead
along the supply chains of our world.<\/p>\n
students care enough
that nothing with a Georgetown logo
will be sold
that doesn’t pass rigorous muster
about the treatment of workers
who manufactured them. 3<\/p>\n
This is what prophets do.<\/p>\n
God provides.<\/p>\n
and in time they prevail.<\/p>\n
whether insiders or outsiders.<\/p>\n
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
for the prophets of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.” 4<\/p>\n
along the supply chains
that are now the main roads of the world.<\/p>\n
amounts to interference,<\/strong>
and through their interference
God continues to make the world.<\/p>\n