An Odd God (24th Sunday after Pentecost; 1 Kings 17:1-24; October 30, 2016)

An Odd God

24th Sunday after Pentecost
1 Kings 17:1-24
October 30, 2016

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Last week we were in the beginning of Davids reign. He ruled for a long time and then he died. His son Solomon became king. Solomon ruled for a long time and then he died.

When Solomon died the kingdom split in two. David’s dynasty continued to rule over Judah from Jerusalem. But in the north, in Israel, there was a series of short-lived dynasties. One of the rare exceptions was the dynasty of Omri.

Our story takes place in the time of Omri’s son, Ahab. Ahab married Jezebel, a princess of the royal family in Sidon, a city on the Mediterranean coast. Ahab turned away from Yahweh and worshiped Baal and Astarte. The Bible blames Jezebel, but that’s probably not fair. Ahab seems willing enough to sponsor the worship of Baal and Astarte all by himself.

Into this scene comes Elijah the prophet. Elijah was a new kind of prophet. He was not on the royal payroll for one thing. That allowed him to tell truths that the king did not want to hear. He was Yahweh's man, not the king's. He had a great deal to say to and about the king and queen, none of it good.

He disapproved of the worship of Baal and Astarte. Baal and his consort Astarte were the Canaanite gods of fertility. As fertility gods, Baal and Astarte brought the increase of flocks and herds. They also brought conditions favorable for good harvests. They were economic gods, gods of production, profit, and accumulation. They were hungry gods, demanding a share of the profits. Human beings existed to work for them. With them there was no covenant peace, no covenant justice, and no covenant mercy.

I said that Elijah disapproved of the worship of Baal and Astarte. That is really an understatement. Elijah loathed them. He was a Yahweh-only kind of guy. To worship any other god alongside of Yahweh was religious treason.

At Yahweh's urging, Elijah set out to call Ahab to account, so he told Ahab, “As Yahweh lives, there will be no rain until I say the drought is over.” This was hitting Baal head-on, since giving rain for the growing of crops was Baal’s specialty. If Yahweh's prophet can hold back the rain, how powerful can Baal and Astarte be? And Ahab and Jezebel’s policy of worshiping them is proven to be not only religious treason, but bad policy.

So that's the big story, the story of public policy, of political theology. That story is about the dramatic confrontation between the king and Yahweh's prophet.

But there are little stories, too, lived by ordinary people who are only trying to live their lives in peace. There were peasants working to grow more because grain prices were falling, collectively producing larger harvests and depressing grain prices even more. There were the husbands and sons drafted into Ahab's armies as foot soldiers--chariot fodder--in Ahab's wars of royal ambition. And then there were the widows, orphans, and immigrants, people with no family connection, no protection in a society in which there was no covenant justice, in which looking out for number one was the only commandment. There were many such people in Israel.

But the little story inside the big story is not about any of them. Instead, the little story in our reading is about a Sidonian widow who lives in the village of Zarephath.

Yahweh sends Elijah to Zarephath. At the town gate he meets a widow who is collecting sticks. What follows is a typical hospitality story. Elijah “the guest” asks for water. The “host” widow brings him a cup of water. Elijah ups the ante and asks for bread. The widow doesn't have any. She tells a story of desperation. She has only enough flour and oil to bake a small loaf of bread. She is looking for firewood to bake the loaf. When she and her son have eaten the loaf, there will be nothing between them and death by starvation. They cannot expect charity in Zarephath. This region is where is where Jezebel came from. Sidon where she learned to worship Baal and Astarte. There is no covenant justice with Baal and Astarte. There is no covenant mercy in Zeraphath.

But Elijah promises that for as long as the drought lasts, her jar of flour and her bottle of olive oil will not run out. The effects of the drought will not fall on her nor on her young son as long as Elijah is her guest.

There odd things about this story. There is the obviously odd thing. I doubt very much whether I could plant myself on a bench in Cresco’s business district and invite myself to stay for three and a half years in the home of the first older lady who passed by. Even if I were wearing a clergy shirt with a clerical collar. But I presume that Elijah and the widow were working within the rules of hospitality as they understood them. We have different rules |and that's why this seems odd to us.

Leaving the obvious aside, there is still something odd here. Jesus noticed it. In Luke 4 he reminds the congregation of his home church that while there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, he chose a foreign widow in a foreign place.

Even odder, I think, is that Elijah chose a widow at all. Why not find someone who actually had the financial ability to act as host? Elijah is sitting at the town gate, where the town worthies would have been. Why not ask one of them?

And here the oddity is not a matter of differing customs. The oddity here is the oddity of Yahweh. Elijah had an odd God. We have an odd God.

We have a God who, when forced with choosing some place for Elijah to keep his head down for a couple of years, chooses a poor widow, one who worships other gods. Remember that when she speaks to Elijah she refers to Yahweh as “your” God.

We like to imagine that God is fair and that we can expect a level playing field, but fairness is not one of this God’s core values. God chooses. God picks sides. We like to imagine that God is everywhere and I suppose that is so in some sense. But the God of this story chooses to be more present in some places and with some people than in others. This God prefers to be with a poor widow in Zarephath than with Ahab and his queen in Israel’s capital. For three and a half years this God hangs out in Zarephath, not in Israel.

So, I wonder, where has this God been hanging out this week?

I think we can guess where God wasn’t. God was not following the campaign very closely. God wasn’t hanging out in the boardroom of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. And God has certainly not been hanging out at Wrigley Field the last two nights. God wasn’t those places.

Maybe instead God was hanging out near the Standing Rock Reservation, standing with the Standing Rock Sioux and hundreds of North American First Nations who are supporting their efforts to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline project. It was originally routed near Bismark, but the good folks, the Anglo folks, of Bismark would have none off it, so the route was changed to go near the reservation through treaty lands given to the Sioux by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.

All over the world indigenous people have stepped forward to defend the earth, and especially the fresh water of the earth. And everywhere they are being met with industry and government suppression and violence. I imagine that this God, the God of our story, has been at Standing Rock this week.

I imagine that God was in Flint, Michigan, where the water is still poisonous because some people in Lansing decided that the cheap water of the Flint River was good enough for the mostly black city of Flint. Mothers and fathers are trying desperately to find usable water, trying to scrape together enough money to buy bottled water, while the city is still charging them for the poison in their pipes. I’d like to think that this God was with them in that struggle this week.

Wherever powerful people met to make decisions with no regard for anything but short-term gain, the God of this story was boycotting the meeting. And wherever the outsiders, the poor, the marginalized, and the powerless struggled to live lives that are human and humane, this God was there. Wherever voices were raised to demand justice, wherever people placed their defenseless bodies between the ones they love and threatening greed, the God of our story was present.

What an odd God we have!

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