Songs in the Night by Anne C. Brink
The story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath is of my favorite stories in the Bible. It begins with Elijah, one of the great prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, fighting against the cult of Baal. Baal was the name of a fertility god in the ancient near east, and those who worshiped him believed that Baal had the power to make it rain, that Baal had the power to bring forth life from the earth, to help their crops grow. So, in order to show the superiority of the God of Israel over Baal, God tells Elijah to call for a drought – one that would wind up lasting three years. The logic is that if the God of Israel could stop the rain, then it showed that he was more superior to Baal, who brought the rain.
When the drought first begins, God sends Elijah to a creek, where he could get some water and where God arranged for ravens to come and bring him food. But it didn’t take long, in that drought, for the creek to dry up. And so, God tells Elijah to travel to a town called Zarephath in Sidon, an neighbor and enemy of the Israelites, and an area that worshipped Baal. God sends Elijah to a widow there – the widow of Zarephath. Now, in that time, widows were among the poorest people in society. Without a husband, they had no means of economic support. If they didn’t receive help from the king or religious communities, they became scavengers and beggars. That’s just what happened to this widow and her son.
By the time Elijah meets them, they are down to their last meal. She tells Elijah, “As the Lord your God lives, I only have a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” Elijah says to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day the Lord sends rains on the Earth.” And it was so. Just like the bread and fish when Jesus fed the 5,000, their meal and the oil never ran out. Elijah saved the lives of the widow and her son. And they, in turn, saved his.
Elijah remained with the widow and her son for close three years. And this is where our reading for today picks up the story. During that time, the widow’s son – her joy, her treasure, her hope, her heart – gets sick and he dies. And the widow and Elijah have the same thought: how could God save us from starvation and this drought only to let him get sick and die? The widow curses out Elijah. She says, “What do you have against me? Why has your God let this happen?” Elijah takes the dead boy’s body from his mother, carries him upstairs, lays him on his bed, and, in the same way Elijah rails at God. “God, you sent me here to save these people. You sent me here to bring life, and now this woman’s son – all she has in the world – dies? Elijah stretches his arms over the body of the dead boy three times, stretching and praying: “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” The Lord hears Elijah’s prayer, God listens to his voice, and “the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.” Elijah leads the boy back downstairs and says, “See, your son is alive.” It is a beautiful story of how historic enemies become friends. It is a story about mercy and compassion, a story about resurrection.
It is a story that is echoed in the life of Jesus and in our Gospel lesson for today. In the course of his early ministry, Jesus travels to a place called Nain, a village near his hometown of Nazareth. When he arrives, we encounters a funeral procession. Another widow’s son has died, and they are carrying his body to the grave. The Scripture says that like Elijah, when Jesus saw the widow, “he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep,’ then touched the funeral bier and says, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” And the boy comes back to life and Jesus gives this boy back to his mother. And the people glorified God.
There are plenty of stories in the Bible about healing and resurrection in the Bible, but what is remarkable about these two readings, I think, is the compassion we see in God. Continue reading
