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The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost November 8, 2015

This Weekend's Readings (click each reading to view the passage)

1 Kings 17:8-16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9:24-48; Mark 12:38-44

Pr. Christine's Sermon - The Widowed Prophet

Children's Sermon - Thank You Note for Jesus

Choir Anthem - Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us

Sermon Notes from Pastor Christine...

This week's lectionary pairs together two texts both about widows; both of whom are on the verge of death; both of whom have very little left to give, either emotionally, spiritually, or materially. And yet they do...

And now you expect me to launch into the traditional 'stewardship' sermon that reminds us if a poor widow can give her sacrificial bit for the Lord's work, how can we - so comfortably wealthy by comparison - not give much more?

There may be some validity to that statement, but what is also true is BOTH of these widows are willing to give up their whole lives. Not a percentage, nor a portion, nor a tithe... but rather they each respectively gave their whole lives. All they had to eat and drink; all the money they had; all they had to live on.

None of us can give that.   We do a disservice to the widows by rationalizing their offerings and I believe we miss the point of their life stories entirely.

So first, I'd like to start with the widow from Zarephath. Let's make sure our preconceived notions aren't clouding our hearing of her story. This is a traumatized woman: fighting poverty, completely despondent, and is heading home to face death with her child. She has all but given up and then this JERK named Elijah shows up.

He demands a drink of water, demands the last bits of her bread, and he hangs out in her house when she clearly doesn't want him there. And did I mention she's also on the verge of DEATH?! Additionally, the part we have in our bulletins today fails to mention that the widow's son does actually die and the widow is convinced that Elijah came into her house to bring God's judgment upon her. Elijah is a jerk.

And frankly, God comes off as a jerk too. I mean really? He's the one who sends Elijah to this poor woman who can't possibly begin to care for him. Now, in hindsight I know he's not really a jerk, it all sorta works out in the end, but initially they both just seem to be adding more trauma to an already horrific situation.

And... the people in the Temple aren't any better. Think about it. This woman gives her last two cents to the Temple and then slips away to starve to death. We applaud this?

It may not say she went away to die, but Jesus all but tells us she will die, unless someone is going to do something about it. His words were, "She out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

She's not going home to anyone who's going to care for her or provide for her. There's no magical pot of bread that keeps multiplying. She is exposed and vulnerable in every way imaginable.

And they stand by and let it happen? This makes no sense to me.

So I'd like to consider these two widows differently than we have in the past and I'd like to start with the term used to describe them.

Widow.

If you asked anyone today to define 'widow,' they'd say, "A woman whose husband has died." Right? That's our basic linguistic understanding. Well, one of the fascinating things about the study of language is looking at their evolution, the root words which compose them, and their diverse meanings. My mother did her undergraduate work in English, so my childhood was marked with proper language, grammar, and word study. Unintentionally, or maybe intentionally, she planted a fascination with verbiage within me...

This love of words made me pause as I discovered the Hebrew word for 'widow' is derived from the Hebrew word meaning 'to be mute.' The connection suggests that widowhood creates a sort of social muteness.

Throughout the ages we have heard these widows stories laced with a tone of resignation to reflect their assumed social muteness. But, what if we have missed the true voice of the widows. Since the Bible hardly uses adverbs we make assumptions about tone, but I can't find any reason that these passages couldn't be read with a tone of opposition and defiance.

We've read through the lens of human constructs which color our reading, telling us how it should happen. God often doesn't function in 'shoulds'. This is the Bible. The story of God and God's ways. It seems to me that we should read, hear, and interpret through God's voice, not ours.

Climb into their stories and hear their actions in another light:

Pennies clamor as they fall from the widow's fingers as she makes her desperation known. She receives a ring of silent response from those within the temple doors.

The dough drops on the wooden table with a loud thud, as the widow 'silently' pushes back at Elijah's demands with her own needs. This is her last little bit of hope left.

But now that her son lies silent in her arms, her wailing sears through Elijah's heart, finally forcing him to take action.

The widows' actions sing of dignity and of courage. Their costly offerings denounced the ways of injustice and favoritism. The widows' actions are prophetic in their own right. I'm pretty sure, 'make a lot of noise,' is number one in the job description for 'Prophet.' These women are anything but voiceless.

Now, obviously, I've conflated the actions of two women into a singular character, highlighting the strong polarity which resides within both of them. I'm going to call her the Widowed Prophet. She is a feisty, gutsy agitator of the system and she isn't going quietly.

Jesus never applauds her self-sacrifice or invites us to follow in her footsteps. Take a look. He never says those things. We've said those things about her for years, but Jesus DOES NOT.

What Jesus does do is notice her; hear her 'silent' cry and tells others to see and hear too. The offering wasn't only a little bread, a little shelter, or a few pennies, but also the Widowed Prophet offers the 'gift' of noise, but she makes us uneasy with her unwillingness to acquiesce, her pushing back, her demands and neediness.

We like to believe in this exceptional country of ours that all our afforded equal voice and equal opportunity, so when we hear grumblings that it's not true, our defensiveness causes selective hearing and the sequestering of today's widows.

Who are the widows of today? Those we'd like to ascribe social muteness to? I mean, there are people you'd like to shut up, aren't there?

The blacks and latinos; the gays and the women. There are more....if you'd like me to list them. You're tired of hearing this aren't you? Tired of the issue of racism, tired of the issue of sexuality, tired of the issue of feminism. And it just keeps getting brought up, doesn't it?

I mean really... why do they have to make so much noise?

Here my tiny example from this past week:

I'm a member of a clergy fb page that discusses a myriad of topics, most of the time this group exhausts me, because I feel like they whine a lot. This past week a woman pastor posted a comment expressing her frustration about how the male pronoun is almost always used in referencing a pastor and the assumption that a pastor is a man.

You know, as a women, this gets tiring, but... I didn't think that much of it. It seemed like a fairly benign statement. You'd think that her voice could be heard and she wouldn't be left alone widowed for expressing the hurt she's experienced just for being a woman. But that wasn't the case.

Some called women pastors too sensitive, the anti-christ, and even satanic.

Seriously, it's 2015. Honestly, I was shocked. And yet, I wasn't. We 'widow' people all the time, hoping they will just be quiet or get tired and we can go on about our lives.

Those of color rally because they've experienced racism, not because they want to be a nuisance.
Women make noise because their voices aren't always valued as much as men.
The homeless bang on our windows because they don't have enough to eat.
The LGBTQ community dances in their rainbow shirts loudly because they too want to celebrate love.

They won't allow us to widow them.

Recently I've found myself saying repeating something in a variety of contexts which I believe is the call of the Widowed Prophet. You may have heard me say this, because I've said it in our racial justice meetings. I've said it in social ministries. I've said it in Bible study. I said it last week after our presentation on human trafficking...

When we hear something that makes us uncomfortable; something we don't want to hear; something with which we disagree, that's the place we need to stay; that's the place where the Gospel is breaking in.   Jesus didn't come to make us comfortable.

In all ways the Widowed Prophet is a dichotomy:

Prophets have voices; widows do not.

Prophets hold place in society; widows do not.

Prophets are chosen by God; widows are forgotten.

The Widowed Prophet sounds a lot like Jesus:
the one who was and is the least, and demanded a place in the world.

The one who was and is the outcast that now nobody can forget.

The one who was and is the most unlikely to be the voice of God, and yet was.
Which is how I know the Widowed Prophet is not going to shut up. She's making a holy ruckus for all the mute ones, because as Jesus tells us, they will die - physically, emotionally, spiritually, unless someone does something about it. I'm pretty sure He's talking to us.

Truly, these poor Widows gave everything they had to serve a world so broken that it killed her. A few days later - literally in the Bible, a few days later - Jesus himself died, giving everything He had to redeem and restore His world, so that we all might have life. Amen.