I’ve been there. Have you? When you’re at the bottom of the barrel, when the money or food or life itself give out? Readings you may hear this weekend tell some heroic stories and affirm a Holy Presence even when gloom seems to have snatched away any reason for living. They won’t give a glib answer, a “buck-up, shake it off” sort of advice which means so little to the hurting. They DO address God’s sharing of our mortal pain, and remind us that there are moments of grace even when the shadows are deep.
Begin, please, with the prophet Elijah (I Kings 17:8-24). To set this up, Elijah was on the lam from Queen Jezebel: remember how he had shown Yahweh’s power greater than the Ba’al, and had slaughtered all the Ba’al priests when their barbecue wouldn’t light. Very angry, Jezebel promised Elijah that he’d be dead meat by sunset! “Better hit the road,” God said.
So now we find him at Zarepath, outside of the Queen’s domain, penniless & starving. His one hope was that the Lord had told him about a widow who would help him. Sure ‘nuf, said widow was gathering one last stick to make one last fire to bake one last Jonny-cake before she & her son died of starvation. Elijah promised that her jar of meal and her cruze of oil never would become empty ’til Good Times came again… and so they remained full enough.
Then the son of the widow, her only son, died. Elijah prayed for the child to revive; and he did! Another happy ending! So here’s Elijah, exiled from home–was he beyond Yahweh’s territory?–and at the bottom of the barrel. And a destitute widow and a dead son, all at the bottom of THEIR barrels….but God wasn’t through yet.
Paul’s biographical statement to the Church(es) of Galatia (1:11-24) shares how God has worked in his life to get him to be an Apostle of Christ. Not exactly the bottom of the barrel, but such a radical change! “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” (v.23)
Luke’s Gospel presents a story about Jesus going to the town of Nain. (7:11-17) There he encountered a funeral procession: a young fellow, his widowed mother’s only son (!) had died. Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” (v.14) And as he did, the people glorified God. Just when one would say, “This is the bottom of the barrel for sure,” God makes things different….
A caveat, here: some of you may be saying, “but I’VE had a child die, too!” Or maybe you’ve come to your last meal. Or maybe you’re running for your life in a foreign and alien place. Where was Elijah when you needed him? or Jesus?? These lessons have nothing at all to do with rewarding the righteous or comforting the faithful. What they are is an acknowledgement of God’s grief with ours, a reminder that pain has existed across the ages and that the Creator hates it just as much as we do ourselves.
The individuals in these readings were met by God and changed in some way. How shall we receive the Presence of the Holy when the Bearer of the Flame comes near?
God Bless Us, Every One H B King
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