Building A Bigger Table (Opening Worship 2019 Synod Assembly)

Building a Bigger Table

NW MN Synod Assembly/June 7, 2019

Acts 1:1-8 and Ephesians 3:20-21

Dear friends in Christ—grace, mercy and peace be multiplied unto you through Jesus our Risen Savior, who sends us out as his witnesses, to the ends of the earth. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

You and I are creatures of time and place.

We’re thoroughly embedded in time….always living out our days within a single, slender slice of history….forever moving from our past through our present toward our future….

We’re embedded in time….and we’re also hemmed in by place.  We simply cannot be in more than one place at a time…..

You and I, creatures of time and place, can’t really conceive of any other way of living...

…which is why it’s virtually impossible for us to wrap our minds around God.

For God, you see, is not a creature of time or place….because God is the Creator, and therefore the Lord of time and place.   As we confess in the Nicene Creed, God is “the Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” 

God fills all of time, occupies the totality of space, and therefore is not in the least bit limited by the boundaries that contain us.

In these opening verses from the Book of Acts, Jesus’ followers ask him an utterly time-and-place-bound question:    "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?"

Now that’s not really a bad question.  It’s the kind of question creatures of time and place are always asking, especially when they’re bumping up against realities that baffle them.    It’s a question that popped into the heads of Jesus’ disciples quite naturally, caught (as they were) between Jesus’ miserable death on a Roman cross and his surprising reappearance three days later, in the power of the Resurrection.

Jesus was dead….but he’s alive again….so now what?  

The disciples try to squeeze this dead-but-now living Jesus into their time and their space:   “Lord is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

The question suggests that they were hankering for a little political payback:  It’s high time for the Roman occupiers to be put in their place. Their Empire needs to go so Israel can be returned to the fleeting glory it knew back when David was king.   

Notice the verb that the disciples use here:   “Lord is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  

Such is often our fondest hope as well--to return, to be restored to whatever our preferred version of “the good old days” might happen to be!

There’s just one problem with the disciple’s question, though. And that problem isn’t that Jesus’ followers were expecting too much of him, but that they were ready to settle for too little.

….which is how Jesus quickly responds, as paraphrased by the late Eugene Peterson:  “ [Jesus] told them, ‘You don't get to know the time. Timing is the Father's business. What you will get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.’”

And just what might that look like—when the disciples start bearing witness to the One who has death behind him and nothing but a wide open future ahead of him?

The disciples ask a very constricted, limited question…and what they get is an expansive, mind-blowing answer--because the One they’re dealing with has an imagination as huge as the whole universe….and a perspective that encompasses both time and eternity.

The disciples are wishing that Jesus might make Israel great again—but what Jesus wants is to make all things new again, to usher in a brand-spanking-new creation!

And it’s all going to start soon, when the Holy Spirit swoops down upon Jesus followers on the Day of Pentecost…fills them with fire, untangles their tongues and places on their lips amazing news that will change everything.

It all starts as Jesus’ followers become witnesses to his life, death and resurrection….first “in Jerusalem” where it all began….then fanning out into the wider neighborhood of Judea and Samaria—the launching pad for these testifiers to start traversing all the conventional boundaries of time and place, propelling them to the very ends of the earth, toward a future that will keep unfolding forever.

This is what happens when human beings are gob-smacked by the Resurrection.   All at once they find themselves living in a new day, inhabiting the fresh creation that the Risen Christ is always opening up.      

Wow!   Isn’t that amazing!??

But wait--it just keeps getting better!....

….Because this same risen Lord Jesus Christ meets you and me today--discombobulating us, as well.

For whenever we’re with this Jesus, all our working assumptions about how life works will be called into question.

When the Risen and Living Christ meets us anew in the Pentecost power of the Holy Spirit, everything that limits us (like our sin), and everything that thwarts us (like the power of the devil), and everything else that holds us back (like our mortality), it all goes off the rails!

And when that happens the last thing we want to do is expect too little of our living, agitating God who “by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”   (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Our synod’s theme for this year—and thus, our synod assembly theme is Building a Bigger Table…..or, as I’ve starting saying to myself:  “Building an Infinitely Expanding Table.”

In a world seemingly hemmed in by time and place, the very thought of that seems ridiculous, undoable, impossible….

But in the disruptive, sin-forgiving, death-defying, future-opening power of the Living Christ who transcends both this finite world and God’s infinite Creation….what seems utterly impossible turns out to be a piece of cake.

And that’s exactly what God’s been doing for centuries:   taking small, warped, seemingly useless building materials and refashioning them into realities beyond even our wildest imaginings….

…an ancient couple gifted with land and family in their old age…

….a tongue-tied refugee speaking truth to the power of Egypt’s Pharaoh…

…exiles restored to their longed-for homeland…

…a tiny little Baby shivering in a manager….

…a crucified man, lying stone-cold-dead in a borrowed grave….

…a terrified band of women and men huddled behind locked doors, prayerfully waiting for Whatever’s Coming Next….

This is what God’s always been up to:  upsetting all our applecarts, messing up all our assumptions, fashioning something breath-taking out of next-to-nothing!

And, bringing it all closer to home, this is what God has been doing for years, here in our little corner of the vast Creation--our synod:   planting faith-communities with one foot in time and the other foot in eternity….establishing and sustaining congregations, each of which is a sign, foretaste and instrument of Christ’s in-breaking Reign over all things.     

If all our lives, put together, amount to little more than the thinnest slice of eternity….these last twelve years have been barely a blip on a radar screen…

….and yet, looking back over my two terms of serving as your bishop, I can scarcely count up all the ways God has been building bigger tables in our midst—with us, through us, sometimes even despite us!

God has been opening up fresh ways to welcome all believers—including our gay and lesbian siblings in Christ—not just to sit at God’s bigger table, but also to serve at that Table.

God has been stirring up in us a passion for passing on the faith, ever more winsomely, particularly with those in the first third of life.

God has been helping us see in the wider world how our Lord is building bigger tables through ventures like YAGM--Young Adults in Global Mission—a host of whom have come from our synod.

God has been deepening and enriching our relationships with table-mates in the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church of India, our companion synod.

God has been nudging us toward re-encountering our oldest neighbors, the first inhabitants of this good land, our beloved native neighbors.

Most of all, God has been building bigger tables through our 226 congregations and dozens of ELCA-related ministries—vehicles through which sins are forgiven, Baptismal water is poured out, soul-satisfying nourishment is served up:  God’s Word and sacraments and mission making all things new right in our midst.

All these thanksgivings—and countless more that we could add—stir not just our gratitude, but also our hope.

I can’t think of any reason why God would not finish in us, all that God has already begun in us.  

Especially this Pentecost weekend, as our synod calls a new bishop and a new vice president, we can confidently expect to see bigger tables being built until God’s New Day surely comes.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Remembering Pastor Art Rimmereid

GREETING AT THE FUNERAL OF PR. ARTHUR RIMMEREID

July 1, 2019

On behalf of the Northwestern Minnesota Synod, where Art served both as an assistant to our first bishop Harold Lohr, and later as our synod’s second bishop….

and on behalf of the ELCA Conference of Bishops and its chairperson Bishop Bill Gafkjen of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod…

and on behalf of Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I greet you—family and friends, as we remember, give thanks for and commend to almighty God’s care our dear brother, Pastor Art Rimmereid.

I will never forget the first time I met Art, in November of 1991 when we were together at the annual regional retreat for ELCA bishops and bishops’ assistants at Luther Crest Bible Camp near Alexandria, MN.

In that first time with Art, I will never forget two things.   First, how the two of us “hit it off” almost immediately, both of us loving stories and humor and good fun….and often thereafter Art and I sat together at such confabs…sometimes almost on the verge of misbehaving, though—thank goodness!--we were never placed on detention.    Art loved laughter, funny stories, teasing and joy—and just being with him was always a delight!

The second thing I’ll never forget from my first time with Art is that he never, ever treated me like the the 36-year-old kid I happened to be.  Rather, even though Art was more than two decades my senior, he always regarded me as a peer. Utterly comfortable in his own skin, Art never thought too highly of himself, whether he was with his fellow bishops or the people of God whom he loved to serve.

Lastly, in the words of an old English collect, let us remember before God Art and all others “who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no [one] can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for evermore are one.”[1]

Bishop Lawrence R. Wohlrabe

Northwestern Minnesota Synod ELCA

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[1] From the Bidding Prayer in the liturgy for A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, U.K.

No Turning Back

Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Fergus Falls

Pentecost 3/June 30, 2019 

Luke 9:51-62

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

When Jesus decides to do something, there’s no stopping him!

When Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem”—he permits nothing and no one to slow him down.  If an obstacle suddenly appears in his path—he doesn’t allow it to delay or deter him.

But what’s the rush?  Why the urgency?  What’s waiting for Jesus in Jerusalem that obsesses him so—that produces in him such a relentless sense of urgency?

When the author tells us—in this great “hinge” verse of Luke’s gospel—that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” just what does that mean?   Toward what was Jesus aiming himself?

You know the answer:  Jesus was making a beeline for the Cross.  Jesus was rushing toward his goal, his crucifixion, his death.  

But why rush toward that?  Why not hold death at arm’s length for as long as possible—the way we try to do?   Does Jesus have some perverse “death wish”—is he on some insane suicide mission?

Well, to tell the truth, Jesus does have a death wish, of sorts—but it’s about so much more than his own personal death.

Jesus’ own death is just the beginning—the Beginning of the End of this old dying age.  

When Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem” he’s aiming himself directly toward the death of all that will die when he dies.

This past spring many of us read the obituary of Tim Schrandt of Spillville, Iowa.[1]   A memorable tribute, written by his sister, it went viral on social media.  I especially liked this line:  “...For the record, [Tim] did not lose his battle with cancer. When he died, the cancer died, so technically it was a tie!”

Maybe that’s a way to rethink Jesus’ death, too.  

Jesus is eager for the death of sin, our fatal condition that leaves us all wrapped up in ourselves.   Sin is killing us—it needs to be killed. 

When Jesus dies, sin dies, its grip on us is broken, sin’s reign over us is finished.  Because Jesus’ death is the death of the only human being who was NOT all wrapped up in himself.  Jesus took the sin of the world to the grave when he died.

But there’s more.

Jesus yearns to die on the cross, because he also intends to take the devil with him—Jesus desires the demise of the perverse force in our world that is always cooking up some new scheme for making us miserable.  Jesus can’t wait to “take the Devil down” at the Cross—to say “enough” to the demonic forces that create all the sickness, all the suffering, all the strife, all the storms of this life.  

Thirdly, Jesus anticipates with eagerness, the death of death itself. 

Death, you see, is like a neighborhood bully whose continual intimidation of us robs our lives of joy.  Jesus has had enough of that—he’s ready to die, because when Jesus dies he’s taking death with him!  The sting of death loses its “stinger” forever, when Jesus dies.

So, because of all that, Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem,” eager to take up his Cross and embrace the death that will bring an end to all our worst enemies: sin, death and the power of the devil.

Jesus can’t wait to stretch out his arms in love for the whole human family, in compassion for the whole creation that God is making new.  Jesus anticipates that, here in our gospel lesson…so he must be off….and though he welcomes company along the way, he has no room for laggards, slowpokes, “ditherers” or anyone else who’s torn between this dying old age and the New Age of God’s Kingdom that is surely coming.

So here in Luke 9 we see Jesus rushing resolutely toward God’s Kingdom that will be inaugurated at the Cross…and we also see all sorts persons who’re still caught up in, enamored by this old dying age

His own closest followers—like James and John—want to call down fire on a Samaritan village that rebuffed them…but Jesus has no time for recriminations!

Other wanna-be followers approach Jesus, wanting to hook up with him…but first they have to attend to some of the affairs of this old passing age.  Jesus is running toward God’s future, but some of his would-be disciples are stuck in this old era that even now is expiring.  

But Jesus can’t be bothered with any of that.  

Because Jesus already has one foot in God’s Kingdom that’s coming.  As he presses on toward Jerusalem, he’s leaving this old dying world behind.  Jesus belongs to God’s future.  And anyone who wants to join him must look ahead, not behind.   “No one,” Jesus reminds us…”no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

When I was a kid growing up on a farm in south-central Minnesota I observed how my father planted the fields every spring.  He subscribed, you see, to Garrison Keillor’s notion that farming is a spectator sport….meaning that as he operated the planter my dad was always vying with his neighbors for having the straightest rows of corn and soybeans in Blue Earth County!

And the only way to make that happen was to keep looking ahead, lining up that ornament on the hood of his tractor with  the marker in the dirt that had been laid down by the planter on its last pass through the field.

There can be no looking back when you’re planting.  You can’t win the prize gazing in the rear-view mirror.

It’s all about scanning the horizon, heading toward the future, looking ahead, Jesus tells us.

And that’s just as true for us, today.   Because we know what happened when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem.   He died for us and for all people, on a cross just outside Jerusalem.  And when Jesus accomplished that amazing sacrifice of himself…he took to the grave all the things that suck the life out of us.  

When Jesus died for us sin died, the devil died, and death itself died….so that on the first Easter Sunday, when Jesus burst out of the tomb, he opened up God’s new future--for us and for all creation. 

In his resurrection Jesus set our faces toward that future.   No looking back.   Only ahead!

The only problem, though, is that we haven’t fully arrived yet.    Sin still clings to us.  Sickness and strife and storms still break out among us.   The devil prowls around like a roaring lion[2]—a mortally wounded lion!—but a lion nonetheless, who still has a few tricks up his sleeve.

And although we have one foot in God’s coming kingdom, the other foot seems still firmly planted in this old, dying world.   We still have to have a roof over our heads, deals to seal, trips to the funeral home to make.

God’s Kingdom is surely coming…but it hasn’t arrived yet in all its glorious fullness.

But even so, even now, we’re starting to live our lives differently because we belong to Jesus and his wild way in the world.   

We live our lives trusting that sin, death and the devil are defeated—they just don’t know it yet.  

We carry on our dealings in this world, but fully aware that none of those things are “final” for us—none of them are the “real deal”—the ultimate reality, the finalgoal of our lives.

St. Paul, in a memorable passage from his first letter to the Corinthians, nails it when he writes:  “²⁹I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, ³⁰and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, ³¹and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.” (I Corinthians 7:29-31)

So, my dear friends….tend to whatever’s before you

Tend your political convictions, whether you’re on the far right or the far left, but don’t ever let your “politics” have the final word.

Mind your bank account and your retirement savings, but never forget that their value to you will vanish, three seconds after you take your last breath.

By all means take good care of your body…eat well…exercise often….cultivate friendships…and look after your humble home, as long as you remember that even those good gifts have an invisible expiration date stamped on them.

And whatever you do, don’t look back—because you aren’t heading that way.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

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[1] https://www.schluterbalikfuneralhome.com/obituary/tim-schrandt?lud=4759246C096BEEA2A07A23120E236986&fbclid=IwAR2jZuM-qj5lVJrsvRTyYZ23wIbmDE-4fN6DoDJ3y_JiYvS3wMyHVNHQzG4

[2] I Peter 5:8

Justice League

“Justice League”

2018 NWMN SYNOD MIDDLE SCHOOL YOUTH GATHERING

November 16-18 at Luther Crest Bible Camp, Alexandria MN

GATHERING THEME VERSE:  Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  Amos 5:24

I always like the themes chosen for our youth gatherings, but this year’s theme beats them all:  Justice League!

Not only is the theme great—but this just might be the best logo ever-- with Jesus in the midst of a host of comic book superheroes, describing how he (Jesus!) saved the world.

I find that so sweet, because, you see, I’ve been fascinated by super-heroes my whole life.

In the family I grew up in I was the baby brother, the little tagalong who was born when my sisters Judy and Cathy were in middle school!

Judy and Cathy, were like “auxiliary moms” to me….so that I grew up being pampered not by just one, but by three “mothers!”

Even though they loved their little brother, there were times when Judy and Cathy were mortified by some of the things their goofy little brother did:   like when I was 4 or 5 running out to meet their school bus at the end of the day, wearing just my underwear with a super-hero cape over my shoulders.

My childhood habit of dressing up like a superhero was fostered by the fact that I grew up collecting DC comic books, especially the ones about Batman and Superman…

Those also happened to be the years—in the 1950s and 1960s—when there were live-action TV shows about my favorite super-heroes.   So I hardly missed an episode of the Superman show in good old black-and-white TV of the late 50s and early 60s…

….and I was always in front of the family TV in the late 60s, when the 120 episodes of Batman were on—in living color!

Why was I so fascinated by these super-heroes….and why am I still a big fan of super-heroes, including now the whole Marvel Universe alongside the DC comics I had as a child?

I can think of five reasons why I still love super-heroes

1.  They have cool origin stories—tales about how they came to become super-heroes

2.  They have super-powers that allow them to do extraordinary things

3.  They use their super-powers to defeat evil and help those who are weak

4.  Most of them have dual identities:   Superman (Clark Kent), Batman (Bruce Wayne), Spiderman (Peter Parker), Hulk (Bruce Banner.   These secret identities (“alter egos”) allow super-heroes to blend into daily life when they’re not living out their super-hero identities.

5.  They sometimes join forces with other super-heroes, especially when such cooperation multiplies their super-powers to save the world.

No wonder that when you and I think of super-heroes it’s natural for us,  as Christians, to think of Jesus as sort of a super-hero.

After all, Jesus has a pretty amazing “origin” story….and Jesus has some pretty amazing super-powers…and Jesus also definitely uses his powers for others, not for himself—Jesus’ power allows him, too, to defeat evil and help the weak and needy, like most of our favorite superheroes.

It’s natural for us to liken Jesus to the super-heroes in our lives….

BUT IN OTHER RESPECTS Jesus is so much more than one more super-hero.  Jesus is something else, in a class all by himself….he’s way above and beyond the other super-heroes we follow…

Here’s five reasons why I say that Jesus is NOT just like our other super heroes:

1.  Jesus originates not in some sort of trip through outer space (like Superman) or some science experiment gone wrong (like Spiderman).   Jesus’ “origin story” is all about God—God’s overflowing, unconditional love….God’s amazing willingness to be born in a cattle stall and laid in a manger…to become one of us….God’s fierce determination to be our God….God’s stubborn desire to set us free so that we can be God’s people.

2.   Jesus’ super powers are way above and beyond the super-powers of our super-heroes…

a.     One of Jesus’ super powers is his ability to “bend time”—to live and act in the past, the present and the future all at the same time.   Take Paul’s words about baptism for example: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”  (Romans 6:3-4)  

In saying that the event of baptism is one of the ways Jesus “bends time,” it’s not too far-fetched to think of the baptismal font as a kind of “time machine” in which Jesus past act of saving us invades our present moment while also preparing us for the future when Christ will come again to say to us:  “You are mine.   You are forgiven.   I give to you life abundant, life forever!”

b.    Another of Jesus’ wondrous super powers is his ability to create endless second chances…to offer us countless fresh beginnings….to provide us with daily “do-overs.”  One of the best Bible verses that sums up this super-power of Jesus comes from Revelation 21:  “See, I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)

c.     Perhaps Jesus’ most amazing super power is his ability to win by losing, to empty himself out in order to fill us up, to lose his own life so that we might gain life--life that knows no end—all because of Jesus.  

Unlike most of the other super-heroes we pay attention to, this power of Jesus doesn’t rely on brute force or compulsion.  Instead of avoiding death, Jesus faces death, walks right up to death, endures death, demonstrating Jesus’ fearlessness in the face of death.   Jesus saves us by allowing death to do its worst to him, all because Jesus believes 100% that God is the God of resurrection.

3.    Jesus doesn’t have just one secret identity like “Clark Kent” and Superman….Jesus doesn’t resort to a single “alter ego” that allows him to sneak around unnoticed…..

….but rather, Jesus wears a mask, of sorts, by coming into our lives and identifying himself so closely with us that (in the words of St Paul) “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  (Galatians 2:20)

You are Jesus’ “alter ego” because Jesus has taken up residence within you, and through you Jesus keeps doing his work of making all things new, restoring people and creation to the goodness God has always intended.

4.   And none of this happens just to you or just to me all alone—by ourselves, in isolation from others.  Jesus has the astounding power to bind us to one another, to make us—all of us—his Body, to continue his work of making all things new, forgiving sins, walking beside us in our past/present/and future, facing everything that frightens us, including death itself, confident that there is a resurrection waiting for every one of us.     As we’ve been reminded during this Gathering by Pastors Sue and Jake,[1] Jesus makes all of US to be God’s vast “Justice League” in a hurting, hungry, angry, disappointed, hope-hungry world.

5.  …and perhaps best of all, you, my young friends, can get in on the action NOW—not just when you’re all grown up.   This hurting world, and especially the adults in this world like your youth group advisers and your parents and grandparents and adult friends…..we are all LOOKING TO YOU to lead the way—because Jesus has made you his own, his “alter egos,” his Justice League.

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[1] Earlier in the Middle School Gathering participants heard Pr. Sue Koesterman describe her work with Churches United for the Homeless in Moorhead, MN, and Pr. Jacob Anderson of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Fergus Falls, MN, describe his one-on-one ministry with needy persons who seek help from the congregation’s Deacon’s Fund.

Bite-sized Miracle

Installation of Pr. Paul Erdal

Calvary Lutheran Church, Perham, MN

Pentecost 25/November 11, 2018

I Kings 17:8-16

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

In our first reading from First Kings, chapter 17, it’s hard to tell who in this small cast of characters is the most desperate.

Is it Elijah, the prophet, who had just confronted Israel’s King Ahab…Ahab whom we’re told had done “evil in the sight of the LORD more than all [the kings] who were before him.”  (I Kings 16:30)?

Elijah was desperate because he’d just informed wicked King Ahab that God was bringing upon his kingdom a devastating, long-term drought.   Elijah was desperate because horrible kings like Ahab don’t like getting news like that, and the urge to “kill the messenger” is very real….so real that Elijah had to flee to the wilderness near the Jordan River, where God promised protection and survival in the midst of the impending drought.

Elijah is desperate here…but so are the other two characters in this story—starting with that widow in a village in Sidon, a Gentile territory bordering Israel.

This woman is desperate because her husband has died, and no available man has married her….so she’s experiencing a drought in a time and place with no social safety net to ensure her survival….

….and her desperate situation is made all the worse by the fact that there’s this third character in the story—her dependent child, a son, who’s counting on her—his only hope for food, water, shelter and safety in a time of drought-caused famine.

So right off the bat we encounter three desperate souls here in this story from I Kings 17:   Elijah, a man on the run…the widow who has no means of survival…and her son, who’s utterly dependent on his desperate mother.

What heart-wrenching pathos meets us here---three desperate souls, who for all the world appear to be “goners”—thrown together by horrific circumstances, with no escape route, no way out of their tragic situation….

But here’s where things get really interesting.

Because Elijah enters her village, and immediately engages the widow….asking first for some water, and then demanding “a morsel of bread” as well.

Elijah’s brazen “ask” elicits from the woman perhaps the most pathetic sentence in all of Scripture:   “As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only 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.”  (I Kings 17:12)

Eat it and die!   Have your last meal with your son…and then wait for death to take you both!

Elijah hears this…and then responds in a shocking way:  “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….”

My gut reaction is to say, “the gall of this man Elijah!”--to order her to make him a cake from her meager provisions, and feed him before tending to her son and herself!  Typical man! 

But Elijah says more here, adding to his command an amazing promise:  “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 that the LORD sends rain on the earth.”

Here--these three desperate souls were bound together by more than just their dire straits.   The LORD, the God of Israel had come a calling in this Gentile village in Sidon—the home territory of wicked King Ahab’s even more despicable wife, Queen Jezebel.

Here, precisely when and where things looked absolutely hopeless, the God of Israel was already at work…to tend the needs of these three desperate ones, binding them together not just in their deep hunger, but also in their capacity for life-changing, future-opening faith.

In the light of what happened—the bottomless jar of meal, the never-empty jug of oil—in the light of this astonishing miracle, we hear Elijah’s seemingly selfish command “make some bread for me first”—not as the order of a brazen, privileged man….but as an invitation to transformative faith.

“Make me a little cake of it,” says Elijah….because there will be plenty more cakes where that came from, for you and your hungry son.

God was going to take care of them miraculously, all right—but not by way of an overwhelmingly spectacular miracle.

God could have turned everyone’s heads in Zarephath by plopping down out of heaven a 10,000 bushel grain bin right next to thousand-gallon tank of cooking oil in the widow’s own backyard.  

But God didn’t do that…God didn’t put on a show to turn all their heads and make all the widow’s neighbors go, “Wow!”…..

….but rather in the intimacy of the widow’s humble home, and in the daily-ness of life in her small household…the miracle unfolded, in bite-sized chunks that fed not just their stomachs, but that nourished their faith as well.

And isn’t that just like the God of Israel, who is our God—and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

The abundance of God—which is oh, so real—comes to us most often NOT in ways that overwhelm our senses…but rather via unexpected channels that increase our capacity to trust God in each and every moment of every day we’re alive.

Such faith opens our eyes to see God at work in some of the last places we’d ever expect:  

·       in the unforeseen “God moments” that surprise us day by day

·       in the daunting problems and the perplexing challenges that seem beyond on us, though not beyond God…

·       in all the small, barely perceptible interventions of God in our lives….

·       in the simplest of gifts--like water and words and bread and wine…..

·       in the go-for-broke generosity of the poor, like the widow’s mite in our Gospel….

·       and always, always, always in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for us and for our salvation.

Dear brother Paul….dear people of God…this same God who revealed himself in the hovel of a forlorn widow….this same God is the source of your life and your only reason for having been called and enlightened and sanctified and gathered into this community of faith…..this same One has brought you together as pastor and people, fellow-servants of our abundant God.

Martin Luther, was born 535 years ago yesterday in the village of Eisleben, Germany.   What you may not know is that 63 years later, Luther’s life came full circle when he died in the very same village of Eisleben in 1546. 

In the room where Luther breathed his last, a scrap of paper was later found that read:  “We are beggars, this is true”—likely the last words of the Great Reformer.

Although these words may not sound like a shout of triumph, they do bear stirring witness to something deep in Luther’s way of living, trusting, serving and finally dying.  

I like that definition of the church that goes like this:  “Christians are beggars helping other beggars find Bread.”

The most powerful gesture whereby we express what it means to live each day by faith in God looks like this:  our hands cupped together, the way we will shortly come to the Lord’s Table, a posture for beggars who always look to God for whatever might be the next good thing that God  has in store for us.

We are beggars—this is true—beggars who always know where the Bread comes from.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.