Abundance in a Time of Scarcity

The Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

Our First Testament reading today gives an account of two — not just one, but two — miracles God works through Elijah, miracles that call those who witness them to deeper faith that God gives abundance even in a time of scarcity.

This is how the story goes: God tells Elijah to go to a town called Zarephath in the region of Sidon, where God has commanded a widow to feed him. Now the reason Elijah needs a widow to feed him is because there is a famine in the land, there is no food. And the reason there’s a famine is because there’s been no rain and the crops aren’t growing. And the reason there’s been no rain is because God, working through Elijah, has declared that the heavens will be shut and the rain will not fall. And the reason God has declared that the heavens will be shut and the rain will not fall is that King Ahab of Israel has married Jezebel, a Canaanite, and the two of them have built an altar for the Canaanite god Baal, they’ve put up a sacred pole for the goddess Asherah, and they’ve made the worship of Baal and Asherah an official part of the state religion of Israel. And of course that goes against Yahweh’s First Commandment — “You shall have no other gods before me” — so Yahweh takes action to stop them.

Now in Canaanite religion, Baal was the god of the thunderstorm, and you sacrificed to Baal in order to bring the rain, so that the fields would be fruitful and the crops would grow. But God sent Elijah to say to Ahab and Jezebel, “You think Baal brings the rain? It is Yahweh, the true God, who gives the rain — and to prove it, God will not give you rain until Elijah says so.” Well of course this gets Ahab and Jezebel pretty angry at Elijah, so Elijah has to flee. And that is why God says to Elijah, “Get out of town, get out of Israel, go to Sidon, to a little town named Zarephath, to the house of a poor widow — a place so far off beaten path, so far below the radar, that Ahab’s soldiers would never think of looking for you there — and wait there until the time is right to confront Ahab and Jezebel again.” That’s what God says, so that’s what Elijah does.

And that’s where we pick up the story in our reading today. Elijah arrives in Zarephath, and finds the widow out gathering firewood, and he asks her for a drink of water and a bite of bread, and she says “Are you crazy? Don’t you know there’s a famine going on? I only have enough flour and oil to bake one little pita, and after that the food is gone and my son and I are as good as dead.” But Elijah says “Don’t be afraid. God has promised that you will not run out of what you need until the rains come and the famine has ended.” Well you can just imagine the widow’s reaction to that, can’t you? But she does as Elijah says, and the flour and the oil do not run out, and she and her son and her guest are able to eat and stay alive even in the midst of the famine.

But times of drought and famine can also be times of disease, and before too long the widow’s son becomes ill, so ill that there is no breath left in him. The widow blames Elijah, saying “Why have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son?” — and Elijah blames God, saying “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” Yet even as Elijah and the widow engage in this blame game, they still never really lose sight of God in the center, they still never really lose their belief in God’s fundamental goodness and God’s life-giving power. So Elijah takes the boy upstairs, and Elijah prays to God, and the boy’s life is restored. And it’s not just the boy’s life: when Elijah gives the widow back her son, her life is restored, as her faith is deepened and she comes to trust that the Word of the Lord is truth; even Elijah’s life is restored, as his faith is strengthened that God will not just bring calamity to everyone around him, but that God can work through him to build up life.

Both of these miracles show God bringing about abundance — abundance of food, abundance of life — even in a time of scarcity. The story shows how God empowers earthly things — Elijah, the widow, the boy, even the jar of flour and the jug of oil — to show forth divine generosity. That divine generosity in the midst of earthly scarcity was good news in the drought of Ahab’s time.

And it is good news in our time, too, this time when we seem to be surrounded by scarcities of so many kinds. Leading indicators say things are improving in our nation’s economy; Wall Street seems to be picking up; but consumer confidence is still way down; and I don’t know anyone who says they feel financially secure right now. Financial scarcity seems to be all around. I was talking with our parish treasurer and administrator about our parish budget the other day, about the deficit in our budget this year and the deficit projected for next year, and what we might or might not be able to do about that. There’s a kind of scarcity we face right here in our parish. Today we are commissioning people to go on a mission trip to Cerca-la-Source in Haiti, where long-term poverty and the lingering after-effects of the earthquake have made scarcity a way of life. And there’s the oil spill still gushing in the Gulf. The longer this goes on, the more I feel this terrible sense of waste — the waste of all those thousands of gallons of oil of course, but also the waste of the beaches and marshes of Louisiana and Florida, the waste of the livelihoods of the fishermen and all the people who make their livings on the Gulf, the waste of the fish and birds and the whole marine ecosystem under threat from the poison flowing from ocean floor. So much waste — and all for a resource that even the oil companies say is getting scarcer, a resource scarce enough that we have to go to greater and greater lengths to get it, lengths like 5000 feet under water, where even “normal” accidents quickly become disasters. Our whole petro-economy is based on the presupposition of scarcity, and it is killing us. In this time of scarcity, we could really use some good news.

And the good news is that God’s abundance is with us, divine generosity can be made manifest among us, even in this time of scarcity we face today. But if we want to experience that divine abundance, we have to be like Elijah, willing to leave behind the comforts and familiarities of the life we know and follow God into new places and new modes of relationship. If we want to experience divine abundance, we must be like the widow, willing to give what we have, even it seems like too little, even if we are afraid of losing it all, so that we can witness how God makes it enough. Above all, if we want to experience divine abundance, we must trust that God will give us what we need — not necessarily what we want, not necessarily what we think we deserve, but what we need. God’s abundance for Elijah and the widow and her son was flour and oil that did not run out; it wasn’t choice meats and rare delicacies and fine wines; it wasn’t unnecessary extravagance, but what they needed to live day by day. God’s abundance for us is the same: what we need to live, what we need to live lives that are not defined by the things around us, but by our manner of living. God’s abundance for St Mark’s School in Cerca-la-Source is a five-classroom schoolhouse, something we would take for granted, but something that will transform their entire village. God’s abundance for our parish budget would not be to rake in lots of cash for cash’s sake, but to have the resources we need to do the mission God gives us. God’s abundance is revealed in us not by how much we have, but God’s abundance is revealed in us by how we share, how we build up together right relationships of mutual well-being, how we take up material things and transform them into spiritual instruments of beauty and truth and goodness and compassion and love. God promises to give us abundantly everything we need; we just have to be clear about what it is we truly need.

Our scriptures today speak to us of how our faith grows as we learn to trust in God’s abundance even in times of scarcity. May that faith grow in us, and may God give us what we truly need, now and always. Amen.