“A bottle of this, a jug of that, and that’s how God works it” Sermon June 5, 2016, Elijah and the Widow

“A bottle of this, a jug of that, and that’s how God works it”
Sermon, Year C, Proper 5, June 5, 2016
© Rev. David J. Huber 2016
Plymouth UCC, Eau Claire, WI
Focus Scripture: 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Luke 7:11-17





We are talking about vessels for the coming weeks. We are all vessels of one form or another. All of us are vessels. We are all carrying many things around with us and in us. Think of us as jars, or Tupperware, or storage bins, or maybe even grails. What if we think of ourselves as holy grails? Which, in a sense, we are. Holy grails holding God’s spirit. Holding God’s love and grace. Would that make a difference to think of ourselves as a holy grail? I think it does. Something good to remember. We are all vessels.

In that we go about the earth, we go through this earthly life containing things, carrying things, with us. Our personalities, our hopes, our dreams. We carry those around with us. We walk around as well holding on to our failures, or guilt, or shame.

But to that, I say this: remember that our vessels have lids. We can take the lid off, and take out all that which is not healthy or wise for us to carry around. We can let go of all the unhealthy thinking or feelings that are contaminating the good. We can let God take them out and take them away from us, because that’s what God wants us to do, and wants to do for us. That is one of the functions and why we have a prayer of confession and the assurance of pardon in worship. It’s not there to make us feel bad, but to remind us of our state of grace. To admit to our mistakes, to be honest about them, and then let them go. To say, “This happened” or “I did this” or “I failed to do this” and then say “I am going to let that go. I won’t dwell on it or stew on it.” And then to be assured through pardon that God doesn’t hold it against us, and so therefore we don’t have to hold it against us either. We can let it go. We don’t have to marinate in our guilt or our shame.

Open your lid with confession and just let it out and let God have it. That, we do not need to carry in our vessels.

But our vessels also contain our skills, our passions, our life experiences. Our bodily vessels can also show some of our life experiences: the lines under our eyes, our scars, parts of our bodies that have been cut away or removed. Our bodies are also vessels that show some of those life experiences.

We also contain the Holy Spirit. We have within our vessels the Holy Spirit. Imagine that! Something as wildly precious and holy as the Spirit, God said, “I am going to contain that in these human beings that I have made in my image.” That’s good news, there, too! To think that God would use us to hold the Holy Spirit.

We contain our likes and dislikes. I hope your likes outweigh and outnumber your dislikes.

The vessels that we are contain our gratitudes and our disappointments. I hope also that our gratitudes outnumber our disappointments.

We contain love and hate and apathy. Fear and joy, courage and sadness. We also contain the fruits of the Holy Spirit, like a big ol’ fruit basket! Think of the vessel of ourselves as a big fruit basket. We will hear more on the spirit fruits in a few weeks when Andrea is preaching. We are all vessels.

We are all vessels in which God has put things, and in which we put things. Some things that come from God and are wonderful. Things that come from us can be wonderful, but we also have a tendency to put our garbage in there and let it hang out in our vessels. But that stuff… that stuff, we can let out.

The church is also a vessel. It contains many people. It is a container that is also always able to expand as well. There is not a finite space within the vessel that is the church. Always room for one more.

As our worship team was preparing worship for June, as Andrea set up earlier, this idea of vessels came up. It appeared because of stories like today, with the widow and the jar of meal and the jug of oil. We will have a jar of perfume next week that a woman uses to wash Jesus’ feet. Then we will have the vessel of the church, and then the basket of spirit fruit at the end of it all. There is a theme of vessels and containers in those lessons. And it raised some questions for us:

• What are we carrying around in us?
• What has God put in us?
• What do we need to let go of to let God come into us?
• What are you carrying in your vessel?
• What do you carry around with you in this precious beloved unique vessel that is you?
• What are you carrying within you?

Those are the some of the questions we thought of as we were looking at worship.

• What are you carrying, or holding, or maybe even hiding in your vessel?
• What are you holding in there that would be better off if you gave it God and let it go?
• As in confession, What needs to be let go of to make room for a healthier and more spiritually mature life?
• And what are you holding within you that could be used for the glory of God, or that you are using for the glory of God?
• What is your vessel being used for?

We aren’t perfect. We know that are not always going to do things that give glory to God. We are all going to make mistakes. We can’t expect perfection. But we can strive, I think, toward more glory moments than mistake moments. Especially if we rely on the help of the Holy Spirit.

But there is a way to glorify God even in our mistakes, when we admit to them. When we offer forgiveness to others, or offer forgiveness to ourselves. That is a powerful witness, as well, and a way to give glory.

For this widow in Zarephath, her vessel is hospitality and faith. Amongst other things, like love for her child. But as someone in our planning team said, her vessel is one of hospitality and faith.

I thought that was spot-on, and something that I had not thought of. That’s the nice thing about coming together as a group to talk about scripture. We learn from one another.

At the time of the widow and God’s prophet Elijah, the people of Israel had been unfaithful. The king then was King Ahab, and he was awful. The biblical texts spends a lot of words letting us know how awful he was. Did terrible things to his people. He was also at the time of this story worshiping the god Ba’al, which was the god that his wife Jezebel brought to him. Jezebel was from Sidon. She was a foreigner, and she brought Ba’al with her. Ba’al was a god of rain, storm, and fertility. So it is ironic that God, responding to the unfaithfulness of worshiping the god of rain and storm, brought a years-long drought upon Israel. Then God sends Elijah to a person who was not Jewish, Hebrew, or even in the land of Israel. God sends Elijah to this widow in Zarephath, which is in Sidon. Where Jezebel came from. More irony there. God does have a sense of humor, albeit sometimes it’s a dark humor.

Elijah is told to go seek help from a nobody who has nothing. But she really is not without nothing. Materially, her vessel echoes from emptiness. But spiritually, she is filled to overflowing with faith and hospitality.

“Bring me a drink,” Elijah says to her. So she moved to do so. That’s hospitality. What do you do when someone shows up at your door? You give them something to drink. Elijah asks for water, and she goes to get some. Then as she is going, he says to her, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

That is a very specific request. Not just “Bring me something to eat,” or “Bring me food,” but “Bring me food in your hand.” In your hand. Elijah saying, maybe, “Let your hand, let your physical self as woman and widow and mother, let your hand be the vessel that brings my nourishment. Not a plate or anything else, bring it to me in your hand.” Maybe Elijah also knows that she doesn’t have very much, and that all that she says food-wise maybe would fit in her hand.

She says, “But I have nothing baked!” She has nothing ready to eat. Embarrassed perhaps by her poverty, or embarrassed that she can’t offer hospitality to this stranger. I would think that many of you know that sense of panic, or disappointment, in not being able to provide for a visitor. I saw that in my mom, and aunts, and family friends. I think there is, definitely here in the midwest, a sense of hospitality that when someone shows up at your house you have to give them something to eat. There is always that question when someone shows up, “Did you eat?”

I saw this in my mom and other family when there wasn’t something prepared. “Oh my gosh, we have visitors, and I have no pie, no cake baked, nothing ready to serve them!” So they whip something together. That hospitality is so important to them, and so important as well to our faith as followers of Jesus. Hospitality is really important as a part of our discipleship. And very important within the culture of Elijah and this widow. She says, “I have nothing.”

And then she confesses: “I have so little, that I was going to make a last meal for my son and me and then we were going to die.”

Elijah says to her, words that we hear so often in scripture, “Do not be afraid.” He tells her not to be afraid that there seems to be so little. “Don’t be afraid of me. Don’t be afraid to show hospitality. Don’t be afraid to give from what you have.” And remember, too, that this widow was not Jewish, Hebrew, not an Israelite. She is more than likely a Ba’al worshiper herself. Living in a land foreign from Elijah’s. I don’t think there’s any reason that she would know who Elijah is. I don’t think she would know that she has a great prophet at her doorstep. To her, he’s just a stranger. She has no idea who he is, what god he worships, maybe not even knowing where he’s from. He says to her, “Do not be afraid. Make me food, and make some for you, and for your son, because my god” - now he lets her know who he is! - “Because my god, the God of Israel has said that your jar of meal and your jug of oil shall not fail until God brings rain upon the earth. My God will provide for you. My God cares about you.” So she followed his directions. She made the food and her vessel, filled with faith, and maybe filled with hope - though it can be difficult sometimes to tell the difference between hope and faith, as they are very similar - she does as Elijah instructs her. Her jar and her jug were not emptied. They never ran out of meal, never ran out of oil.

As someone in our planning team said, “God gives us vessels of unending love and grace.”

What is in your vessel? How much room for God have you left in your vessel? Are there some things that need to be cleaned out to make more room for God? What are you using your vessel for? I hope that you are using it for the glory of God, and for making a more loving world. For being disciples. For showing the faith of God to those around us, trusting that we have unending jars and jugs that the more we empty them out for God’s glory, for the sake of God’s realm and the sake of God’s people, the more that God fills them back to the top.

Amen.