In the Thick of It All

What is so amazing about today’s story is an unspoken idea that influences everything that happens from start to finish. And I am just going to throw it out there so we can see the way that it plays out throughout this whole story. It’s faith. Faith is what permeates this passage even though the word itself doesn’t actually appear. So lets take a look at all the places that it appears.

First, God tells Elijah to leave where he is and hide in a brook where he will drink from it and where ravens will bring him bread and meat night and day. Then he is told to leave there and go to Zarephath which is a land outside of Israel but also experiencing the famine and drought. Next, the widow has faith when she goes and makes bread for Elijah when she had just told him there was only enough for her and her son before that becomes their last meal ever. I’m sure it took a lot of faith to continue to make the bread each for all three of them. And it took faith for all three of them to know that there would in fact be bread for each of them. Elijah had faith that if God wanted God would bring the boy back to life to which God listened. Finally the woman had faith in Elijah and it seems that she might even have faith in Elijah’s God.

I don’t know about you but that is a lot of faith appearing in this one story of Elijah. And I bet that if you were to sit down and record any given day of your own life like the authors did with Elijah’s here, and then you went back and analyzed it, I bet that you just might see the ways that you had faith that God would work through and carry you through whatever it is that that particular day presented to you. It might not have been easy, and you might not have noticed it at the moment but it is always good to look back and see the way that the faith God gave you helped you to get through the different parts of your day.

Do you know what else I would bet if you looked back not just on a single day but on multiple days? I am sure that you would find that there were hardships and trials just like Elijah. Sure Elijah had faith, but at the same time look at what Elijah had to deal with. He’s asked to leave where he was living. I’m sure he was asked to do this because Ahab was a bad king and didn’t appreciate Elijah speaking on behalf of God declaring that there would be a drought in the land. I mean God explicitly tells Elijah to go and hide. But again, he tells him to leave the city where there was probably, in Elijah and any person’s mind, a better chance of getting food and water during the drought.

I know I said it took a lot of faith but can you imagine the turmoil going on in the widow’s mind as she tries to reconcile preparing the last two cakes of bread for her and her son with this prophet of a foreign god being so bold as to tell her to make him a cake first essentially ensuring there would not be enough for her and her son? How do you make that choice? Where does she get the faith when she believes in the god Baal not Yahweh? I don’t know who would have made such a difficult decision especially from as I said a foreigner who is speaking on behalf of a foreign god.

Then when everyone probably assumed that everything was going to be ok. The oil and flour had indeed not run out for many days. God had spared all of them from the drought and famine and then the boy falls ill and it gets’s so bad that he stopped breathing. Both the widow and Elijah get upset with God. Honestly I don’t blame them. What seemed like an impossible way to live happened because of God and now the boy gets sick and stops breathing. It seems unfair. In faith Elijah turns to God.

The reason why I point out all this faith and all this hardship is to help us to understand that both of these things can happen at the same time. As much as we hope and pray for only good and holy things to happen when we have faith in God, we need to know that even in those times and in those places sin and death can and does happen, but that doesn’t mean that sin and death have the final word.

That is the whole reason we celebrate All Saints. It is a reminder that throughout our lives God is with us responding to us and the world around us. We are reminded by Luther that we are both sinner and saint. We are always a human who is bound to make mistakes in this world and at the same time we are forever redeemed and a beloved child of God that have been rescued from sin and death. And when our race is over, as Paul puts it, then we can fully live into the promises and blessings that God gave to us in this life. So while I would love to tell any believer that a life of faith will prevent sin and death in it’s physical form from ever happening, I cannot promise that.

I cannot promise that a new or life-long person of faith will live without hardship or trials. What I can promise is that God is with you every step of the way. I can promise that even though sin and hardships exist in the world, and even in places where holy people like Elijah are present, that where those things exist, the power of love and grace and forgiveness also exist. And when we lean into the love of God, the grace of Jesus, and the forgiveness of the Spirit we can know that the power of sin and death really have no real power over us. When we let God’s power emanate in and through us, when we fully embrace God’s love then we like Elijah can demonstrate to ourselves and to this world that the forces of sin and death, of the evil that exists in this world, they have no power over us.

So on this day that we remember the saints in our lives who have gone before us, we remember them not becuase they are gone, but becuase they have lived a life of faith and have experienced the fullness of God’s grace in their lives through the good times and through the trials. They have walked by faith and have completed their journey. So again remember, that while we may experience many hardships in our lives we, like Elijah, the widow, and the son, can choose to focus on the faith that has been given to us to remind us that no matter what happens in this life, God is more powerful than any of it. Amen.