MORE FLOUR! MORE OIL!

Text: I Kings 17:7-16 and John 21

About three years ago, I stood in the hilly fields of northwestern Brazil. Along with other North Americans, I was learning about Mennonite Central Committee's ministry by observing, listening, and touring-but on this day, I was going to do more than gawk. We gazed as wiry elderly farmers, first wife, then husband, cranked a small engine that supplied power to press manioc tubers into a mush that was next heated in a huge open vat. The process eventually yielded manioc flour that sustained life for these poor, yet productive, farmers.

"Would you like to see my house?" our guides inquired.

"Of course," we all said. We tramped farther up the hill. The simple structure had four rooms, a red tile roof, a dirt floor, and few furnishings. Windows were protected with bars but no screens. A small stove, a table, several chairs, an old couch and a bed were the only pieces of furniture.

"Would you like to taste my beans?" the spry 70 year-old farmer- woman offered.

Of course, we would be pleased to taste her food, we told her.

The ceremony began. She collected an assortment of plastic glasses-some chipped and some retrieved from cupboards with dust covering them. She blew off the dust, wiped the glass on her apron, and dipped a ladle into the steaming kettle on the simple gas stove. She skimmed off the bean juice and with a grin and sparkling eyes, offered a boiling, tangy glass half-full of liquid. I sipped, oh so carefully, and immediately felt warmed clear to my stomach. "How about some more?" she beckoned as we North Americans gingerly drank the wine-colored concoction.

We stood in a circle around this servant who assured us that there was plenty. She also said that she cooked beans only twice a week and that meant we had just drunk a sizeable portion of her weekly food allotment which fed a family of eight. I almost choked. Had I just consumed her daily bread? Had I, an Anglo affluent American, just drunk deeply at her rationed well? My tender conscience began hurting but the servant was offering me more. "There's plenty here! You want more?"

I have never quite solved the dilemma I faced on that trip and I doubt that I ever will. Being served by widows-or the world's poor--is a reversal of roles that doesn't feel good to me as a Christian. Being the receiver of steamy bean juice, brought me to the table of the world where distribution is indeed the key to survival and hope.

Elijah, the prophet, is ordered by God to leave the area after warning King Ahab that a drought was starting that would last for several years. King Ahab, we all know from the text, was evil. In fact, Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger, than did all the kings of Israel before him. (I Kings 16:33). Now, that's bad. We understand evil kings and rulers from biblical times-terrible massacres of whole tribes and clans, wanton destruction of fields and vineyards, and idolatrous worship of graven images. And we understand too, that Elijah had to get out of town to escape the wrath of the King.

The text tells us that Elijah follows the commands of the Lord God and hides east of the Jordan near the Kerith Ravine. Yet, in spite of the drought, Elijah does not starve because he is miraculously fed by ravens that bring him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening-plus he drank from the brook. Elijah survives his lonely exile with the help of the forces of nature supplied by the Creator God

But the drought takes its inevitable toll, the brook dries up, and Elijah is again rescued by a generous God and being sent to Sidon and specifically ordered to visit a widow there. Elijah, no fool, follows orders and finds a woman gathering sticks and demands not only a drink of water, but a piece of bread.

The story is already interesting but now the plot has thickened. A widow, a nameless representative of the lowest class, is targeted to supply food for a well-fed, non-working prophet. Already our discrimination antennas should have caught evidence of a problem. The widow, one who has little, one who is barely surviving, one who is responsible for the life of a dying child, one who has nothing left to give, is asked to supply the needs of God's servant, Elijah. I cringe at the injustice. I inwardly seethe at the indignity that this heaps on her already impoverished life. Why, Lord, would you ask one who is dying to give life to someone else?

But, is this story only ancient?

District Bishop Ronald M. Cunningham for the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, writes this in a recent Bread for the World newsletter: "On recent trips to West Africa as bishop, I visited more than a dozen elementary and secondary schools sponsored by our denomination. I discovered that the majority of these children come from homes in which neither parent holds a salaried job. Instead, they do subsistence farming to provide for their children. The children might eat only one meal per day with their families. The meager lunch they receive at school-pounded yams-hardly begins to fill this void. This brand new world stabbed me awake to the reality that there are still millions of hungry people in the world…." (BREAD, June 2003, vol. 15, number 5, Bread for the World).

Jim Wallis writes in his most recent column in SOJOUNERS MAGAZINE, (July-August, 2003, p. 7) "It is now clear that the ongoing costs of the war with Iraq and the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy, are leading to a crisis for America's poorest children. Indeed, America's poor were the first casualties of the war, as U.S. domestic needs were pushed off the political agenda…. The consequences of these actions are becoming a silent war, felt most severely in the poorest parts of the United States, where low income families are desperately clutching onto the bottom rungs of the failing economy. Virtually every state in America is suffering terrible budget deficits…. The truth is that hungry people will go without food stamps, poor children will go without health care, the elderly will go without medicine, and school children will go without textbooks so that the taxes of the wealthiest Americans can be further reduced…"

It takes no genius to stand here and recite the troubles of the world and our country. It takes no scholar to read the daily newspaper of every town and city in this country to document the needs of women and children, families. It takes no extra sensitivity or heightened awareness to watch daily television broadcasts and see the images of poverty all around. It seems that the biblical text for today--depicting a poor widow with a dying son--is being replicated right before our eyes. What is God doing? What is God creating?

We return to the scriptures to be reminded that this demanding prophet from Israel was fed by the woman from Sidon, a woman from a culture outside the Promise Land. Walter Brueggemann describes the situation as "failed". "The trouble in Israel was structural and systemic," he says. "There was no rain. The drought brought with it death. Drought is an ancient form of energy crisis. The energy crisis means that the government has failed. The king could not cause rain, could not give life. The king was impotent; the government was discredited. The world had failed. The situation was right for despair and dismay." (THE THREAT OF LIFE - Sermons on pain, power, and weakness, edited by Charles L. Campbell, p. 42)

It takes little imagination, then, to know that this widow would not have any resources to share, especially with a strange man. She rightfully pleads her case, assuming that her last piece of bread is needed for a starving child, nearing death. Surely the prophet would understand her desperate state.

However, he assures her that following his demands will, in fact, lead to more food. She obeys. And, there is more flour and more oil. They are fed and nourished by a compassionate God. They eat together. They survive together.

I have been wondering if our extensive use of the table metaphor during this week and our celebrating of the Lord's Supper today isn't a challenge to our professed faith. Aren't we telling the world that we are Christians by gathering here? Aren't we confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior of our lives? Aren't we the body of Christ in the world?

Surely you say "yes" to those questions. Yet, my friends, the poor and the hungry are all around us. There is little justice; there is rampant poverty, pain, and disease. How can we eat together at this table without hearing the cries of those who have nothing? How can we drink together without feeling the grip of the dying on our hearts? How can we meet together in this luxurious setting in Atlanta, Georgia and yet claim simple justice?

My faith calls me to the table precisely because of those deeply felt questions. My faith calls me to the table just when the pain of disparity and injustice wants to wound my soul so deeply that I am paralyzed to do nothing at all. My faith calls me to the table just for this time when our very lives are contradictions and our faith is a dizzying array of inconsistencies. We come to the table because we must. We come to the table because this is where we are fed and we are nurtured by the One who said, "Feed my sheep." We come to the table because we are invited to offer more oil and more bread to those who have little, in the name of Christ.

When we lived in Kansas City, many of our neighbors were very poor. A woman knocked on our door one day. She was in mid-life but already nearly blind due to diabetes and being severely overweight. She had two sons, the oldest attending an alternative school after public school fights and the youngest was skipping school regularly. She asked a simple question, "Could I borrow several eggs and some spoons?" I was eager to give her a whole dozen eggs and all the extra cutlery I could scrounge, but she was insistent. "No, only a few eggs. That will add to the soup I'm making and thicken it up. Too many eggs and there won't be enough for every body."

I invited her into our home as I went to the kitchen to search for her supplies. She followed me by holding her hands in front of her, feeling along the wall for stability. She came into the dining room and stopped short. "Is there a baby in here? I smell baby lotion."

"Yes," I stammered. The bassinet holding our newly born daughter was no more than two feet in front of her. "Want to hold her?"

She reached out without a word and I carefully placed our sleeping child in her arms. "Don't you just love Jesus?" was her response as she cradled this tiny baby in her massive arms.

Again, I stammered out a hesitant, "I sure do."

"You see, " she went on. "Just when you think that Jesus has forgotten all about you and you're all wore out, there's a miracle. Like getting some potatoes from the fella down the street so I can have a big pot of soup tonight. And you being such a nice neighbor and giving me a couple of eggs. And now holding this baby. I'm going home and hug my sons right now."

And with a dramatic stretch, she held out the squirming infant for me to retrieve, took her eggs and spoons, and shuffled out. But before she closed the door she said, "Want to come to supper? There'll be plenty."

We didn't attend that supper and I will always regret my valid reasons for staying home-a new baby, a tired body, a needed break from working in the city. She had invited me to her table and I knew there would be enough for anyone who dared to risk the invitation.

I'm afraid that Mennonites have become stingy with the communion bread and juice. We have rationed the tiny cubes of cut bread and the minuscule swallows of grape juice at the Lord's Table. We have been snacking at the Lord's Table and feasting off the tables of the world's poor. We have forgotten how hungry we are and how hungry the world is. We have dulled the memory of the widows and the children who are dying in our world and we have even forgotten our own past experiences of migration, settlement, and persecution. We have forgotten that when we stand at the table together, we are bringing the world to the table in our very bodies. We have forgotten that when we drink and eat together we practice the universal habit of fellowship around the table. We have forgotten a generous God because we have forgotten to be generous at our tables.

I suggest that the endless supply of oil and flour that sustained the widow, the son, and the prophet in the biblical text, gives us a sign that Jesus acted out with his disciples years later. Jesus knew that his very body would serve as a reminder of the limited power of the state over his life and the incredible unlimited power of God to give life. Jesus invited ordinary fisherman to try finding food one more time and then share the catch with others. Jesus invited his closest friends to love him fiercely and forever.

It's a new day-because we know about the unlimited supply of bread and wine. It's a new day-because Mennonites of every tribe, every culture, every class, every language, every orientation, every tradition can be fed here and then can, in turn, feed the world. Risk the invitation!

Jesus said, "You must follow me" (John 21:22). That word is ours today-even because we must die to this world in order to live faithfully. By eating and drinking together, we give witness to our faith, our confession, our commitment and our promise to challenge the state with its corrupt policies as well as offer to our neighbors a couple of eggs. By eating and drinking together, we say "no" to evil and "yes" to miracles. By this simple act, we will be nourished forever.

So, come to the feast. There is more oil! More flour! More bread! More wine! More life! There is plenty! Amen.