Sermon July 29 2012 2 Kings 4: 42-44
As a preacher, there’s always a fine line to draw when choosing a Scripture passage for preaching. Most of you know that I usually preach from the Lectionary, the pre-organized list of Scripture readings that runs through a three-year cycle, giving four passages for each Sunday (usually a First Testament passage, Psalm, Gospel, and an Epistle). But even within these prescribed readings, there’s room to expand or to cut. And that makes a difference. If I stand up here and read you two and a half chapters about what city such-and-such king attacked and what this prophet had for lunch on Tuesday, you won’t be engaged and when the “good part” comes, the miracle or the teaching or whatever, it won’t sink in quite as easily. However, if I stand up here and read you just one or two verses out of a passage, out of any passage in Scripture really, I can twist it to make it mean whatever I want it to mean. Context often matters. The details often matter a lot. If I cut passages down really small, or leave out the “hard bits” from the middle of passages, I can be unfaithful to Scripture, and tell you what I think rather than what God says. So it’s a balance – choose a passage, then read just enough to give all the necessary context but not so much that people start to tune it out before the sermon even starts. I believe that some powerful truth can be learned out of just about any passage in Scripture, so when I preach, I have to do the best work I can with what I have been given.
When I saw this passage for today in the Lectionary, I was both excited and cautious. Excited because it was brief and easy-to-understand, so it would hit you squarely between the ears without a lot of fuss. Cautious because I was unsure just how much was being left out – was this story a complete self-contained teaching, or was it the tip of a Scriptural iceberg that I’d have to explain for ten minutes before I can make any kind of meaningful point? As I got to reading and researching, I realized that it’s a little bit of both.
You see, in the context that it was originally written, this story isn’t very exceptional. It’s the last in a series of five miracle-stories from the prophet Elisha. Elisha was a prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel sometime about eight or nine hundred years before Jesus was born. Elisha seemed to be a very diverse prophet – he spoke God’s word to King and rulers, as well as performing small wonders for individuals and families. In this section of Scripture, Elisha has just recently taken over after his master, the great prophet Elijah, has ascended up to heaven in a chariot of fire. And here in chapter 4, we have a series of miracles – they come one after another with no apparent transition, no sense of when or why these things are happening. But it turns out that these miracles are an exact parallel to a series of miracles by Elijah, the master prophet who has just left the earth and left the job to our hero, Elisha. Elijah had done a very similar series of miracles in his own time. So in a way, this is the book of Kings’s way of telling us that Elisha is a legitimate prophet. That he’s not just the sidekick, but that he’s a real mouth of God and hand of God in the world. They legitimize him, so that all of his “important” stuff later in the book – his bigger, national prophecies and teachings and miracles that affect whole populations of people – so we can be sure that all that stuff counts.
You know, that’s very good for the original readers of the book of Kings. For them, there was a serious concern about whether Elisha was legitimate, because a lot of the country’s actions depended on the stuff that he said and did. But for us? I don’t expect that many of you were worried about whether Elisha was a real prophet or not. Scripture says he was, and we have no real reason to doubt it. So why, I wondered, did the people who pick the lectionary passages for each week pick this one? Why did they choose this little three-verse miracle, written for a purpose that most congregations aren’t really concerned about? When it comes down to it, this is just a feeding-miracle-story. There are a bunch of them in Scripture. This is just one more story of God providing a miraculous amount of food so that a whole population can eat.
Notice how it happened – a man came to Elisha from the town of Baal-shalishah, offering his firstfruits. Firstfruits was a Hebrew harvest festival – whenever you reap your crops, before you eat any of it, you go and offer some to God. Today, the man brings his offering to the prophet, Elisha. The text is unclear, but it’s possible that Elisha was eating dinner with the whole company of prophets, during a major famine, when this happened. Regardless, the man fulfills his religious duty – he brings his offering, the first food taken from his crops, to the prophet. This text starts with an act of stewardship – of somebody offering what they have to God. Now, normally, the offering would be given to a priest, who would burn it completely as a way to devote it to God. It’s a way of signifying trust in God – I know that God cares for me, so I trust that it’s safe to get rid of some of my food, to give it away, because God will provide.
This time, though, the holy man does something different with the offering. This time, rather than burning it – the traditional way of dedicating something to God – Elisha distributes it among the people. How would you have felt if you were the man? If you had given your crops to God, rather than eating it yourself, like you deserve to do, and then instead of giving them to God the holy man gives them to other people? Would you be angry at the redistribution of wealth, at these people who had not worked for this food eating the stuff that was supposed to be for God? Would you be frightened that Elisha is making you miss out on your duty to God, and that maybe God wouldn’t get your offering because other people ate it? Or would you be delighted that your act of stewardship went towards feeding hungry people?
Elisha’s servant, however, has a different concern. This food – twenty loaves of bread and a few sacks of grain – is not enough to feed the hundred people who are gathered here. When Elisha gives the order, “Set it before the people so that they may eat,” the servant is not concerned that Elisha is doing something improper – he’s concerned that the offering won’t be enough to feed the people. But Elisha repeats it, sort of – “Give it to the people so they may eat, for thus says the Lord, they shall eat and have some left over.” The act of stewardship, of one person offering what they have to God, is enough to feed the people, because God has chosen to turn stewardship into abundance.
Why do we give to God? Why do we, small finite creatures who work for the fruit of the ground, give what small portions of Creation we have back to God? Why do we give of our meager portions to the infinite God, who needs nothing, who does not eat or drink or spend money? Why do we serve the God that can do all things, the God that does not tire, the God who needs no servants?
When the Hebrews were wandering in the desert, they were thirsty and pleaded to God. Moses hit a rock with his staff, and water gushed forth so they all drank their fill. They were starving and pleaded to God, and God granted them manna – mysterious bread from heaven, enough that every family was able to gather as much as they needed. The prophet Elijah told a woman to make him a flour cake – though she protested that she did not have enough, the flour never went empty, no matter how many times she used it. Elisha gave a small firstfruit offering to a hundred people, and they ate and had some left over. In the Gospel passage given by today’s Lectionary, Jesus of Nazareth gathered by the sea and fed thousands of people with a basket of bread and fish.
Why do we give to the God who needs nothing? Because our God is a God of abundance. When our world shouts that blessings are rare, that food and water and shelter are scarce, God is abundant. When our world shouts that we must protect what we have, because somebody is going to try and steal it from us, that we have to fight and kill to keep other people from taking what is ours, God is abundant. When our world shouts that we must never give to the poor because they are lazy, because they do not deserve our charity, we must remember that God is abundant. We must remember that we did not create ourselves, but God created us out of abundance. We must remember that what we have, our stuff and the joy in our lives, is not our own doing, but it granted from God. We must remember that although we did nothing to deserve salvation, God pours it upon us. We serve this God because with this God, the cups of the thirsty run over, and the bread of the hungry never rots. With this God, there is plenty. With this God, there is life – eternal, abundant, life.
Amen.