Coming to Church with a Bit of Meal, a Little Oil
1 Kings 17:8-16
Sunday, June 10, 2007

I probably should have renamed this sermon: God Can Do A Lot With A Little. After all, look what God does with a handful of meal and a few drops of oil for the widow at Zarephath! I also had another possible title for this sermon: Smelling Good to God. Ever smelled fresh bread? Can you imagine what the bread God provided smelled like to a hungry widow and her son? I bet God enjoyed the scent of their happiness!

So I thought about changing the sermon title away from Coming to Church with a Bit of Meal, a Little Oil, but because I drive Nancy (our secretary) crazy with my title changes at the last minute, I thought better of telling her, and I am telling you instead!

What welcome relief Elijah’s words must have brought to a hungry woman and her son! Imagine the first scent of baking bread! It’s a scent she and her son thought they might never smell again this side of heaven! Can you almost smell it?

I bring you Elijah’s story today as welcome relief. God can do a lot with a little in our lives. We bring to church a handful of truth about our lives and we offer a few drops of longing and prayer to God – there’s so much rich and wholesome God can do with these things! There’s so much God wants to do! There’s so much God is already doing in our lives right now, if we notice and ask God to make bread of us!

But do we believe God is capable of making bread out of our days? Do we really believe that only God can feed us and sustain us ways that truly matter? That’s the kicker in this story of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath. You see, God doesn’t send Elijah into the slums of Zarephath out of the compassion of God’s heart! No! God sends Elijah to the widow at Zarephath because God can’t find anybody at home in Jerusalem who’ll truly commit to becoming bread for God! Not the king of Israel , not the queen, not the priests, not the pundits, not the folks! The hometown folks are hedging their bets with other gods. So the God of Israel, the God of Creation, the God of the Exodus, the God of the land flowing with milk and honey needs to start somewhere new, find some new folks, set an example, so God starts with a widow at Zarephath!

That’s right! So God sends Elijah the prophet to a widow who doesn’t even live in Israel . Zarephath is a village near the city of Sidon on the northern coast of Lebanon . And the widow isn’t even Jewish! She lives in the hometown of the agricultural god called Baal, sort of a Seed, Weed and Feed God! Today we would call her a Baalist, I supppose. So the message is that God has to put Elijah on the road, far from home, to find somebody –anybody--who’s going to show a little hospitality to what God wants to do in her life!

That’s amazing! If you truly want bread in your life, if you truly imagine that God can make bread out of the little you have and bring, if you truly believe that our God is a capable God, if you have a longing in your heart to know the God who lives and creates and sustains, then God will find you, God will scour the streets to find you. God will travel to find you.

Isn’t that why you’re here this morning? So God can find you?

Then listen. God is looking for a few good folks who want to make bread out of a little truth in their lives and some longing to see what God can do!

Speaking as one of the hometown folks (myself), I should tell you that I have trouble with God. It isn’t that I don’t believe we have a capable God. It isn’t that when I sing of the mighty power of God here in church I’m being a bit of a hypocrite. (Well, maybe a little!) It’s more that I don’t go around in my ordinary days expecting that God wants to find me and God has a passion to do a little mixing and kneading and baking with my stuff.

Let me give you an example. I have a neighbor up in the hills of Granville. His name is Ed. Ed doesn’t like me and I don’t like Ed. Early last week I was walking down the road in front of our house one morning and I saw Ed walking up the same side of the road. Ed saw me, turned around and walked off home.

Now, I watched Ed walk off with a toxic mixture in my heart of annoyance and self-righteousness. You see, the reason that Ed is mad at me is that I don’t let him drive his All Terrain Vehicle through our woods to get to the Westfield watershed area where he likes to hunt. (Mind you, he’s not supposed to be hunting there anyway). Actually, it’s worse than that. I asked Ed not to drive his monster machine through our woods and when he did it anyway, I took branches from our hawthorne trees with thorns the size of shoe making needles and blocked the entrance to the path in the woods. So one day Ed tries to drive right over the hawthorne branches and he gets some pretty bright red scratches. (Yeah, I know, I ought to be ashamed of myself!). Anyway, next thing I know Ed is pounding on our door breathing fire.

To make a long story short, Ed has declared in town that I don’t belong there, that the town could do without people like me. That’s serious stuff where we live.

Now, I can live with toxicity. God knows there’s enough of it going around today. You sort of get numbed to it. But here’s the thing. Every time I decide to tolerate toxicity, I make a little less room for God. Do hear what I’m saying? God is looking for a few good folks who can’t tolerate toxicity anymore and are willing to see how God might do things differently!

I don’t have a nice, neat end to this story. All I can say is that I saw Ed in the store yesterday morning, and I said ‘Good morning, Ed.’ I don’t know, I tried to be cheerful about it. Don’t know if I was believable. Didn’t make much difference. Ed just turned away and walked out. But you see, I can’t control what Ed is going to do. That’s up to Ed. All I know is that God is working really hard to make a little room in me for a little bread and an aroma coming from me that isn’t toxic.

Here’s a thought. Here’s my theme. Maybe the biggest compliment you can ever give a Christian is that he or she smells good! I don’t mean that you never sweat or that your deoderant does a good job. I mean that in some way somebody can smell toxicity on you. But also in some way somebody can smell truth and a longing to do life differently. That’s what St. Paul calls the aroma of Christ, a fragrance from life to life. (2 Cor 2:15). It’s a wonderful smell! I don’t smell it often enough, do you? I don’t know! What do you think? I imagine it smells like fresh bread in front of starving people!

And I want to smell like that. And I want our worship and our fellowship here at South Church to smell like that. You know what? God longs to smell the aroma of Christ on us. God will go any length to smell that smell. It doesn’t take a lot! You bring the stuff of your life and a longing not to be toxic, and God can make a lot out of a little!

Friends, you know what toxic smells like! You know what toxic smells like on others. You know what it smells like on you! It smells like something you pull out of the refrigerator, thinking what’s this and you pull the top off cautiously and put your nose close, and then you put that top right back on and toss whatever it was into the trash. Nobody doesn’t know what toxic smells like.

Do you know what fresh smells like? It smells like people who do not avoid one another. It smells like folks who admit they are part of the toxicity of the world, but now they absolutely cannot live that way anymore. It smells like people who long for a word of good news from God. It smells like some person saying to God: Here’s my heart, God. There’s a mix of stuff in it, I know. It’s not much. But here it is. Take it! Make something of me that smells good to you!

Friends, I long to be part of a community that smells like fresh bread. The message today is that God longs – God will travel any distance, make any sacrifice, set aside any obstacles -- to smell that fragrance from you and me!

All God asks is that we let God work with the little we have. Give God our hearts. Give God some counter space to work on us. Let God mix in God’s handful of desire, a few drops of God’s plan! Let God knead our resistance and doubt! Let God shape us into loaves and put us into the oven of discipleship and turn the heat up to expectant and joyful.

Tell me! Is that a lot to ask, to give God our hearts? Wouldn’t it feel like welcome relief?

Amen