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Sermon: The Second Sunday after Pentecost (C) - 6th June 2010
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8 & 10am
Readings: 1 Kings 17:8-16, Psalm 146, Galatians 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-17
Since it introduces the final collection of the Psalter, the Hallelujah Psalms, 147-150, which all finish with “Hallelujah!” or “Praise the Lord!” it is fitting that Psalm 146 recalls the beginning of the Psalter, summarizing the fundamental message of the Psalter.
Like Psalm 1, Psalm 146 states that “happy” are those whose lives are completely oriented to God. Like Psalm 2, it asserts God’s sovereign claim on the world. Like Psalm 3, it makes it clear that God’s help does not mean a carefree existence for the righteous. In other words, by characterizing “the righteous” as being oppressed and hungry and imprisoned and so on, Psalm 146 conveys the understanding of the Psalter: God’s reign is proclaimed amid circumstances that seem to deny it and in ways quite often completely unexpected.
Such a proclamation of God’s reign calls for a decision. Psalm 146, asks, “Whom shall we trust?” The question is as timely and crucial now as it ever has been. To trust in “princes” and “flesh and blood” is a perennial and pervasive temptation, especially in a thoroughly secularized society like ours. Human help seems so compelling, immediate, and effective. Self-help schemes abound, and the creed of our culture has virtually become, “God helps those who help themselves”. No mention in that creed of helping the oppressed, the hungry, the blind, the stranger, the widow and the fatherless! Such a selfish creed, results inevitably not in praise of God but in self-congratulation. Some churches fall into such a trap and teach a Gospel of success and some of us believe it as well. The results are ruinous. As Claus Westermann, the Old Testament scholar that I quoted last week, puts it: “The praise of God occupied for Israel is actually the place where ‘faith (that is, trust) in God’ stands for us... the directing of this praise to a man, an idea, or an institution must disturb and finally destroy life itself.”
Psalm 146 is, therefore, an urgent call to praise, indeed, a call to life. In biblical terms, to praise God is to live and to live is to praise God. Praise is thus both liturgy and life-style; the two are inseparable. Brueggemann makes this clear, taking “sing praise” as a point of departure: Israel holds the praise of God against the powerful staying force of the rulers of this age. Israel sings, and we never know what holy power is unleashed by such singing. Israel sings, and we never know what human imagination is authorized by such singing.
In our lives, one reason we may not sing is that such hope is intellectually outrageous. Another reason we may not sing is that such an alternative is too subversive. But, the Church and Israel do sing! This singing is our vocation, our duty and our delight. We name this Holy Name and the world becomes open again, especially for those on whom it had closed in such deathly ways: the prisoners, the blind, the sojourner, the widow, the orphan. The world is sung open. Against this Holy One and this song, death cannot lock the world into injustice again.
By way of its call to praise and its instruction and proclamation of God’s reign, Psalm 146 anticipates Jesus’ preaching of the reign of God, as well as Jesus’ teaching about happiness and his putting into practice of God’s will in a ministry of justice, feeding, liberation, healing, and compassion. As the we face the same kind of opposition to God’s values and policies that Jesus faced, Psalm 146 is an encouragement to us to sing and to pray as Jesus taught, affirming “yours is the kingdom” even as we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Hallelujah!
The praise that we are to give to God for all the ways we have been blessed, especially in the most unexpected manner, is very important. What we seek from God maybe intellectually outrageous but the example of Elijah’s encounter with the widow of Zarephath and Jesus’ encounter with the widow of Nain, are examples of unexpected results. In our times of distress, God gives us the answers to our prayers in the most unexpected ways and to which we must sing, Hallelujah!
The main point of the account of Elijah’s visit to the widow and the other miracles in this chapter: It is the Lord, the God of Israel, who brings about these wonders. So, too, we dare to believe that things that seem impossible to human beings can be brought about by the Lord: Birds of prey may provide nourishment; the poor may have their food supplied wondrously replenished; and even the dead may be restored to life. It is the Lord and no other god who performs such miracles. Therefore, we are called to believe as well and sing, Hallelujah!
The wonder of these stories resides not merely in their supernatural character, however. We are amazed, too, at the wondrous freedom and sovereignty of God. God uses even creatures that are regarded as ritually unclean to fulfil God’s purpose. So, too, God is free to act beyond the borders of Israel, even through Gentile worshipers of foreign gods. As the hymn by William Cowper says “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform”.
This point is picked up by Jesus in his inaugural sermon in his hometown synagogue, when he observes that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time; yet, the man of God went to a foreign land and sought out the foreign woman. The woman of Zarephath is apparently not a worshiper of Elijah’s God, for she refers to Elijah’s deity as “your God”. Yet, she is the recipient of God’s miraculous provision. God’s universal love reaches beyond the boundaries of nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and even religious affiliation.
Elijah is seen in the New Testament as a forerunner of Jesus. Explicitly and implicitly, Elijah’s ministry is seen as a model for the ministry of Jesus. There are, indeed, parallels between the two accounts: the city gate, the plight of a widow, a son who has died, the miraculous resuscitation, the return of the son to his mother. The miraculous resuscitation of life in each case leads to the recognition that God has acted through a human person.
In the New Testament, however, Jesus surpasses Elijah. Whereas Elijah is the beneficiary of God’s miraculous provision of nourishment and he proclaims that God will sustain the hungry despite the small amount of what is available. Whereas Elijah appeals to God to revive the widow’s son, Jesus himself commands the dead to rise again. Indeed, the culmination of the story of Jesus in the New Testament is that he represents the power of God to grant and sustain life, his own resurrection from the dead being the ultimate testimony to the triumph of God over death.
Death and life are the ultimate realities of the human condition. Death represents the limit of human autonomy and control over life and poses for everyone a reminder of the frailty and brevity of life. Funerals remind us of our own frailty and our ultimate limit. Persons we love pass from our presence and we can do nothing to prevent their passing.
Jesus’ encounter with the widow concerned the death of her son. We do not know their names, his age or the cause of his death. In the end, none of that matters, only that she had already lost her husband and now she has lost her only child. The Book of James tells us that, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress”. Had Jesus passed by that funeral procession on the other side when he had the power to stop it, none of his other works would have made much difference. If religion has nothing to say to a grieving widow, it has nothing to say.
Jesus’ words to the young man “rise”, recall other Gospel words in the presence of death. The angel at Jesus’ own tomb will declare that another young man has risen; the disciples will announce, as we read last week, “This Jesus God raised up and of that all of us are witnesses”. Paul also will connect Jesus’ resurrection with our own hope for life beyond death: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died”. The resurrection of Jesus, the one who had compassion on a widow in her grief, provides the basis for the apostle’s confident vision of the end: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable”.
The hope of the resurrection, therefore, is not grounded in the fact that the widow’s son came back to life but in the fact that the one who had the compassion to bring back the widow’s son has himself triumphed over death. God’s ways are not our ways. In Isaiah we read, “ For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”
“Praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul: while I live I will praise the Lord. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob: whose hope is in the Lord their God”. May our song always be, Hallelujah!
This sermon composed using The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vols III, IV and IX, Abingdon Press, Nashville.