Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

The widow of Zarephath voiced her complaint to the prophet. “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son.” (1 Kings 17:18).

​

This widow had been through the wringer of grief over her son before. When Elijah the prophet first came to her she was out gathering a few sticks to bake the last of her flour for a final meal before lying down with her son for the two of them to die, her boy held in her arms (1 Kings 17:12). There was no hope for them because of the drought and the failure of crops and the resulting famine. She was dreading the inevitable death of her son, having already known the desperate grief of death when she had to bury her husband.

 

It was this same prophet Elijah who had said that due to the sin of King Ahab and all of Israel worshipping the false god Baal, that there would be no rain or dew for years (17:1). Things got really bad, especially for people like this widow, a single mom trying to keep her and her child alive. They were down to their last meal when Elijah arrived and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread... Do not fear... first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the LORD the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain upon the earth.’” (1 Kings 17:11, 13-14).

 

And that is the way it was. In faith this widow forewent baking the last meal for her and her son and trusting the promise spoken by the prophet of God, she fed him first and found out that the Lord would never stop feeding her and her boy. “The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the LORD that He spoke by Elijah” (v. 16). That was last week’s Old Testament Reading.

 

So what happens when after some length of time that beautiful boy of hers becomes deathly ill? The flour and oil are not much help anymore. It is not the famine that has got him. Death has found a workaround to get at the widow’s son. It seems cruel that they should miraculously escape starvation and that the boy should die anyway. And so she accuses the prophet of cruelty. “Why would you do this to us? What do you have against me? Why should my sin suddenly demand a penalty—and that, the life of my son?”

 

It is not just the prophet that she accuses. “What have you against me, O man of God...” (v. 18). She recognizes that Elijah is the prophet of the LORD, Yahweh. She and her son have been living off of the miraculous provision of God all this time. It must be God who is playing this cruel trick of providing life with one hand and seizing her son by death with the other.

 

God is usually blamed for death and its effects. When mortality becomes obvious, suddenly it is God’s fault. And the more tragic the death, the more likely people are to ascribe it to God’s will and purpose. I am sure you have heard this, if you have not voiced it yourself. “Why did God take my child? Why did He let this tragedy happen?”

 

The reaction of Elijah may seem a little surprising to you, unless you have been in the position of God’s representative hearing the accusations of those who are mad at God. Pastors certainly experience this, but you may also, as the ‘religious’ friend or member of the family. You have to bear the accusing challenges and you don’t have an answer for them. But you claim to know God. You claim that He is loving and gracious, so explain this!

 

And Elijah does what is surprising unless you have been in his shoes and have done the same. He also accuses God. “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?” (v. 20).

 

“You sent me into her home. You had her save my life when I was in need. You miraculously provided for us all. She has faithfully relied on your promise all this time and now you are killing her son, taking away what we thought was a guarantee of the preservation of life throughout the days of the famine. It was I who spoke Your promise to this woman. By allowing this child to die, You are making Yourself look cruel and making me to look the fool for speaking Your promises so boldly and confidently—promises which now look not only empty but deceitful.”

 

The following reaction of God, then, is even more surprising—surprising in the sense that He does not reply like we would have. He did not say, “Who are you to question Me and what I choose to do? Am I not God, and you My creature?” So often that is how we must answer our own questions about the loss of our loved ones. God is God and I am not. I must take whatever He dishes out. I have no avenue of complaint or redress. In fact that is the way that God answered the patriarch Job in his terrible suffering, but it was only the answer in part. You, see it is all true. We are God’s creatures. But that is only part of His anwer.

 

Furthermore, God did not reply by saying to the widow, “You know why this happened. You are well aware of your sins and that you do not deserve to have any kindness from Me.” That is also the answer that pops into our heads. Like the widow herself, our sins come to our mind, too. We have not been the parents that we should have been. We have raised our tempers in violence. We have shirked our responsibilities to discipline and let things go that needed correction. We have not taught our children true fear of God or thankfulness for all that He gives. And when His gifts are withdrawn we know that it is our fault, and we assume that the death of our loved ones is all about us, our relationship with God. But the LORD did not reply suggesting in any way that this was about the widow’s sin.

 

Jesus dismissed this idea also when the disciples asked Him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind” (John 9:2). Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (v. 3). It is not always so easy to sort out what is happening or why, and yet God has His purpose.

 

The LORD could have reacted differently to Elijah’s complaint as well. He could have said, “You’re My servant. It isn’t the other way around. You do and say what I tell you. You answer to Me, not I to you.” But what the LORD actually did in response to Elijah’s complaint was... He heard it and did what Elijah bid Him to do. “And the LORD listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived” (17:22).

 

He did not just pull out the God card and say “This is the way it is going to be.” He did not shake His finger and point at the widow’s sins. He did not ask Elijah to fill out a complaint card and leave it in the box on the counter. No. The God who gave life through flour and oil gave life also through the body of His servant Elijah stretched out upon the child. The God of life was not looking to take life, but to give even more. “And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And Elijah said, ‘See, your son lives’” (17:23).

 

In the Gospel we saw the same God, Jesus Christ, doing the same thing, even more abruptly. Why not interrupt the funeral procession and go to the grieving mother (also a widow) and tell her to stop crying? Not because death is just a part of life, or because she brought this grief upon herself by her sins, or because He doesn’t entertain complaints. But because He has compassion. “And He said, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise.’ And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother” (Luke 7:14-15).

 

It’s important to realize that this God did not just back down and give in to some whiny complainers. This God acted entirely within His character as the almighty, all-knowing Creator of heaven and earth who declares through the apostle Paul that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). That is the result of sin first entering into the world so quickly after creation. Sin must be punished severely, not merely because it makes God look bad (it does when we blame Him for our sin), but because sin hurts the people He loves. He created man and woman to live with Him in peace and love for eternity, and sin erodes and destroys that.

 

King Ahab and his wife Jezebel were leading the whole nation into idolatry with the worship of the false god, Baal—not a god of compassion and life, but a god of cruelty and death. Life under such a god brings horrors into this world and eternal separation from the true God of life and love. The king had to be punished, the queen had to be punished. The nation had to be punished for its own sin and for the way it was leading others to follow their evil. That is why God held back the rain and caused the famine.

 

Into this mess of death, which the nation had brought upon itself, God sent news of salvation through His prophet Elijah. He sent salvation through the flour and oil which would not run out. The widow did not deserve that promise. Neither did Elijah who, although a mighty prophet of God, also did his fair share of complaining as well. But when death tried to work around God’s promise and claimed the widow’s son another way, the LORD heard their cry and instead of kowtowing to their complaint, He acted within His nature of compassion and life.

 

He passed over the sins of the widow and of the prophet and of the boy and of the nation and He injected life. He passed all of those sins over onto His own boy, His eternal Son, who took on flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. He passed all of our sins onto Jesus Christ so that although “the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans). This is not a weak god giving into whiners and complainers, but an almighty, compassionate God who hears the prayers of His people, a God of power and grace.

 

This God raised the son of the widow at Zarephath. This God raised the son of the widow at Nain. This God has placed all of our sins upon His own Son and suffered His death without complaint. He did not interrupt that feeble funeral procession of Joseph and Nicodemas carrying His Son to the tomb, but saw His own Son laid in a dark and sealed tomb. And in answer to our prayers and complaints, not for Jesus, but for ourselves, God raised Him from the dead in order to give life to us all. In order that all of our children may be raised to life again when Jesus calls to them on the last day. This is the God of compassion who acts so that we might have our children back in our arms, so that our parents might have us back in their arms, so that He might have all of His people living with Him for eternity.

 

Don’t let sin take by death what God has given for life. Remember and teach your children that all of our sins have been placed upon the Son of God who died and rose again. He stretches Himself upon us all through our Baptism to cover us with His life and His righteousness so that we will rise to live forever and death will not keep us in its grasp.