“Got Faith?”

I Kings 17:8-16

Luke 21:3-4: [Jesus] said [to his disciples], “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than [all the rich people]; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all that she had to live on.”

I Kings 17:16: The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

Hebrews 11:1: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Karl Barth: A Christian witness is someone willing to do something foolish in a world of serious purposes.

[prayer]

I’m sure that all of you are familiar with those silly ads in which some celebrity or the other, wears a milk moustache and asks, “Got milk?”

Those ads don’t work on me. Unless it’s heavily flavored with chocolate syrup milk never touches my lips. I detest the very smell of it! I’m aware enough of needing the calcium and vitamin A that’s in milk that I do consume other milk products that I consider more tolerable.

It’s a good thing for me that I can substitute other foods in order to get the nutrition that milk provides. However, there is no substitute for the faith required to faithfully follow Jesus in the way and the will of God. While milk is important, faith is an absolute necessity. One cannot truly live without it. So the question I ask each of us today is, “Got faith?”

Elijah had faith. In a time of drought he obeyed the word of the Lord and traveled to a village named Zerephath, where he was assured by God that a widow would feed him. He maintained his faith even after the widow told him that she was down to her last bit of food. Elijah told her not to fear. On God’s word he promised that she was not going to run out of food before the drought ended.

That widow had faith. Trusting the promises of God spoken to her by a stranger, she followed Elijah’s directions. She took her last handful of meal and her last ounce of oil, baked a small cake, and fed it to Elijah. She trusted God’s promise that, “The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” Imagine the faith it took for her to risk everything on the basis of the promise of an improbable future.

But she at least had a spoken promise. The poor widow described by Luke didn’t even have that. But she had faith in the promises of God. She believed in those promises enough to give everything that she had away.

We don’t know what happened after the widow put her offering into the temple treasury. The Scriptures are silent. Maybe her story had a happy ending. Maybe it didn’t. That’s beside the point. The point is that she, based on the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, gave everything she had to God.

Faith isn’t about happy endings. Faith is about having enough trust in God today to place all of our tomorrows in his hands. Rainfall doesn’t always follow the dry seasons of our lives. Sacrificial giving doesn’t guarantee a prosperous return, and those so-called preachers who say so deserve a swift kick in the pants! Healing doesn’t always occur in the aftermath of even our most ardent prayers. Even the best Christians suffer.

A brief sidebar. Zerephath was located in Sidon, a territory where the worship of Baal prevailed. This was supposedly a place under the rule of a deity other than the Lord God. But there is but one God. He is Yahweh - the Lord. His rule is universal. And even if there really are false gods, and if even those supposed gods really do have sovereignty over some particular time or place, the Lord God ultimately has sovereignty over them. God can work his will anytime and anywhere.

The Lord God is omnipotent and omnipresent. His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In Jesus the Lord God has personally wrestled with the Devil and won. He has brought life out of death and light out of darkness. He has raised Jesus from the dead. In light of all that, keeping the widow of Zerephath provided with bread and oil for a few days wasn’t really all that miraculous, was it?

We worship and serve a God fully capable of the miraculous. But that’s not why we have faith. Whatever our circumstances might be today and whatever changes there might be in those circumstances tomorrow, our circumstances are in God’s hands. Faith is trusting him to do what ultimately fulfills his purposes. Faith is trusting him to resolve the situations in our lives in ways that will ultimately lead to what is best for us. God does not always provide short-term answers to our prayers. Nor does he always answer them the way we want.

We don’t know what thoughts were going through Elijah’s mind as he plodded his way toward Zerephath. Scripture is silent as to what he might or might not have been mumbling under his breath. Even though God had miraculousy provided for him in the past odds are that he still had a few questions.

Ditto for that widow who was asked to feed him. She probably did a little mumbling under her breath too. Did she really trust God enough to bet all that separated her from death against the possibility of a life of plenty? Yes. She placed her bet on God to do the right thing, whatever it might be.

Ditto for that other widow. Maybe she mumbled under her breath as she waited to make her offering. Maybe in that brief moment in which she stood over the opening in the offering box she had second thoughts. Quite possibly there was a part of her that didn’t want to let go of her tiny offering. But let go of it she did. Just like Elijah and that other widow she made a faith statement. What was that statement? “In life and in death I trust God to take care of me.”

That’s what faith is: believing the promise that in life and in death we belong to God. Trusting God to use whatever it is that he asks of us to accomplish his will. Believing that our acts of faith, even when they seem foolish in the eyes of the world, are a witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Taking God’s word that the seeds of faith we sow will, in God’s own time and God’s own way, produce a rich harvest. Holding fast to the notion that the sacrifices we make on behalf of God are not made in vain.

Think about the prophet Jeremiah. As Jerusalem faced immanent conquest and destruction by the Babylonians, what did he do? He went out and bought a field. He was facing either sure death or exile. That field would never do him a bit of good. He would never build or plant anything on it. There would come no later time when he could sell it for a profit or offer it as a gift. Once the walls of Jerusalem crumbled he would never see that field again. What was he thinking?

Actually that’s the wrong question. The right question is, “What was he believing?” He believed that God was God. He trusted God to act in history to restore Jerusalem. His purchase of that field was symbolic of his faith that God would ultimately work God’s own purposes out in a way that was redemptive for Israel. He didn’t buy that field for himself. He bought as an investment in the future goodness of God.

There are ways in which I identify with Jeremiah, Elijah, and those two widows. I am resolute in my unwillingness to abandon the Presbyterian Church (USA). It is divided. It is losing members. There are some who consider it apostate. But I continue to invest in it because I believe that some day, some way God will use our denomination or its remnant to do great things for the Gospel. I trust him to use that which I invest in our denomination to do something good, if not now, then some time.

Like Elijah I go where God sends me, often mumbling and grumbling the whole way. Like Elijah I continue to ask other people to invest their seemingly meager resources in the work of God. Like widow number one I take whatever it is that I have and use it in the service of God and others. Like widow number two I drop my offering in the modern equivalent of the temple treasury and trust God to do something good with it, even when it seems that the treasury stewards are less than trustworthy.

Why? Because I am called to be a witness for Christ in this world of so called serious purposes even when it considers such witness to be foolish. Why? Because I trust God to ultimately do what is right. Why? Because even though I don’t always act like it, I truly believe that in life and in death I belong to God. Amen.