Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for giving, giving us the Bible, which permits us to see how you have acted through the ages, how you have heard our prayers. Heard prayers? We didn't even think to ask you. You have moved in our lives and taught us just how great you are.
Hear your word today and bless us as we try to follow your will. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Today's reading is from two kings, the fourth chapter, and we follow Elisha in one of his encounters.
One day, Elisha was passing through Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived who urged him to have a meal. So whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for a meal. She said to her husband, look, I am sure that this man who regularly passes our way is a holy man of God. Let us make a small roof chamber with walls and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp so that he can stay there whenever he comes to us. One day when he came there, he went up to the chamber and lay down. He said to his servant, Gehazi, called a shimenite woman. When Gehazi had called her, she stood before him. He said to Gehazi, say to her, since you have taken all this trouble for us, what may be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army? She answered, I live among my own people.
Elisha said to Gehazi, what then may be done for her? Gehazi answered, well, she has no son, and her husband is old.
So Elisha said, call her. When he had called her, she stood on the door. Elisha said, at this season, in due time, you shall embrace a son. She replied, no, my lord. O man of God, do not deceive your servant. But the woman became pregnant, and the next year, about that same time, she gave birth to a son. Just as Elisha had told her, this is the word of God.
Let's be to God.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: So if you are newer to this church community, we're currently going through the book of two kings. Each year in the fall, I like to tackle one of the books of the hebrew scriptures. And years ago, we talked with Genesis. We started with Genesis. We are all the way to two kings at this point. And there's something powerful about going through a particular book of the Bible, especially in the hebrew scripture, and seeing the overall arc and movement of a particular story that's told in one of the books of the Bible, in one and two kings. Those of you who were listening to sermons or a part of our worship service last year might recall from one kings. Or if you're familiar with these books, you'll know there are three categories of people we tend to find in the books of one and two kings. The first category of people, not surprisingly, is, well, kings.
Monarchs play a prominent role in the books of first and second kings. In one kings. It begins as we get to hear from King David in his last days, and then the throne gets passed to Solomon. At that point, the king ruled over a people and a territory that expanded some distance. Well, as you remember, King Solomon, after his death, passed on the throne to another, and at that point, the kingdom got divided. From then on, there was a southern kingdom of Judah that came to have Jerusalem as its capital. And then there was a breakaway kingdom in the north, the kingdom of Israel, that would come to have Samaria as its capital. And so, as we follow this division of what had once been a united kingdom into two kingdoms, as we follow this through the books of one and two kings, we start to read not about one king like David and Solomon. We start to read about kings in the north and kings in the south, a succession of kings in both areas. And we get to read about how those kings either were obedient to God, walked in God's ways, did what was right, or in, in many cases, departed from God's way, did what was evil, turn to other and false gods. God's figure, or kings, rather, figure prominently in the books of one and two kings. But, of course, a second major category of person in first and second kings is the prophet. We see prominent prophets in one and two kings, Elijah in one kingsheen, Elisha in two kings. The prophet is often portrayed as having an adversarial relationship with kings, calling them and the people they rule to worship God and God alone and forsake idols and false gods. Prophets and first and second kings. They prefigure the work of Jesus Christ.
Elijah and Elisha. They visit widows and ensure that they and their households are fed. Prophets show how God's presence and power can be like a refiner's fire. They feed crowds with a handful of loaves. They heal people from leprosy and even revive those who had been pronounced dead. Prophets like Elijah and Elisha so often display the awesome, healing, purifying, life giving work of God.
But there's yet a third category of people we find often in one and two kings.
This story today that Darlene read tells of just such a person, this third category of people that serve as central players in the books of first and second kings don't hold the title of king, nor do they hold the title of prophet. In fact, they're often not given a name at all. Like the woman we heard about today. They're simply associated with the village or region that they're from. But these extraordinary, often unnamed people nevertheless possess an extraordinary ability to see God at work in their midst and respond faithfully, compassionately, rightly.
Think of the widow of Zarephath, who's near death from starvation, and yet she courageously risks her own life and that of her son to welcome into her home a stranger, a traveler, who promises that if she does so, the oil in her jug will not run dry and the meal that she has will not run out. And even though this woman has barely enough to survive, she welcomes this traveler into her home. And lo and behold, the jug of oil does not run out, nor does the meal run, go empty. And she discovers that this traveler she'd welcomed in this stranger was the greatest prophet Elijah.
Think of the people of Jericho who recognize God's work in Elisha and how God's power was manifest in him and in faith. The people of Jericho plead with Elisha by God's power, to purify their contaminated water supply. Their pleas are answered by a God who cares that a community have clean, fresh water.
Or think of the widow who approaches Elisha. Just before today's passage in chapter four of two kings, she says to him, debt collectors are at my door, and they will pull my children into slavery if I can't pay my debts. And yet she trusts God enough and sees in this prophet Elisha God's work, that she approaches him. She's like the ancient people of God in Egypt who cry out and goddess answers their plea. God provides for this widow and her family more than she had even anticipated. At Elisha's direction, this widow collects vessels and containers from her neighbors and from her one little jar of oil, she fills all these containers. She then sells the oil and has enough money to pay off her creditors and still have money left over for her own family.
Well, in today's passage, we read of yet another ordinary woman whose faith and generosity are extraordinary.
She's introduced by the hebrew word gedola, which is often translated great or wealthy. Unlike the prior two women that we read about in one and two kings, widows who were often destitute, this is a woman of means, of esteem, of status. She has a husband who may have held a prominent position in the army. She has not only a house, but she has the resource to do an expansion, to build a guest room. And not only that, but to have it furnished. This is a woman of means.
She has so much, in fact, that unlike the widow who pleads with Elisha for help, this woman offers to help Elisha in the form of hospitality. And when he asks her in turn what he might do for her and even offers to put in a good word for her or perhaps for her husband, with the king or commander, she responds with these words, I live among my own people. We suspect that means she's saying, I have resources in my community, in my family, in my friends.
And yet, even if her socioeconomic status might put her in stark contrast with that of the widow of Zarephath, like that widow, this woman of Shunem welcomes in a traveler, believing there is something about this person, some way God is at work in them, that makes hospitality the right, the faithful action.
This woman of Shunem, we read, sees holiness in this man, Elisha. That's a word that's so often used for priests and not for prophets. But she sees it in Elisha, a word often associated with purity or being set apart, marked as for God's purposes, it's a word that points to that radical otherness of God, someone mysterious, wondrous, dangerous, and yet who draws near.
Elisha learns from his servant the hazy that though this woman of Shunem has a great deal, there is one thing she does not have. She doesn't have a son. And so Elisha says to her, in due time, you will embrace a son. She had welcomed him into her home. And Elisha brings good news to her. She will bear a son. And don't those words, doesn't that exchange recall to you another story from the book of Genesis? Doesn't it call to your mind that time that Abraham saw three travelers near his home and how he welcomed these three travelers in and had his servants prepare milk and curds and cakes for them and offered to wash their feet? And we discover later that those three travelers were, in fact, messengers from goddess. And they say to Sarah and Abraham, though they were well advanced in years, Sarah will bear a son.
And Sarah, you might recall, overhears this, and she laughs with incredulity. Well, in today's story, we also have this announcement of a birth to a woman, a woman of Shunem, who, along with her husband, we also read, were advanced in the years, and that announcement's met with incredulity. Can't believe this is true. She says, man of God don't deceive me. Don't deceive me. Often the blessings God brings seem too good to be true. But like Sarah, this woman of Shunem does give birth to a son. And when that son later complains of head pain and then falls to the ground and loses all signs of life, we read of how Elisha, like Elijah did with the son of the widow of Zarephath, resuscitates him, lays his body on him, and shows the life giving, renewing power of God, bringing life again to that boy.
This woman welcomed a traveler in and finds she is blessed by God by precisely that traveler, one named Elisha.
Incredible. Miraculous that a traveler from another place welcomed in by a gracious woman, whether poor, like the widow of Zarephath, or rich, like this woman of Shunem, that this traveler should then bless that woman's household.
Not so unbelievable, really.
You who have known the blessing of a stranger in your house can point to those times when you saw God at work, saw God's blessing even in that stranger. You welcomed in how they enriched your life by their presence, by something they did, by some blessing, some sense of God's work in the world that they brought.
Each summer, my wife Jill, my daughter Lucy, and I will often spend a week or so with my extended family at a cottage in northern Michigan. And on one of these recent summer trips, we were visited at this cottage by a woman who had once been a traveling stranger staying in my home, my household. Back when I was in middle school, my family began welcoming a series of three international exchange students. The first were from the Garcia family in Mexico City. The third was from the Buschner family in Berlin, Germany. All three students, each of whom spent a full year with us, became like family to me. God used them in a powerful way to open my eyes, to see the world from another perspective and culture and language. After their time with us, I would go on to spend the summer in each of their homes, the Garcia home and the Bushner home. My life was changed in a powerful way by my time with these travelers staying in my home.
Paolina was the second of these exchange students to spend a year with us, and she and I were particularly close in age. Initially, she could barely speak English, and so we'd interact by playing board games, often with my sister, too. We'd play these long games of Monopoly and try to do it with sign language.
Over time, Paolina became more and more comfortable with English, and that year, she became like a best friend to me. We went to the same school we'd talk about life. We'd talk about other classmates who we might be interested in romantically. We shared stories. She became very much like a sister.
She would attend the catholic church and I would attend the presbyterian church. But this time in middle school was also a time when both of us were beginning to get really interested in the christian faith. Both of us were starting to discover how meaningful a relationship with Jesus Christ could be in our lives, and we had the chance to talk with each other about that. It was like we were on a journey together later in life. I learned years after this that Paolina had considered becoming a nun.
Didn't surprise me.
Today, Paolina works as a freelance photographer in Mexico City, and she came to visit us at our cottage in Michigan a little over a year ago. I got to introduce her to Jill, and I got to meet Paulina's wife, a university philosophy professor in Mexico City who I loved getting to talk with. I asked her a lot about important writers and thinkers from Mexico and Latin America, and she would email me back with names and suggestions for deeper exploration.
And I got to recall with Paolina the gift of that time and friendship when she had been a guest in our home, and such a blessing to me that year. Every time this church takes a trip to visit and work with the Casa orphanage in Tijuana, as we're getting set to do on October 19, I think of my longtime interest in building relationships across the US Mexico border, and I think of all the ways those relationships have enriched my own life and churches I've served. And I think back to how that was something God brought to me initially through Paolina, a stranger who was welcomed by my parents into our home.
Well, this past May, as some of you know, our daughter Lucy got her first taste of this kind of experience Paolina once had living in our home all those years ago. After traveling in France with Lucy for a time in May, Jill and I got to drop her off at a house in Aix en Provence, right near the university where she'd be studying French. That would be her home away from home for the month of June. We got to meet Elise and Jean Pierre, a charming couple who were her hosts, and their two children, a daughter of maybe eleven years old and a son of eight or nine. We presented them with wine that we had picked up at a vineyard on the way, and they gave us a tour of their house, finally bringing us downstairs to the guest room where Lucy would live for the next month. Their daughter jumped on Lucy's bed and wouldn't get away from it. She was thrilled to meet Lucy, perhaps seeing her as a kind of sister for that month. Lucy would then tell us about the long dinner. She's like mom and dad. They eat forever and they talk politics, and it's all in French.
But what a gift, you know, to get a taste of that other culture, to be invited around to dinner tables, share in family life. She'd been a stranger, but by the end of that time, began to feel like part of the family, and particularly as her father, I like to think just maybe she was a kind of blessing to them during her month as well. That family who had so graciously welcomed her in this woman of Shunem we read about in two kings, did such a simple thing, really. She saw in a stranger that wondrous work of God. She saw holiness in him. And she, together with her husband, welcomed that stranger into her home. And as a result, she was blessed, blessed beyond her wildest dreams.
Well, through history, Christians have tended to read this particular story from the Old Testament as a woman welcoming in the prophet Elisha in one of two ways. On the one hand, Christians have seen in this portrait what we do when we accept Christ into our lives and hearts.
Back when I was in middle school, back right around the time Paolina was with us, my middle school youth director invited a few of us to start a memory verse program put out by the navigators. He eventually gave up on following that program with us, but a couple of us continued with it. We thought this was kind of cool, beginning to learn scripture passages, and I still remember one of those little cards he'd given me. It was the verse from revelation, chapter three, where a Christ figure says this to the church in Laodicea. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door for me, I will come in to them and dine with them and they with me. And I remember seeing myself in exactly that time as a middle school student doing that in my faith, welcoming the savior I was reading about in scripture and hearing about in church, but welcoming him into my life, my home. I was starting to see Jesus not as some foreign figure off in some other time and place, but one who had traveled to my part of the world, my time, and could be welcomed into my home with as simple a move as a prayer. I saw that this traveler from another language and culture and time could be my brother, my friends, could even bring near to me the love of God. When we receive communion, as we will today, I often hold that kind of picture in my own mind that as I take the bread and the juice into my body, I'm welcoming Christ anew, spiritually into my life, my home, my heart.
But as Christians, we have also read this passage in quite a practical, physical, material sense, too. The shunammite woman, welcomed in a traveler, sensed that God was at work in him, and wanted to welcome that presence and power into her home. That christians through history have recognized is the very story of faith based hospitality, especially when it's extended to the widow, to the stranger, to the one in need.
In Matthew 25, the Christ figure is again portrayed as someone standing outside the door, only this time it is in the guise of a person who is hungry, thirsty, in need of clothing, a stranger in need of lodging. And when people offer such hospitality to what Matthew 25 calls the least of these, they do it. We read, in fact, to Christ the king.
And so christians have long celebrated providing hospitality to those in need and doing so in the name of Christ. And they've noted time and again that in doing so, such actions can prove a blessing to them, to their family, to the community that dares to welcome in the outsider, the stranger, the immigrant, the foreigner.
Back in the fourth century, we find the first mention of the term Christ room, a term you may have heard. It's first used by John Chrysostom. As he writes, every family, every family should have a room where Christ is welcome in the person of the hungry and thirsty stranger. It's like updating that notion of a room for Elisha, saying, for christians, it's now a room for the one Elisha prefigured, the savior Christ the Lord. Some of you here have welcomed visiting missionaries and traveling pastors and even refugees and asylum seekers from other countries into your homes. And when you've done so, I've heard you share time and again how having them in your home brought a blessing, powerful blessing, to your life when it comes to our unhoused sisters and brothers, our unhoused neighbors. Because the needs of the homeless are often so immense and complicated, churches and community organizations today will often work together to provide food and housing and support for those without those resources. You'll get to hear from the executive director of one such ministry this church has long supported, called Door of Hope. A few Sundays from now, she'll share with you some of what that ministry does, providing a home, a welcome for families in need, another organization that churches and other groups have partnered with together to provide housing for those who experience homelessness, as, of course, union Station and I remember well back in my seminary days when I had the privilege of serving as an overnight supervisor there. My first night, I wondered, what's that going to be like sleeping with all these folks who are experiencing homelessness? Is that going to be scary? Am I going to sleep at all? I had to be ready to deal with any calls or concerns that might come up. I wondered what that would be like and what I found very quickly, spending three nights a week over in what was the basement of the first congregational church at that time, that these individuals I was blessed to play games with, play chess with. They would just destroy me, do the laundry with talk about life and faith and renewal. I was blessed. Those relationships. In them I saw God at work in these people that had been before for me, strangers. And I also sensed in those relationships a call. You have likely sensed, too, that call to be advocates for those experiencing homeless, for the person in need that our nation as a whole and our community might open our hearts more powerfully to this notion of christian compassion and hospitality and the common good, that all might have a place to call home.
The story of the woman of Shunem it's our story, isn't it? God's word and presence has come near to us, as it did for that woman of Shunem and the prophet Elisha. Only for us, the prophet that has come near we also call Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
Today he stands at our door in spirit and in that mysterious guise of a stranger or traveling prophet. As this woman of Shunem made room for Elisha, may we make room for the one Elisha prefigured. May we make room for Christ in our hearts, in our homes, in our church, Christ in spirit, Christ revealed in scripture, Christ here in community, and Christ in stranger. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
