"Not Enough"

II Kings 4:1-7 Place empty jars on the communion table … You may have heard about Elijah, one of the prophets of Israel long ago. Elijah did some remarkable things: he matched wits with brutal King Ahab and nasty Queen Jezebel, he was in a dramatic show-down on a mountaintop facing down 400 false prophets, he ran an incredible marathon sprint on foot through the desert, and, in the end, he did not die, but was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. Until Jesus comes along in the New Testament there’s no one quite as dramatic as Elijah. To this day, in many Jewish households, there is always an extra table setting and chair prepared in case Elijah should come to the door at dinner time. There’s another prophet from around that same time who often gets mixed up with Elijah. His name is Elisha. Their names sound almost the same. And it is Elisha that we will learn about today. Elisha was actually the disciple of Elijah, and in the Book of II Kings you can read all about Elisha’s adventures. The story we have before us is a heart-wrenching one. Not enough. A woman’s husband has died, suddenly, leaving her and their two sons destitute. It turns out that her husband owed money, and the creditors have quickly appeared looking for the debt to be paid. But she has no money. She has nothing to sell. There is nothing. Her only option is to sell her two boys into slavery. Not enough to pay the bill, not enough to survive, not enough to live. . She finds Elisha and asks for his help. “I have no money.” “Do you have any oil to sell?”, he asks. “No, this big jar of oil is nearly empty; only a few drops left, there is not enough to sell. I am lost and my boys will be taken away.” There are times when we have had direct experience of “Not Enough”. I remember during my junior year in college I didn’t have enough money. I had bought a car without much thought about how I would cover my other expenses. My parents might have been willing to send me some money, but I was trying to show that I could make it on my own. So when I went to the grocery store I bought the cheapest possible food supplies for my kitchen: little packages of frozen vegetables, they cost about 29 cents apiece at that time. I still remember watching that frozen clump of green, orange and yellow warm up on the stove in my one cooking pan, and then adding a little spaghetti sauce. I ate that way for a whole year. Not enough money, not enough food. When I first moved to Rochester, I had almost no money. To get to work I would drive to the gas station each morning, get one dollar’s worth of gasoline, enough to get me to work and back home. Not enough money, not enough gasoline. When I was a student at Union Seminary in New York City, I had very little money. I would head out each day with just enough money in my pocket for two subway tokens and a small sandwich at the deli for lunch. One day I put my money on the counter at the deli and they wouldn’t take it, because I had tried to use a Canadian quarter. I had no other money with me. I had to leave the sandwich behind. Another time I lost my return token and I had to walk back to the seminary the whole length of Broadway, six miles or so. I’m not telling these stories to gain your sympathy, or to get you to pass the hat around, but to remind you that we have all lived through tough stretches, at one time or another: not enough money, not enough work, not enough food, not enough gasoline, not enough friends, not enough love, not enough peace, not enough hope. So there’s that poor woman – you can see her on the cover of the worship bulletin - telling Elisha that there is not enough money to pay the bills, that there is not enough oil to sell to raise money, that her sons will be taken away, and that she will live on the street as a desperate beggar. Your heart goes out to her, even as you know that she is just the tip of the iceberg. There must have been hundreds, and thousands of cases like hers. There was no Social Security in those times, and no Public Assistance, so when the man in your life dies, you are out on the street begging to survive. It is still this way in many parts of the world. So what will Elisha do? To help this poor woman and her two boys? To help all of the women and their children in a time of “not enough”? While riding a stationary bike at the Batavia YMCA on Wednesday I came across a magazine article written by Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times. Kristof has done remarkable writing to draw attention to the terrible genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan in which countless women and girls are assaulted while their husbands are murdered by government sponsored paramilitaries. He has written about women in Pakistan, who after being raped are often murdered by their own parents or brothers for bringing dishonor to their families. He has written about the girls enslaved in the sex trade in Cambodia. He is frequently frustrated that much of his writing results in shoulder-shrugging, “what can you do about such a far-away place?”. Since the purpose of his writing is to motivate people to get involved, he has tried to figure out how to get around the shoulder-shrugging. He has found that the best way to capture people’s attention and to draw their engagement and support is to always tell a personal story. And so in the case of Pakistan, he has highlighted the story of one courageous woman, a rape victim, who has defied her own family and established a school for girls, to teach them about worth and empowerment. In the case of Cambodia he tells the story of a girl who found the courage to run away from those who enslaved her in prostitution and has been able to make a successful business. And in Darfur he tells the story of a girl who is working hard to held her family together after personally experiencing the effects of genocide. When Kristof tells the stories in that way he finds that he is able draw people in who might normally just shrug their shoulders. Think of the story Pam told last week. She has told us for several years that 20-30 families are receiving backpacks of food each week right here in our own school district. But then she told us about an experience with one of those families, and how excited a little girl was to see her visit each week with the backpack … and we are drawn into this project like never before. So the story of Elisha and the widow is a masterful way of drawing us into a terrible situation on a grand scale without causing us to turn away. There were many women caught in this terrible situation, but we are not left shrugging our shoulders. It gets us thinking about those empty jars and what it would take to fill them. It gets us thinking about lots of mothers with children at risk, and what it would take to help them, a backpack here, a back there, backpacks in LeRoy and Batavia, backpacks all over New York State, backpacks across the country. The backpacks don’t solve everything and can’t solve everything, in fact there is a lot left unsolved – the collapse of the economy and the slow recovery, lay-offs and export of jobs to other countries, deep-seated poverty. You know the whole story. It’s a tough time. But here are these jars. What will it take to fill them? 4 Now the wife of a member of the company of prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the LORD, but a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves.” 2 Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house, except a jar of oil.” 3 He said, “Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few. 4 Then go in, and shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all these vessels; when each is full, set it aside.” 5 So she left him and shut the door behind her and her children; they kept bringing vessels to her, and she kept pouring. 6 When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” But he said to her, “There are no more.” Then the oil stopped flowing. 7 She came and told the man of God, and he said, “Go sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your children can live on the rest.”