A jar of flour that can be not emptied.
A jug of oil that can not fail.
During a time of famine a visitor, a stranger comes and asks to be fed.
A widow and her child who are soon to die in the famine feed the visitor and are blessed with abundance, food enough until the rain returns and the famine ends.
The prophet of God, Elijah, pays a visit carrying the Word of God, to say it is for it to be so, to speak it is for it to happen. He speaks for God.
God’s Word pays a visit in a land of famine and death. God’s Word speaks and abundance pours out, life where death was to be expected, hope where forsakenness had set up house.
It is an image of God’s Kingdom, of the heavenly banquet, of the Eucharist, of bread, of plenty, of abundance interrupting our scarcity.
Good people die.
People of deep faith suffer horribly; they die of hunger, and disease and war.
People of faith do not always survive, they are not always rescued.
We all know this.
The weak, the innocent, the helpless are forsaken, forgotten and preyed upon.
Darwin reigns supreme, those who have make it, those who don’t have, have what little they own taken or stolen or tricked away.
A world of scarcity, where we fight and kick to hold onto what we have.
Then a visitor comes up, and the famine no longer matters, a word, the Word is spoken and there is abundance, more than enough.
Which world do we live in? Which world is true? Which world is false?
Does the oil jug never fail?
Is the jar of meal ever emptied?
The Apostle Paul once persecuted the Church.
You know the type of person. He was one of those who has to take from others, control others, put someone else down to build himself up, who can’t abide others disagreeing or not fitting into his scheme of things.
Something happened, he saw himself, he saw God, and how ungodly he was.
He then disappeared for three years.
I suppose he had to come to terms with the horror that he had become, the perversion that he had become, distorted and twisted, how ungodly he had become when he thought he was being Godly.
He came out of that confrontation with God and himself changed, he had something to give, to offer, a proclamation of super abundant grace.
No longer a taker, no longer a contender in the world of scarcity he became a giver, a proclaimer of abundance, of grace, of a grace that really is gracious, unending, never failing, never emptied.
It is a profound change.
Paul had God all wrong.
God had become the reason to hurt people.
Then Paul saw God and then he had God right, God became the reason bless and help people with things like hope and freedom and comfort and food and celebration.
The God of grace not the God of scarcity.
Paul died a poor man, tortured and executed, but he lived a life of abundance and adventure and hope and impatient eagerness to let people know about the God of grace who really is gracious, not just sort of gracious or sometimes gracious, but never emptied and unfailing like that jug of oil, like that jar of meal.
What do we do before such immensity?
Live and die with hope, celebration, thanksgiving, sharing, helping, comforting, reaching out, with peace, eagerness and adventure.
The vocabulary of grace, Paul was the original author. There is hope for all of us.
Jesus raises a young man from the dead, returning him to his grieving mother.
The first wave of the rising tide of God’s kingdom, the sign of things to come.
But what about all those other folks who died too soon?
We hope for the resurrection of some day, but what about now?
We don’t get an answer.
Jesus saw a need and he helped.
He didn’t help everyone, just this one that he met and touched.
Death isn’t the final word, life is the final word.
So there are the two widows, one who was starving to death, one grieving the loss of her child. Then there is the man who persecuted others, hunting them down and killing them. Stories of scarcity, of running out, of grasping for more, of just giving up and despair and vengeance.
And then there is the visitation, a surprise, and the story changes, the characters change, the landscape changes, they now inhabit a different country than before.
How to explain that?
These people who just don’t give up, who keep on going, hoping and giving and loving when the world all around them is falling apart? Just because. Faith in an abundance that we normally just can’t see.
The world says the cup is half full or half empty and these people come along and say we are all wrong, that the cup runneth over, that the jug of oil will not fail, that the jar of meal will not be emptied.
What to do? What to do?