Pastor Hugh's Monthly Meditation
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A DEEP AND HONEST FAITH
Part One
When I was in my senior year of college and feeling the first stirrings of what would become my calling to ordained ministry, I remember sitting with my pastor to discuss the confusion I was experiencing and to receive some guidance. I suspect that he must have just prepared a sermon based on the story of Prophet Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarephath (I Kings 17:17ff) because I remember how animated he was as he enthusiastically shared his new-found insight into this text. This excitement and animation stood in sharp contrast to the numbness that was slowly growing in my mind. Although I am certain I politely nodded my head and appeared to be appreciatively taking it all in, I had no clue what he was trying to tell me, let alone why.
Click on image to see a larger view of Gustave Doré’s “Elijah Raiseth the Son of the Widow of Zarephath”, in a separate window.
I confess that this initial introduction to the prophet Elijah and his stay with the widow from Zarephath may be why I have never really looked at this story all that closely. It has always seemed one of those strange stories from the Bible that one nods at politely without having a clue what it’s really all about.
In my most recent encounter with this story, as I was looking at the texts for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, I was initially struck by the permission it seemed to give to our being completely honest with God, especially when it comes to the hard and unanswerable questions of life. Let’s see if I can explain what I mean without causing mind numbness myself.
Elijah was a prophet of God who resided in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th century BC. In I King 17, Elijah had just fled from Israel to a town in Sidon (in modern-day Lebanon) called Zarephath. The reason for his sudden departure: he had just rebuked the King of Israel, Ahab, for Ahab’s (and his wife, Jezebel’s) active promotion of false and idolatrous worship practices in Israel: something that would have been absolutely prohibited by the Ten Commandments and the laws handed down from the time of Moses. He fled Israel to save his life.
It is in Zarephath that a widow (and to Elijah, a foreigner) took him in and offered him shelter. You would think that if someone were to rescue a prophet of God, a blessing of some sort would naturally follow. But just the opposite happened. This widow’s only child, her son, suddenly grew sick. As it is described in I Kings 17:17, “[The child’s] illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.” The child died.
Here’s where the brutal honesty comes into the story: the widow—now childless—turned on Elijah and unleashed a torrent of anger and despair. “What have you against me, O man of God?” the widow pleads. “You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son! ”
And Elijah didn’t flinch from her accusations. He didn’t try to proclaim his, or God’s, innocence. Rather, he carried the dead child into his own room (and into God’s presence) and then questioned God with the same blunt honesty of the widow. “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” Three times he pleaded for the life of the child to return to him. And finally his prayer was answered and the child was revived. When the child was returned to his mother she proclaimed, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”
What I notice here, that I didn’t before, is the complete honesty of both the widow and the prophet. They pull no punches. When the widows despair is vented upon Elijah, he carries not only her dead child into God’s presence, but her painful questions as well.
What does this say to me? While life can too often bring questions that can crush us for lack of answers, God doesn’t duck these tough and painful, even angry, questions. While the Bible (Prov. 9:10) says that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight,” I believe that the first step toward a deep faith is complete honesty.
Faith is not really faith if it isn’t fully honest, if it doesn’t dare to ask the often unanswerable “why?” to God. Faith doesn’t supply cheap and simplistic answers to complex questions. And it doesn’t guarantee a particular “happy” outcome, either. But it does allow us—indeed invites us—to stand confidently in the presence of God and cry out our protests, our hurts, our confusions, our deepest and darkest pains, trusting all along that ours is a God who doesn’t flinch . . . ever.
When I was less than two years old, my oldest brother, Fritzy, died of lymphosarcoma, cancer of the lymph system. Fritzy was one month shy of turning nine. I have lived my whole life wondering why. Why did my brother get cancer? Why did he have to die? What would it have been like to have grown up with him around? And so on. And I also know that my many questions paled in comparison to those of my parents’. The loss of a child brings questions—raw, painful, and hard— that beg a response. I am convinced that a deep and honest faith begins by asking, “Why.”
As I’ve grown older and have come to a deeper knowledge of the Bible and its truths, I have long shed my “Sunday School” faith—a faith that accepts much while questioning little—and have come to a deeper, more honest faith that trusts and questions at the same time. And at times my questions far outnumber any tentative answers I may have found. Elijah and this widow have given me permission to question God and question him hard at times. But it doesn’t end there. And thankfully so.
It is a deep and honest faith that also trusts in a God who can reach into the ugliness of death itself and bring forth life—in all its newness and beauty.
Next month, I will continue my journey through this simple text and explore what this life can be about. Rest assured that in that life, in that hope, lies the source of both the widow’s and our final joy.
Hugh R. B. Haffenreffer
Pastor
June 2007
ABOUT THIS MONTH’S ARTWORK
Gustave Doré was born in Strasbourg, France in 1832. By the time he was 15, he had begun his professional career as an illustrator in Paris. He is most known for his many depictions of scenes from the Bible. And while his work was extremely popular, it was never really accepted by the artistic elite in France. Because of this rejection, Doré spent much of his later years in London, where he ran a very popular gallery. Doré died at the age of 51.
Among his many illustrations from the Bible is this month’s portrayal of the prophet Elijah raising the son of the Widow of Zarephath which he completed in 1865. What is striking about this woodcut is the extraordinary way that Doré played with light and shadow. While the whole room seems lost in shadowy darkness, the widow, her newly raised son, and Elijah all are lit by light streaming upon them from above. It is as if the artist is saying through this work that where we encounter God’s word, the light of hope triumphs over the darkness of despair.
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