A Little Goes a Long Way -- FPC sermon excerpt

In the last month, two celebrity suicides have made the national news. First, an actor named Andrew Koenig hanged himself after suffering from severe depression. Then Marie Osmond’s son jumped from his eighth-floor apartment after saying that his depression had left him feeling friendless.

Depression. Loneliness. Friendlessness. These three are a deadly combination.

Suicides now outnumber homicides in the United States, and they are most common among the young and the old. Suicide is tough because mental illness is a factor, and counseling and medication do not provide quick or guaranteed fixes. In addition, Americans have become more isolated and lonely in recent years. When a 1985 survey asked, “How many confidants do you have?” the most frequent response was three.

Can you guess the number when the question was asked again in the year 2004? Zero.

Zero confidants. From three to zero in less than 20 years. This is a frightening trend. Friendlessness leads to loneliness, which leads to depression, which can lead to suicide.

Having friends is not just nice. It can be life-saving.

I begin with these thoughts on suicide because I want to stress how important it is that we have been focusing on Christian hospitality. Making our church a more welcoming place is not about serving better coffee in the narthex, or coming up with an improved system for identifying visitors. Instead, hospitality is all about connecting people to this community of faith, in a deep and meaningful way.

When people become part of the church, they begin to develop relationships. Their number of confidants begins to move upward. Their loneliness is replaced by friendship, and they don’t feel quite so isolated.

Christian hospitality can be a matter of life and death.

Making a place for hospitality has been a challenge for thousands of years. In First Kings, the prophet Elijah is sent by God from Israel to the city of Zarephath, up north near the foreign town of Sidon. God says, “I have commanded a widow there to feed you” (17:8-9).

Zarephath was a Phoenician commercial capital known for its exports — including wine, grain, and oil. And yet, it wasn’t prospering at the moment Elijah was sent to it, because the region was suffering from a terrible drought. Like us today, it was experiencing an economic crisis.

This becomes clear to Elijah as soon as he arrives at the gate of the city. A destitute widow is gathering sticks so that she can make a fire, prepare a few cakes, eat them with her son, and then die. The future looks bleak for her, and in reading this story it certainly sounds to me like she is depressed.

But Elijah remembers the promise of God — that a widow in Zarephath would feed him. He knows that his God has commanded hospitality, even in a time of drought and deprivation. So he says to the woman, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink” (v. 10).

The widow looks at him, probably wondering if this is the man of Israel that she has been commanded to feed. She knows that he is a foreigner, and realizes that she doesn’t have any personal religious responsibility to help him — she worships the god named Baal. But since a vessel of water is not an outrageous request, she turns to get some for him.

As she is going, Elijah calls to her and says, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” She stops and shakes her head, knowing that she cannot do it. Then swearing by the name of his god, the God of Israel, she says, “As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug” (vv. 11-12).

She’s got no bread, not even a morsel to offer. And because she is depressed, lonely, and friendless, she cannot imagine where in the world she will get some.

But Elijah believes in God’s promise, and he won’t give up. He is like the young priest in the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. This priest has made a commitment to visit with the flinty old widower played by Eastwood, even though Eastwood insults him and tells him again and again that he wants him to go away. Because the priest keeps showing up, and refusing to give up, the two of them develop a connection — they even become confidants.

“Do not be afraid,” says the prophet Elijah to the widow; “go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain upon the earth” (vv. 13-24).

Here is the promise of hospitality, delivered by Elijah: With God, a little goes a long way.

Scripture tells us that the widow goes and does what Elijah says. She doesn’t have much to share — just a handful of meal and a little oil — but she offers it freely. Yes, times are tough for her, just as they are for many of us in the current economy. But despite her depression and destitution, she makes a place for hospitality.

And what is the result? She, Elijah, and her household eat for many days. The jar of meal is not emptied, neither does the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that was spoken by Elijah (vv. 15-16).

With God, a little goes a very long way.