Give me your son

1st Kings 17: 17-24, OT page 324 After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. She then said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” But he said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. He cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah, the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” So the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that this word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” Sermon I was in the Maury County library a couple years ago and was glad to run into the Corbin family. We were all there for story time, a time when one of the librarians reads a book and leads children in doing a craft, but Christian Corbin was a little too big for the story that the librarian was reading and was instead reading himself a book on his Kindle. These Kindles are incredible inventions – a little pad, battery powered with a screen that you can easily carry around and that can hold in its memory hundreds of books. I asked him what he was reading and he happened to be reading The Call of the Wild by Jack London. I have read that book myself, but the more interesting thought that occurred to me in that moment was that my grandfather also read the book as a child and he loved it. In fact I remember him telling me that he loved it so much that when he was 9 or 10 he had trouble making himself stop reading to go to bed in their house out in the Caw Caw Swamp of South Carolina, and once his parents settled into their room, he’d sneak out of his own bed, re-light his candle, and would continue reading by candlelight while nervously listening for the footsteps of his mother and father who would surely be disappointed to see him out of bed so late. The book both Christian and my grandfather loved is the same, which shows me that there are some things that all young boys, no matter what time they were born into, have in common. But the way they read the same book is so different, showing me that young boys and old men also have something exciting to share with each other. I don’t know many 10 year olds today who have ever read by candle light, nor do I know any once 10 year olds now 80 year olds who can operate a Kindle. The question is, considering how interesting these differences are, it’s a pity how seldom the two have the chance to share their particular experiences with each other. In fact, I think it’s a pity how seldom any two people have the chance to sit together to learn from each other. This widow and her son in 1st Kings don’t seem to be in much of a position to share anything with anyone else as it sounds from our scripture lessons as though they were living in relative isolation. Certainly they have never met the great prophet Elijah nor have they even heard of him, and it is with some reluctance that the widow allows him to come to her house. For her it is a matter, not of choice, but of circumstance – she might very much want to be hospitable, she might very much want to give Elijah and her son the chance to talk, but there is simply no food to share with another empty stomach. The drought has been severe in the land, and as these things often do, the drought made life more difficult for those who were already scrapping the bottom of the barrel. When Elijah came to the gate of the town and saw this widow who the Lord had said would feed him, she was there gathering sticks to prepare her last meal: “As the Lord your God lives,” she says to him, “I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” Now I’ve heard some good excuses but surely this is the best reason not to invite someone over for dinner. It beats out, “we are just so tied up this week,” “the house needs to be cleaned,” “the kids have so much homework,” or any other excuse any of us might use that keeps us from inviting guests over to our homes. What happens then is that the kinds of interactions that we really need have less and less of a chance of happening. Many remember knowing neighbors very well, but few of us know our neighbors now and even fewer have been invited into even our neighbor’s homes. As a culture we pretty much stick to ourselves, which can be good for building up the family but so truly there are times when children have a need that their parents, no matter how capable, cannot supply. That was the case in our scripture lesson from 1st Kings. The son of the widow became sick, so sick that “there was no breath left in him,” and feeling helpless and powerless to do anything about it the widow lashes out at Elijah saying, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” But he said to her, “Give me your son.” You might say – what other choice did she have – but still, there is nothing easy about handing your child over to someone. The first day of preschool makes that plain, when teachers, prepared to care for little children dropped off at school for the very first time wind up having to deal with, not crying children but crying parents. “The kids are fine,” I heard Ms. Becky at my daughter Lily’s preschool once say, “but you parents, you’re something else altogether.” A tremendous amount of trust is required to drop your child off, even for the morning when you know their back-pack is packed and their lunch is made. Even more is required to drop them off when they’ll be spending the night away from home here at camp, entrusting what is so precious to a camp staff that you might be meeting for the very first time. But can you imagine handing your child over to a man you only know because he’s been squatting at your house, living off the last crumbs in your cupboard. Still Elijah says, “Give me your son,” And he took him from her bosom, carried him to the upper chamber and called out to God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And Elijah was able to do something for the boy that even his mother couldn’t do. Thanks be to God, that there at the end of what his mother was capable of doing for him – there beyond all her skills and her longings – there, in the place of what she couldn’t do stood this man of God who could. But there isn’t always someone standing there. Our society seems to be pulling inward, and rather than seeing in those on the outside of our nuclear families our salvation in times of need, so often we view others with suspicion, as parents struggle to trust the care of their children to anyone. And it is for good reason – we are living in an age of back-ground checks because there are those in our world who would hurt them. There are those in our world who will not treasure them as we do. There are people in this world who we need to guard ourselves against – but we must fight the temptation to guard ourselves against everyone for too often the salvation of a child rests in the hands of someone besides that child’s mother or father. I’ve heard from John Satterwhite many times, that his dream of being a farmer became a reality, not because his own father taught him, but because his own father carried him down to the farm of Winn Halliday and entrusted his son to the expertise of this man who could teach his son what he could not. For my own father this was true in an even greater sense. His father was with the air force and had developed a drinking problem, but where his father lacked the ability to nurture my Dad in many ways, there stood a Boy Scout leader who saw in my father great potential that he encouraged and built up in those areas that lacked. The same has been true for me as well, not because my parents were failures, but because they, like all people have gifts and skills – and what can a mathematician and a theater major do with an aspiring preacher but trust that their son will need mentors besides them, that he will need to be guided by the knowhow of others, that they, as parents, will have to trust their son to the care of people besides themselves. In one way you parents might think, what could be more horrible or more difficult than to admit that there are things that you cannot do for your children? Surely such lack must feel like failure. But that is the wrong way to look at it. Instead see that children may be loved more fully by people who are not your flesh and blood. That the love of God and the promises of God’s salvation may be incarnate in people who you barely know, and no parent should ever keep their child from such love as this. Sue Dunneback told me last week that she would be seeing me at Lily’s dance recital. I wondered at first why she would be going, thinking that the grandson of hers that I hear so much about must have a lot to contend with on his riffle team if in addition to being a marksmen he is also a ballerina. But Ms. Sue’s grandson isn’t a dancer. She was going, and made sure that Hal Landers got her tickets to the recital because, she said, “All our little girls are into dance Joe, so I have to be there.” I must have looked at her like I too often do, not knowing exactly what she meant, because she looked at me as she so often does with an expression of exasperation as though surely I should not be so dense. After a while I did understand. By “our children” she meant my children, she meant your children, to Ms. Sue they are hers too. The great gift of a church like our church and a day like today is that this bond between people has the chance to become more real. The promises that we make at a baptism, promising to care for and nurture and make real the love of God to a child that we aren’t related to has a chance to take on arms and legs when we are all together in a creek or around a table. God has set us here to this place because ultimately we all have needs that cannot be satisfied within the confines of the families that we were born into, and so you must seize this time to care for those children that need you, to care for adults that need you, because in this family of faith we belong to each other. “Give me your son” Elijah said, and when his mother entrusted her boy to that old man he came back to life. Now be so bold to believe that such miracles can still happen in the family of faith. Amen.