One of our local celebrities, Prince, is performing here in the Twin Cities on 7/7/07 to herald the release of his new fragrance, 3121. For $250 you can attend an intimate concert with 1,400 fans on the eighth floor of Macys Department Store followed by a public concert that evening at Target Center. You’ll also receive a sample of his new perfume. Tickets went on sale a week ago Friday morning and people started camping out in line on Nicollet Mall Thursday afternoon. Scalpers wasted no time putting these instantly scarce tickets up for sale on the internet for as much as $1,200 apiece!

The final novel in J.K. Rowling’s seven-part Harry Potter series is scheduled for release at 12:01 am on July 21st. When book #6 was released two years ago, it became the fastest selling book in history – 6.9 million copies in 24 hours! Even though Scholastic is printing an unprecedented 12 million copy first run of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, book stores across the nation are already anticipating long lines by hosting all-night “Potter Parties” as people vie for available books.

In our capitalistic economy we’re used to all kinds of shameless promotion and competitive demand for products and services “while supplies last”. And this time of year, I certainly don’t have to remind anyone affiliated with a High School graduate that time and energy and money are in short supply with the host of events associated with Pomp and Circumstance.

Our Old Testament reading for today is yet another story about perceived scarcity and limited supply. Ironically, the story begins by describing a drought in the land of Zarephath, a center for pagan Baal worship, the very god of rain and agriculture! The prophet Elijah has been on the run in this parched land after offending the wicked King Ahab and God sends the hungry prophet to a most unlikely place for nourishment – to a starving widow who was down to her last remnant of ingredients to make a bit of bread for her and her son before they succumb to famine. And Elijah has the gall to ask that woman for water and to share some of her bread! Her response in verse 12 sounds like a funeral dirge, “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; I am now gathering a couple of sticks [to make a fire], so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

I’ve been in this spot myself on a number of occasions…have you? We’ve already given all we think we’ve got left to give to our employer, to our customers, to teachers and professors, to our spouse or partner, to our dependent children, to our independent children, to aging parents, to bill collectors, to schools and scouts and band boosters and coaches and churches… and while they keep asking for more, we just feel wrung dry – as if there’s only enough meal left in the jar and only enough oil left in the jug to let us escape quietly and burnout in private. That’s the way most of us do it, because we’re just too proud or too mistrusting to let others see us when we’re down.

But an interesting twist happens in our story from the 17th chapter of 1 Kings. Elijah says to the widow, “Do not be afraid; 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 for 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 on the earth.”

Through Elijah, God promises that the jar of meal and the jug of oil will not fail. But with that promise comes a couple of observations: first, that the starving widow needed to reach out; and second, that supplies wouldn’t last indefinitely, but only until the rains come again.

We read that the starving widow reached out. At first glance it seems that the only one she benefited by reaching out was Elijah, he got his food and much to her own sacrifice at that. But the widow also reached out by confessing to a complete stranger her life threatening struggle, and in the process received the support to cope for yet another day. It’s a big risk, to openly acknowledge that we don’t have it all together sometimes, but that kind of reaching out may be our only hope of connecting with the resources that others may be able to provide.

Second, we read that the meal and oil would last until it became accessible once again with the rains. God’s grace is sufficient for the need and is not to be taken for granted. Time and again people who are enduring phenomenal pain and hardship share with me that if they had known at the beginning the extent of all they would have to face, it would have felt absolutely overwhelming, but when they just prayed for the strength to make it through the next day, and sometimes just through the next hour, over time, the jar of meal and the jug of oil did not fail!

Walter Brueggemann, professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, sees as a recurring theme throughout the Old Testament the conflict between the “liturgy of abundance” and the “myth of scarcity”. The Bible starts out in Genesis 1 with a liturgy declaring God’s abundant blessing on all creation. At the end of each day God declares that day’s work to be “good”. It isn’t until we get to Genesis 47 that we encounter scarcity. Then Pharaoh organizes a plan to save up food for a coming famine. Even in the wilderness of the Exodus from Egypt, God provides Israel with enough. But the people are frequently fearful that there will not be enough.

Brueggemann sees Americans functioning in the world today much the way Pharaoh did in Genesis. He writes, “We never feel that we have enough. We have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity – a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.”

I share this because it’s very easy to fall into the rut of church involvement being just one more life responsibility that drains us of our meal and oil. On one hand, I agree with that. There’s an institutional service component of church life that has to stand alongside all the other worthwhile volunteer programs that compete for your time and attention. On the other hand, like the starving widow who met God through Elijah, there is a spiritual hunger our lives that can’t be filled by more things or more commitments, or more accomplishments, or more accolades, but only by acknowledging our hunger and putting ourselves in an empty enough position to be filled by God.

While church volunteerism may ebb and flow as life circumstances permit, our spiritual health is as important to attend to daily as our physical, psychological and emotional health. While we’re all periodically prone to spiritual droughts and famine, high school graduates are particularly vulnerable as you start to leave these comfortable, structured communities of family and church. This year Good Samaritan is giving to each of our High School graduates a wonderful little book entitled, Soul Tending. It’s a compilation of brief 3 page descriptions of 37 different spiritual disciplines with exercises on how to practice them. Although written for youth these themes like meditation, stillness and silence, discernment, honoring the body, keeping Sabbath, repentance, forgiveness, stewardship of money, time and creation, living simply, sacraments, worship, prayers, and hospitality just to name a few, are pertinent to us all. Jean Elliott and Becky and I also have copies of this book and it would be wonderful if in the months ahead you’d e-mail or call us or blog with comments and questions as you seek to grow in faith just as you seek to grow in education or employment or travel or service to country or any other endeavor you may pursue.

In the 2005 movie, Walk the Line, Johnny Cash, who is played by Joaquin Phoenix, is talking to the prison warden who admonishes, “Mr. Cash? The record company asks that you not play any songs that would remind the prisoners that they are in jail.” And Johnny replies, “Do you think they forgot?” Another exchange is between Cash and a record company executive. “Your fans are church folk, Johnny. Christians. They don’t wanna hear you singing to a bunch of murderers and rapists, tryin’ to cheer ’em up.” To which Johnny Cash responds after a pause, “Well, they’re not Christians, then.”

We’re not here in worship today, coming to be entertained as ones who have it all together. No, we’re here confessing to be the wrong and the wronged, to acknowledge our emptiness and to be filled by the meal and oil that does not fail!