| (1 Kings 17:8-16) -- Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah, saying, "Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you." So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, "Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink." As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, "Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand." But she said, "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, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die." Elijah said to her, "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 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." She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.
(Mark 12:38-44) -- As he taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."
He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."
My friend Philip had an addiction problem that rendered him homeless from time to time. I started handling his finances so he would be more consistent in managing things like his rent, utilities and other necessities. Philip rarely made more than $500 a month. Try working out a monthly budget on $500. It's pretty tough.
It always amazed and humbled me, though, to witness Philip's generosity. He consistently met people and gave them money. Then he would come tell me what he had done. I would grimace, knowing how tight things were for him. "But Father," Phillip would explain, "they're so much worse off than me. I'm okay. I can get by." He had an especially soft spot for children. For a while, he was giving at least $50 a month to a little girl's parents because they were homeless, and they had a child. They needed it so much more than he did, he told me.
I always think of Philip whenever I read this story about the widow of Zarephath. Though she has run out of food, and has only enough for one meal for herself and her child, she responds with courageous generosity, preparing some bread for the hungry prophet Elijah before tending to her own needs. What kind of detachment and faith does it take to be that way? And then there is the woman whom Jesus notices in the temple with her offering of two copper coins. "She out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." What allows someone such freedom, such fearless defenselessness?
All of the classic spiritual guides tell us that there are two essentials in the spiritual life. They speak of a two-sided positive and negative bipolarity. Jesus called these two essentials "prayer and fasting." The spiritual literature speaks of "detachment and attachment," "mortification and aspiration," "discipline and desire," "death and resurrection." The mystical tradition of the spiritual journey speaks of coming out of bondage in Egypt, through the wilderness, into the Promised Land. In one scene Jesus tells his followers to take up their journey into the Kingdom of God with an empty knapsack.
Speaking for this via negativa, the great spiritual director St. John of the Cross writes: "Would that I could convince spiritual persons that the road to God consists ...in one necessary thing only, in knowing how to deny themselves in earnest, inwardly and outwardly... and if he be deficient in this exercise, which is the sum and root of all virtue, all he may do will be but beating the air... utterly profitless." (quoted by Gale D. Webbe, "The Shape of Growth" p. 20. This sermon borrows from his fine chapter on "Detachment")
Traditional spiritual directors are less likely to ask "how are you doing in your prayer life?" and more likely to be concerned to know "how are you doing in such things as penitence, humility, discipline, obedience, detachment, simplicity" and the like. Under the theory that you've got to pour out the dirty water before the bottle can be filled with the clean, they'll emphasize that we are rich in proportion to the things we can do without. A little like Garrison Keeler's supermarket in fictional Lake Wobegone. If you can't find it at "Ralph's Pretty-Good Grocery," you can probably live without it. Traditional spirituality knows we are free when it really doesn't matter to us whether we abound, or are in want.
You know some of the sayings of Jesus. "Sell all and follow me. Whoever loses your life for my sake will find it. No one can serve two masters, God and wealth. It is as difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundred-fold. Blessed are the poor."
Familiar stuff isn't it? And distressing. Something seems to shout inside us, surely God doesn't expect us to give up everything in order to embrace Christ. There is such a contrast between the message of the Gospel and the message of the culture.
The Gospel tells us that we are God's children, happily and utterly beloved of God and happily and utterly dependent upon God. Literally a child who lives by grace and in grace. And grace is given. Gift. Freely given. So the critical virtue for us is our ability to receive. "The spiritual life is one of letting God come in and flow through." (Webbe, p. 21)
It's not like that in the world of culture that raises us. In the natural world we make progress, we adapt successfully, we survive and arrive by being competitive. And it you don't succeed, you at least try hard, and go down fighting. The world's mantra is: "Get power. And after you've gotten it, hold on to it tightly."
Most of us live stretched between these two worlds. We want to give up and trust God, yet we struggle to make and defend our place.
What these remarkable people like Philip and the widow of Zaraphath and the penniless woman in the Temple can teach us is that our desires are not a fixed quantity. Desire is almost infinitely flexible in both directions. How easy it is to be entertained watching "The Lives of the Rich and Famous." There is always something else to want. Today's newest thing on the market will become tomorrow's necessity. I remember how amazing and luxurious it seemed when I first saw a color TV. We've got three now. For two people. No HD, though. Yet.
Don't get me wrong. The church insists that creation is good. Everything in a sacramental world can be a means of grace. Bread and wine. Water. Sometimes a mountain or the fall leaves. Often these are little windows that let God in. But most of the time, all of that stuff, and our defensive preoccupation with the stuff, are walls that block God and occupy us. Our attachment to the stuff occupies and blinds us.
There is a way to lay one's self aside and step freely back into the Garden of Eden. "To have pleasure in everything and seek pleasure in nothing," says John of the Cross. "As having nothing, and yet possessing all things," says St. Paul. "The things of the world are for our use, not for our enjoyment," says St. Augustine. "That which is for our enjoyment is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."
Or, my favorite. Tilden Edwards describes five responses on seeing a flower:
* So?
* Oh, beautiful-- I can sell it!
* Oh, beautiful -- I want it; I will take it!
* Oh, beautiful. I want it; but I will let it be!
* Ah! (from "Living Simply Through the Day, p. 136)
There was a rich man who dreamed that if he went outside the city he would find a poor man under a mango tree who would give him a great treasure. Early next morning he drove out in his Mercedes Benz and sure enough there was a poor man sleeping under the mango tree. He roused him from sleep and told him of his dream. The poor man yawned and stretched in a very relaxed way. He then reached into his backpack and said, "Maybe this is what you are looking for, I found it a few days ago in the forest." He presented the biggest diamond that the rich man had ever seen. "How much? How much?" the rich man asked excitedly. "Oh, if you think it will make you happy just take it," answered the other and he rolled over to go back to sleep.
The rich man sang his way back to town and laughed at the poor idiot who would give away a diamond worth millions without asking even for a cent. But that night he couldn't sleep. And the next night he could not sleep. On the third morning he drove back to the poor man who was still sleeping happily under the mango three and he said, "Please, take back the diamond, and give me your real treasure."
"What is that?" asked the poor man in surprise. "Your real treasure" answered the rich man, "is the freedom that enabled you to give away the diamond!"
It seems that the only way we discover God in things is when we let go of them. That old Lenten practice -- self-denial -- is the tool that helps us practice the journey of freedom from our attachments. |
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