Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
Lectionary 32B Proper 27B
November 8, 2009
Texts:  1 Kings 17:8-16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44 

Have you ever noticed that when you think you have it all figured out
God seems to have a different plan for you.
A God Plan B.

Annie Lamott writes about a lot of those kinds of experiences in her book,
“Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.”

In one vignette she describes her birthday.
She woke up depressed,
Depressed because it was her birthday
And depressed because of the state of our country.

She struggled to get off the couch that morning
Struggled to get dressed
And struggled to go to the grocery store
To buy her own birthday dinner.

As she was checking out,
The cashier told her excitedly,
That she was the lucky winner of ten pound ham.

Now Annie is almost a vegetarian
And was again depressed at the idea
Of having won what she considered
To be a ten pound pink eraser.

As she went out to her car,
She was so lost in thought and depression
That she ran her grocery cart into an old beat up car,
Which was driving out of a parking place.

When Annie looked up,
She realized that the driver was an old friend,
Who looked terrible,
And who was obviously down her luck.

The driver looked at Annie and burst into tears.
She told Annie how her gas gauge was on empty,
And that she had never asked a friend for help before.
However, she had no money to buy gas
And only a few canned goods left in her pantry with which to feed her children.
Annie thrust a handful of bills into her friend’s hand
Told her that it was a gift for her
Because Annie was celebrating her birthday.

She then had the presence of mind to ask her friend
If she and her family liked ham.
Her friend looked wistful
And said that they loved ham,
But could never afford it.

Annie lifted the ten pound pink eraser
Into her friend’s car.
Her friend lovingly put the ham onto the seat next to her,
And looked as if she were going to put a seatbelt around it.

As Annie pulled out of the parking lot,
She thought about pools of rain in the desert,
And the life that springs up in them.

When God gives a ham to a vegetarian,
God obviously has a Plan B.

Or as Annie put, it was truly a ham of God!

In our Old Testament lesson today,
The prophet Elijah must have felt as if God
Had a lot of Plan B’s

Elijah had been off minding his own business,
When God sent him to inform evil King Ahab
That because of the sinfulness of worshipping his wife’s god Baal,
God was going to bring a drought into the land.

These prophecies caused Ahab and Jezebel to attempt to kill Elijah.

In another of these Plan B’s,
God spirits Elijah off into the desert,
Plunks him down by a wadi, flowing with water
And commands the ravens to bring him food.

When the wadi runs dry,
God tells Elijah not to worry,
God will take care of him.
God is going to send him to a foreign country,
To Sidon,
Where God has commanded a widow to feed him.

Now if I were Elijah,
I might have asked,
God, whatever are you thinking?

You are going to take care of me by sending me to a foreign country?
Don’t you realize that Sidon is Queen Jezebel’s home country,
The same Queen Jezebel who wants to kill me?

And then you are going to ask a widow to feed and house me.

God, have you never heard,
That widows, are pretty down on their luck themselves?
They can’t own property,
And they depend on the largess of relatives
To eat and have a place to sleep.
During a drought,
Their relatives are surely
Not going to be giving them very much. 

God, do you have a Plan C?

But even if he had doubts,
Elijah got up and trudged to the town of Zarephath,
In the country of Sidon.

Sure enough, as soon as Elijah crossed the town line,
There was a widow gathering sticks.

And Elijah, a gruff old coot, if there ever was one,
Commands the widow to give him a drink of water.
No pleasantries, no “if I could bother you”,
And not even a “please”,
Just a command  “Bring me some water in a cup.”!

As she dutifully turns to get the water,
Demanding Elijah continues
“Bring me a biscuit, too!”

That’s when the widow loses it.
“As the Lord your God lives,
My pantry shelves are bare.
I have enough oil and flour only to make a biscuit or two.”
“That’s why I’m gathering wood.
I’m going to make a few small biscuits,
Which my son and I are planning to eat as our last meal.
After that we will surely die.”

Then Elijah gives the widow the famous Biblical “fear not”!

This is what is always said in the Bible,
When God is giving a Plan B,
And the person receiving the details of Plan B
Has logical reason to be scared out of his or her wits.

Elijah tells the widow,
Just make me a biscuit out of  your meager supplies,
And your son and you will be able to eat later,
Because the Lord will keep your jar supplied with flour
And your jug supplied with oil,
As long as the drought lasts.

Now imagine what is going through the widow’s head
Here is this curmudgeon of a stranger
Ordering me to feed him with my last supplies.

He claims that his God
Will take care of me,
By making sure that I don’t run out of flour and oil.

Do I believe this guy??
Do I have enough faith??
Do I give away my very last food?
Or do I save it for my son, my only son,
Whom I love. 

For whatever reason,
Whether she believed Elijah,
Or she had heard God’s command earlier,
Or she figured she and her son were as good as dead anyway,
The widow went ahead and fed Elijah her last food.

And true to the Lord’s word,
A Plan B did emerge
And the widow was able to feed Elijah
And the rest of her family,
Not only that day,
But, for the remainder of the drought.

Now I can almost hear you.
Pastor, that’s a nice story,
And that probably did happen in Sidon a long time ago.
But those kind of things don’t happen any more.

But I have to ask you,
Have we ever run out of food,
When we invited a stranger,
Or a homeless family to share a picnic
Or a potluck supper with us?

There has always been enough
And usually enough to send food home with the family.

Whenever a family has asked us for help,
Somehow, the stuff they need
Has always materialized.
Someone has a spare sofa,
Someone else a table,
And someone else realizes
That she has more than enough dishes to share.

When the pastor’s discretionary fund runs low,
Someone always finds a way to make sure,
That it is replenished,
So that I can meet the needs of people who call here.

Somehow the flour and oil stretch to meet the needs,
When they are mixed with prayers and generosity.

Now let’s think about those plan B’s!!

Have you ever felt as if God were putting a Plan B
In place in your life?

Have you ever had plans you were happy with,
When all of the sudden they were disrupted?

You planned a vacation,
But someone lost a job,
And the money needed to be spent in other ways.

You had college and career plans,
Which you though were fixed,
But somehow another college seemed to be a bet fit,
Or you found out that what you thought was your career plan
Turned out to be something you didn’t enjoy doing.

You had glorious plans for retirement,
But your investments tanked,
Or your spouse’s health didn’t quite hold up.

When these things happen where is God in this for you?

Do you feel God’s presence supporting you?

Or do you find yourself blaming God
For not letting things happen the way
You had wanted them to?

Where is God when life seems to take a detour
On a pothole laden dirt road?

Where was God when Jesus’ life didn’t turn out
The way the disciples had hoped it would?

God was at the foot of the cross,
The cross the disciples had run from.

The theology of the cross
Tells us that we find God
Under the appearance of the opposite
In the last place we expect to find God.

Or in other words,
We find God in the midst of the Plan B’s, C’s and D’s of our lives.

God works to bring good out of whatever detours
Life takes us on.

Sometimes we don’t know how those detours will turn out
And sometimes it seems as if we are lost,
Or that the detour is taking us into a neighborhood
That we don’t want to visit. 

The assurance we have from the God
Of both the cross and the resurrection
Is that we will not be left alone
When we are sent on Plan B or C or D

The God of the resurrection will accompany us, bring hope,
And work to bring good out of whatever happens.