a life for a life: 10th Sunday C 2013

There are certain things in the first reading that intrigued me and ever since I read it in preparation for this Sunday, this reading won’t leave my mind even if I wanted to reflect on our gospel today.  So this morning I would like to learn from them instead, from these things that are intriguing in our first reading.

Before that permit me to give some preliminaries: this is the same widow that Elijah, fleeing the wrath of King Ahab, was told by God to go to.  Elijah encountered her at the city gate and asked her for a drink of water.  She got the drink but then Elijah asked her for bread.  Without refusing she expressed her hesitation for the bread she was about to bake would be her and her son’s last food before they commend themselves to die of starvation at the time of famine. But Elijah told her to trust God and indeed the bread and the oil lasted them.  After a few months, with Elijah still living with this widow and her son and eating from the same flour and oil that miraculously sustained them, the son of the widow died.  And this is that part narrated in our first reading today.  And so the intriguing parts.

First, when the son of the widow from Zarephath died, she poured out her anger to Elijah saying, “Why have you done this to me, O man of God?  Have you come to me to call attention to my guilt and to kill my son?”  Have you come to me to call attention to my guilt?  These words are quiet intriguing.  She took the death of her son as a punishment for her sin, a sin which may have called the attention of God and thereby also God’s wrath by the presence of Elijah in her home.  Strange.  But the argument is like this.  When Elijah was not around, she was morally better than her neighbours.  But when Elijah, the man of God lived in her house, her sins became more obvious probably because of the presence of a contrast as in black became blacker on a white background.  And so she was punished by God. 

I am not saying that this is so, that God indeed used the contrast as a basis to punish her.  But this is how the widow of Zaraphath saw and judge things in her life and that is why she was angry with Elijah.

Many times we define things in contrast to or in comparison with.  What is the best?  My best is something better than him, better than her, or better than last year.  When we do not-so-good things we sometimes justify this by saying mayo-mayo na lang ni sang sa – as if the morality of my action depends on how far others did theirs, or as if the good that I do is good because it is better than what others do.  The perspective coming from the principle “in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king” may not be a helpful norm.  Be careful too for many times the causes of our hidden and unreasonable anger come from this habit of comparison.

The second intriguing thing is this:  Elijah, hearing the accusations of the widow told her in a matter of fact tone without any hint of emotion “give me your son.”  The widow gave to him her dead son and Elijah carried him in the upper room where he was lodging and laid the boy on the bed.  And there alone inside his room he prayed and cried to God.  Elijah was in anguish and his prayer to God is partly blaming, partly pleading.

How many times have we felt the same way and have done the same thing?  In public we put up a brave face, and many times rightly so to assure people, to strengthen the weak among us.  But alone we grieve, we cry, we pour out our hearts.  And many times like Elijah we blame, we plead, we cry and we pray to God, spilling our sorrows alone.  If the prophet Elijah, this man of God, this greatest among the prophets after Moses, had to face things in his life feeling helplessly alone, full of doubts, spent and frustrated, we should not think ourselves exempted from such.  Hibi gani si Elijah, ikaw pa.  Which goes to show that Elijah is a real person with a real relationship with God.  This kind of comparison is heart warming.

And finally the last intriguing part which I would like to share and this comes from the interpretation of the rabbis of Judaism.  Why was the son of the widow resurrected even before the time of the resurrection?  Because the widow from Zarephath gave food to the hungry prophet.  The rabbis said - giving food to someone else is a great virtue that results in the resurrection of the dead - because the widow from Zarephath gave food to Elijah, she merited the reviving of her son.  A life for a life.  When we give life, life is returned to us.