Eleanor Rigby and the Widow of Zarephath
As I drove back to Stephenville from Hico recently, I passed a funeral procession on the road… a hearse followed by a long line of cars, all burning their headlights in broad daylight. I followed the Southern custom of pulling off the road and stopping until they were past to honor the deceased and show respect to the family. Because I did not know the people involved, I hardly gave it a second thought, and continued on my way as soon as they were past. After all, my life was untouched by this tragedy.
In the same way, most of the people who lived in Nain, as well as those who lived in Zarephath centuries earlier, were indifferent to the deaths of the two young men from their own villages. Death was not a stranger to those who lived in first century Palestine, and death was the constant companion of those living in the drought during King Ahab’s reign. But the deaths of these two young men, separated as they were by hundreds of years, were truly tragedies… not just for the destruction of the promises of what their futures might have held… but for the tragic circumstances in which they left their mothers by their deaths.
Both of these men were the only sons in their homes… the only sons in a society that treasured sons and ignored daughters. In both households, the fathers had already died and the mothers were left widows. The sons were the ones who inherited the property and the wealth of the fathers. The sons carried on the family name. If the son also died leaving no heir, the property and the wealth of the family went to a brother. There was nothing for the mother… the widow. Without a husband to protect her and provide for her, a widow was dependent upon her sons. If she had no sons, she had no worth… no status… no home… no property… and no one to protect her.
Why would Jesus care… about the widow? Why would Elijah care…about the widow? There were lots of widows… and lots of dead young men. No one would have thought anything of it if Jesus and Elijah had each gone their own way… and left these women to their fate. Instead, both of these men deliberately turned aside to help… like a stranger on the highway… turning their headlights on… making a u-turn… and joining the funeral procession. Both of these men deliberately intervened in the lives of these women… restoring both of these young men to life… and, in doing so, restoring the lives of their mothers, as well. For in restoring the lives of their sons, Jesus and Elijah restored the status of these women in the community… restored their worth as mothers of sons…secured their homes…their property… and restored their protectors. In each case, at least two lives were restored in exchange for one small miracle! Not a bad return on investment!
Why would Jesus stop to help a widow woman? Why would Elijah perform his first recorded miracle for a widow in the desert? Yes, the fact that Jesus raised the young man from the dead firmly established his identity as a prophet. But why waste a miracle on someone of no importance… of no status… of no worth? There were no witnesses to Elijah’s miracle… save the woman herself… so what did he gain by performing a miracle for this widow woman? He was already known as a prophet. He had already irritated King Ahab and Queen Jezebel more than once with his dire prophecies. Why save a widow’s son and provide a jar of meal and jug of oil for them that could never be emptied? Was it because God wanted to show that his love and mercy were not just for the privileged few, but for all? There was no preferential treatment for celebrities in either of these stories… just the touch of the Master and the love of God for those who had nothing… those who were nothing… for those who were alone in the world.
Do you remember Eleanor Rigby? Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote a song in the 1970’s about her. It begins like this:
“Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been; Lives in a dream.
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for? All the lonely people; Where do they all come from? All the lonely people; Where do they all belong?”
I will admit that, at first, I hated that song. It is so bleak. There is no joy in it at all. But the longer I have lived, the more I realize that many people live lives steeped in loneliness… lives of hopelessness… like the two widows in our stories today. Widows who would have gone completely unnoticed… by people in their own time and by us… except that Jesus… and Elijah… deliberately reached out to them… to touch their lives… to give them hope… and to show them the boundless love and mercy of God. How many widows… how many nameless… lonely people… sit by the window and wait for someone to reach out to them… to give them hope… to show them the love and the mercy of God? How many in our own congregation live lives just “under the radar”… lives unknown to us… lives that we are indifferent to… lives that we don’t even notice? Henry David Thoreau said, "Most people lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to their graves with the song still in their heart." What a sad commentary on our world! What if those people are just waiting for someone to invite them to share their song? Do we even care about them and their lives… or are we too engrossed in our own lives to notice them? Do we even care that they have a song to sing? How can we show the love and the mercy of God to others if we don’t even see them? Isn’t our inattention… our indifference… another sign that we have missed it… that we still do not truly understand what God has done… what God is doing… what God wants to do… in their lives… in our lives… in this city?
But there’s more to the stories in our two texts today. The village of Nain… the village mentioned in the reading from the Gospel of Luke… was located in Samaria. We presume that the woman… the widow who lived there… was a Samaritan woman. In our Old Testament reading, the woman from whom Elijah requested a drink of water, was a woman from Sidon. She was not a Jew… a fact that was clarified when she said to Elijah, “As the Lord your God lives…” She was not a believer in the God of the Israelites. Here is an even stronger reason for Jesus and Elijah to continue on their way… to be as indifferent as other “passersby” to the deaths of these two young men. The women were widows… without worth… without status… and, if that weren’t enough, they weren’t even Jews… they were Gentiles. But neither Jesus nor Elijah continued on their way as other “passersby” may have done. Instead, they deliberately inserted themselves into the lives of these women and each of them performed a miracle that radically changed the lives of these women forever. Why?
Once again, it was for no other reason than to demonstrate that the love and the mercy of God is not reserved for a select few… for the children of Israel or even for Christians today. The boundless love and mercy of God is poured out for all… believers and unbelievers alike … for all of us are the children of God. And, if God can work miracles in the lives of these two women who were not yet believers… then God can work miracles in your life and in mine… and in the lives of everyone in this city.
Ah, but do they know that? Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock…” What if somebody… what if someone… some Eleanor Rigby in this city… is waiting for us to knock… sitting by the window… wearing that face that she keeps in that jar by the door? “Ah, look at all the lonely people.” “Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name; Nobody came. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people; Where do they all belong?” What if they belong to us? What if God has given them to us? The widows… the orphans… the strangers… the aliens… and all the lonely people? “All the lonely people; Where do they all come from? All the lonely people; Where do they all belong?” What if God has given them to us… and we don’t even notice that they are there? Will they die without singing their songs… with their songs still in their hearts? Who will listen to them? Will you? Amen.
1 Kings 17:1-24; Luke 7:11-17