Sermon for November 19th, 2017

2 Kings 4:38-40

38 When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the company of prophets was sitting before him, he said to his servant, “Put the large pot on, and make some stew for the company of prophets.” 39 One of them went out into the field to gather herbs; he found a wild vine and gathered from it a lapful of wild gourds, and came and cut them up into the pot of stew, not knowing what they were. 40 They served some for the men to eat. But while they were eating the stew, they cried out, “O man of God, there is death in the pot!” They could not eat it. 41 He said, “Then bring some flour.” He threw it into the pot, and said, “Serve the people and let them eat.” And there was nothing harmful in the pot.

Stew(ardship): Elisha's Stew

Year after year the old married couple attended the county fair, and every time it was the same story: The husband was tantalized by the old-fashioned, World War I bi-plane which offered anyone a 30 minute flight in the co-pilot's seat for $100. But the man's wife was disgusted by such an obvious waste. "$100 is a lot of money!" she would always say. And so the man would go home without his airplane ride.

One year the husband said to his wife, "Look, there's that bi-plane again. I’m 81 years old and this year I want to go for a ride." His wife bristled, "There you go again. Don't you realize that $100 is a lot of money?"

At this point the pilot who owned the bi-plane, and who had heard this conversation as far back as he could remember, intervened. "Listen, you two, I'll make you a deal. I'll give you both a ride for free if you promise not to say anything during the flight. If you speak even a single word, I'll charge you the $100." Well the old man and his wife thought that sounded fair, so off they went.

The pilot put on quite a show. He took his plane through banks and spins and loop-the-loops, and then did the whole thing over again. Amazingly, he never heard a single word. When the plane landed he looked back at the old man and said, "I'll have to admit I'm impressed. You never spoke once."

"Well," said the old man, "I was going to say something when my wife fell out of the plane, but... $100 is a lot of money!"

We are talking about money today, and so I sincerely hope none of you fall out of the plane, or your pew, for that matter. Seriously, though, this story illustrates the point that money is entirely relative. $100 may seem like a whole lot of money when it comes to something as trivial as a plane ride, an impulse purchase, or perhaps when the offering plate passes by you in church. And yet, when it comes to big picture things like life or death, personal safety, the cost of an education, or the well-being of our children...most of us would spend $100 or ten times that without even blinking an eye.

The way in which we allocate our resources, the way we decide which things are worth the $100 and which things are not--in church lingo, we call that "stewardship." And we are now in the midst of our annual stewardship campaign, where we remind our members of the promise they made when they joined this church to support it faithfully through their giving.

Incidentally (in case you were wondering), you don't even have to be a member to contribute! If you enjoy sitting here in this nice air-conditioned room on Sunday mornings, listening to some great music and some half-way decent preaching, or if you have benefitted in any way from the programs, the services, and the fellowship that our church provides, please know that those things all have a cost, and are made possible by your donations.

So last week, this week, and next week, we are talking about stewardship. The first four letters of "stewardship" happen to form the word "stew," and as we talk about giving this year, we are using the metaphor of stew (the kind you eat), in the lone three places in the Bible where the word "stew" actually appears.

Which brings us to today's passage in Second Kings. The central character in our story is the prophet Elisha. That's Eli-SHA, not Eli-JAH. Eli-JAH was the greatest prophet in Ancient Israel, and Eli-SHA had the misfortune of coming right after him, and despite some pretty amazing miracles, Elisha lives forever in the shadow of his great mentor and teacher, Elijah.

But the great prophet Eli-JAH, as best as I can tell...never made stew, and thus is disqualified from our sermon series. But Eli-SHA does. And that brings me to my first point about STEW-ardship. It's this:

There will always be someone greater than you, someone wealthier than you, someone who seems to have their life completely figured out. You can spend a lifetime wishing that you had as much to give as that person. You can even tell yourself that if you only had what that person has, THEN you would be able to really give.

Elisha could have done that, too.

He could have said, "look, there's no way I'll be able to give to Israel what Elijah gave, so why bother? I won't even try." Instead, Elisha gave what he had. It wasn't exactly a chariot of fire blazing through the heavens...it was just stew. But it fed some people, and saved some lives.

So don't let what other people give determine or diminish what you have to give. Just throw what you've got into the stew, and trust God to make it work out.

In verse 38, at the start of the story, we read that "When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the company of prophets was sitting before him, he said to his servant, “Put the large pot on, and make some stew for the company of prophets.”

There was a famine in the land. Actually, there was a famine in the land for most of Elisha's ministry, and a significant number of his miracles had to do with feeding people when there wasn't enough food to go around. So that's our second point about STEW-ardship:

It is precisely in the times of famine that we most need to come together and make some stew. It is in our hardest, leanest, most challenging circumstances that we are most called to give generously, to take care of the company of those gathered around us.

• Guy who found the gourds: Famine (desperation) makes us put strange things in the pot
• Elisha: Does not remove the gourds from the stew; instead he adds something more to it
• The People: After a bad experience, they still have enough faith to eat the stew

Growing up in my six-person family, there was never any question if, whether, or which of the evening leftovers would go into the giant stew-pot that lived in the freezer. Each night, everything that wasn't eaten for dinner got added to that stew pot and frozen, waiting to be thawed, reheated, and reclaimed at the end of the week. The only real question was how this particular leftover ingredient or that would affect the taste and character of the stew when the pot was full. And despite some highly questionable additions (like pancakes, or spaghetti, or applesauce) somehow the stew always ended up being surprisingly good--and completely different every week!