Way back in Advent, you may remember, we began using this new lectionary. I published a piece in St George's Today about it, and I announced it in church on the First Sunday of Advent, and we've been using it ever since. And the reason we began using the new lectionary in Advent is because last summer, when I was a deputy to General Convention, one of the things we did was to vote to authorize the Revised Common Lectionary as the lectionary of the church, replacing the Prayer Book lectionary that had been in use since 1979. I voted for the change, and one of the reasons I did so is because of the way the RCL handles readings from the First Testament during the Season after Pentecost. From Advent until now, we haven't really seen much difference between the RCL and the old lectionary; but now that we're into the Season after Pentecost, the difference is coming into view. And the difference is this: The new lectionary gives us the option to read passages from the First Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, in a more consecutive and connected way than we did in the old lectionary.

In the old lectionary, the First Testament readings were always chosen to go along with the Gospel lesson, so that the Gospel themes were always reflected or foreshadowed in the Hebrew Scripture passages. And that meant that one week we'd read from Genesis, and the next week from Isaiah, and the next week from Deuteronomy, and the week after that from Amos, and then from Isaiah again--and so on. All our First Testament readings skipped around, in order to find themes that would fit with what the Gospel was saying. That's a good way to deepen our understanding of the Gospel; but it meant that we never read the First Testament in its own order, in its own sequence. And in the Hebrew Scriptures, a lot of the meaning comes from the history, a lot of the significance comes from the way the narrative unfolds, the way one thing leads to another, the way lots of little stories about God's revelation and God's justice and God's way with the world come together and add up to a big story about God's purpose and meaning and mission in Creation. In the Hebrew way of thinking--perhaps even more than in the Christian way of thinking--you have to follow the narrative over a stretch of time in order to really get what the narrative is trying to say. Our old lectionary tended to chop up the great First Testament narratives into little, often disconnected, bits. The new lectionary gives us the option of hearing more of the long stories, read over several Sundays. The stories of Noah, of Abraham, of Joseph and his brothers, of King Saul and King David and King Solomon--and, in Year C, which is the year we're in right now, the stories of the prophets--not just the prophecies they made, but their lives and their times and their politics and the history that makes their prophecies make sense.

And our reading from First Kings today is a perfect case in point. There are two stories about Elijah included in today's reading. We had both of those stories in our old lectionary; but they were split up from each other and assigned to different Sundays in the cycle. The first story, about the flour and the oil that don't run out, was assigned to a Sunday when the Gospel was about the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes. The second story, about resuscitating the widow's son, was assigned to a Sunday when the Gospel was about Jesus raising the widow's son at Nain, the same Gospel we read today. So in a sense neither of these stories about Elijah is new to our lectionary reading; what's new is seeing the stories in context, together, the way the original narrative presents them. And when we see them together, we see how they reinforce each other's themes, how together they bring out more meaning than either story would have separated and alone. It's the arc of the narrative that helps make the meaning clear.

So here's how the narrative goes: God tells Elijah to go to a town called Zarephath in the region of Sidon, where God has commanded a widow to feed him. Now the reason Elijah needs a widow to feed him is because there is a famine in the land, there is no food. And the reason there's a famine is because there's been no rain and the crops aren't growing. And the reason there's been no rain is because God, working through Elijah, has declared that the heavens will be shut and the rain will not fall. And the reason God has done that is that King Ahab of Israel has married Jezebel, a Canaanite, and the two of them have built an altar for the Canaanite god Baal, they've put up a sacred pole for the goddess Asherah, and they've made the worship of Baal and Asherah an official part of the state religion of Israel. And of course that goes against Yahweh's First Commandment--"you shall have no other gods before me"--so Ahab and Jezebel are leading Israel into apostasy. In Canaanite religion, Baal was the god of the thunderstorm, and you sacrificed to Baal in order to bring the rain, so that the fields would be fruitful and the crops would grow. But God sent Elijah to say to Ahab and Jezebel, "You think Baal brings the rain? It is Yahweh, the true God, who gives the rain--and to prove it, God will not give you rain until Elijah says so." Well of course this gets Ahab and Jezebel pretty angry at Elijah, so Elijah has to flee. And that is why God says to Elijah, "Get out of town, get out of Israel, go to Sidon, to a little town named Zarephath, to the house of a poor widow--a place so off the radar that Ahab's soldiers would never think of looking for you there--and wait there until the time is right to confront Ahab and Jezebel again." That's what God says, so that's what Elijah does.

And that's where we pick up the story in our reading today. Elijah arrives in Zarephath, and finds the widow out gathering firewood, and he asks her for a drink of water and a bite of bread, and she says "Are you crazy? Don't you know there's a famine going on? I only have enough flour and oil to bake one little pita, and after that the food is gone and my son and I are as good as dead." But Elijah says "Don't be afraid. God has promised that you will not run out of what you need until the rains come and the famine has ended." Well you can just imagine the widow's reaction to that, can't you? But she does as Elijah says, and the flour and the oil do not run out, and she and her son and her guest are able to eat and stay alive even in the midst of the famine.

But times of drought and famine can also be times of disease, and before too long the widow's son becomes ill and dies. The widow blames Elijah for bringing this calamity, and Elijah blames God--yet even in the blame game they still believe in God's fundamental goodness and God's life-giving power--so Elijah prays and the boy is restored to life. And then, after all that she's seen, a miracle of food and a miracle of life, then the widow finally says "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth." The whole Zarephath story arc builds up to the moment when the widow realizes that the living and true God speaks truth through the mouths of faithful people. The whole Zarephath story arc invites us, as faithful readers, to recognize that the living and true God still speaks truth through the mouths of faithful people--and we can be such faithful people if we will continue to open our hearts to God.

And we can that meaning today because we see the whole Zarephath story arc, because we read these two Elijah stories back-to-back, not separated and split up over different Sundays. And over the coming weeks we'll see how the Zarephath story arc fits into an even larger story arc of the life and mission of Elijah, and how the Elijah story arc fits into an even larger narrative sequence of the missions of many prophets. The new lectionary pattern, reading connected stories from the First Testament, allows us to see more clearly over time how God's faithfulness is always there, God's faithfulness is always at work, God's faithfulness is always calling forth a faithful response from faithful people. Reading more connected stories from the First Testament allows us to see more clearly that no matter how much the histories and the politics and the fashions of the world may change, God's faithfulness is always there, and because God is always there, we can be faithful to God in the midst of anything.

And I think that might just be one of the greatest benefits of this new lectionary pattern of reading: that by reading connected narratives of God's faithfulness through time, through shifting situations and changing circumstances, we can be encouraged to recognize how God is faithfully present through the shifting situations of our life-stories as well. Reading the great Bible stories in a more connected way can help us think about how our stories are connected, how the different experiences of our lives add up to one whole story, a story animated by the mission and ministry and presence of God working through us in our time and place. I think that is the invitation our lectionary puts before us. May God give us grace to accept that invitation, and in these Bible stories to find our life-stories made more whole, more faithful, and more responsive to God's call. Amen.