Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading (from the first book of Kings) describes a scene where the prophet Elijah is staying with a widow. The widow’s son fell sick and died. Desperate with grief she said to Elijah: “What quarrel have you with me, man of God? Have you come here to bring my sins home to me and to kill my son?” Elijah then took the boy’s body and prayed to God to return the boy’s soul to him. God heard Elijah’s prayer and returned the boy to life. Overjoyed the woman said to Elijah: “Now I know you are a man of God and the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth itself.” Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus journeying to the town of Nain. As he approached the town, the body of a man was being carried out; he was the only son of a widow. Moved by the situation Jesus commanded the man to get up. The man came back to life and joined his mother. Everyone who saw this “was filled with awe and praised God.”

I know this will sound crazy, but I think many of us focus on the wrong part of these readings and that fact marks much of the progress we have made since these readings were written.

Both readings focus on the mercy of God, the important places of Elijah and Jesus in our salvation history and I think we see that correctly. But when we hear of the death of these sons of widows we immediately imagine the grief of losing a child.

And let’s face it: the death of a child (of any age) constitutes a parent’s worst nightmare. We find death painful but most of us expect that we will bury our parents and know that we may or may not survive our spouse. But there is no understanding the death of a child. Ten years ago I presided at the funeral of a 15 day old infant and to this day it was the saddest experience of my eighteen years as a hospice chaplain.

But these readings are not about grief, or at least not as the primary focus. The widows here, on top of the grief, faced the distinct possibility of starvation.

Women, in those days, were not easily able to make a living; they experienced what we today call “food insecurity. They were dependent first on their fathers, then their husbands, and finally their sons for even their basic needs. These two women lost their lifelines when their sons died, and while there was always the possibility of charity (or perhaps remarriage), they could no longer be confident in their ability to live. They had virtually no ability to earn their own living and nobody was obligated to support them.

I don’t wish to dispel the power of charity and the demand that we care for “the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien” (ie, those who can’t support themselves) goes back to Moses. But they were always dependent not only on the generosity of those who could help, they soon learned that they couldn’t depend on those who couldn’t help. I’m certain I’m not the only one who receives large and unwieldy piles of mail asking for my help with various causes. And it’s not that (most of them) aren’t worthy charities, it’s just too much. If I gave to everyone who asked, I’d need to start my own charity to pay my own bills. The play “Fiddler on the Roof” gives us a funny scene where a beggar asked someone for some help. The man gave him some money but the beggar complained that this amount was half of last week’s amount. The man explained that he had a bad week to which the beggar replied: “So you had a bad week. Why should I suffer?

But slowly, and primarily in the last century, we’ve recognized that individual acts of charity, noble as they may be, don’t go far enough. We began to recognize that our shared values called us to action. At least in the developed world we recognized that those who had nobody to care for them needed to be cared for by all of us.

Here in the United States, as late as the 1930s, those too old to work depended on savings or their children. But as we began to live longer and the the elderly population without resources grew, we developed two programs: pensions and Social Security. They were both collective funds that relied on a combination of saving and taxing those who still work. Social Security is a government program, but large companies also recognized that setting up pensions would provide a healthy retirement for those whose loyalty they wished to reward.

Now I don’t think those behind Social Security and pensions (and similar programs in other nations) happened at meetings where someone looked directly at these readings. But I do believe that these and other like readings call us to collective responsibility. Democracies, in the final word, operate on the collective beliefs and values of all its citizens. There is no way around this eternal truth: nations who answer to one dictator, or a small circle of rulers, invariably serve the needs and desires of the powerful at the expense of the population

But nations where the leaders serve the entire population recognize their responsibility to serve everyone, and particularly those in the most need.

Today, as a citizen of the United States, I celebrate not only Social Security and pensions: I also celebrate other programs. We have Medicare (health care for the elderly), Medicaid (health care for the poor), food stamps (coupons that allow the poor to purchase food), WIC (nutrition for infants and their mothers), free school lunches in schools, and dozens of other programs.

But I celebrate with a few caveats: first, I recognize that these programs, these shared values, are often under fire. Many who claim our same values and religious beliefs see those in need as suffering from self inflicted wounds or are just plain lazy. These folk argue that our charity only makes it easier for people to stay lazy. It’s an unfortunate truth and I pray they never find out firsthand how wrong they are. And second while I gratefully pay taxes for these programs (and say a silent prayer whenever I see the difference in my paycheck) I also recognize that these programs don’t complete my responsibility. The widow, orphan, and resident alien may receive adequate nutrition through my taxes, but I’m still called to provide love and a commitment to help them. No program is 100% efficient and neither is any program 100% effective. These readings call us to vigilance in ensuring nobody faces true food insecurity.

But I’m cheered to know that while nobody who collects a pension or Social Security will grow rich, neither will they likely starve. And this reality that our actions will prevent their starvation makes us the Elijah and Jesus of our readings.