“Beware of the scribes … They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.”

The prophet Elijah seems to deserve the harsh condemnation given by our Lord to the scribes today. What is he doing if not literally devouring the house of a widow, depriving her of the very last of her flour and oil in the middle of a famine, what she was planning for and her son to make their last meal before their inevitable death from starvation? Elijah has gone out of his way to encounter this woman – to save her. He is in Zarephath, in the region of Sidon, inhabited by pagans who are hated by the Jewish authorities to whom the Lord is speaking. In fact, He infuriated the people in the synagogue at Nazareth at the beginning of His public ministry by pointing out that during that famine, Elijah was sent not to any Israelite, but went to save this pagan woman and her son. After all, Elijah knows what is going to happen when he asks her to give him the last of her starvation rations.

What we see in both this pagan woman and the widow who gives her last two coins to the Temple is true freedom. Freedom is something we deeply misunderstand. We think that it is the ability to do what I want, when I want, where I want, why I want, with whom I want. But this is not freedom – it is slavery to our basest desires. Real freedom is the ability to do the good.

In the case of these two widows, detachment from the things of this earth frees them to make acts of heroic generosity and complete dependency on God. In this way, the poor are freer than the rich. They might not be free to spend spring break on a Caribbean island, but they are free to do something much more important: they are free to be dependent.

The fear of being dependent is probably a constant of fallen, prideful human nature, but it is greatly accelerated in the modern era. For the great majority of their existence, human beings have always known that they are dependent on someone else. Surviving the harsh conditions of pre-modern life on your own was impossible. The ideal of the self-made-man, the self-sufficient person – this is a very modern creation. It is dangerous because it obscures the fact that we are all completely dependent, not only on other people, but on God. Fear of dependency prevents us from forming rich and meaningful communities, and undermines our lived faith in the God whose power is greater than this world.

          Their lack of fear of dependency gives these widows another great freedom: They are even free from the fear of death. Their acts of generosity – to a stranger, to the Temple – mean death by starvation. Of course, we are afraid of death, and always have been, ever since it reared its ugly head in the garden of Eden after Adam and Eve’s sin. Death is one of the consequences of sin, the loss of the original gift of immortality. St. Augustine taught that the fear of death is the root of sin. I found that odd when I encountered that teaching of the great Doctor of Grace. It would seem like the lack of fear of death causes a lot of sin. People think they will always have time to repent later, or they presumptuously lack fear of God’s just judgement that will follow immediately upon death. And just in general, it seems like a lot of bad decisions could be prevented if people had a healthy fear of the consequences of their actions, including death.

However, Augustine knew better than I. His point is that because we are afraid of death, we try to create our own eternity here in this world. This is why we find sin so attractive, because with our vanity, envy, materialism, and pride, we look to drag out our time here. In our fear of death, we do not know how long we will have to enjoy the pleasures of this world, and so we start to seek them outside their proper order. That is what sin really is: a lack of the proper order of things. Pleasure is not sinful in itself. But our fear of death leads us to seek it for its own sake, to seek it outside its proper order.

There can be little doubt that we are increasingly afraid of death. Modern medicine often acts not out of compassion for the suffering, but out of a desire to delay death at all costs, even when it causes more suffering to the dying. Even euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide is ironically an expression of fear of death, by seeking to get it over with as soon as possible, rejecting suffering at all costs. Even more so than rejecting suffering, killing the dying is often a rejection of being willing to be dependent: a greater suffering for our modern, autonomy-obsessed selves, than even physical pain.

It is not just poverty that has made these widows incredibly free, though. With poverty has come profound suffering. For the widow of Zarephath, giving her last little cake to Elijah only delays death by starvation. It’s coming for her regardless. So why not do a good deed in the meantime, why not make your last act on this earth one of generosity and love, when what is obviously most important now is to prepare your soul to meet the Lord? Their poverty and suffering free them to make an act of radical generosity. The poor and those who suffer are often, if they embrace the Cross, the freest people in the world. It is the Saints who are the most free, and it is little surprise that so many of the Saints endured profound suffering and voluntarily embraced a life of poverty. How often have we not seen those who have little being willing to share the little that they have, and those who have much hording their possessions?

These generous widows have overcome the fear of death because someone has invited them – Elijah asking the widow for her last flour cake, or the rabbi who preached about giving to the Temple. We receive all sorts of invitations to overcome the fear of death: the people who impose on our busy schedule (we fear that we won’t have more time), the people who ask for our generosity (we fear the end of our money), the parents or other authority figures who hold us accountable for upright moral conduct (or sometimes, the children who hold us accountable for doing ourselves what we taught them is the right thing to do!). Every one of them is an invitation to overcome the fear of death that lies at the root of sin and unhappiness.

“Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him.” Freedom from the fear of death enables us to focus on what is most important. When we no longer fear death, when we no longer fear the loss of the fleeting pleasures of this world, what we long for is not just one more day, hour, or minute of pleasure, but for the accomplishment of this world’s purpose, when the full judgement of God will be revealed at Christ’s second coming. Like Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac because he believed that the God who gave him a son in his old age could just as miraculously restore him from the dead, the widows have implicit faith in Christ’s Resurrection, which is the source of hope and the light that banishes the fear of death. They are willing to give away their last and risk even the terrible death of starvation, because they recognize that this life is not the end. One day, even death will be no more.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

10 November, A.D. MMXXIV