Elisha's Feast: A Lesson in Abundance and Sharing (Advent III: II Kings 6:4-7:20)

Follower of Jan Joest of Kalkar. The Adoration of the Christ Child. ca. 1515

Scarcity is the order of the day. Our dominant economy concerns the management and administration of scarce resources. It is fear of scarcity that propels us to accumulate and to hoard, always sure that we do not have enough yet. Thus the great ancient monuments to scarcity includes the great storehouses of Pharaoh that required slave labor to construct (Exodus 1:11). As James C. Scott has seen, in Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, it has been an early and continuing enterprise of great powers to store up grain as a representation of power, prestige and social leverage. In such economic arrangements, grain, power, and wealth are always accumulated for control by dominant authority. The ruling class always and everywhere administered grain and food.

The particular expression of scarcity that shows up in economies of scarcity is famine. It is easy enough to conclude that famine is an outcome of a lack of food. But Amartya Sen, in his defining classic Poverty and Famine: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1982), has shown that famine is not the outcome of a lack of food, but rather a product of “entitlement and deprivation” wherein the powerful are entitled to excessive amounts of grain and food, while the powerless are denied resources that are essential for life. There is nothing “natural” or “innocent” about famine; it is rather the outcome of greedily managed resources. It is for good reason that famine occurs at many points in the Bible, because the Bible readily reflects on greedy management and accumulation that skew human possibility to the enormous advantage of some at the immense suffering of others. Early on, Joseph, as Egyptian prime minister in service to Pharaoh, managed a food policy for Pharaoh. He nominated himself as food czar for Pharaoh:

Now therefore let Pharaoh select a man who is discerning and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land, and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plenteous years. Let them gather all the food of those good years that are coming, and lay up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to befall the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine (Genesis 41: 33-36).

Joseph implemented his scheme for a food monopoly for Pharaoh:

During the seven plenteous years the earth produced abundantly. He gathered up all the food of the seven years when there was plenty in the land of Egypt, and stored up food in the cities; he stored up in every city the food from the fields around it. So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance—like the sand of the sea—that he stopped measuring it; it was beyond measure (Genesis 41:47-49).

His success on behalf of Pharaoh was “beyond measure.” It is no surprise that the kings in Jerusalem subsequently imitated such patterns of accumulation. Thus Solomon organized “tax districts” to “provide food” (I Kings 4:7-19). His own royal diet included a lavish abundance of food that depended upon the produce of peasant farmers who were radicalized by his taxation to revolt (I Kings 12:1-19). It is possible to conclude that this pattern was set for the duration of the Davidic dynasty, with ample food for the royal-priestly elite with corresponding desperation among the peasants. Thus in the time of Elisha, there was severe famine:

Famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver (II Kings 6:25).

In response to the famine, the king abdicates responsibility and declares himself helpless to relieve the famine:

No! Let the Lord help you. How can I help you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press?” (v. 27).

Beyond his abdication, the king voices an astonishing non-sequitur:

So may God do to me, and more, if the head of Elisha of Shaphat stays on his shoulders today” (v. 31).

The king is prepared to blame Elisha for evoking protest and agitation about the famine.

In the midst of that restless turmoil about food and in contrast to royal abdication of responsibility for providing food, we get an amazing witness to Elisha who characteristically acts in ways that contradict royal ineptness. A man gave to Elisha twenty loaves of barley and few ears of grain (4:42). Elisha received the man’s offer of food. He promptly commanded it to be shared with the hungry:

Give it to the people and let them eat (v. 42).

His servant knows that this modest supply of food was no match for the hungry crowd. But the man of God reiterates his command:

Give it to the people and let them eat (v. 43).

In his recitation, Elisha adds that God has promised that there will be a surplus (v. 43). The servant obeys. There was indeed a surplus just as God had promised! The narrative is terse. It does not reflect on this odd report. It does not explain. It does not even express wonder, though it surely invites us to be dazzled by this strange outcome.

This short report establishes Elisha as an agent of abundance. He lives in a royal society that thrives on scarcity. There is not enough to go around! But Elisha knows who it is that suffers when there is a lack of food: the poor and the vulnerable who have no voice in distribution. It is surely likely that he also knows that the scarcity all around is the outcome of royal indulgence. But all of that is tacit. All that is explicit is that this man of God acts decisively to counter the royal practice of entitlement and deprivation. The narrative attests that Elisha is occupied by the power of abundance that makes him an effective agent and performer of the abundance of the creator. In this reading, Elisha may be perceived as an oddity. But we may also reason to the contrary, that Elisha is a normal, credible performer of the abundance of creation, whereas the greedy kings and their confiscatory policies in fact constitute the oddity and contradiction in a world of God’s good governance.

Of course, those of us situated in the Christian tradition will readily recognize that the wonder of abundance enacted by Elisha is twice reiterated in the narrative of Jesus. In Mark 6:30-42 it is reported that he took “five loaves and two fish” and fed 5000 men with a surplus twelve baskets of food. In Mark 8:1-10 he took seven loaves and “a few small fish” and fed 4000 people with seven baskets of surplus. These narratives are offered without commentary. No one seems dazzled or overly impressed. Rather the offer of abundant food is more-or-less ordinary in the course of Jesus’ life. They are ordinary because he is sent to be the human performer of God’s work as creator who wills the creation to be abundant. The only marker that these wonders are exceptional is that in each case he performed a sacramental gesture over the food. In Mark 6:41,

He took, he blessed, he broke, he gave.

In Mark 8:6,

He took, he gave thanks, he broke, he gave.

He performed his governance of food-stuffs; as he does so he reenacts the work of the creator:

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,

and plants for people to use,

to bring forth food from the earth,

and wine to gladden the human heart,

oil to make the face shine,

and bread to strengthen the human heart…

These all look to you to give them their food in due season;

when you give it to them, they gather it up;

when you open your hand,

they are filled with good things (Psalm 104:14-15, 27-28).

The eyes of all look to you,

and you give them their food in due season,

you open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing (Psalm 145:15-16).

The Psalmist knows that the administration of food is exactly the good work of the creator. And then, in the wake of the Psalmist, the early church witnesses, in the work of Jesus, exactly the gift of abundance that refuses the parsimonious hoarding of the ruling class.

Advent is a time in which the church may reflect on the will and capacity of the creator God that good food should nourish the life of the world. But the church cannot undertake such doxological wonderment unless at the same time it also reflects on the reality of scarcity in a world that has been skewed by greed, fear, surplus, and deprivation. The doxological part of reflection is easy enough for the church as we easily sing:

We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land,

But it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand;

God sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain,

The breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain.

You only are the Maker of all things near and far,

You plant the wayside flower, you light the evening star;

The winds and waves obey you, by you the birds are fed;

Much more to us, Your children, You give our daily bread.

We thank you then, Creator, for all things bright and good,

The seedtime and the harvest, our life, our health, our food;

Accept the gifts we offer, for all your love imparts,

And what you most would welcome, our humble thankful hearts 

(“We Plow the Fields and Scatter,” The Presbyterian Hymnal, 560).

We are, with the eyes of faith, to see that it is God’s generosity that lets the world teem with food. But beyond our doxological expression, we are required to do hard, critical work concerning the greedy, skewed ways in which food resources —and generally life resources for health care, housing, education—are managed and distributed by greedy practices and greedy policies. We may indeed accept “abundance” as the “normal” intent of the Creator. But then we must consider the systemic disturbances evident in policy and in practice.

Our study might readily focus on the parable of Luke14:15-24. The “great dinner” is said to be on offer for those with privilege and advantage. Indeed they must be privileged and advantaged, because they are not hungry enough to want to come to the dinner. They make excuses and refuse the invitation. The host of the dinner is provoked by their refusal, and revises the guest list:

Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame (v. 21).

The meal is for the disqualified! It is an offer for the undeserving. But then, that is how abundant food is characteristically offered. It was so already in the wilderness context after the Exodus from Egypt, beyond the reach of Pharaoh’s food supply (Exodus 16). And now this memory and hope of abundance is entrusted to the church. Indeed we have this festival of abundance that we call “Eucharist,” i. e., “Thanks!” In my tradition of the United Church of Christ, we begin the meal in this way:

This is the joyful feast of the people of God; come from the east and the west, the north and the south.

All are invited; all are welcomed, all are offered nourishment and sustenance. No one is disqualified or screened out as unacceptable or unwelcome. The Eucharist has over time been burdened by enormous impositions of sin, guilt, and repentance. In our time, however, it is more likely that the meal can be seen as a sacramental insistence on God’s abundance that refuses and contradicts the scarcity of the world. But the church must and can do more than celebrate the meal. The church can and must do the hard work of study, to reflect on how the agenda of scarcity has been imposed upon us by law and regulation and custom and habit. The church must be about the work of regulation that limits excess of accumulation of grain, food and wealth by some at the expense of others. It must recognize that our “normal” way of scarcity is not at all normal, but is a contradiction of God’s good funding of creation. Once that recognition of the goodness of God is seen as normative, then human scarcity cannot go unchecked. For that reason, the church must insist upon the claim that it is God, the creator, who is the giver of food. The alternative to scarcity is not indulgence or luxury, but rather community provision for all to have, on the bet that there are and will be given adequate provision for all. We have to do with the God who provides, whose provision must not be dominated by human fear and greed.

In his most successful novel, Jayber Crow: A Novel; The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself (2000), Wendell Berry sketches out the life of an older couple in his rural community:

They were a sight to see, Della and Athey were, in their vigorous years. They had about them a sort of intimation of abundance, as though, like magicians, they might suddenly fill the room with potatoes, onions, turnips, summer squashes, and ears of corn drawn from their pockets. Their place had about it that quality of bottomless fecundity, its richness both in evidence and in reserve (p. 181).

Thus in his telling, Mr. Keith can declare: 

Wherever I look, I want to see more than I need.

And then this:

In coming to the Keith place, he [Troy, his son-in-law] had come into an order that perhaps he did not even recognize. Over a long time, the coming and passing of several generations, the old farm had settled into its patterns and cycles of work—its annual plowing moving from field to field; its animals arriving by birth or purchase, feeding and growing, thriving and departing. Its patterns and cycles virtually the farm’s own understanding of what it was doing, of what it could do without diminishment. This order was not unintelligent or rigid. It tightened or slackened, shifted and changed in response to the market and the weather. The Depression had changed it somewhat, and so had the war. But through all changes so far, the farm had endured. Its cycles of cropping and grazing, thought and work, were articulations of its wish to cohere and to last. The farm, so to speak, desires all of its lives to flourish (182).

This portrayal of a peaceable generative life is contrasted with that of Troy who will soon take over the farm:

Of all this Troy had no idea, not a suspicion. He thought the farm existed to serve and enlarge him…Troy bought a tractor and several implements, using a considerable portion of his year’s profit as a down payment and borrowing the rest from the Independent Farmers Bank (pp. 182-183).

It turned out, as Berry sees so clearly, that “abundance” is an attitude. It is not an attitude measured or determined by possessions. Rather it is an attitude that may govern our possessions. Thus the church is put down as a community of abundance amid an economy of scarcity. Its work is to insist that it can be otherwise than it is among us. We do not need to be grudging and parsimonious about the economy. We do not need to use our energy competitively. Rather our energy can be mobilized to foster community, to share common resources with all of our neighbors—the deserving and the undeserving. It is evident that when Jesus did his feeding wonders, he did not ask who was qualified to eat. There was enough for all, the deserving and the undeserving.  The church, in its sacraments, its proclamations, and its advocacy, insists on the reality of abundance.  It is the skewed economy of scarcity, produced by squandering and hoarding of God’s good gifts, that distorts. Indeed we know that God’s good gifts among us are not possessions or achievements. And so, we cling to Paul’s query:

What do you have that you did not receive? Why do you boast as if it were not a gift?

(I Corinthians 4:7).

The narrative of Elisha and the narrative of Jesus put to flight any notion of self-sufficiency. It is all gift, generous enough to have “some left.” This is all “according to the word of the Lord” (II Kings 4:44). It cannot be otherwise!