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RSSEnough Already
by Barbara Crafton
6/13/2007
Year C Proper 5
1 Kings 17:8-16(17-24)
Psalm 146 or 30
Gal 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17
The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah. -- 1 Kings:16
On one level, this is just a story of a magical event: a jar of meal and a jug of oil that replenish themselves. Such things appear often in the folk tales of the poor, for whom scarcity is a way of life.
But we can read it in other ways. The miracle occurred using ordinary things: meal and oil. The miracle used what the woman already had in the house: this wasn't manna from the sky, not this time. God used what was already there.
Manna from the sky is the exception. Usually, God uses what's already there. Episcopal Relief and Development's work in poor countries mirrors that divine economy: use what is already there. Make what already exists in a community able to do better what it already does. Turn to local leaders, who already know their people, and give them the tools they need to do what they do better. Strengthen a community's capacity to sustain itself with the relationships of bartering, buying and selling it already has, and a small amount of money will go a long, long way.
In Puno, Peru, for example, where 78% of the population lives in poverty, ERD partners with the Anglican diocese and the Episcopal Church Loan Fund in offering loans to establish small businesses -- very small by our standards, twenty-five or thirty dollars being enough to get one off the ground. Almost always, the indigenous Queucha and Aymara borrowers pay back their loans very quickly, something American lenders encounter only in their dreams. Thus the money becomes available to be lent again, and remains in the local market economy.
So the jar never empties, and the jug never runs dry. Because the people themselves continue to fill them.
