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the text for this morning's sermon that was just read for us in spanish is the story of Elijah and the Widow of Zira faith. Maybe you know the story, it's the first time that we see Elijah

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in his public ministry which began just at the beginning of this chapter, chapter 17 with a brief introduction in verse one. Now, Elijah, the Tisch bite of fish, B and Gilead said to ahab

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now, Ahab was the king of Israel at the time and not a good king either. So Elijah says to ahab as the Lord, the God of Israel lives before whom I stand. There shall be

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neither dew nor rain these years except by my word . In other words, Elijah is telling ahab, there's going to be a drought and after he says this, God sends Elijah to a ravine. Do

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you know what a ravine is? I had to look it up, I'm so embarrassed, but a ravine is basically a place that holds water when there's been enough rain and then it dries up when there's

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a drought. So just before this passage, Elijah has been sent to this ravine where he is able to drink water because there's been enough rain. But then he witnesses firsthand the effects of this prophecy of

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drought that God declared through Elijah to Ahab Elijah sits by the ravine where God feeds him through Ravens until the water dries up the drought is now officially on And now this is what has happened before our text

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, we hear that God has sending Elijah yet to another place to get up and to go to zero fat because God will now feed Elijah through a widow there. And sure enough, elijah goes to zero

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faith. And they're at the gate is a widow collecting sticks. And Elijah first asked sir for for just just a cup of water. And so she starts on her way to give him water. But

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then he asks her as she's going along, oh and please, could you give me just a bit of bread? And that stops her in her tracks asking for water. In the early days of a

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drought was already a lot to ask, but asking for some bread. This seems to really awaken this woman into sharing her true situation, she says, Surely as the Lord your God lives, see how

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even her hope is gone. The Lord is your God not mine. She doesn't claim God as her own. Surely as the Lord your God lives, I don't have anything baked just some flour in a

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jar, in a bit of oil and I was about to make some food over a fire for me and my son so we could eat our last meal together and then die. This woman knows she has

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nothing. We don't know how long she'd been a widow or really how bad the drought had gotten at this point. Could it really be that there was no more grain to harvest for a lack of rain

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, whatever the reason, there is nothing for her to grind into flour and she has lost all hope that she and her son can survive. But Elijah undeterred. Having been fed by Ravens by God's command

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, makes his request again. Do everything that you set out to do, go home and make this last bit of bread. But first make me a little bread and bring it here and then go bake

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some for you and your son. Because I tell you this, God has declared that your jar of flour will not run out and your jug of oil will not run dry until God sends rain again to

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fall on the earth. And she goes and does as Elijah says, trusting in the word of the Lord spoken through Elijah. And sure enough, they all have enough to eat for many days. It's

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a miracle in thinking about this story, I began to really feel our distance from the text. I tried to picture what it would be like to be in a drought that severe. I mean, those

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of you who have lived in texas for at least a decade have known past droughts because maybe the water levels of lake Travis or Lady Bird Lake were down or the water restrictions were so severe. So you

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couldn't water your lawn is often so it turned brown and died. But you are probably more concerned about your plants dying and contemplating your own death. I was thinking about this story's context, as I was

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watering our garden in the backyard recently, we grow peppers, tomatoes, fresh basil and oregano, sweet potatoes and blackberries and green beans. We don't have uh, irrigation system as part of our garden.

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So we have to water it by hand, going out with a hose and standing there until the ground gets a good soaking. And I have to stop here to admit it's usually fill, who does this

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and not me? I just have to say that . Uh and we tend not to rely on the forecast for the rain since rain is often predicted here in texas, uh, and it doesn't happen.

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So we just go out, make sure the plants get watered all the same, but it's so easy for us. We just go to the side of our house and we turn a knob and the hose

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, we take this hose and water is coming out of it and we get to water our garden. We're not bringing up water from a well or carrying it up from a stream or waiting on the rain

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to fall right. We're not dependent on the amount of rainfall to determine whether the plants in our garden will survive or whether we will have food to eat so that we may survive. Not. So in

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the times of the bible and not so in many parts of the world still today, sometime in the recent haze of pandemic world, Not sure when it was, I can't remember exactly, but we had

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tons and tons of rain here in Austin. It rained and rained and rained and because of all the rain, the wastewater treatment facilities couldn't process it fast enough. So some of the pollution from the runoff

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was getting into our drinking water. So we were all put on a boil water notice and during the winter storm of last february, when everything was frozen for more than a week, some folks had their

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water pipes freeze and were unable to get water for their homes during that time. So while we may feel some distance, we don't know exactly what it's like to be in a severe drought. We may

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know what it feels like to have. The systems fail that we have depended on to bring us safe and clean water to drink, to wash with and to water our gardens. So I want you to

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sit with that for a moment. If you remember those experiences, the feeling of wondering where you will get your water. Did you go to H. E. B. And C. The long lines

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of people waiting to get ended. You wait your turn and arrive in the store only to see the aisles of bottled water full of people, but empty of water all the shelves bare like a lot of

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others. I just went to the next aisle and got cans of sparkling water or sweetened beverages that still contain water in some form. It's the luxury of living in a country where we can drink plenty of

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other things besides water though. They may not be helping our bodies stay hydrated. And then do you remember the feeling of what it was like when the water boil notice was lifted or when your water was

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turned back on after the pipes were patched and repaired , what it was like to take that first shower or to drink a tall glass of water that you didn't have to boil first. Wasn't that amazing?

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Yeah. Have you ever wondered where our water comes from? One of our alumni, the reverend Sarah Macias owns and operates Sister Grove Farm, north of Dallas and she's taught me a lot about the ways

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that how we consider the land and our relationship with it can deeply affect our faith. She once asked me, you know, water is one of the most basic elements that we depend upon for worship.

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It's there in the baptismal font and on our communion table required for the making of the bread we break and yet we rarely know where it comes from. Do we know the name of our watershed. Mhm

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. I'm embarrassed to say that no, I do not know the name of our watershed, but I want to know. Yeah, I was visiting another friend at her ranch recently and they have a natural

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spring on the property. This is water that flows by itself and you know, it doesn't depend on the rain. It's just a natural spring. And a biologist from texas parks and wildlife had come out

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to do some research about the water. And they're in this base of the spring. They found microscopic living organisms called Austra cods. The biologists in here might know what I'm talking about. Austria cods.

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The things that are filter feeders that actually clean the water In some of these looks so unique. They might even be new species of these tiny water cleaning creatures. Never before documented by scientists and the water

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from this particular spring can be dated back some 10,000 years. I'm not sure how that happens at all , but it amazed me. So the first miracle I want us to think about in looking at this

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story is the miracle of water. Because water itself is such a miracle that God who made this world and created all the living things within it and who separated the waters from the land. God made that

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water to be a necessity for human life and the life of all beings on earth. We cannot live without water. So when the widow is ready to die, she knows that her life depends upon water

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. And she knows that this drought means she has no water. She has no grain to grind into flour to make food for herself and her son. But I just want to stop and take note of

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another miracle when Elijah comes to her and asks for a cup of water. She consents until he asks her for something more. A bit of bread and that is what breaks her. That is what leads

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to her confession of her despair in that moment because yes water is running out and that means there's no way to grow food necessary to live. She has but a bit of grain already ground up into flour

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to mix with a bit of oil, but that is it. She can bake that into bread and that is the end of her food. And I just want us to talk about the fact that she

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is talking about making bread. This was written some 550 years ago, 550 BC some 2600 years ago . Did you know they have been baking bread for thousands of years bread, not just gathering nuts and

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grains and eating them, but they're grinding them in some sort of mill or grinding them by hand, turning it into a flower and then this they're allowing it to sit for a while long before we knew

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what yeast was. Long before microscopes were available to let us see with our eyes through these special lenses , the shape of these microorganisms responsible for the fermenting process. Long before we could classify them scientifically.

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Humans were fermenting things and relying upon these invisible living creatures all around them in the air, sitting out a lump of flour mixed with some water, maybe some oil that would allow these microscopic yeast particles to

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fall upon it and by using human hands to knead the bread. These yeast particles would then get introduced throughout the dough. And those particles of yeast actually a form of fun guy. Yes. Fun guy

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would eat the sugars in the grain, a kind of composting or breaking down of the grain. And the waste of that process is how we get the bubbles or the air within a loaf of bread.

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The byproducts of the yeast, this carbon dioxide and alcohol called Ethan, all those of you that know all of this. I'm sorry for repeating, but this is totally new for me and was breaking my

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brain inbred the Ethan all is baked away in the heat of cooking. And the carbon dioxide is what leaves those bubbles within the loaf that makes the bread spongy and soft rather than hard and rock like.

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Now, I'm telling you all these scientific names for what is happening. But thousands of years ago, people were just doing it, not knowing the names of the processes or the chemicals and by products of

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this process, they were fermenting stuff, making wine and beer and bread to know the difference between good fungus and bad fungus when things that are fermenting are good to eat versus when they've gone past their prime

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and are now unhealthy to eat all of this. And we look at the story of exodus. When the people of Israel were told to leave comets or the leavened bread behind to take nothing with say or

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or the leavening itself? They had words for these things. They had words for leavened bread. The bread that would take so long to make, that the people had no time to make it before leaving

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an exile to flee from the Egyptians. By the way, the word say, or while not the word for yeast, exactly amounts to that sour dough starter that many of you may have cultivated during the

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pandemic. A piece of edible fermented dough that's not edible itself, but can start the process of fermentation in other dough. So many of you know what I'm talking about and I myself I'm not a bread

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maker. So I'm in awe of all of you that make bread. But the fact that they had words for these things and that they knew how to make bread relying on these invisible tiny living organisms all

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around us astonishes me. The humans have been working with these microorganisms for thousands of years. And in the text that we read today, we have evidence of this experience. A woman with flower and a

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word for bread and a word for a cake. These three different words in this text, the more words that we have for something, the more we know how to use it. I'm wondering if we

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ourselves could live thousands of years ago in the time of this widow without our little packages of yeast without our flour already packaged without our bread machines to time it all perfectly. Could you have lived then?

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And maybe you could, maybe you could have survived and made your own bread. But it would have been a miracle. And here's this third miracle in the text, because it's not just the fact that

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there are these living organisms that we depend upon for the making of bread. Elijah has to go and meet with this widow in order for her to use the ingredients necessary for the making of bread. This

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third miracle is this reliance on human cooperation that we humans given so much freedom to be on our own and to live independently from one another. We've been invited into relationship with others to participate in the miracle

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of water. In the miracle of bread with and for one another, that woman was at the end of her hope ready to die after eating her last bit of bread. But Elijah came to her in

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that in that relationship of community, her bin of flour did not run out and her jug of oil did not run dry. God provided the ingredients for that nourishment, but God also made it. So

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those people had to work together. They had to be together in order to benefit from this food. While God previously had fed Elijah by the Ravens at the ravine. God could feed us each individually.

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But now God required that he get food from this widow and the food wasn't delivered ready, made like the bread that Elijah received from the Ravens. But it had to be baked before it could be baked

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, had to be worked into dough and it had to have time that it needed. But the living organisms to do their work and making the dough rise , We are all invited to be participants in this

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miracle of life. We depend upon this miracle of water and we depend upon the miracle of bread by which unseen things create these pockets of air that gives bread its texture and we depend upon one another.

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The miracle of human cooperation to feed and to be fed by one another and to receive these miracles of God that are part of this amazing earth all around us Right now, in our technological age, we

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tend to think like machines pushing buttons to get what we need delivered right to our door or ready to eat as soon as we are hungry. But the God who created this miraculous world full of wonders,

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has invited us to live in cooperation with one another and with the rest of creation including the tiny microorganisms that we depend upon for bread. How might we live if we were to live in daily reverence for

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all of God's creation of which we are but one part and take not for granted the gifts of miracles