by Lia Scholl
Old Testament Reading: 1 Kings 17:8-16, (17-24)
For Sunday, June 9, 2013: Year C—Lectionary 10
Every time I read this passage, my first reaction is, "Elijah is a jerk!"
He doesn't ask for a drink of water, nor does he ask for a morsel of bread, he demands them. He hides out in a home with a woman who clearly doesn't want him there. It's just jerk behavior. No introductions, very little explanation, just insistence that the widow take care of Elijah's every need.
Adding Inconvenience to Trauma
Elijah's just lucky that I wasn't the widow. I would have told him where he could stick his morsel of bread...
One of the things I'm acutely aware of with the widow is this: this is clearly a woman with trauma, fighting poverty, nearly despondent, heading home to face death with her child. She has given up. And then the jerk inconveniently shows up.
Really Any Better?
Today, we would offer the woman services—therapy, support groups, food bank membership. Or would we?
Are we really any better at recognizing trauma than Elijah the Jerk was? The Bible is filled with exhortations to take care of widows and orphans, but do we? Do we recognize, as the church, the pain they're in? Do we see a clear way to serve them? Do we feel compelled at all to make sure they are taken care of?
I would really have liked it better if Elijah had come in kindly. I would have liked it better if he asked for her help. I would have liked it better if he had noticed her need first, then taken care of his own. But Elijah the Jerk is also a survivor of trauma. In fact, he's in the midst of it. He's scared for his life, had a battle of wills with the evil king and queen.
Trauma Brain
Trauma brain makes people respond in three ways: fight, flight and freeze. Elijah meets the widow with fight. She meets him back with freeze which eventually becomes fight. His looks like rudeness. Hers looks like compliance and then confrontation.
I'm really unclear as to whether either of them really heal when they are together. Elijah hides out. The woman escapes her abject misery for a moment. Elijah heads for a major depressive bout, and the widow falls back into obscurity.
What about the woman or man at your church who has just faced trauma, whether it's the loss of a spouse, child, job, or even a close call with a car accident? Will you freeze up—incapable, so you think, of any kind of appropriate response? Will you let them freeze into a kind of numbed compliance? Will you even bother to recognize their despondency? Or will you walk with them, provide care and attention? Will you meet their fight with more fight, comparing whose losses are worse? Will you instead meet their fight with understanding, their flight with a gentle invitation back? Or are you going to be a jerk?
The Hardest Question
When trauma speaks to trauma is being a jerk somehow therapeutic?
Rev. Lia Scholl serves as pastor at the Richmond Mennonite Fellowship in Richmond, Virginia and is a sex work ally, a Board member at the Red Umbrella Project. Her book, I <3 Sex Workers, is forthcoming from Chalice Press. Find out more at www.liascholl.com or you can find her on twitter at http://twitter.com/roguereverend.
