Elijah said, “Bring me a bite of bread.’ The widow said, ‘My son and I are almost dead. Let me go bake a funeral cake, so we can take our last supper: so we can eat it, and die.”

(1 Kings 17:11-12)

This loaf before us today is a funeral cake. This bread is the last supper of Jesus.

This bread represents what that widow thought would be her last supper with her son. This bread recalls your last supper with Cindy last month.

This bread will be our last supper today with Jenny.

It also recalls my last pizza with my father-in-law who passed away this last good Friday.

The family had planned to have a pizza with Daddy Bill in New Jersey on Friday night. But Friday afternoon he passed quietly away in his wheelchair, without a last word, without a last slice of an anchovy pizza, which he and I loved to share

(and Lenore and her mom didn’t like to be anywhere near).

We cling to last words. We want to get in the last word. Yet who gets the last word?

Jesus?  But what was his last word? Depends on which Gospel we quote.  Beloved John  heard Jesus nearly last word as “This is your mother,” so John took Mother Mary home, after he heard Jesus at last say, “It is finished.” But Luke has the finish, Jesus’ last word, as, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Matthew and Mark, sounding starkly less like “Good News,” mark Jesus’ last word as, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

So who has the last word?  God: & we haven’t heard it yet, because God is still speaking.

So here we are, with my first words to you, and then we’re off to Jersey for me to say the last words over our Daddy’s remains. But we will be back with you next Sunday, and remain with you until you call a new pastor. And, now, and tomorrow, and for the days God grants us to stay together, not in sorrow, but in digging the furrows for a new tomorrow,  I am here, assured – and to assure you – that my words here are not the last words that you will hear from me, nor the last words that will be said and heard about my dearly departed Dad-in-Law wherever, nor the last words we will hear from our never-departing Parent God and Regent, who Jesus called “Daddy,” and we could, by God, as rightfully call “Mommy,” our King or Queen.

So we hear in our lesson today, “The Word of God came to Elijah.” Elijah wasn’t a king;

he just brought the word of God to the king, King Ahab, and said: “As the God of Israel lives, there will be no rain except by my word.” And so the author of First Kings caught on fast that the Books of Kings were not primarily about kings and ascendancy, but about prophets and prophecy, not about the reigns of heads of state, but instead about the rain and bread that come from God.

And Elijah also brings the word of God to the Queen of What Has Been, that widow who has lost her husband and her stock of meal, and was down to her last meal. Oh, my God, haven’t we all felt at some time, that we are, our bodies are, or this church body is, a Has Been – that the good old days are as good as gone, and our glory days are history?

But I am here today to say that I believe, and we got to believe, that our best is not past, that this sparsely passengered Pilgrim ship not only has room and resources for more to get on board, but that the Lord still has a word or more to speak to and through us here.

Right here, on the back of our bulletin today, is the word (certainly not the last word) from Walt Bruggemann, former Eden Seminary professor, current UCC theological giant, who I featured on a radio series that aired here which I hosted from New York years ago, so I invite you to turn to the back of our bulletin and join me in reading the indented text:

Elijah says to the nameless woman, “Do not be afraid.” Imagine saying that to a woman who, with good reason, is about to give up for want of food. His utterance is a startling disruption of her despair. And then he puts substance to his disruptive invitation to move beyond fear: “The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.”   That is what he said. To the settled economy of anxious scarcity he uttered an absurdity.  In the Bible, however, generative people always say what the world thinks is absurd…. Elijah announced a reliable God-given abundance to this woman who had nothing and who hoped nothing.

But we are here today to say that we are not here for a lay-down-and-die party,

that we are not only the party of the last supper of the dearly departed Jesus,

but for us, this is the party not of sorrow, but of the first supper of tomorrow,

where the widow’s loss & scarcity is turned to the Grower’s abundance for tomorrow.

My favorite last word of Jesus is “I thirst.”

I thirst (don’t we all thirst) for more – for the more (not the less) that God has in store?

Like the woeful widow in our lesson today, we need a good meal to get us to tomorrow.

This is the meal today. This is the deal whose falling of the cards makes us not only now high flying Cardinals, but, tomorrow, sentinels who turn that widow’s and our sorrow

into the wow of a new tomorrow.

Now we teeter on the brink of sorrow over our losses and hope for a resurgent tomorrow.

I’m here to say I’m with you on the brink, a link to both our sorrows & our tomorrows.

You may fear that this unknown transitional pastor might be a missed rather than a missing link.  I might fear that I should not have come here to be with you umknowns.

But in the beginning, and in the end, I have and still believe that when we, in faith, ever sail out as pilgrims from God’s comma and common port of embarkation to a destination we know not, but God only knows.

And so we go, with barely a daily meal in hand,

with that widow, not in a last chance sorrow, but with a first chance store for tomorrow,

not in fear, not as the dearly departed, but as the dearly imparted with heart and spirit,

with Elijah’s and the angels’ “fear not’s,”

knowing that this is not our last supper, but our first supper together,

not just here in Pilgrim Church,

but wherever we pilgrims will lurch

on uncharted seas to whatever pilgrim landings

and new understandings our still sailing God hands us.

So this is not just the last supper of Jesus.  This is, as Jesus promised, our first supper in the realm of love, peace and justice that he is bringing.  That is why we are singing,

“This is a day of new beginnings, time to remember and move on” . . .