Unexpected Grace: The Shunammite Woman’s Son

This sermon is part of a Lenten midweek series on resurrections in Scripture.

Text: 2 Kings 4:8-37, 2 Cor. 1:8-11, Rom. 8:31-39

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            She had never asked for a son, this wealthy Shunammite woman. She’d married well, with a good husband. She’d found other outlets to care for people, even going so far as to build an addition onto the roof of their house so that the prophet Elisha could have a place to stay whenever he passed that way. She had found ways to live around her childlessness. But then, suddenly God’s grace broke into her life. Elisha promised her a son and God fulfilled that promise spoken through the man of God. God did not wait for her to ask—she was too modest, turning away the potential petitions Elisha suggested—but even though she couldn’t dare to ask it, God gave it. A year later she held her miracle in her arms, a gift from God beyond what she could hope or expect.

            And for years she cherished that unexpected gift. He grew and she loved him. But then, one day, as unexpectedly as he was given to her, he was taken away. The boy went out to the field with his father and suddenly he felt wrong. “Oh, my head, my head!” he cried out in agony. The servants carried him to his mother, and there, on her lap, he died. As unexpectedly as he was given to her, he was now taken away. Her faithfulness, her generosity, her kindness, her love for him, even the child’s own miraculous birth—none of it could save him from death. Death is the great equalizer, so they say, and what a cruel job it did in this case.

            We don’t have any words from the Shunammite woman when this happened. She simply carried her dead boy to the upper room, the prophet’s room, and laid him on Elisha’s bed. The place of hospitality, of thanksgiving, had become a tomb. She didn’t tell her husband the boy died. She simply got the donkey and a servant and went as quickly as she could to Mount Carmel, where Elisha was. It’s here that we see an interesting conversation between the woman and the prophet’s servant. Gehazi asks her, “Is all well with you?” or as we might know it, he asks her, “Shalom? Is all well with your husband?” Then, “Is all well with the child?” And the woman inexplicably answers, “Yes, it is well. Shalom.”

            Why would she say this? Everything most certainly was not well. Was she lying to Elisha’s servant Gehazi? Was she in denial? No—this woman knew better than that. She knew that she was coming to a man of God, Elisha, the successor of Elijah, over whose shoulders Elijah’s mantle had been cast so that he would receive a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. And if Elijah had resurrected a boy in his upper room in Zarephath, then surely Elisha could do the same in his own upper room in her home. This is faith in God, even in the face of death.

            That doesn’t stop the hurt though. When she’s finally face to face with Elisha she grabs hold of his feet. She clings to him, even though Gehazi tries to pry her off his master. And there, from that position of holding tight, of grasping on, her anguish finally boils over. “Did I ask for a son? Didn’t I say, ‘Do not lie to me’? Why would you give this child to me just to have him taken away so abruptly?”

Faith and pain can coexist in the same heart. Grief is simply the cry “This is not right!” that rises from your very core. You know it. You’ve felt it. You’re holding on to God, to His Word, for dear life; yet you still hurt. The feeling of pain isn’t going away. Even the mighty prophet Elisha, the one who has an ear in the counsel of God, doesn’t have the answer. “Leave her alone,” he tells Gehazi to get him to stop trying to push her away in her angry sorrow, “for she is in bitter distress, and the Lord has hidden it from me and not told me.”

But she knows that this child was a gift—someone she loved, someone the prophet loved, someone God loved, so with that grief that tells her that this isn’t right, she knows that she can present her complaint to the Lord. She knows the one through whom the Lord is working in her land. When she says to the prophet, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you,” she knows to hold on; that he will come to the place of death, and in her faith she hopes that he will speak a word of life.

Elisha goes into the upper room and shuts the door behind him. He is now face to face with death—an unjust death of someone who didn’t deserve it, a death that ripped a mother’s heart in two, a death that came out of nowhere and left them all at a loss—and he prays. And then there’s a moment of stunning closeness. “Then he went up and lay on the child, putting his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands. And then as he stretched himself upon him, the flesh of the child became warm.” Elisha was doing what had been done by his predecessor and father in the faith, Elijah, when he raised the widow of Zarephaph’s son. But mouth to mouth—he was also recalling—re-living—when God first breathed the breath of life into Adam. And, in an even greater mystery, this closeness also foreshadows how God would unite Himself with our humanity, taking on our flesh when His Son would be born of Mary. The Word would become flesh and dwell—that is, live and live abundantly—among us, eye to eye, hand to hand. In His own upper room centuries later, Jesus would say, “This is my body, given for you,” touching His life-giving body to us. He would stretch Himself out on the cross, taking our death into Himself.

And through that contact of life, the boy was raised from the dead. Through Jesus’ contact of life, we are raised. Christ has joined Himself to us in our death so that we would live again. And what unexpected joy and grace that is. The Shunammite woman entered the room and saw her boy alive again. Elisha told her, “Pick up your son,” and after giving thanks, she did.

That’s the same command that Jesus will give you. “Pick up your son. Pick up your daughter. Pick up your mother, your father, your husband, your wife, your grandparents, your friends, everyone who was lost to you. Embrace them. Laugh. Rejoice. Life has overcome death.” The Shunammite woman received her son through surprising grace. And even when unexpected tragedy struck, it was met again with even more unexpected grace: resurrection.

This is the very heart of the Gospel: we receive everything freely from God’s hand—life, joy, and even life restored. Your God is not scared away by your tragedy or your loss. He’s not put off by your grief. He draws near. He touches you—eye to eye, mouth to mouth, hand to hand. He shares your human nature. He warms your mortal flesh with His own life-giving body and blood. He unites Himself to you in His own death and resurrection in Baptism. And just when you thought He’d given you all you could imagine, even when you thought you couldn’t dare to ask for anything more, He pours even more life into you, even more joy, even greater things than eye has seen or ear has heard—the glory of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. In the name of Jesus, who brings unexpected grace. Amen.