Zarephath and Nain were the home cities of the two widows in our lessons for today. Zarephath was on the Phoenician coast of the Mediterranean, far from Israel, while Nain was only about 25 miles from Capernaum, which was Jesus’ home base. Their disparate locations got my attention. The widow of Nain was one of the chosen ones, one of the children of Israel, obviously special in God’s eyes to those who heard this story. The widow of Zarephath, on the other hand, lived in enemy territory; she was not a Jew. When Jesus used her story as an example in his visit to Nazareth, the people were so enraged, they “drove him out of town . . . so they might hurl him off the cliff.” (Lk.4:25-30) We don’t like it when God doesn’t do things our way, when we realize we might have to change our perceptions if we want to walk in the way of Christ Jesus. In our self-centeredness, we want God to be on our side, to be against the others, but that’s not the way God works.

Here’s a bit of what scripture has to say on this issue of God’s favor. In what we call “The Sermon on the Mount”, Jesus was quite clear in telling us how wrong divisiveness is: “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Mt.5:43-45) It took Peter awhile to get that message, but after his vision of the sheet with the unclean animals followed by the invitation to visit the Roman centurion, Cornelius, he said, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34-35) Paul too came to realize in his calling to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles that “God shows no partiality.” (Rom.2:11)

No partiality—that is the insight I got from the stories of the two widows. Whenever we are focusing on division in our world, when we are separating folks into “us” and “them”, we are not cooperating with God. When we exclude those who are different from us in whatever way it might be, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, education, culture, values, wealth, we are separating ourselves from the Divine.