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The widow of Zarephath and the extra mile

The widow of Zarephath and the extra mile

Last updated on: September 9, 2026 at 4:37 pm by Fred Clark

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The widow of Zarephath and the extra mile 2026-09-09T16:37:15-04:00 Fred Clark

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So the other day I used a weird word. This was pointed out to me by both my wife and my spell-check (which tried to turn “supererogatory” into “super-derogatory”).

That’s a ten-dollar word for what we might call sacrificial heroism. It means going above and beyond what you are obliged or expected to do. If you looked it up in the dictionary, you’d find it defined as something like “observed or performed to an extent not enjoined or required.” Read on and you’ll find the literal meaning of the root words, which is something like making an extra payment beyond the amount that is owed.

The typical textbook illustration of this involves the Drowning Stranger. If you’re in a position to save that Drowning Stranger with no risk to your own safety, then you have an obligation to do so. That is your moral duty. It is what you owe — what you should do and what you must do. That’s just basic. That is “erogatory.”

But you are not obliged or expected or duty-bound to take a huge risk to your own life to save that Drowning Stranger.* If you do that — put your own life at risk to save another person, that’s heroic. It’s laudable and praiseworthy and admirable — a Good Thing — but it’s not what is required of you. It is “supererogatory” — it goes beyond what is required.

To do something supererogatory is to go the extra mile.

That’s why this can be a tricky word, and a tricky concept, for us Christians. Because “going the extra mile” isn’t just some old saying, it’s from the Sermon on the Mount: “If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

That’s Matthew 5:40-41. It’s both the source of that expression about “going the extra mile” and a confusing complication of this whole idea. Once “going the extra mile” is made a commandment — an obligation — then the extra mile ceases to be an “extra” mile. The supererogatory merely becomes erogatory. Going above and beyond what is owed becomes what is owed and radical self-sacrifice seems to become simple duty.

This is troubling for selfish reasons, but also for unselfish reasons. The Sermon on the Mount convicts me on the former point, but indicts itself on the latter. The Golden Rule, among other things, prevents me from insisting to others that radical self-sacrifice and self-abnegation is compulsory for them.

We admire supererogatory acts of heroism because those who do such things did not have to do them. We look in awe at, say, John Lewis, beaten into unconsciousness as a Freedom Rider. Then we look on in even greater awe when he gets out of the hospital, straightens his tie, and walks across the Pettus Bridge to be beaten unjustly again, embodying and incarnating and living out the very words of the Sermon on the Mount.

But what would it mean for us to have told him that this is what he was obliged to do? What would it mean for us to have insisted to him that this self-sacrifice was compulsory and something commanded of him? That would seem to put us in the same category as the corrupt white cops and klansmen who were also telling Lewis that his duty — his role in life — was to take a beating, turn the other cheek, and then be beaten again. Instead of the world being changed by his radical heroism, we would be locking that world into place, with all of its grievous injustice protected and enshrined.

An illustration of what I’m struggling here to get at comes in the book of 1 Kings, in the story of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. This is the story in 1 Kings 17, Elijah comes to this small town during a terrible famine:

When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”

“As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”

Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.”

Hospitality is a Good Thing and an obligation. It is a Good Thing to share our food with a hungry stranger. This is a should — a thing we should do, a moral obligation. It is “erogatory.”

But we are not obliged to share food with a hungry stranger when we are the hungry stranger. We are not obliged to share food when we do not have any food. This woman has no moral obligation to do what Elijah requests of her. She has just barely enough food to feed her own starving son one final meal and taking that food from her son to give it to this weird, greedy stranger is not a duty or a commandment or an expectation.

In this story, of course, Elijah promises her a miracle: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.”

Maybe she was instantly convinced to have faith in Elijah’s God. Maybe she thought he was just the basic rainmaker conman he sounded like, but since she had nothing to lose she might as well enjoy one last bit of showmanship to go with her final meal. Either way, she makes the loaf of bread for Elijah, and one for her son, and one for herself, and God rewards her faith and supererogatory generosity by miraculously multiplying the flour and oil. Her extraordinary act receives an extraordinary reward and, because Elijah himself is present, we get a miraculous happy ending to this little parabolic story about providence and plenitude and pleroma.

But problems arise when someone tries to make this a story about hospitality. Hospitality is an obligation, but what this woman did was not that. What she did went beyond any obligation.

In Luke 3, John the Baptist describes hospitality and duty: “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” That’s erogatory — a basic obligation. That’s both the minimum and the maximum of the widow of Zarephath’s obligation to the weird stranger who approached her empty hearth and demanded take-out.

We can, and should, marvel at the heroic recklessness of her faith and we can, and should, admire her sacrificial generosity.

But we cannot, should not, and must not, point to her as an exemplar of hospitality or as a model for what is expected and required of all of us. That wouldn’t be calling us to a “higher standard” — it would be giving us license to steal food from the mouth of a hungry, dying boy and to condemn him for not handing it over.

Talk of “erogatory” and “supererogatory” and of all those hypothetical Drowning Strangers in the ethics textbooks always reminds me of one of my favorite stories from when I was at the newspaper. A man passed out while driving alongside the reservoir near Dover, his car veered off the road and into the deep water, sinking fast.

The first person to see this and respond was a young man who, without hesitating, jumped in to try to pull the man from the submerged car. This kid didn’t know how to swim, but he figured there was a small chance that he might somehow manage to learn by doing and a perhaps an even smaller chance that he’d also figure out some way of getting the literal Drowning Stranger out of the car and back to shore. It was a very small chance, much less likely than the probably outcome of both of them drowning. But it was still better odds than the absolute guarantee that if he did nothing the man would die. So in he went.

I admire that kid. I am in awe of his courage and his heroism and his astonishing, beautiful bravery. Greater love hath no man than this.

I am still grateful and very happy that this young man’s bold action was quickly followed by that of two other neighbors — a passing businessman (who peeled off his expensive suit before jumping into the water) and an airman from the nearby base. The three of them managed to get themselves and the ailing driver to shore, successfully rescuing and reviving him before paramedics arrived.

We can and should celebrate heroes. We cannot and should not make heroism obligatory — especially not obligatory for other people.

A starving woman is not obliged to take food from her starving son and give it, instead, to some wild-eyed, arrogant stranger. A young man in Delaware who doesn’t know how to swim is not required to sacrifice his own life in a long-shot bid to save a Drowning Stranger. If we try to turn their supererogatory virtues into laws and requirements and Rules For Other People then we won’t end up making the world more virtuous, we’ll just wind up hurting people and getting them killed.

* The “Go” in “Reach, Throw, Row, Go” has two meanings. It can mean “go” into the water and risk your own safety to try to save the Drowning Stranger. Or it can mean “go” for help because that’s the safest thing to do. Because we’re not telling you that you have to put yourself in danger, but we’re also not going to tell you that you’re not allowed to make the heroic, extraordinary, supererogatory choice to do so. The supererogatory is not prohibited, but it is never required.

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