Introduction

This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 7-8, 2009, the weekend of the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost.

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Readings

1 Kings 17:8-16
Psalm 146 (8)
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

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Prayer

Long ago, O God, you spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets. Now in these last days, make us listen as you speak to us by your Son. Amen. (based on Hebrews 1:1-2, NRSV)

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Message

The God we worship is unique among the many gods
that people have chosen to worship over the centuries.
Alone among all these gods,
he is the God who lives in history
and he is the God who makes himself known
by the story of his history with his chosen people.

We are blessed, with Israel, those chosen people,
to worship her God.
And so, when we do, people may ask which God that is,
whether it’s the one who offers escape from time and suffering,
or the one who dwells in nature and brings fertility,
or the one who is worshipped by the pursuit of possessions.

And we can say,
“Well, he is the God who made all things from nothing,
and who revealed himself to our ancestors.
He is the one who freed Israel from bondage in Egypt,
and raised up judges and prophets and priests and kings to serve him.

“And he is the one who as the Son of the Father
was born of Mary and the Spirit.
He is the one who as the Father,
raised that Son from death by the power of their Spirit.
And he is the one who as the Spirit
creates the Church to be the bride of the Son
and will gather it around the throne of the Father.

“And now in these last days, he also is the one
who has chosen you and me and washed us in our Baptism.
He is the one who blesses the Church with the office of the keys,
so that she may forgive and retain sins in his triune name.
He is the one who feeds us with his Word and his Holy Meal,
giving us strength to live our days in faith.

“And he is the one who guides the fingers
of the hands of the women who make the blankets
for Lutheran World Relief, witnessing to poor people of his love.
And he is the one who strengthens the arms and legs of those of us
who clean the litter from the roads as a sign of care for his creation.
And he is the one who inhabits the embraces we offer one another
in consolation upon the death of our loved ones.

“And he is the one who gives us voices
to sing his praises and to speak his prayers.
And he is the one who listens and comforts us
when we come to him on bended knee,
trembling with our fears and worries.

“And he is also the one who leaps with us in praise
when we shout for joy over a young child’s first wobbly steps
or an old parent’s first tentative steps in rehabilitation
after injury and illness.”

That’s the God who has chosen us to share in his history.
And as his chosen people, his children by adoption,
we share that history, not only with him,
but with all whom he has chosen before us
and all whom he will choose after us.

God’s choosing us is the ultimate gift of grace,
the surprising and unsurpassable turn of events
that changes us now and forever.

Once he makes us part of his life
and gathers us together and places us within his story,
then everything is different.
Our priorities are turned around,
our paths head in new directions,
our purposes are his and not our own.

Then we see the world with God’s eyes
and not with our own blurred vision.
We judge the rightness of our actions by God’s law
and not by our own biases.
We discover that he calls us to serve him selflessly
and not to follow our own selfish desires.

Today’s Gospel paints a vivid portrait for us
of these two ways of living,
one to serve our own human ends,
and the other to live by God’s grace
and to submit in obedience to his will.

The way to tell the difference
is to look at what attracts our attention, our focus.
When people adopt the way of the scribes in their own lives,
then they turn their efforts to increasing their own comfort
and to bolstering their own respect in the eyes of others.

It would be easy to dismiss this way,
to pass it off as the pious and proud attitude
of a class of religious leaders distant from us in space and time.
But we do the same thing.
We often act in ways we know are designed by us
to improve our own lot in life,
to make things just a little better, a little more comfortable, close to home.
In this, we are brothers and sisters to the scribes.

The other way is the one we would not see on our own,
the one hidden right in the middle of our blind spot.
But as a blessing to us, to heal us of our blindness,
Jesus turns our attention to the passing crowd.

And there, almost without notice,
amid the parade of the well-off making a show of their donations,
passes a single widow.
She drops two small copper coins–worth a penny–
into the donation box, the offering plate.

This is the smallest of all givable gifts.
And yet, she gives the greatest of all gifts a person can give.

As Jesus says to his disciples and to us,

⁴³“Truly I tell you,
this poor widow has put in more
than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
⁴⁴For all of them have contributed out of their abundance;
but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had,
all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:43-44, NRSV)

Out of poverty,
she gave everything—
the coins in the box
and by her selfless action, the heart of another chapter in God’s story.

And so, across the millennia
her wordless witness speaks to us and tells us,
by her selfless giving,
that everything we have is really God’s and not our own.

Our lives do not belong to us;
they are a gift, a moment-to-moment blessing from God.
The food we eat, the clothing we wear,
the homes we inhabit, the skills we use,
the money we earn, the time we spend–
all of these things are the daily gifts of God,
our daily bread as Luther explains in the Catechism.

This means that as we pray to God
and ask him to guide us in our giving,
he calls us to step into line,
taking our place behind the widow,
and to make our way to the altar of God.

When we reach that place
and take our hands from our pockets and purses
and stretch them out over the offering plate,
we can, by God’s grace, out of poverty, out of our brokenness,
open our hands and let go,
putting in everything we have, all that we have to live on.

And as we do, we can pray
in the words of a famous hymn,

“We give Thee but Thine own,
Whate’er the gift may be;
All that we have is Thine alone,
A trust, O Lord, from Thee.

“May we Thy bounties thus
As stewards true receive,
And gladly, as Thou blessest us,
To Thee our firstfruits give.” (William W. How, 1864, Lutheran Book of Worship 410) Amen.