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"THE WIDOWS MITE" Readings: Psalms
127:1-5, Habakkuk 3:17-19, Hebrews
9:24-28, Mark 12:38-44 Preached at Baldwin Presbyterian
Church, November 8th 2009 A bible
story about a widow and a rich man. Jesus challenges any who will listen,
"Who gave the most?" The widow had nothing going for her. The rich
man had everything going for him. He
was in the position of being able to make a sizable offering, which it seems
he did. But in the light of God’s
economy, he never gave as much as the widow.
The widow gave her all. It was upon the widow that God's favor shined. Here's a
sobering statistic. A recent survey concluded that the average Presbyterian
gives more in tips and gratuities for the meals they eat out during the week
than they put in the collection plate of their local church. I am thankful
therefore that here in this church there are many who are well above average
in the way that you support this church and its mission. That being
said I don’t know who gives the most and who gives the least. I don’t know
how that all breaks down into percentages, whether some of you who have less
income are proportionally giving a whole lot more of what you have than
somebody who gets a lot more than you do. I don’t know. But I do
know that many of us are hoping and praying that this church can blossom and
flourish and grow. We then need to acknowledge and act upon a basic principle
in life. The harvest is always related to what is sown. You cannot grow
anything without planting the seeds. You cannot grow programs and new
opportunities and new ministries within a congregation without investing in
them, with time and talents and, yes, with plain old cash! Now you
may be sitting there thinking, ‘Listen Preacher, Stewardship Sermon was last
week. I’ve made my pledge. Just typical of a preacher, you say you’ll give
something and all they want is more, more, more.” All I can say is that this
was the lectionary text set for this Sunday and it’s hard to talk about it
without mentioning money! So… let’s
take a different route. In the calendar year we are heading towards the
celebration of Thanksgiving. The Pilgrim Fathers, who are celebrated at
Thanksgiving, didn't have much to be thankful for. They had been hounded out of one country.
They tried settling in another but that didn't work out. They fled
persecution and sailed across the ocean in that tiny ship they called the
Mayflower. When they got here they
were met with a land that needed to be tamed, a hostile environment, new
diseases, inclement weather, starvation, challenges they had never dreamed
of. How did they handle it? They gave thanks. Our first
reading this morning was from the book of Habakkuk. I'm glad Habakkuk wasn't
a chef. What a mouthful it would be to go to the bookstore and ask, "Can
I have a copy of Habakkuk's Cook Book, please?" He didn't have much to be thankful for.
Why? Habakkuk didn't have a Cook Book because Habakkuk didn’t have anything
to cook! In verse
17 of Habakkuk, Chapter 3, the fig trees aren’t blossoming, there’s no fruit
on the vines, no food in the field, no sheep or cows in the stalls to provide
meat. "Yet" (and listen to
this), he says “Yet, I will exult in the Lord, I will be thankful, I will
rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength.” (Verses 18-19) There's
that crazy thing again. The widow thing.
The Pilgrim thing. People who by the standards of this world wouldn’t
appear to have a great deal to get excited about are overflowing with
generosity and thanksgiving. Some weeks
I feel like I need some cheerleaders up here with me instead of the choir.
(No offence to the choir. They do a fantastic job.) But you know, when our
faith is under attack, a few cheers of "Dee-Fence, Dee-Fence"
wouldn't come amiss. What about when the collection plate goes around, “Put
it in, Drop it in... Touch Down!” How about an; "Everybody in the pews,
Come and stamp your Good News shoes", something along those lines to get
us psyched up to the importance of what we're doing here as a church. We have a
lot to be thankful about. Times are hard, for sure, disposable income is not
readily available, that’s the truth. The bills keep rising and the taxes
always seem to one step ahead of them. But you know what? We’re alive and
kicking. We have a beautiful facility for worship and service. We have people
around us who love us and pray for us and care about us. We are
free to come here and worship. None of us are going to be imprisoned today
because we came to church. We are not going to be considered enemies of the
state or political subversives because we claim Christ as our King. That is
not the case for many in our world today, nor has it been for many
generations throughout history. We have
schools. And when our kids go to school they have books and computer labs and
playing fields and sports coaches and heated classrooms and class sizes that
are, well sometimes larger than we would like, but small in comparison to the
one-room, all age school-houses of other nations, where kids share paper and
often the only text book is a blackboard. We have
roofs over our heads, food in our bellies, if we get sick we have doctors we
can go to and hospitals to be treated at. On a worldwide scale that puts us
at the top of the food chain. We have transport, we have gadgets galore, we
have entertainment and opportunities and advantages that most of the world
doesn’t share. I’m not
trying to make us feel bad or feel guilty or feel unworthy. Friends, I want
us to feel thankful. We need to embrace every new day that we have to enjoy,
every day filled with all these blessings and acknowledge before God that we
are truly, truly, truly blessed. Genuine
thanksgiving always produces an outpouring of generosity. It causes us to think about our
responsibility towards God in terms of how we spend our time, how we use the
talents and gifts that God has graced our lives with and to consider what we
do with our treasures. What do we
sow? What do we invest in? How can the money that we earn be used to glorify
God and grow God’s kingdom? How do we
express our thankfulness in tangible ways that benefit folks other than
ourselves, ways that grow our church and bless our community? Our giving
should not be motivated by the fact that there is a bill to be paid but from
a gushing out of thankfulness… a response of joy. In that
sense this story about the widow is not about money. It’s about who she was
and the genuine nature of her relation to her God. The money she gave was
just an indication of something far more important. She was thankful. She
challenges us through her actions to consider if we genuinely have a heart of
thanksgiving. We are invited to take our spiritual temperature by considering
our giving as a guide to gauge how committed we are to the love of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the grace of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The New
Interpreters Bible Commentary offers this reflection. "The story of the widows mite poses
the same challenge to readers today as it did in Jesus time. People usually think of giving to the
church and to charities as an option. The money for charitable giving comes
out of the surplus after personal expenses have been met.
Those "necessary expenses" usually include many many extras in
terms of entertainment, clothes, food and playthings" Do we have
the widows heart, prepared to give all, or the rich mans heart who just gives
the left-overs? What is the nature of what we offer to God? Is it our
first-fruits, the best that we can give or just what’s left after we’ve taken
care of the rest? I know these are uncomfortable questions but I really don’t
believe that Christian faith and experience were ever meant to be
comfortable! Notice how
the widows act of dedication foreshadows the giving of Him Self that Jesus
Christ revealed to us through His death on the Cross. He died that we may live, embraced poverty
that we may enjoy God's prosperity. He took on the mantle of service that we
may learn the joy of serving each other. I want
to reiterate one of the points that I made in our newsletter. It’s something
that I reckon the widow knew, but the rich man never grasped. It’s something
that we are also in danger of missing. Giving
is a spiritual practice and an expression of a life that knows itself touched
by the Grace of God. It is not a duty but a delight. It is not a requirement
but a heart response to the love of God that in Jesus Christ laid itself
naked and bare on the cruel cross of Calvary to win our devotion. It’s not about ‘making a donation’ but
everything to do with “overflowing with thankfulness”. A rich man
and a poor widow. One gives because it seems that’s what is expected, the
other brings an offering from a thankful heart. A group of pilgrims flee
persecution to a hostile environment that will take years to tame. What do
they do? They give thanks! An Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, who doesn’t
have a cook book, because there’s a famine in the land, proclaims “Yet, I will exult
in the Lord, I will be thankful, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength.” By the
example of these faithful ones, through the action of the Holy Spirit upon
our hearts, may God teach us how to live in ways that express true
stewardship, stewardship that flows out of our thankfulness and overflows in
blessings towards others. Stewardship that engages us passionately in the
work of God’s kingdom, heart, mind, and soul, with our time, talents and
treasures. To God’s name be the Glory. Amen. Adrian J. Pratt
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