11 November 2012

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 17:8-16 / Mark 12:38-44
11 November 2012


Today ... in our continued walk through our end of the church year “basics of faith” review ... we have a tale of two widows.
One widow is the victim of a drought; a drought sent by God upon his people Israel, to convince their king and the other rulers that indeed, God is God, and that the false gods and goddesses of their neighbors, which the King has adopted as his own gods … God is out to prove that those false gods are no gods at all. And this widow is caught up in the results of the king’s poor choices.
The other widow … she is a victim of the religious establishment, those who openly prey on women such as her, to make themselves rich at her expense.
However, both widows end up being for us examples of … and witnesses to … God’s abundance; full, rich, plentiful living, cup filled to overflowing blessings which God so wants and wills to shower on all of us … and for which we are called to offer thanks and praise to God.

Abundance. It’s all around us. It’s all of what God so richly wants to give us.
And yet … abundance is so often the furthest thing from us.
Because we live in a world, a culture, often, with a theology … a way of thinking, and talking about God which is all about … scarcity.
The theology of scarcity … really, it’s embodied fear that there won’t be enough to go around, there won’t be enough for me, and therefore I have to amass more and more and more.
Scarcity is the byword in both of our texts for today.
In the Word from Kings, the woman known as the “Widow of Zarephath” is living scarcity. There is a drought in Israel, sent by God because King Ahab has put his faith and trust in his neighbors’ false god Ba’al, instead of the God who brought his people from slavery in Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. The prophet Elijah, sent by God into the wilderness, comes across the Widow of Zarephath -- a foreigner, it must be pointed out – and Elijah makes that request of her,

Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.

The Widow of Zarephath’s objection is understandable. There’s nothing left, only enough for a last meal for her and her son. To be a widow in these Bible times meant suffering … a husband’s premature death was seen as divine punishment for some kind of horrible sin husband or wife had committed … and when her husband died, the widow had no means of support or livelihood other than begging or relying on the grace, the charity of others. Now even that had run out … or so she thought.
Yet God had other plans, through Elijah, for her.

Do not be afraid!

That’s the way Elijah prefaces his word to this Widow of Zarephath. In the face of so much scarcity, he goes right to the heart of it all, for her and for us … fear drives scarcity, and just serves to make things worse. So do not be afraid … trust in this word I bring to you in my body … do as I ask of you, and you will have enough … this is what Elijah says to her.
And so the Widow of Zarephath she went and did what Elijah said … and she, and her son, and Elijah had enough.
This is a fine story of God’s abundance casting out scarcity and fear … on so many levels … religious fear, national fear (the Widow of Zarephath isn’t an Israelite in faith or nationality) … and, especially, fear that there won’t be enough.
To all that fear ... God says ... turn around, my people. Turn and look, turn and receive, turn and hear and follow and do and be, in the richness of my abundance ... which is, for you.
Fear is also at work in the lives of those scribes in our Gospel reading today … the ones of which Jesus warns,

Beware! Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.

Here … Jesus wraps up his case against them … their theology … their way of thinking and talking and acting and living about God … the God they claim to worship … they may say one thing with their lips, but their actions shout loud and clear, “I don’t trust this God to give me what I need … I need more. More stuff … more respect … more honor.”
So much more, so great was their need and their greed, that they needed to devour widow’s houses – taking from even the poorest of the poor.
Oh yeah, these scribes, these religious leaders and authorities of Israel ... they had the best seats in the synagogues – they prayed long prayers – but their lifestyles spoke even louder and longer than their voices.
We don’t believe that God will provide … that God is in charge … that God is God … so it’s every scribe for himself … survival of the fittest, the fattest, the most financially flush.
Ah … but I said this would be “a tale of two widows,” not Slap a Scribe.
So let’s see, let’s hear Jesus’ word about this widow.
Once again, and ... just like Elijah in our Old Testament reading ... Jesus is caught up with an outsider … one who, by her very living, is not part of “the crowd” that Jesus sees passing by the Temple treasury, throwing in money as they pass by. Just like blind Bartimaeus from our reading a couple of weeks ago, this woman was invisible to everyone else … her clothes, ratty and threadbare; her wealth, a pittance. Two copper pennies don’t make much noise when they fall into the collection box.
But large sums do. And when the rich people came by, and threw in their bags of coins, everyone knew it, and surely turned, smiling approvingly in their direction. CLANK!
But Jesus hears with different ears and sees with different eyes than the spellbound crowd. He noticed this unnamed, unassuming, beggarly widow. Calling his disciples over to him, he points her out and says, “See her? When she threw in those two pennies, she gave more than all those other moneybags who made a big deal out of their giving-a-plenty. Because they gave out of their abundance – out of what they had left over, or didn’t need – but she, she gave out of her poverty, everything she had … literally, her whole life.”
It’s abundance set on its end. The abundance of the showy rich scribes was all a show…their gluttony for more more more was never sated, and that’s why Jesus says they even went after the houses of the poorest of the poor, the widows. Their abundance was really … scarcity. They could never get enough because “enough” wasn’t a word in their vocabulary. It might all be taken away tomorrow, so better go for more of it today. No matter how much money’s in the bank, how fat’s the portfolio, go foreclose on poor widow Smith because who knows, you might be out on the street licking butter wrappers for your dinner tomorrow.
Hmn.
That makes it sound like what those scribes loved the most was their stuff; what they trusted most was their wealth; and what they feared most was losing it.
Silly me! I thought those places were reserved for … God.
And so they are.
But the god of these scribes is not the same as the widow’s. Their god is a god of scarcity … the way they think and talk and act, shows a theology of scarcity, not abundance. Fear drives them to speak, and act, in the exact opposite way of the “greatest commandments” which one of the scribes’ number so publicly agreed with Jesus, in last week’s Gospel:

The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

The widow gets it right where the scribes once again don’t. She doesn’t give ten or twenty percent of her income … she doesn’t keep one penny back for herself and throw the other in … although that would have been the prudent thing to do … NO! In an incredible act of defiance to the powers and authorities who are trying to run and ruin her life … she throws the whole thing in … her whole life … everything she has. She is the one living in abundance … she has the God of abundance; or rather, the God of abundance has her … so she rests in the trust, the faith, the assurance that what she’s put in … her whole life … which she realizes belongs not to her, but to the God who made and sustains her … what she puts in is stewarded back to God, and she trusts that God will take care of her and give her all she needs.
Wow.
True abundance. She believed it.
Do we believe it?
Make no mistake. Fearful living, scarcity living, it’s exhausting living. It is so much more freeing to believe that God is a God of abundance like the widow believes … not the sham, plastic, phoney baloney god of scarcity that the scribes slavishly serve.
But it’s tough. We see the poor, and we want to be generous … we hear of the needs of orphans and widows, storm victims and people on the streets … and we’d like to help … but we have our mortgages and student loans, taxes and car payments, credit cards and doctor bills to pay. We need to put something away for a rainy day. We want to be generous … but what if we run short?
In some ways, this is a miserable text for us today. We can feel guilty when we hear it because maybe we feel we’re more like the scribes than the widow. I know I do. So I do what I can. You do what you can. Our giving here reflects this – it’s generous and increasing, and for that we should be … and are … very thankful.
But the widow threw in “her whole life.”
Do we believe it?
So should I feel guilty about that? Not giving enough, not believing or trusting enough, that there will still be enough even after I give my ten percent or more back?
No. That’s not the point of this text. Giving out of guilt or shame isn’t it. It’s not what the widow does, and it’s not what Jesus is looking for here either.
This is not a text, a word, a “stewardship Sunday” cattle-prodding motivator, simply meant to drive us to empty our wallets into the collection plate this week.
Remember ... the widow throws in everything she has, literally her whole life.
What this text is all about ... is the abundance of God, for us. It all starts with what God does … God, the giver – the One who creates and gives to us out of abundance, everything …earth, sea and stars … animals and fish … food and clothing … home and family … health and safety … all there is.
God, who gives his only Son, so that we would not die forever, but have eternal life.
God, who one day will gather everything and everyone to himself, in a feast that has no end.
Do we believe it?
Once again, we’re going to need some help to believe. Help that comes in water and word ... flowing streams of living water, welcoming, forgiving, freeing us in Jesus’ name to be the people he creates and calls us to be ... bread and wine broken and poured out for us ... hearts and hands to hold and care for us.
And so we have them here. And so we have them here. Abundantly.
And knowing how God’s story for us ends gives us what we need to live abundantly and give abundantly now.
A story I have shared before … about a decorated American veteran … on this weekend we recognize our nation’s veterans … illustrates this well. Admiral Jim Stockdale was Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992. Some may recall the Saturday Night Live skits of the time which made fun of him – but Admiral Stockdale was a real-life hero. He was the highest-ranking US military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” POW camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Imprisoned from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale was repeatedly tortured but refused to give in, and helped create conditions so that the most prisoners would survive captivity unbroken.
When he was asked how he survived eight years as a prisoner of war, Admiral Stockdale answered:

I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end.

Who didn’t make it out of the “Hanoi Hilton?” Stockdale said,

The optimists. The ones who said ‘we’re going to be out by Christmas,’ and Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘we’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.

To Admiral Stockdale, this was the most important lesson.

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

It’s a good lesson for us. Life was brutal for both widows of our texts.
The widow of Zarephath was saved, rescued by the Word of God … through Elijah … the word which brought the light and warmth of the love and care of God into the dark and gloom of her scarcity-existence.
And the widow at the temple treasury … she knew whose she was … so she could be truly abundant, trusting her whole life back to the One who gave it to her … who made her, who claimed her … who knew her and loved her when no one else cared.
The same is true for us. Life can be brutal sometimes. Some of us here today are deeply disappointed over election results … others, over health test results … some, thinking and worrying about our personal economics ... employment or lack of it, for spouse, child, loved one, or maybe self.
And yet, the God who has us … who gives us a name and claims us in his flowing streams of living water, YOU ARE MINE … this God, our God, is the One who gives us all we have and all we are … always, in all ways.
Do we believe it?
May we have hearts ready to believe, and hands ready to serve - lives given to us out of the Abundance of our Creator God … lives that reflect the abundance of our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer God … lives that are good soil, lives that bear much good fruit. Amen.