Proper 27 (November 6-12)
Texts: Mark 12:38-44;
1 Kings 17:8-16; Heb. 9:24-28
MODELS OF GENEROSITY
Children's Sermon
Telling the story of Oseola McCarty, an African American woman
who did laundry all her life
and was able to donate $150,000 to start a scholarship fund for
African Americans at University
of Southern Mississippi. After hearing of Miss McCarty's gift, Ted
Turner, a multi-billionaire,
gave away a billion dollars. He said, 'If that little woman can
give away everything she has, then
I can give a billion.' [full story and picture on half-sheet for
children]
Sermon
Models of generosity. Our theme began two months ago with Bev
Dirkin's newsletter story about
her grandmother as a model of generosity. Last month, Don Jones
continued with the story of
Millard and Linda Fuller, the rich young couple who literally sold
everything they had and helped
to found Habitat for Humanity. Last week, Gary Bischof shared the
wonderful story about his
grandfather and the crosses he made. Last night, we heard more
inspiring stories about parents
and grandparents, employers and neighbors, and even of a whole
culture of generous people, the
Filipinos. I'm grateful to Jane Knuth for coming
to share one of her stories that goes along with
the poor widow in this morning's Gospel. She told us the story of
one of their impoverished thrift
store customers who was so excited to find the bargains that would
help her be more generous in
her Christmas giving that year.
I had been reading Jane's wonderful and inspiring books Thrift
Store Saints and Thrift
Store
Graces -- which I highly recommend -- preparing to
share more such stories this morning.
Models of Generosity. But something disappointing happened on the
way to the preaching. The
story of the widow in this morning's Gospel changed on me. I had
wanted to tell more such
stories because they are inspiring, but I was disappointed to
discover that this Gospel story isn't
quite the story I thought it was.
So my task this morning is, in just a few short minutes here, to
bring us all through the same kind
of disappointment I experienced to the inspiration of an even
greater story of generosity -- which
happens to be that same one we always gather to share each week
here. I found, and I hope you
do to, that going through this particular disappointment has
deepened even more my appreciation
for the singularity of that story of generosity which is
our Lord's Passion, the sacrifice of his life
for us and for our salvation.
So what changed on me with this story of the widow? Like many
others, I had grown accustomed
to taking the last four verses of this Gospel to lift up and
celebrate this widow as an extraordinary
model of generosity. I was fully prepared to do that again today.
Then, I began bumping into
more and more commentators reminding me of the context of this
story, which we can partially
see in the first three verses of the slice that is this morning's
Gospel Reading. It starts out with an
angry Jesus scolding the religious leaders for preying on the
economically vulnerable, for
"devouring the widow's houses." We go directly from that angry
scolding to the scene of what?
A generous offering by the widow, yes. But in this context it is
also an example of how the
system which the religious leaders presided over devoured the
economically vulnerable. Do you
feel my disappointment? The story changes from being primarily about
a model of positive
personal generosity to being primarily about an example of the
oppression of the system.
And if you go wider then just these seven verses, the second reading
is confirmed. What happens
immediately after the widow's offering is Jesus predicting the
downfall of the entire Temple
system. This whole portion of Mark's Gospel has really been about
just that, Jesus revealing the
corruption and the downfall of their way of life as Temple centered.
And, once again,
understanding the First Century world helps. The Temple was not just
the center of their
religious life. It was the center of their economic and political
lives, too. It was their central
institution, and Jesus was revealing its corruption. Spirituality
teacher John Shea puts it this way:
Throughout the Gospel Jesus has consistently championed
human needs over the
hardened practices of the synagogue. Now he targets the Temple
treasury. When he sits
opposite the treasury, it symbolizes that he is opposed to the
whole temple atmosphere
around money. It is a public affair with the rich parading their
large sums. But Jesus is not
concerned with the rich. They are never exploited. They give to
the temple out of their
surplus. ... [T]he rich take care of themselves. But the widow
divests herself of all
support. Her generosity plays into the devouring greed of the
Temple. Those who are
supposed to protect her leave her, literally, penniless. What is
most frightening is that she
cooperates with her exploitation. (1)
Do you feel my disappointment? The story has changed on me from a
positive story of
inspiration to another story of challenge, another story of not just
my sin as an individual sinner
but of the sinfulness that has become embedded in our very
institutions. Jesus is once again
showing us that it's not just us who are corrupt. It's our very
institutions, too.
So how can this change back once again to inspiration? For me it
happened by going from our
stories of generosity, as inspiring as they are, to that singular
story of generosity, our Lord's
sacrifice on the cross. And it changes back to being inspiring only
to the extent that Jesus died
not just to save you and me but to also save our institutions.
Because our institutions are every bit
as much as what distinguishes us as human. The other animals don't
have institutions. We do,
and its part of what makes us human. So if Jesus died to save you
and me, he also died to save
our institutions, too, because we are so completely bound up with
them. It's impossible to save
us as individuals if God in Jesus isn't also doing something to save
our institutions at the same
time.
Each and every Sunday we are presented with the mystery of the
graciousness and completeness
of this salvation, even if we aren't fully aware of it. As much as
our worship changes every week,
every season, what are the words, the core of our worship, that is
exactly the same every week?
We call them the Words of Institution. "On the night Jesus was
betrayed, he took bread, blessed
it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, 'Take this and
eat. It is my body given for you.'"
Words of Institution. In the simple act of eating and drinking each
week, we are proclaiming
Jesus' salvation not only of us as individuals but also as
individuals bound up in our institutions.
His salvation of us includes a re-instituting of us.
How so? The long version is what we need to work out our whole lives
through. The short
version is summed up in the image of our Second Reading this morning
from Hebrews. Here the
writer is taking on that most central human institution of their
day, the Temple (the same as in
our Gospel Reading from Mark). It was central not only to the Jews,
but the Greeks and the
Romans and everyone else had their own Temples, too. And the writer
of Hebrews is trying to
help those early Christians understand how it is that Jesus came to
fundamentally change our
institutions, as well. At the center of our institutions are folks
in control who preside over our
spilling someone else's blood, not ours. Jesus came with the act of
generosity supreme that, as
the Great High Priest, he spilled his own blood. He let himself be
sacrificed. All this so that
someday -- and this is the unbelievable promise of God to us --
someday no one's blood will
ever need to be spilled again.
On this Veteran's Day, this is a tremendously important promise.
Today we remember with
genuine gratitude the terrible price many of our soldiers paid in
letting their blood be spilled on
our behalf. Their sacrifice is real, and it is significant. Our
soldiers were willing to let their blood
be spilled instead of their family and friends and fellow citizens
back home. But we also have to
recognize this: it also is not the same sacrifice that Jesus himself
made, because he completely
refrained from spilling anyone else's blood. We have to face the
fact that the vocation of the
soldier is also to take someone else's blood, if it comes to that in
battle. Thomas Jefferson said,
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the
blood of patriots and tyrants."
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I believe that the writer of Hebrews
would disagree with Thomas
Jefferson. The really Good News on this Veteran's Day is that God's
promise to us is that
someday -- and that day obviously hasn't arrived yet -- but someday
we will no longer have a
need for that terrible sacrifice of our soldiers. Because God in
Jesus Christ has begun to turn our
way of sacrifice into his, beginning to redeem not only us but our
institutions, too. In this meal
each and every week, we have the seeds planted in us of being
re-instituted, of finding the ways,
for example, in which poor widows are no longer sacrificed to the
system but are properly cared
for.
So as we pledge our support of this ministry in Christ's name this
morning as response not only
to the models of generosity we have known in our lives, we also and
especially celebrate that
singular act of generosity in the history of humankind, the act of
generosity which is changing
history forever. It is our Lord's sacrifice on the cross and God's
raising him to new life that truly
has the power to save us, institutions and all. It was that singular
act of generosity in history that
has already begun to change things for the good, things like the
abolition of slavery, the re-instituting of sexism and racism into a
more true equity among God's children. As we pledge to
this ministry this morning, we also dedicate ourselves to being an
institution of change for this
world, of being a ministry that makes a difference. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, November 11, 2012
1. John Shea, The
Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and
Teachers:
Eating with the Bridegroom (Mark - Year B), p. 267.