A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor

25^th Sunday After Pentecost/B • November 10, 2024

1 Kings 17:8-16, Psalm 16, Mark 12:38-44

We often envy what the others have, don’t we? I always wished I was taller and had a cool preacher voice. But most of all, I envy people who can sing and do it on key. I love hearing the choir; I love my daughter May’s voice, she sings on key, something I have never consistently managed. It’s not my gift. I used to record sermons on cassette tapes and play them later, to critique and improve. But I frequently forgot to turn off my microphone during hymns. So there would be my voice, and just my voice, tunelessly singing some hymn everyone else can sing just fine. It always made my family laugh.

Since I can’t sing well, I sing along. You know what I mean? I just kind of sing the words quietly, under everyone else who’s singing so beautifully. I add a little volume and enthusiasm. But I like to sing along. When I sing along, even though my voice isn’t as sweet or tuned or wonderful as others, I’m part of the group, I’m part of the praise. That’s what I believe today’s scripture reading is about. Now when we read the gospel lesson for today, commonly called the widow’s mite, I’m guessing that it may not have been new to you. It’s a common text for Stewardship Sundays and appeals to give to the church. Well, I hope you do give generously to this church. But I don’t think this text has much to do with that. I think it has to do with singing along. 

If we pull back from the specific story of the widow, we find Jesus has been going to the temple and arguing with representatives of various powerful groups. The temple isn’t much like our church buildings; it’s more like a farmers’ market with a chapel at one end. People are there buying and selling animals for sacrifices, they’re changing money because you can’t use Roman currency for temple offerings. It’s a noisy place and if you’ve ever been to a farm with animals, you can imagine what it smells like. It’s also a place where people meet. Some of them are doing business deals, some are meeting friends. In one area, there’s a place to put in temple offerings, just like we have offering plates at both ends of the worship area here. We walk past those plates and quietly put offerings in, but the temple treasury is a public place and the offerings aren’t little envelopes they are coins or sacks of coins and animals. The nice thing about this arrangement is that everyone can see how generous you’re being, how much you love God, calibrated by how much you put in the offering 

Jesus is watching, and he points out what everyone knows. Many of the people bringing offerings are well-to-do, he says dressed in long robes, the equivalent today would be expensive suits. They’re mostly scribes, what we would call lawyers and accountants. They’re rich people working to get ahead and they envy each other, try to make a big impression, try to get one more step up the ladder of respect and honor. And some of them do it by what he calls “devouring widow’s houses.” In this place and time, women have no property rights. When a husband dies, his widow doesn’t get his house. Scribes often help the man’s brother or sons take it over, usually getting a piece of the value for themselves, leaving the widow impoverished and homeless. Why do the scribes do it? Because they live their lives out of envy, always trying to get richer, get more honors, get more important in their world. Somewhere along the way, they have become like the lady in the Led Zeppelin song who is buying a stairway to heaven. Their offerings have become a transaction: see, God, I’ve bought my ticket to righteousness.

Their envy makes them devour widow’s houses and God hates this. God has a particular fondness for widows. There are over 100 places in scripture where God mentions widows for special concern. In Deuteronomy, justice for widows is central to God.

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, ¹⁸who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, [Deuteronomy 10:17]

So it’s not an accident that Jesus is lifting up a woman who is a widow. In his words, in this moment, for this moment, he is demonstrating what he has said, that the last shall be first. Because Jesus sees to the heart of what’s going on here. This woman is going all out. Here she is in all her vulnerability, yet she’s giving everything, thanking God every day. This isn’t about stewardship, this isn’t about giving to the church or the temple at all really. It’s about how we come to God: buying God’s love, or just letting it flow over us? Because we can never deserve that love; we can only accept it and share it.

This text makes me uncomfortable. I’d like to be on the side of the widow but honestly, I look more like the scribes. I know there is a part of me that likes having a title, there is a part that likes sitting at the head table, there is a part that wants to look successful in my career. I know that part of me likes the whole winners and losers game and when I play, I want to win. But God keeps throwing pitches at me even though I don’t always catch them. This is one. It asks whether I’m buying a stairway to heaven or just thankful to be here, thanking God that I know what love is, that God loves me.

The other story we read today asks the same question but it takes us right into the heart of the decision. Elijah is a prophet in Israel at a time when the king has become faithless. He wants to be like other kings, he wants to become more powerful. To do that takes powerful, rich friends and he has to make it pay off for them, so justice has become a thing of the past there. When justice dries up, so does the land, the Bible says. There is a drought; people are starving. Elijah has announced this but he’s hungry too. So he shows up at this widow’s door, dirty, hungry, probably a little stinky. Here’s the amazing thing: she’s a Gentile. She isn’t even Jewish. Geography is theology in the Bible so it’s important to pay attention to the fact that he’s in Zarepheth, outside Israel. A woman is gathering sticks to make a fire and he asks for some bread; she tells him she was just going to make one last meal with all she has for her and her son before they starve. He says what angels say: “Don’t be afraid”, and then he tells her the flour and oil will be enough. 

Now she has a decision, doesn’t she? What would you do? Would you share your last bit with a hungry stranger? Well, let me tell you a story about a Christmas party, the best Christmas party I’ve ever been to. A number of years ago, we had a play at the church where I was the pastor.. It was a big success, people were feeling good, and afterward a man chatted with me for a while. He carefully explained he didn’t go to church; I think he was stunned when I said that was fine. He stayed for a long time, and when he got ready to go, he said, “Preacher, I want to do something good here but you’ll know better than me what to do,” and handed me a $100 bill. I guess I could have put it in the offering, I could have given it to the benevolences but what I did was to give it to a single mom in our church who was struggling. I told her  to use it however she wanted, maybe get some presents for her kids.

A few weeks later, she begged me to come over to her house after the Christmas Eve service. Now after Christmas Eve, I’m always exhausted, I’m anxious to get home to my own family. But I couldn’t say no, so off I went. She lived in a little apartment in a part of town where you made sure to lock your car. I don’t know what I expected, but when I got up the stairs to her place, I was amazed. It was full of people, there were bowls of chili and chips and food and kids, and presents and wrapping paper and happy people. She’d been homeless until recently; now she had a place and she’d taken the $100 and invited a bunch of people who lived in their cars and so on to come over for a feast.What I remember most is sitting on the couch, with her little girl on my lap, endlessly stroking my tie, and asking me why I wore it; she wasn’t used to men in ties. It wasn’t what I would have done with the money; it’s what God would do. It’s what God does.

A widow who gives out of her poverty, who believes her poverty is an abundance because it gives her the means to thank God. A widow who takes a chance on the word of a prophet from another country that God will somehow provide for her and her son and him as well. These are the pictures God’s Word is giving us of what God wants; these are the people God sets up as examples. 

Those guys fussing about their status and giving big sums to the temple, buying influence with the king? They’re going to lose it all. About 30 years after this moment, the temple is going to be pulled down during a war with Rome. Jerusalem is going to be destroyed. All that’s left of it is a bit of a wall today. The Psalm we read in the Call to Worship has it exactly right: 

Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.

When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God,

who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; [Psalm 16:4-6]

If we focus just on today, we miss this. Only God’s way endures and it endures forever.

It’s easy to follow the way of the world in our spiritual life and church life. So thank God we have these examples: women who believed enough to live in thankful faithfulness. The headlines in the news are for today; tomorrow they’ll be something else. God’s love is forever. Which one will we live from? Which one will we demonstrate? 

Believing in God’s blessing, God’s abundance, God’s goodness is like a song. Remember how the Psalm started? “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.” That’s the song these widows are singing and we’re invited to sing along. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a great singer like the people in our choir or a little tuneless like me. Sing along. It doesn’t matter whether you feel like you’re winning or losing today; sing along because ultimately God always wins. It doesn’t matter whether you’re feeling full or worried like the Gentile widow; sing along because the song itself is a blessing meant to be shared. 

Amen.