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S. Pentecost 25.24 Mark 12:38-44

As someone wearing a long robe who enjoys the warm greetings from members here and in the grocery store when we run into each other, who has the best seat in the house (mine is also way more comfortable than yours. It’s the padding on your pew bench which it wasn’t designed for, BTW, that forces you into an uncomfortably upright angle. My unpadded seat is quite comfortable. Just sayin’ 😉 anyway, as someone who also gets a great seat and nice meal at all weddings and church soirees, this text is an uncomfortable one to preach on!

I fit this description way too close for comfort! I will say, in my defense, that the bit about making long prayers for a pretense does not seem a fit, to me. You know how firmly I believe in the one hour service! I think I hold the Synod record at 42 minutes 45 seconds for the shortest Divine Service with at least 50 people in attendance and I’m (sinfully? 😉 proud of that. My sermons are way shorter than most, and I zealously cut down the LCMS Prayers for Sundays that I use (like a good company man 😉 sometimes a little, sometimes a lot… 😉 But maybe “long” and “short” are relative? Who knows how Jesus would evaluate me on this?

The devouring of widow’s houses is another element of Jesus’ description I like to think does not fit me at all. My last stewardship sermon, preached more than a decade ago at the behest of the board of elders, was a plea to make OSLC “The Church of the Money-Back Guarantee”, figuring if you aren’t happy about your church giving, since God loves a cheerful giver, we should make a full refund if you wish…. 😉

The elders made me stop giving stewardship sermons after that (a desirable outcome that may have been in the back of my mind when I was writing that sermon 😉 and the treasurer said such a guarantee would not really be legal under US tax laws. Oh well; at least I tried.

I do appreciate your generosity, please don’t get me wrong on that! But, what pleases me the most is not the amount but the joy with which it’s given. As St. Paul said—thanking the Philippians (the poorest yet most generous of the congregations St. Paul served!)—for yet another gift to support him: it is the partnership in the Gospel that is truly delightful, the mutual love for the LORD and his church that makes for joy…

I can only say “Amen!” to that, to you, the members of OSLC. It seems like a simple thing to do the Common Service of the Western catholic church, search the scriptures together for all Jesus’ hiding places, preach the Gospel as the creeds and confessions rightly confess it, and yet it seems so rare! in our world in general, and our local community in particular. It’s not like there’s a bunch of other churches in the Triangle that do this as single-mindedly as OSLC does. I don’t know where I’d go if OSLC shut down…

Which, to be quite honest, is why I went into the ministry in the first place. It was certainly not for the long robes, good seats, greetings, gifts, the privilege of leading worship (all drawbacks, not perks in my 24 year old eyes!)—though I’m surprised at how much I kinda like that stuff, I won’t kid you.

Rather, I went down this path, as I’ve told you before, because my tutor John Stroup asked, at the beginning of my last semester of div school, what I would do when I graduated in a few months? I told him I was planning a career as a trust-fund hobo, bumming around the planet, and he asked where I would go to church in my ruck-sacking around the world?

I said, “some evangelical-catholic joint that does the old liturgy rite, and preaches Jesus and his cross.” John asked how many of those I’d found? And I admitted: not many, really. In fact, come to think of it, at the time, I didn’t know of a single one that focused on that and nothing else! And John said (with, for him, a rare lack of any irony): “Look, Kevin: I think you will hate all your church options, will stop going (as John had) and end up in hell. If you don’t become a pastor, and do it yourself, I just don’t see you connected to Christ’s Church in any but a theoretical way.” And John and my mentor Paul Holmer were very down on… theory.

But, maybe I’m just making… excuses?

It’s the last part of our Gospel, about the widow’s two cents, that puzzles me. I feel like the answer to my concerns is in there, somewhere, but I can’t quite see it.

My mother told me how her mother, Julia, was that widow, one Sunday when mom was 5 or 6 years old—and how much it pissed her off at the time!

My grandfather Jon had died two years before at age 39 and left my grandma with 4 children, my mother being the 2nd youngest, the only girl with 3 brothers. My grandmother had to go to work as a cleaning lady and they were dirt poor in mid 1940s Calgary. My mom’s oldest brother was only 13 and was 3 years from being able to drop out of school and go to work to help support the family.

But they were devout Lutherans. And one Sunday, they were down to their last 2 dollars because of unexpected bills. 2 dollars was what grandma promised to tithe. And when they were leaving the church, my mom glared at her mother reaching into her purse. Because there was no food at home, at all! Those 2 dollars had to feed the family that day. And Grandma Julia, with a weary smile, popped the 2 bucks in the collection box.

And my mother… fumed. She’d been hungry before. She knew what a pain it was. And her mother’s folly in her face made it worser! You never thought about that side of the widow’s mite story, I’ll bet! Reality is often different than Sunday school lessons picture it!

Anyway, about 1 pm, when my mother’s stomach was growling, a knock came at the door. A relative told how an uncle of theirs had died, leaving my grandmother a bequest. An envelope fat with cash was left on a side table. My grandmother caught my mother’s eye with a wry smile.

My mom had ambivalent feelings at the time! Grandma Julia loved her kids. But she obviously loved God more—which made an impression on mom, on me…

Jesus neither commends nor scolds the widow. The crack about scribes devouring widow’s houses makes you wonder what he thought of it all?

My 2 cents (see what I did there? 😉 is that loving God more than anything else—family, or life itself—is something our world will see as aberrant, diseased, even. But those who do can’t help ourselves. Jesus is all we ever really live on. And, by Word and Sacrament, he frees us to go all in on him—and the life that comes from that grants Peace, surpassing all understanding, that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.