Our Whole Lives

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during both worship services yesterday morning.]

Mark 12:38-44

“All she had to live on.”

That’s what Jesus told His disciples that the poor widow put into the temple offering a few days before Jesus was crucified. 

And, this is no exaggeration on Jesus’ part. When you read the Greek in which Mark originally quotes Jesus, Jesus says of the woman’s offering: “ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς,” literally she placed all her life or her whole life in that offering box.

Now, let’s be clear. In the Old Testament God only called His people to give a tithe, the first ten percent of their income, to the temple. Sometimes, additional tithes were called for in God's Law. But that same Old Testament law would have exempted a poor widow from giving anything. 

Yet here is this woman giving God everything she has to live on. Was she crazy? Was she imprudent? Was she trying to make deals with God?

Jesus doesn’t seem to think that there's anything wrong with her.  In fact, He commends the woman as an example of faithfulness for His disciples, for you and me. 

But let me be clear: Our Gospel lesson for this morning is about a lot more than money. It’s about our whole lives and how we spend them.

Our lesson, Mark 12:38-44, takes place in the temple during Holy Week. Just before where our lesson picks up, Jesus has had another confrontation with the scribes, the experts in Biblical and Jewish law. They’ve said, as Old Testament prophecy says, that the Messiah Whose coming they anticipated would be a “son of (or a descendant of”) David," Israel’s greatest king, who lived about a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. Their claim is true, but they seem to think that the Messiah will be inferior to David.

Jesus teaches them differently though. He quotes Psalm 110, written by David, where it says: “‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’” Here, Jesus is saying that the great King David called the Messiah--Jesus Himself--Lord. Jesus is no inferior to David. Jesus is superior to every king, prophet, priest, and preacher who preceded Him and of any and all born in subsequent centuries. Hebrews 1:1-2 echoes Jesus' teaching: "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe."

As our lesson picks up Mark’s gospel narrative from there, Jesus talks about the scribes to His disciples: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Jesus is warning us against people and warning us against being people who like to appear like believers, but are really, like the rest of the world, looking out for themselves. Today, such people are the ones who crave titles, to have people bow and scrape to them and honor them. They’re hung up on status and hierarchy and having places of honor.

Some of you may know that years ago, Ann and I were invited--along with about 500 people, so don’t be impressed--to a dinner with a prominent man. It was Billy Graham. Just before dinner started, a local pastor was invited to offer the prayer. It went on forever, certainly what Jesus would call a “long prayer.” And, I hope I wasn't judging unfairly, but it certainly seemed that the man was praying less to God than to Billy Graham. Jesus warns against long public prayers meant to wow people with the praying person’s faith.

Jesus also warns us against people and warning us against being people who crave money and the status it can confer on us. He said that the scribes found ways to look pious while extorting money from widows because of their love of position.

They’re like pastors and church people who focus on the performance of liturgy with elaborate exactness but don't believe that Jesus was God. Or that He was born of a virgin. Or that He rose from the dead. Or that He was (and is) “the way and the truth and the life,” the only Lord by Whom we can be saved from sin and death. Or that the Bible is the Word of God. 

Like the scribes’ friends, the Pharisees, who Jesus once described as “whitewashed tombs,” the scribes were spiritually empty suits. Jesus is telling us that in the halls of heaven where God hears prayers offered in Jesus’ name, people like the scribes remain unheard by the Almighty, their long public prayers no more than noise!  

Then, we’re told this, starting in verse 41: “[Jesus]  sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’”

The widow wasn’t trying to be seen by anyone. She didn’t make a show of her appearance at the temple. She simply gave everything she had. She believed that the God Who gave her life would sustain her in this life and give her new life beyond the grave. She didn’t worry about sacrificing herself in this way because she knew that the God Who gives life has plenty more to give away. Jesus says that this gift of her whole-self exceeded the value of all the fat offerings made by the “look at me” crowd.

It’s instructive to consider when this incident took place: Just a few days later, Jesus Himself would give His whole life on the cross. Repeatedly, Satan and the world tried to tempt Jesus away from the cross, to divert Him from His mission of dying as the perfect sacrifice for our sins so that all who believe in Him can live with God and share in His resurrection life. But Jesus was intent on giving His whole life to God for us so that He could give new life to us. Luke tells us that "Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem (Luke 9:51)," and referring to His suffering and death as His baptism, Jesus said, "I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed (Luke 12:50)."

The only way you and I can share in the life that God gives exclusively through Jesus Christ is to for us to yield our lives to Jesus and His saving grace. That’s what it means to believe in Jesus: To trust Him with our whole lives. And, although it’s been four decades since I came to faith in Christ, I realize that I am only now beginning to understand that truth, to understand how complete God's grace in Christ is, how serious my sin is, and how I can do nothing toward my own salvation but give up on being God. 

I repent daily for my sinful desire to hold back parts of my life from Jesus’ lordship and each day, the grace of God given in Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, works to keep making me over in Jesus’ image.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:25: “...whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

This isn’t legalism, folks. God doesn’t require our lives in a legal transaction to claim the salvation He gives in Jesus. Rather, it’s a simple fact that only as we daily empty ourselves of being the lords of our own lives, are we free to take Christ’s outstretched hand of forgiveness, life, and love. 

All the scribes, obsessed with earthly comfort and status, were slaves to this world, weighed down with concerns over what people thought of them, how others saw them, whether they were happy. (They sound like thoroughly modern people, don't they?)

The widow cared only about what God thought of her. And she already knew that God cared very deeply for all people, even poor, powerless widows. That’s why her offering was so valuable: It came from an authentically surrendered believer putting her surrender into practice.

In Germany a few days ago, at the behest of Ann who knew that it wasn't far away, our tour guide took us on a side trip to Ettal Abbey in the German Alps. It’s here that Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in increments of several months at a time, spent a total of several years in prayer and study and also wrote a portion of his book on being the Church, Life Together. (I recommend it.) As we stood by a plaque remembering Bonhoeffer, I thought of how, though he had traveled to and taught in America and Britain and been offered cushy assignments on theological faculties, decided to return to Germany after the racist nationalist movement of Adolf Hitler had taken hold. Bonhoeffer felt he had to be in Germany to continue to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of Hitler’s evils. Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazi government in the waning days of the war. As he went to the gallows, he said, “This is the end–for me, the beginning of life.”  

What are we willing to yield to the Lord? 

What shall we, as individuals, give in response to a grace that has done and is doing everything for me? 

Of course, every Christian will see it as an appropriate expression of our faith to worship regularly, to give to the mission of the Church, take up a ministry, pray in Jesus' name. But even more than your money or your works, God wants you. 

He wants to give you the new life on which Bonhoeffer staked his life as he went to be executed. 

God wants you because He loves you. 

God wants you so that He can redeem and make new every part of your life: your mind and emotions, your work, your friendships, and your marriage, your present and your eternity. 

God wants you because He’s given His all--even the Son’s life sacrificed on a cross--to make you His own. 

And He wants you for all eternity.

May we, like the widow, learn what it means to give our whole selves to the God Who has given us all in Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

What God Wants

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday, November 8.]

Mark 12:38-44
“All she had to live on.” 

That’s what Jesus and the disciples witnessed the poor widow put into the temple offering a few days before Jesus was crucified. 

And, this is no exaggeration on Jesus’ part, by the way. When you read the Greek in which Mark originally quotes Jesus, Jesus says of the woman’s offering: “ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς,” literally all her life or her whole life, she placed in that offering box.

Now, let’s be clear. In the Old Testament God only called His people to give a tithe, the first ten percent of their income, to the temple. 

And that same Old Testament law would have exempted a poor widow from giving anything. 

But here is this woman giving all she has to live on. 

Was she crazy? 

Was she imprudent? 

Was she trying to make deals with God? 

Jesus doesn’t seem to think that there's anything wrong with this woman. 

In fact, he commends the woman as an example of faithfulness for His disciples, for you and me. 

But before you put your money over your wallets to protect them, let me just tell you that our Gospel lesson for this morning is about a lot more than money. 

It’s about our whole lives and how we will spend them.

Our lesson, Mark 12:38-44, takes place in the temple during Holy Week. Just before where our lesson picks up, Jesus has had another confrontation with the scribes, the experts in Biblical and Jewish law. They’ve said that the Messiah Whose coming they anticipated would be a “son of (or a descendant of”) David," Israel’s greatest king, who lived about a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. 

The claim is true enough, but they seem to think that the Messiah will be inferior to David. 

Jesus though, quotes Psalm 110, written by David, where it says: “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ Here, Jesus says, the great King David called the Messiah--Jesus Himself--Lord. 

As our lesson begins, Jesus talks about the scribes: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Jesus is warning us against people and warning us against being people who like to look like super pious believers, but are really looking out for number one. 

Today, they’re people who like to have titles, to have people bow and scrape to them and honor them. They’re hung up on status and hierarchy. 

You find them still in the Church today. 

We were invited to a dinner with a prominent man and just before dinner started, a local pastor was invited to offer the prayer. It went on forever, certainly what Jesus would call a “long prayer.” And, I hope I wasn't judging unfairly, but it certainly seemed that the man was praying less to God than to the prominent man visiting our town.

Jesus says that our aim shouldn't be to pray impressive prayers, but to pray honest prayers, humble prayers.

Jesus is also warning us against people and warning us against being people who crave money and the status it can confer on us. He said that the scribes found ways to extort money from widows because of their love of position. 

Of course, the particularly slimy thing about the scribes as Jesus describes them here is that they want, with their elevated status, to look like pious servants of God, men who are close to God, holier than others. 

In fact, how they looked was of paramount importance to them. It was all about the show. 

They’re like pastors and church people who focus on the performance of liturgy with elaborate exactness, but don't believe that Jesus was God. Or that He was born of a virgin. Or that He rose from the dead. Or that He was (and is) “the way and the truth and the life,” the only Lord by Whom we can be saved from sin and death. Or that the Bible is the Word of God. 

Like the scribes’ friends, the Pharisees, who Jesus once described as “whitewashed tombs,” the scribes were spiritually empty suits. But for as long as they lived on this earth, they were, if I can mix my metaphors, the big dogs. Jesus says though that beyond the gates of death, people like them will be condemned by God.  

Then, we’re told this, starting in verse 41: “And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’”

The widow wasn’t trying to be seen by anyone. She didn’t make a show of her appearance at the temple. She simply--almost furtively, it seems--gave everything she had. 

She believed that the God Who gave her life would either sustain her in this life or give her new life beyond the grave. 

She didn’t worry about sacrificing herself in this way because she knew that the God Who gives life has plenty more to give away. 

Jesus says that this gift of her whole self exceeded the value of all the fat offerings by the “look at me” crowd.

To me, it’s instructive to consider when this incident took place. 

Just a few days later, Jesus Himself would give His whole life on the cross. 

Repeatedly, Satan and the world had striven to tempt Jesus, to divert Him from His mission of dying as the perfect sacrifice for our sins so that all who believe in Him can live with God and share in His resurrection life. But He was intent on giving His whole life for us so that He could give new life to us.

And in fact, the only way you and I can share in the life that God gives exclusively through Jesus Christ is to for us give our whole lives to Jesus. That’s what it means to believe in Jesus: To trust Him with our whole lives. 

Thirty-nine years after coming to faith in Christ, I realize that I am only now beginning to understand that truth.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:25: “...whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” This isn’t legalism. God doesn’t require our lives in a legal transaction to claim the salvation He gives in Jesus. 

Rather, it’s a simple fact that until we empty ourselves of all thought of needing earthly power or comfort, we can’t be free to take Christ’s outstretched hand of forgiveness, life, and love. 

Again, after all these years of being a Christian, I feel that I am only now beginning to learn this.

All the scribes, obsessed with earthly comfort and status, were slaves to this world, weighed down with concerns over what people thought of them, how others saw them, whether they were happy. 

The widow cared only about what God thought of her. 

And she already knew that God cared very deeply for all people, even poor, powerless widows. 

That’s why her offering was so valuable: It came from an authentically surrendered believer putting her surrender into practice.

What are you willing to give to the Lord? 

Of course, every Christian will see it as an appropriate expression of our faith to give of our finances to the mission of Christ’s Church. 

But even more than your money, God wants you. 

He wants you because He loves you. 

He wants you so that He redeem and make new every part of your life: your mind and emotions, your work, your friendships, and your marriage, your present and your eternity. 

God wants you because He’s given His all--even death on a cross--to make you His own. 

And He wants you for all eternity. 

May we, like the widow, learn what it means to give our whole selves to the God we know in Jesus. Amen 

All That Matters

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 13:1-13
A few years ago, I heard a couple tell about a party they had for three other couples at their house. All eight of these people were committed Christians who were also highly successful. Much of their conversation revolved around the latest job offers, the houses they were building, the new cars they'd just bought, and the latest gizmos and gadgets they'd acquired. Their conversation took a more serious turn though, when one of the men reminded them all about the fate awaiting this earth according to the Bible. "One day," he said, "this will all burn."

Let's pray.

God: Remind us this morning of what is truly important. In Jesus' Name. Amen

In last week’s Gospel lesson from Mark, you’ll remember, Jesus contrasted the large offerings to the temple made by powerful religious/political elites (what one of the kids during last week's Children's Sermon called bishodents, mixtures of bishops and preidents) to the paltry offering made by a poor widow. Jesus said that because the widow gave all she had to live on, while the bishodents put in their leftovers, the widow's offering was worth infinitely more than theirs.

That should have been a warning sign to the disciples (and to us). God doesn’t value the things that we often value.

Bigger isn't necessarily better.

Influence doesn't mean moral rightness.

A seminary diploma doesn't indicate deeper faithfulness.

God doesn't always look at things the same way that the world does.

This is the same principle that God revealed to the ancient judge Samuel hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus.

Samuel had gone to Bethlehem in order to anoint a son of a man named Jesse as the new king of Israel. Samuel was about to give the honor to the handsome Eliab. Eliab evidently looked like a king. But God said, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature...for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart..."--that is, on the faith and the motivations a faith relationship with God creates in people.

Even if the disciples didn’t remember an incident which, even for them, would have been part of their ancient religious history, they might have understood that big isn’t always better or that outwardly religious or successful doesn’t necessarily mean closeness to God, from Jesus' encounter with the rich man.

There, you’ll remember, Jesus told an evidently religious wealthy man that his riches were getting in the way of his eternity with God. But apparently, the first disciples were as thick-headed, slow-hearted, and faithless as I am much of the time!

In any case, our Gospel lesson for today finds a disciple, Jesus' words extolling the faithfulness of the poor widow still ringing in his ears, commenting on the beauty of the large stones and large buildings of the temple. (Maybe he was trying to change the subject.) “Look, Teacher," he says, "what large stones and what large buildings!”

The temple complex in first century Judea was enormous. It was also visually stunning. Many world travelers of the day saw it and declared it to be the most beautiful building they’d ever seen.



Setting at the top of Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the one-time site of a threshing floor purchased by King David one-thousand years before, this particular temple had been built more recently by King Herod as a symbol of his dubious claim to the throne of David.

The temple was the center of Jewish worship, the place where the dispersed Jewish population from throughout the Mediterranean basin came for festivals like the Passover.

For first-century Judeans like Jesus’ first followers, the temple was not just the place where they believed the presence of God lived in the holy of holies. It was also a focal point of national pride. The Romans may have conquered them, they felt, but in the cavernous temple, the God of all creation met them.

“Just look at this place,” the disciple tells Jesus. Jesus doesn't miss a beat. He asks all of the disciples to do some looking themselves.

“Do you see all these great buildings?” Jesus asks. “Some day, they will all be thrown down. Not one stone will be left.”

Jesus is right, of course. In 70AD, thirty plus years after His death and resurrection, the Romans would destroy the temple. Today, it’s the site of the third holiest mosque of Islam. All that’s left of the temple is the Western Wall, which you see pictured in books and movies, a place where pious Jews and others pray and also leave written prayer requests in the crevices between the ancient stones.



Bigger isn’t better.

What we think to be holy and inviolable may not be what it seems.

By the time Jesus was born and conducting His ministry in Judea, God’s people had walked far from God. So far from God, in fact, that when the real presence of God Himself showed up on the earth in the person of Jesus Christ, they joined with the rest of the world in a conspiracy to kill Him on a cross.

In His flesh, Jesus was the real holy of holies and Jews and Gentiles saw in Him the chance to get rid of God and to be their own bosses. They put more stock in the things of this world that can be seen—buildings, mortar, personal strength, power, money, military might—than they did in God, Who when they finally caught a glimpse of Him—was a carpenter from Nazareth they thought they could easily kill off.

But as Jesus speaks with the disciples in today’s lesson, all of that lay a few days ahead. Right now, they’re frightened by His words. They want Jesus to tell them more about the future. “When will the temple be destroyed?” they wonder. “What signs will point out that it’s about to happen?” For them, these questions were more than queries about the future of a building. For them, the end of the temple was tantamount to the end of the world.

People have always wanted to get special insight into the future. There's a whole cottage industry built around people's interest in knowing when the world will end and how it will come about. The Left Behind books are in that category. So is the new film evidently based on ancient Mayan mythology, 2012.





But whenever Jesus was asked for insights into cataclysmic events like the destruction of the ancient temple or the end of the world, He gave no inside information. He didn’t tell us to hide in caves, commandeer a nuclear weapon, or drink a steady diet of spring water and Tofu.

And in today’s lesson, in talking about the signs associated with the demise of the temple, Jesus simply gives a series of signs that had already happened repeatedly in history before He speaks and which have happened repeatedly since. He says that counterfeit preachers will come along claiming to speak for Him even though their words have nothing to do with God’s revealed Word in the Bible. He says that there will be wars and rumors of wars, enmity among nations, earthquakes, and famines. Those things were prevalent then; they’re prevalent today.

So, what is Jesus telling us? Just this, I think: We live in an imperfect world; but don’t let it take you in.

Your faith cannot be built on the fleeting things of this world, even those made of granite, stone, or marble.

We need to build on the God Who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh.

True story of two young preachers, friends, each regarded as among the best at their trade: They specialized in reaching out to young people with the Good News of Jesus Christ. They spoke to teenagers and university students across the country. Thousands came to faith or experienced a deepened faith through their preaching.

Each though, early in their careers, went through crises in their faith. They each began to question the authority of Scripture, dogged by things they couldn’t fully understand or explain in the Bible. One renounced his faith, becoming an atheist.

The other, in California, where he was on a preaching and missionary tour, took a walk through a field. He agonized in prayer over his doubts. He came to a large rock. He set his Bible on the rock and kneeled in submission to God. Pointing to his Bible, Billy Graham told God, “I don’t understand everything in this book. But I intend to trust in You and in this book.” Through the access he gave to God, God built up Billy Graham’s faith. And through his ministry, millions of people have come to faith in Jesus or had their faith in Jesus strengthened.

Every day, you and I confront the same issues that confronted Billy Graham as he took that walk some sixty years ago and that confronted the disciples as they walked through the imposing temple grounds in Jerusalem.

Who and what will you trust?

Who or what will you live for?

No matter when cataclysm or the end of this world may come, we each need to know how we’re going to live. What will be most important to us?

What will be our highest priority? Will it be the paychecks, the safe life, the best house, the nicest car, the greatest applause, the most power?

These things fade, die, crumble, or pass away as surely as the temple in Jerusalem did.

In Mark 13:13, after telling His followers all that they were likely to endure just for being His followers—persecution, trial, betrayal, death—the very things He would endure just a few days after He speaks these words--Jesus says this, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

The one whose heart is fixed on Christ rather than on the rewards of this dying world, will live with God forever.

As a younger man, I had absolutely outsized ambitions. I wanted to be a best-selling author. I wanted to be President. I wanted to be a big shot.

But I can honestly say today that when I see the love and grace of God given to me in Christ despite my sinfulness and when I see that God has, thankfully, never given me the punishment I deserve, I have finally arrived at only one ambition in life.

All I want is to endure in faithfulness.

I just want to live each day to the glory of God, no matter what God asks me to do.*

I’m comforted by the fact that, even though I fail and sin each day, those who turn to God in repentance and make faithfulness to Christ their aim--those who endure, will be saved from sin and death and hopelessness by the God Who went to a cross for all who trust in Jesus.

Endure in trusting in Jesus.

Build your life on Him.

That’s the way of salvation.

As we prepare for Consecration Sunday next week, don’t worry about the future. Make following Christ today—each day, one day at a time--your one and only aim in life.

That’s all that matters.

Amen

*I should say that most of the time this is what I want. Or better yet, it's what I want to want. But I am a selfish sinner and there are times when I want to glorify myself--or at least be comfortable--more than I want to glorify Christ.

No Leftovers for God

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 12:38-44
Here’s a bit of trivia: I love vegetable soup. Love it. I especially love it a few days after Ann makes a big pot of it. Two days on, after being cooked and then refrigerated and set on the stove to simmer for a time, vegetable soup hits its stride as a taste treat. Sometimes, leftovers are the very best thing you can set before another person!


But leftovers--the leftovers of our time, our talents, and our treasures--are the worst things we can set before God. Why is that?

One reason is that unless we give God first place in our lives, He’s likely to have no place in our lives.

“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,” God tells us in the Old Testament.

What? Is God jealous like a lover, demanding exclusivity? Yes, that’s exactly what God is like.

In fact, in the Old Testament, God is portrayed as a husband to His people, Israel. When they chase after other gods, their idolatry is seen as a kind of adultery. And when they ignore His will, they’re seen as turning their back on their relationship with Him.*

In the New Testament, the Church is sometimes pictured as “the Bride of Christ” with Jesus as its husband.

It also calls the Church, “the body of Christ,” denoting an almost organic connection to the One Who died and rose to give us everlasting life.

Whatever picture of God in relation to you and me that we like best, it’s clear that God means to have a close, intimate relationship with those who follow Him.

Leftovers can sometimes be a great way to express our love for those we care about. But they’re not the best way for us to express love and gratitude to the God Who, in Jesus, gave Himself on the cross for us.

We were designed to put God and His purposes first, not because God is an egomaniac, but because God made us for a relationship with Him. We are only complete--what our English translations of the Bible unfortunately call perfect--when the holes in all of our souls are filled by God.

Only we can give God permission to do that by putting Him first in our lives.

And it’s only when we let God have first place in our priorities, decisions, relationships, and plans that our lives can reflect His loving design for our lives.

When we do put God first in our lives, it will be clearly seen not only in how we use our time and our abilities, but also in our checkbook registers.

Most of us remember that the first murder in human history happened when one son of Adam and Eve, Cain, killed the other, Abel. What’s less remembered is why Cain killed his brother.

It turns out that Abel had offered the first offspring of his flocks to God. Cain gave God his leftovers.


Their offerings may have been of equal value, but God obviously enjoyed Abel’s offering more. When Abel gave God the very first bit of his wealth, the first ten percent of his income, he was expressing gratitude to God. He was also expressing faith that God would sustain him even if he only had 90% of his wealth left.

Cain was so resentful of the pleasure God took in Abel’s faith that he killed Abel. The first murder occurred because one child of God thought so little of God that he offered God his leftovers. At least for the moment he took to kill his brother, Cain gave no place to God in his life. Unless we give God first place in our lives, He is likely to have no place in our lives.

There’s a second reason it’s dangerous to only give our leftovers to God’s purposes in the world.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus lashes out at a group of supposedly holy people, the scribes. The term for a scribe in the original Greek of the New Testament is grammateus, a word from which we get the word, grammar in our English language. Literally, it means someone with the ability to write. Over time, the term came to be used of a person who was expert in both religious and civil law.

Jesus says that many of the scribes in first-century Judea “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!” And then an even worse indictment: “They devour widows’ houses...”

Some suggest that Jesus was accusing the scribes, experts in Biblical law, of figuring out how to get their greedy hands on the meager estates of widows, who usually had no money. Widows who, in that deeply patriarchal society, by some strange happenstance, had an estate or income were deemed incapable of managing on their own. Scribes were appointed to act as their financial managers and often, lined their own pockets with the widows' money while leaving the widows with nothing.

But, at a deeper level, I think that Jesus meant to say that the scribes were perfectly content to let the poor--people like widows--give everything of their small resources to the support of the Temple and priests while they gave their leftovers.

And they did this while courting reputations of religious faithfulness and piety, giving a tiny fraction of their fat wallets, of their more than ample free time, and of their abilities to the purposes of God.

I’m sure you’ve heard or read about the Pareto Principle. It “states that for many events, roughly 80% of the events come from 20% of the causes...” In most businesses, for example, 20% of the people will make 80% of the payroll. And 20% of the people will do 80% of the work and 80% of the people will do 20% of the work.

As Jesus watches the scribes and then the widow in our lesson today, He really is lamenting the injustice which results when a fraction of believers—in this case, the scribes--demand that those with less time and treasure give their all while they give their leftovers.


That’s why Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

It's interesting to note that the Greek New Testament word that's translated as "all she had to live on" in our lesson is the word, bios, which means life. (We get words like biology and biosphere from this word.) Jesus says that in spite of the ingratitude of selfish people, the widow gave her life to God. She foreshadows what Jesus Himself will do on the cross, giving His life for the sake of all of us.

The widow gave everything she had to God. In this, she also foreshadows the early believers. One of the characteristics of the early Christian Church, the Church that began after Jesus rose from the dead and went back to heaven was how it violated the Pareto Principle: 100% of its members did 100% of the work, contributed to the work of the Church and helped one another out. One passage in the New Testament book of Acts, which tells the history of the early Church, says: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”

What would happen if something of the spirit of the early Church infected the Church today?

What if it infected Saint Matthew Lutheran Church?

What would happen in the lives of those Jesus describes as "the poor in spirit," people who have no connection to Christ or the Church, if we in the Church were more like that widow and less like the scribes, giving ourselves, our efforts, and our treasures to Christ and His purposes in the world?

I tell you what would happen: Thousands of lives, first ours and then, our neighbors’ lives would be eternally changed for the better!

Our trust in Jesus would deepen and the fire and the passion of our faith would lend power to our invitations to others to come and follow Jesus with us!

In two weeks, we will have our Consecration Sunday. When you receive your time and talent survey and estimate of giving card by mail, please pray about how you will respond to the Savior Who gave His life for you and how you will be part of what God wants to do at Saint Matthew.

Speaking specifically to finances, let me tell you that I know that for many of you, this has been a hard year.

I also understand--and more importantly, God understands--how your time for Saint Matthew's ministries can be limited.

Whether it's our time or our talents or our money, God doesn't ask us to give anything more than we have.

God also knows that Saint Matthew isn't the only place where you can serve God's purposes in the world. There are lots of worthy ways to serve God and neighbor and to glorify Jesus Christ that have nothing to do with the formal ministries of Saint Matthew.

But I urge you, as you approach Consecration Sunday, to ask God, whatever your ability or limitations, to help you put Him first, to ask God to help you discern what you can do...because you know that on the cross, God put you first.

Leftovers are great when it comes to comfort foods like vegetable soup. But the God we know in Jesus Christ deserves our first and best and all. Amen

*Spurned lover though He is, God still wants to restore His relationship with the unfaithful Israel, just as He wants to be in relationship with us when we willfully walk away and abandon God.