A Sermon for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

In today’s gospel, set in Jerusalem just days before his Passion, Jesus points to certain scribes, religious leaders. They are fancy dressers. They live in marvelous style. They aim to impress. They make a big show of their piety. People defer to them and their self-importance. They live like lords. These posers prosper at the expense of others, particularly the poor, exploiting vulnerable widows, eating up their bank accounts.

Then Jesus walks over to the temple treasury and sits down across the way from it to people-watch, noting the clinking of coins in the collection box. He points to a poor widow and offers the observation to his disciples that she who has contributed two small coins, a pittance, has put in more than those who are rich. She put in everything she had!

Jesus sits to the side and simply points to the widow. In a sense, he will let the widow speak through her actions and by what she represents. For as we will see, the widow embodies faithful living, a life lived to God. She is all in. Today she will be our teacher.

Her presence points us to all those passages in the Old Testament where God commands justice and shows concern for those who are economically and socially vulnerable, the orphan and widow. She points us right to today’s lesson from First Kings, the story about the prophet Elijah and the widow at Zarephath.

Now the biblical book of Kings is both a record of the kings who ruled over the Israelites, and a catalog of their bad behavior and wicked ways. In fact, Kings is a cautionary tale about kingship. The Bible presents a highly ambivalent picture of kingship. Let me say more about that …

In the exodus God liberated the Hebrews from Pharaoh’s despotic rule, God covenanted with them, God gave them the law, God sustained them in the wilderness, God brought them into the promised, God gave their armies victory. God was their king …. But then the people asked for a strongman to protect them from their enemies. As the tale is told in First Samuel, the Lord God reluctantly grants them their request, warning the Israelites that it would go badly for them. For their kings will lord over them as Pharaoh did, taxing them to build palaces, temples, and barracks and to maintain a lavish lifestyle; conscripting them to fight their battles; lording over them—but when the people cry out because of the injustices of their kings, the Lord would not hear their complaints. To be sure, Saul, David, Solomon are remembered as great kings—and as seriously flawed. First and Second Kings tells tales of the kings who succeeded them; the kings that followed largely failed to be faithful to the covenant with God (in fact, only two of them are regarded as good). They worshipped foreign gods, and as a consequence the Lord God punished them by dividing the kingdom, which then was conquered by foreign kings, terrible and mighty.

As the Psalmist today proclaims, Don’t put your trust in kings!

No wonder Jesus resists every effort to make him a king. When the crowds try to crown him, he runs away. He has not come to lord it over the people but to set them free. Jesus has come to serve, and he calls for his followers to be servant-leaders after his example, putting service to others over and against the self-serving ways of the kings of old.

Today we meet prophet Elijah, who comes on the scene during the reign of wicked King Ahab, who has erected idols to the storm god Baal. To prove that it is the Lord God, not Baal, who sends the rains that water the earth and produce the harvests that feed the people, Elijah announces a three-year drought that will only be broken by the Word of the Lord.

God sends Elijah into the wilderness, where the Lord God provides for him water to drink and food to eat. God then directs him to Zarephath to the home of a widow. He asks her for hospitality, a cup of water, a slice of bread. She hesitates. Her pantry is almost empty. She has just enough food left to feed her son and herself one last meal. But the prophet speaks a reassuring word from the Lord: her supply won’t run empty. God will provide!

In First Kings we see the faith of a widow who trusts the promise of God. She gives God’s prophet her all, and God keeps God’s promise: she and her son have enough to eat. Her faith enables her to give her all.

Back in Mark, Jesus calls his disciples to notice that this widow gives all that she has—literally, “the whole of her life.” She gives her whole life!

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ pointing to the widow is the last scene in Jesus’ public ministry. As Pete Peery points out, all that remains is his foretelling of the destruction of the temple and his Passion. The end is near. Jesus is on the way to giving “the whole of his life” for something that is corrupted and condemned: all of humanity, the whole world.

So, this widow offers a glimpse into what Jesus is all about. In her we see him. We see a servant-leader who will give his all for the sake of others.

Jesus calls his disciples, the church, to himself and points out this poor widow and her giving. Watching her will not lead to uncritical support for religious institutions, or even inspire a few more financial pledges in support of the stewardship campaign. But could it reinforce the call of Christ to the Church to give the whole of its life and ministry for the sake of those who do not deserve such a gift, a hurting world, broken by sin?

Jesus pointed to the widow. What might we point to as a sign of that new life, which is God’s gift to us? Today at St. Mary’s I see Jesus’ followers ministering to the sick, the lonely, the lost. I see Christian disciples engaging in the struggle to free people from fear, despair, depression, addiction, injustice, oppression. I see people seeking to deepen their faith through prayer, reading, and discussions. I see parents bringing their children to church and volunteers who are helping children to grow in faith. I see a generous people, opening their purses, to care for their neighbors in need. I see people working behind the scenes to keep the lights on and the doors of this church wide open, and I see people singing their faith and lending their talents to the perfecting of our praises in our worship today. I see people giving their all, trusting—like the widow, like our Lord—the promise of God that when we give our all, God will keep God’s promises for God’s people.

But the truly surprising and astonishingly good news is that even when we hold back or fall short, even when we fail—and we will fail—God is still God. Jesus will give his all for us. And Jesus Christ is Lord.

Thanks be to God!

The Rev. Gregory Bezilla