Sermons are really better when you listen to them. Listen here!
Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from the Holy Trinity, Amen.
So, after a story about a widow giving all she had to the church, and a recent email from our wonderful volunteer finance director about money, you may be expecting a sermon about why it is important to give money to the church, and I’m not talking just a skimming off the top, but your whole paycheck.
Unfortunately, I am not here to do that today, in major part because I think that’s bad advice, and I can’t see Jesus advocating for unethical advice like “give us all your money, we don’t care if you die because of it.” I certainly would never walk up to someone struggling to feed their family and say to them that their lives would be blessed if they gave the church their last $20 instead of using it to buy some food. And I’m not interested in telling people who have enough money to support themselves to go ahead and put themselves in that position either.
And yet, that’s what happens lots of places every three years when the story of the Widow giving everything she has is read...a plea for giving.
Only...that discounts the first part of the story, about the scribes and their fancy robes and long prayers. And I have a suspicion about why preachers tend to ignore that part. It hits entirely too close to home...seeing as how we preachers tend to wear robes and say long prayers.
Jesus begins this story warning the disciples about spending all their time watching the people in power trying to find God in them. Which makes me think of the past two years, and specifically the past couple months, and especially Tuesday night. I was among the people glued to my TV and iPad watching numbers with such fervor that sometimes it felt like a drug addiction, and each time a state was called it was a fix...till the next one was called.
I got entirely wrapped up in who was going to become our next president that ultimately, I blacked out the rest of the things happening in my life and world for several hours on Tuesday night. I spent all my time focusing on the big wigs, who, while they were not wearing beautiful robes and saying long prayers, may just be our societies equivalent to the first century temple scribes. I think that is one of the biggest shames of this past election cycle, the night itself, and the aftermath. I was saddened as I watched facebook Tuesday night and even now, at the vitriol that was spewed out on both sides, including posts that claimed this election and its results were ordained by God.
We’ve tricked ourselves into thinking (whether we are aware of it or not) that whoever we elect is going to be our savior. And that our party is the one God likes the most. And fortunately for us, God is not a republican...or a democrat. And God isn’t particularly interested in us seeing those in power as God.
And so, Jesus gives us a different vision. Mark contrasts the images of the powerful people in the church and society and the systems in which they work, with a widow, the lowliest of women in the first century, who gives all she has.
I consider the widow’s position in this whole story to be one that makes me stop and reevaluate everything that tends to get spewed around in society. This woman in an act of piety, gives everything she has to a system that tended to be rather exclusive, and oppressive. The church then, much like today, was a system that let people down, that was part of the problem as much as it was part of the solution to problems, and existed as a broken institution. Yet, the church also helps people understand truth about their existence in the universe, and can be an intensely beautiful institution.
Which brings me back to last Tuesday. Perhaps our voting was a sign of the same story of the widow. Neither candidate was perfect. None of us is. But we choose to participate in a system where we believe the person we voted for was ultimately interested in the good of the people whom he was to serve. And regardless of who you voted for, I think it’s important to uphold in others that they made the choice that they felt was the most responsible to the most number of people. We know our elected officials will let us down, and we know that they will surprise us in all sorts of great ways too. Living in that tension is where the widow lived, being part of something that both helped, and harmed.
And whether we are talking about the church, or the political system we find ourselves in, or the corporate world where we try to do as much ethical work as possible within a capitalist society, we know that everything we do cannot compare to the ultimate healing which God brings to the picture.
God created a world that was whole, without scribes or widows, without republicans or democrats, without CEOs or occupiers. And God’s ultimate goal is reconciliation between groups opposed to each other and systems that simultaneously help and hurt the people involved in them. Through Christ’s teachings, we see a glimpse of this world. We see that there is nothing we can or cannot do that will separate us from Christ’s love. Giving all we have, or feeding ourselves will not separate us from the love of God. Voting for Romney or Obama or no one will not separate us from the love of God. Being gay and eating at Chic-fil-a will not separate us from God’s unconditional love.
See, it all begins with God and God’s unending and unconditional love for every single one of us gathered here today. It begins with God reconciling us to each other and to God through the death and resurrection of Christ who defeated death, defeated brokenness, and defeated the divides that we create in our lives. It is only through Christ that those divides can be healed, bringing together those who hurt us, and those who we hurt.
So even when we fall into our traps of superiority and brokenness, blaming the outcomes of a state election on God...or on the devil...we can still remember that if we are hurt by others or if we hurt others, that Christ brings us together into one community, gathered around one table, for the sake of the kingdom of God. The brokenness is ours...and wholeness is brought by living into that one table, that one community together, knowing that Christ is the head of the table...which is a party we can all get behind.
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