What is there to say?

What is there to say?

Veterans’ Day

Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

November 11, 2018

To be honest, this had been a really hard week to figure out what to preach about.  We are just two weeks past the horrific synagogue massacre, and then this week, another shooting in a nightclub full of young people.  Our hearts are heavy with the sadness of seeing such senseless loss of life.

And then there are the fires in California that seemed to come out of no-where. 

And then to top it off – here we are on Veterans Day – on the 100^th anniversary of the end of the devastating war that killed millions – it is estimated that 23 million people lost their lives all told by the end of that conflict including 100,000 men from our own country, and 700,000 from Great Britain.

And so it leaves us asking, “what is the good news of God that manifests itself from the smoke and the fire, and the carnage?”

I remember a homiletics professor saying when you are stuck in preparing your sermon, turn to the texts.  Trust the texts? What are the texts trying to tell us? What does the Holy Spirit want us to know right now,from these very texts that are before us.

So let’s turn to the texts.

And so we have two stories that are fairly similar, aren’t they?

In our Old Testament lesson, we have a widow who is about to prepare her last meal for herself and her son, and after that, they will prepare to die – they have hit the end of the road. There is nothing to eat and there is nothing to hope for. They are emptied out, down to the last few ounces of meal, and drops of oil.  I wondered how Elijah felt going to the widow in Zarephath to ask her for her last little bit of sustenance?  Did he know that God would provide for her after he took his share of the cakes?  So the widow, because she has been commanded by God, we read that at the beginning of the lesson, she gives her last bit of nourishment away – and in giving, she is given an abundance in return.  She was given life.

And then turning to our Gospel lesson, we hear about the widow in the temple giving her last two coins to the treasury.  Jesus says of the widow “out of her poverty [the widow] has put everything she had, all that she had to live on.”  Some translations say all her livelihood – but the Greek is more telling. It says she gave her βίον αὐτῆς– which literally means, she gave her life.

Sowhat do we make of these stories? What they seem to be saying is that all Godasks you to do is to give God everything. And yet, that challenge to give our all, our entire life, seems so impossible, so unfathomable, it even seems ridiculous.  We might quite rightly ask, “Is God going to pay for my children’s college education? Is God going to provide for me in my old age? I can’t give God everything. What will be left?”

But what I think these lessons are asking us to consider, where are we holding back in giving to God? Where can we start this week in giving our lives over to God?What are those two coins, or the last bit of meal and oil, that God wants from me to hand over for God’s safe keeping?

And maybe the clue to where we start is in the psalm for today.

Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help!

Whose hope is in the Lord their God.

Psalm 146

What would our lives be like if we really could trust God to help us?  What would our lives be like if we could fully live in hope that God will make things right.  What would that free us up to do and to say and hope for?  How would that help us to accomplish God’s work?

So this week, in the wake of the week that has just been, and on a day we remember the men and women in our armed services who have given it all, and our lessons that talk of two women that gave their lives to God, I invite you to take sometime in stillness, time and prayer.  And to ponder this one question: what is God trying to make manifest in you, and what do you need to give up to make that so?