Time with the Children of God
Today I have three bags of coins. Let’s pretend that the person with this bag puts 4 coins into the offering cup. This person gives 3. This person gives two coins. Who gave the most? We would think the person who gave four coins.
But let’s look at the money bags. The first person gave 4 coins, but has X left. The next person gave 3 coins, and they have X left. The last person who gave 2 coins has an empty purse. This person really gave the most, because they gave everything and had nothing left.
Today’s Gospel reading tells us how Jesus watched people give money at the Temple. Some rich people put in large amounts of money. A poor widow put in two copper coins, worth about a cent. But it was all she had. Jesus said “I tell you that this poor widow put more in the offering box than all the others. For the others put in what they had to spare of their riches, but she, out of her poverty, gave all she had to live on.”
Jesus pointed out what the woman did. It wasn’t about the money. It was about her heart. She gave her whole self to God. She knew God would still provide for her. She trusted God completely.
God doesn’t want us to keep our hearts back from him. Would it be OK to love God only sometimes, or in some ways? Would it be ok to love God with half of our hearts? How much time do we give to God in prayer and worship? Are there things in our hearts that God wants us to let go of and give over to him because they’re not good for us, like not being truthful, or being angry with other people? Or do we spend our time doing what we want even when it is not best for the others around us?
God has saved us to be his own alone. Jesus said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30). That can only be because God has first given his whole self to us. We cannot even measure what God has given to us. When we look at Jesus on the Cross, who died to pay the price for our sins, we see that God loves us and the whole world with his whole heart. He gave everything he had. He gave away Jesus and all of his riches to us in baptism [put coins in font] forgiveness, peace, and life with God now, each day. Because God gave us his Son Jesus, we can give ourselves to him as his children, trusting our lives to him, happily using all we have as a gift from God.
Prayer
SERMON
The coins used in our Time with the Children of God today give another helpful illustration: they have an attractive appearance: bright, shiny, golden. But being chocolate coins, it’s not the outward appearance that matters to us, but what is underneath the exterior.
This is really at the heart of what Jesus is teaching in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus warns about the religious authorities who liked to walk around in clerical robes to be admired by the people, and affirmed by being saluted in public. They prized the best seats and places of honour at feasts. They loved having all the focus on themselves. They are more concerned about how they appear on the outside before others, that they may have the approval of others, and be praised and admired and applauded, than helping others. They prayed long prayers with sophisticated language in public. But their prayers are not really prayers to God but a performance to gain the attention of others. They claimed to be religious yet devoured the homes of the most vulnerable—poor widows. They are those of whom God said: “They honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”
Their hearts were far from God because they had such a complex and strict structure of rules to determine who was ‘in’ and who was ‘out’—those who presented as righteous and those whose performance didn’t measure up. They had no concept of compassion. Sinners should just be cast out—like Jesus, who welcomed them, and ate with them, thereby undermining the moral fabric of society they had created. Thus, rather than seeing Jesus as the fulfilment of all righteousness they saw him as unrighteous. That’s why Jesus’ claims to be God offended them. How could this be God—look at him, and those whom he associated with! This immoral rabbi was ruining their traditions and righteous framework with his talk of grace had to be done away with, before he corrupted their supposedly pure society.
This is the very issue Jesus confronts the religious leaders with in chapter 12, in which today’s text is found. At the beginning of the chapter is Jesus’ parable of the tenants in the vineyard. It’s a parable rebuking the religious leaders for stoning the prophets who called for repentance, and who would kill Jesus himself. Jesus concluded by teaching that he is the cornerstone that the builders rejected, spoken of by Isaiah (Isaiah 28:16). He is the cornerstone to the house of God and the righteousness and salvation of God’s people. He is the Son of God, the eternal ruler on David’s throne of whom David said: “The LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.” (Mark 12:35-37).
Therefore, seeing as salvation and righteousness has come to earth for all people in Christ, in chapter 12 Mark points us to the obligation that God’s people have. During the discussion about what is the greatest commandment, Jesus answers: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” (Mark 12:30-31). To do this is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. Worship of God must be more than outward ritual devoid of heartfelt love.
When some of the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus by asking him if they should pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus pointed to the image of Caesar on the coin, and connected one’s obligation with the image. As the coin had an image of Caesar on it, they should give what is due to the Emperor. But as human beings are created in the image of God, stamped with his image, they have an obligation to give themselves to God—our whole selves.
Jesus knew everything about everyone who gave. Not only did Jesus see their money, he saw their hearts. He saw the motives, of why they gave what they did, why they sought recognition and attention, why they made so many regulations and rules, why they were rejecting him, the Son of God. The religious were concerned with their outward behaviours, because they thought God would give them more blessing for how well they achieved and how they presented. That’s how the world works—rewards come to those who do well! But it is not how God works. God sees beyond our external appearance, and into the heart.
It’s against this backdrop in Mark 12 that Jesus corrects the hopeless misguidedness of the religious authorities with a life object lesson—the humble but profound devotion of this poor widow. She actually wasn’t wanting the people to take notice of her. She wasn’t looking for honour or praise. Even though she needs these two cents more than anyone else gathered there, she denies herself of “her two cents worth” and without any fanfare or pious display, gives her coins away.
Jesus knows that she has actually given far more than two cents. This woman has no husband to provide for her. There’s no Government family assistance office at Jerusalem in 30AD. The others put in a lot more in the Temple treasury than she did, but they also kept a lot more back. The poor widow keeps nothing back. She gives away her basic needs, her survival, her very future. Jesus noted: “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” We could translate the original Greek: “she put in her whole life.”
As we watch on and listen in from the sidelines, every fibre of our being, our reason and logic wants to scream out for her to stop. She’s only got a couple of cents left! She’d be better off buying a crumb of bread to survive at least another day. But the widow is not bound up with the cares of this life. In observing her outward actions, Jesus highlights her inner heart. He would elsewhere say: “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also” (Matthew 6:21). In the midst of all the pomp and pious ceremony, it is this woman whose heart is in the right place—complete devotion to God…pouring out her life to God.
Not only is she completely devoted to God, but her giving away everything she has shows that she trusts God will continue to provide for her. This isn’t reckless abandon, this is carefully considered faith! A few cents won’t help her like God can. Like the widow of Zarephath who gave Elijah the last of her food—a handful of flour and a little oil in a jug which she was about to make a last supper with for her and her son—the widow at the Temple gives away her last paltry possessions too. And like the widow at Zarephath trusted in the word of the Lord through Elijah—that the jar of flour would not run out and the jug of oil not run dry, and they afterward ate for many days—the widow at the Temple also knew she too was in God’s gracious care. It’s likely the widow at the Temple knew the account of God’s extraordinary provision to the widow at Zarephath from 1 Kings 17.
Today’s text leads us to ponder: where are our hearts before God? Are we whole-hearted in our devotion to him? What are we are willing to give him …a portion of ourselves, or the whole? What are the motives deep within, for the things we say and do? What are those things we grip on to so tightly that God invites us to surrender to him, rather than struggle to control ourselves? Do we think as the religious leaders of old, that the better a person behaves, and the better they perform, and the more religious they appear, the more they will be blessed from above?
If the sermon stopped there by focusing on the poor widow at the Temple as an example of right priorities with God and whole-hearted devotion to him, then all we would have done would be to focus on more law…crushing law. For even though that is what God expects, who can do this? What would it take to be able to do this?
What would it take? Well—now comes the Gospel. It would take Jesus.
For we share in the same human nature as all those throughout Mark 12, who are self-focused, self-absorbed, and bank on their righteousness before God through effort and performance. The default position of the natural person is that the self is the priority, and other people get the leftovers. The default way of looking at the world, and relationships with God and others is always from the standpoint of the self. Luther spoke of the person in their natural state as homo in se incurvatus (the man curved in on himself); the man inescapably imprisoned and entangled in himself.
What would it take to be untangled from ourselves and freed from the bondage of the things that bind so firmly in this life, and to instead have the devotion and trust of the poor widow at the Temple? It would take the heart of a God so overflowing with generosity, grace, compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love, to free us from ourselves. And Jesus has freed us from our bondage to ourselves. The Gospel is in the one who does the changing, who works in the human heart, giving us new birth to be less self-serving and more self-giving. Because that is what God himself is like.
God lavished his riches on the world when he came in the Person of Jesus. He lived perfectly for us. He fulfilled all righteousness for us. He identified with and served the outcasts, the poor, those without help and hope, and redeemed them. Though Jesus was rich he became poor when he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross—to free us, the poor and destitute before him, spiritually bankrupt, lost and condemned sinners. It was for our sake that God made Christ who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. God did not hold anything back from you but has given you his all. Jesus poured out all he had for you when he bled from his wounds in his hands and feet, and when his side was pierced by the soldier’s spear.
Jesus does not pray long prayers for show, but prayed earnestly in the Garden of Gethsamene, so that his sweat was like drops of blood –Father, take this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done. Jesus is not concerned with taking the best seats in the synagogue, but made himself least when he was enthroned on the Cross. And after he suffered and died as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world, he has ascended to the Father’s right hand to still intercede for you and the saints of all times and places.
Jesus does not like to walk around in long robes to be greeted in the marketplaces. He is here to greet you in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the name by which you were covered in Jesus’ own robe of righteousness in the waters of baptism. Jesus is not concerned in taking the place of honour at feasts, but delights in honouring you by inviting you his holy table again today – the foretaste of the feast in heaven to which you are his specially invited guests.
Blessed are you when you realise that you are so poor that you depend on God for everything―especially his saving grace by which he freed us from the sentence of our sin. “All this he has done”, Luther reminds us, “that I may be his own, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting innocence, righteousness and blessedness, just as he has risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally. This is most certainly true”—for you. Amen.
