Sermon Mark 12:38-44
November 11, 2018 Veteran’s Day 100th anniversary of the end of WWI
Sacrifice and Honor
The widow’s mite, the last two pennies of her existence, offered
up to God, is a strange Scripture to use for Veteran’s Day. What Bible verse ‘better
fits’ this occasion of honoring those who have served, fought, died, and lived
for this nation of the United States?
There are times in the life of faith and our life in the
world that they intersect. Some have this idea that we give our hour of faith on
Sunday mornings and then we go out into the world and that faith doesn’t exist
there.
They actually intersect in every moment of every day.
As people of faith we do not live in a bubble.
All that we do and believe affects our perception of how we
respond to the world in which we live. And how we worship is dependent on how
we experience God in every moment of our day. We live our lives with the Bible
in one hand and the newspaper in the other and there is a positive balance. We ignore
neither, we lift up both. We remember that we are people of faith, people of
the Covenant. We have a heritage that comes to us from the Torah, that is part
of our legacy of faith and hope.
So we come to this story in the gospel of Mark tells of a woman
filled with grace and faith. She has
enough courage to trust God and the world for her life.
You see, Jesus is watching these people going in and out of
the Temple to pray and give their tithes and offerings. He observes more than
just what is being given, he witnesses the hearts of those who enter to pray,
to worship to give, to sacrifice. He discovers quite the variety of those who
come.
He also notices the widow who goes unnoticed.
She is the one the rulers and congregation are called to
look after and offer what they have for her wellbeing.
Yet, here she is
offering up as a sacrifice the last two pennies of her life, and no one
notices. No one stops her, no one intervenes to help her. The powerful just
keep puffing themselves up as righteous and wonderful and neglect the
commandments to love their neighbor and to care for those in need. She is more often caught in the debate of
the powerful deciding how she is justified or not for being poor. She is
caught in a system that denies her very existence as a woman and as a person of
faith.
Today is probably a good day to remember that our veterans
are often found caught in the middle of people’s debates.
Our veterans are often found at the end of examples people
in power use to either lift them up or dismiss them as irrelevant. Veterans are
also often left to the mercy of the powerful making decisions about their
future, they are often lumped into one category or another and not looked at
for the individual service for our country.
They are sandwiched between the power of one administration
to the next.
More and more veterans are homeless and without the
resources to care for themselves. More and more veterans are disabled and
suffer from serious mental illness and yet the hospitals called to care for
them are underfunded and understaffed.
Until a day like today, they go
unnoticed.
Until there is someone that
witnesses the sacrifice they have made they go unappreciated.
The fact is we have men and women
who made the decision or who said yes when they were to called to arms is
one the greatest and most honorable sacrifices a person can make.
Whether a person served as a cook on a ship, or a
communications officer along the coast, or went deep into the jungles of
battle, these men and women gave up all they had for future that was completely
uncertain.
As we look again to the widow we
recognize, there is no glory in poverty
or widowhood. Shame on us as ministers who this woman as an example in
stewardship.
There is no glory in war or battlefields.
BUT, there is glory and honor in sacrifice even to broken systems and
broken worlds. Yes, to broken systems and broken worlds, there is glory
in honor in sacrifice.
We have often been frustrated with the church and the
corruption of so many pastors and priests, the greed of various Christian
denominations. We have been angry about wars that have been fought that are called
‘lost causes’. We have been disappointed in our country’s engagement in corrupt
societies and broken corners of the world.
But, we, as a people, would we
really prefer to walk away than to support things that seem to have no future
for good?
We have a tendency to justify our inactivity and our dismissiveness
by saying, “well, it’s all corrupt” and we choose not be involved or part of any
system.
We even pat ourselves on the back and we find ourselves
quite self righteous in our attitudes.
There are very few of us who know what it is like to give up
everything as a sacrifice.
There are very few of us who know the life of one who has
served our country in battle.
Also, there are very few of us that can wrap our heads
around what it is like to be destitute.
We don’t have any kind of frame of reference for things like
these.
No
one in his or her right mind would say to someone else go and be like the
poverty stricken widow.
No
one in their right mind would go and tell their sons and daughters to go into
battle and put themselves in harms way.
But, we would say
there is great honor in those who offer there lives for freedom, for a future
of peace, for the hope of love to flow down, for the power of grace to cover
the world.
We hold up Christ who was the ultimate sacrifice for a
future of love and mercy for all, for a future of peace and God’s glory to
cover the earth forever.
We lift up those who put
faith, hope, trust, and one’s very life in the hands of the One who is greater
than systems and institutions.
The widow had the power of faith to trust God who is greater
than all things put together to receive her sacrifice and to still care for her.
Jesus points her out to the disciples because he too will go
and offer up all that he has and is to the God he trusts beyond this world.
Jesus was not depending on a broken system or a broken world to save
him or anyone else. He gave his life for the life of many through his
sacrifice on the cross. His faith, hope, trust was in the One Creator who will ultimately
bring all things together for good.
Those who serve and have served are loyal to the power
of freedom, to the power of sacrifice for the sake of others. They offered
their lives for wars to cease and for nations to rise up and be just.
WWI-the war to end all wars didn’t happen.
But, brave and
courageous men and women get
up every day and go into danger zones with the greatest trust that there will
be a day when peace will be all over this land.
We owe them honor for their courage and hope and faith that
what they have done has been for the honor of freedom.
All glory and honor belong to you O God, and we offer you
our sacrifice and praise. Amen.
Reverend Monica Gould
PCUSA
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