Sacrifice and Honor November 11, 2018 Veteran’s Day 100th anniversary of the end of WWI

Sermon Mark 12:38-44 November 11, 2018 Veteran’s Day 100^th 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

Stubborn Prayer

Sermon Luke 18: 1-8 October 16, 2016 Parable Series

Stubborn Prayer

We can no longer sit silent.

This text from Luke is a pivot point for us. It reveals the Word of God powerful, strong, and unrelenting.

The widow can no longer be dismissed.

She can no longer be pushed aside.

Work for the Kingdom of God is challenging, confusing, frustrating and ongoing. We find ourselves at a place where we can no longer sit at the feet of Jesus and pray prayers with flowery platitudes.

We stand shaking our fist and we scream and we yell and we demand, “When are you coming to straighten out this mess?”

“How long do we have to wait for you Jesus, to return to us with your justice, love and reconcile the world to yourself?”

We plead with feeble voices, “Where are you?”

There are times we are angry, we are bitter, we are hurt in many ways by words, by feelings of those who think and act differently from us.

We have lost loved ones, we have lost parts of our own selves.

In the midst of crisis around the world we watch and wonder, “where is God?”

In helpless voices we ask, “Where do we step in and stop being afraid and where do we stand before those who block the way of doing what is right?”

There are many reasons why believers have lost hope and trust.

There are many reasons among believers (and those who don’t believe for that matter) where faith feels dismantled.

Can you name where your faith seems dismantled? For those around you, Do you where faith has disintegrated?

For places in your heart where has faith been disrupted?

Is there something burning to burst forth from your heart that must be spoken?

Each of us has a widow voice within us.

We come before God with persistent cries for the young woman who has lost yet another child and has empty arms and an empty womb.

We are angered at yet another death in the streets of police officers and unarmed men. We are bitter at another factory closing and people without work.

We are hurt by the public officials who fling words as if they are immune to retribution. We hide behind social media and witness accusations hurled across invisible wires by those who refuse to come face to face.

We are infuriated at rebels who take the lives of children and have no remorse.

We find ourselves banging on the door of God’s Kingdom begging and begging for action on the part of God. (1) Our prayers, like the widow’s, are persistent and stubborn-do something God! Show up for Pete’s sake God-we are here! We beat ourselves against the gates of heaven to get God’s attention.

~~~

This week we hosted a spaghetti dinner to raise funds for the Coalition Against domestic violence. We seek to be light to the women of abuse to find a way to leave the life that holds them hostage. We seek to speak out so they can find their voice to speak out against their abuser. We have made a choice to reconsider our silence (2) and as a church speak openly in the community that words matter and that violence against women is NOT ok.

The world seems out of our control and so the widow voice is all we have.

We come as she does before God-vulnerable, alone, without a crowd to support us. The Old Testament and during the times of Jesus the faith community was responsible for the care of widows and orphans. They had a mandate from God to provide widows with all that they needed. And so here we read about a widow before a judge, an unjust one to boot, who comes alone-no faith community is present with her-no one has taken responsibility to care for her and to remain at her side. And yet, she goes forth with audacity and unashamedly before the judge to stubbornly make her request.  

We come willing and with audacity and with stubbornness before the One who can make a change, we come persistently and consistently.

The widow voice within us cannot let go.

This is the hopeful courage that resists the injustice in our lives and in our world.

The Spirit fills the heart and bubbles it up with strength to act when there is no strength. The Spirit acts within us to go beyond ourselves.

And perhaps, that is the Good News for us today.

It is in our daily persistent prayers-“give us this day our daily bread”-our stubborn faith that God will provide-that God’s amazing love for us is a promise that brings it all around-even if we have to wait-we will not give up. For the Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. The Scriptures remind us, “For the Kingdom of God is within you.” 17:20-21

That’s all well and good you say to me, that’s only half of the story, what about this unjust judge?

Is this judge an image of God?

How can we imagine such a capricious being? How can God be so frivolous?

This judge says he has no fear of God or respect for others. What does that mean?

Is he granting to this widow the answer to her request just to keep her quiet;

to protect his reputation?

Is he giving her what she wants to keep himself from being publicly embarrassed? Is it that she won’t leave him alone that people are beginning to wonder about his ethics? How can God be compared to this judge?

What have we learned about God as we’ve grown up? Nothing like this guy, for sure! We’ve learned that God is faithful and loving.

God claims us as his children.

God’s love is so persistent for us that God chases after us continuously with love for us even though we keep running away. Hosea.

God is relentless in love to the point that Jesus was among us-God incarnate-persistent-stubborn-fully present.

Jesus who gave his life for us so we in turn can have the fullness of life.

There is no doubt of God’s unfailing and sacrificial love for us as we have been taught.

Perhaps then this judge who has no fear for God and no respect for others

is how

we see God in relation to our unanswered prayers and our frustration in a broken world.

Perhaps this

is how

we see the lives of the faithful who pray and one prayer is answered and another goes unanswered.

Perhaps our witness of God, our experience of God is of a being who has no respect and no fear.

Perhaps we feel that God is just NOT fair.

That is exactly where the gospel writer Luke wants us to be with this parable of Jesus. He provides us with the definition of justice that Jesus proclaims: respect for others and the fear of God.

Which brings us back to stubborn prayer.

An unjust judge grants the request of a widow who puts herself at great risk to receive a measure of justice.

Her stubborn persistence brought about change, no matter how she felt about the judge.

No matter how we feel about God: just or unjust; we can have the widow’s voice and come to God over and over again.

We have a widow’s voice within us.

Let us act with stubborn prayer, with unrelenting faith (the faith that Jesus will find on earth) and publicly come before God seeking justice for all. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Amen.

Resources: Karoline Lewis (2); Feasting on the Word (1).