This sermon is based on I Kings 17:8-16 and Mark 12:41-44. It was delivered on November 12, 2006 at All Saints Anglican Church in
Barboursville, West Virginia.
Note: After the initial prayer, our acolyte was directed to come forward and get a basket full of dollar bills. The basket was passed around with instructions for everyone to take a dollar out of the basket. When everyone had a dollar, they were admonished:
“This bill is life indeed. Take, eat, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
After the laughter died down, the message commenced:
This dollar bill represents the world and all it has to offer. The world tells us that if we will just feed upon its riches that our souls will be full and satisfied. But what do you think? Will your dollar bill taste good as you chew on it? Will it satisfy your hunger and feed your physical body? No? Well, in the same way, neither will the other Stuff in your life feed your soul. Rather, if you attempt to feed yourself on this false food, you will become malnourished and eventually die.
As Christians we have another view on this dollar bill. Again, think of this bill as representing the world and everything in it- all of your life. Before we handed out the dollars you didn’t have a dollar in your hand. In Christian terms, because of the Fall, our life was taken away from us and we did not have true Life, but rather the false appearance of life.
Now, instead of trying to eat that dollar bill, think of yourself receiving as a Gift from God, giving thanks for it, and offering it back to Him. ( Later, we will actually ask you to do this.) Then, imagine God multiplying what you have offered him in ways that none of us can imagine. This is the Christian Gospel – not a “Lucre-istic” feast, but a Eucharistic feast – one which we see symbolized for us in our readings today.
We have stories about two Widows, two marginalized, helpless people, who really had nothing materially. To be a widow in Jewish culture was to be a person who lived hand to mouth. A widow could not engage in a trade per se, could not compete in the marketplace openly, but rather had to rely upon a son to take care of her, or to glean fields, as Ruth and Naomi did. It was a tenuous existence at best.
And in the case of the widow of Zaraphath, we have the additional hardship of drought in the land. Why a drought? Because the prophet Elijah had declared there would be no rain, or even dew for a period of years, until he himself gave the command. Why such a harsh pronouncement? Because King Ahab had plunged the nation into unrighteousness. During his reign, …”he did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him” (I Kings 16:30 ff.) He also set up an altar to worship Baal (a phallic god representing the worship of one’s own genitals), and married Jezebel the wicked. In short, Ahab did the exact opposite of what God required for righteousness. And this in turn was what caused Elijah to make his pronouncements upon the land.
So, as if widows and other helpless people didn’t have it hard enough, now there was a famine in the land and people were dying of starvation. In fact, the widow in our story was getting ready to bake up the last little bit of bread she could make, and after that she fully expected to die. At that very moment, along comes Elijah and asks her to give her a drink and make him a cake to eat! ( Our modern ears can hear echoes of Jesus and the Samaritan woman – “Give me a drink…” Jn. Chapter 4.) Elijah makes the startling prediction that the oil and flour would not run out until the rain returned. Most astonishingly, the woman apparently just accepted this and went to make the bread. I suppose she had heard about Elijah and may have reasoned that anyone who could stop the rain could also conjur up some oil and flour. At any rate, she accepted this provision from Elijah, and she enjoyed the multiplication of these meager resources for the duration of the drought.
But let’s back up a bit and notice that God had commanded Elijah to go to Zaraphath saying, “Behold, I have commanded a widow to there to feed you”. (v. 9). God chose a widow, a marginalized person with no resources, who was about to die…to provide for His prophet! How upside down things are in God’s economy ! Elijah was not sent to a wealthy landowner who could easily have taken care of his needs, but rather to someone who could not possibly provide for him out of her own resources. Elijah obeyed and went to Zaraphath, not questioning God’s rationale; the widow obeyed, not questioning Elijah’s sanity. In both cases, their obedience resulted in Life for many who were affected by their actions. “…she and he and her household ate for many days” (v. 15).
Fast forward now to the widow that Jesus observed giving her offering in the Temple. Everyone else contributed out of their abundance, but Jesus tells us that this widow gave everything she had to live on. In other words, she put in all of her Life as an offering. Perhaps she too was so near death that she decided to give her last little bit and then lay down and die. Or perhaps – she had grasped the reality that “All things come from Thee, and from Thine own have we given Thee”. Perhaps she understood her vocation as a Priest.
Alexander Schmemann, in his book, “For the Life of the World” says, “The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God – and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him.” (pg. 15).
“All that exists is God’s gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God.” (pg. 14). If we understand this, then our natural response should be to bless God for the gifts received. We are to Know that all things come from Him, to Name each blessing and to Possess all things as trustees of the Life God has given us. Let’s look at a contemporary version of how a priestly approach to things results in Life for many.
In her book, Where Wonders Prevail, Joan Webster Anderson tells the story of Bill and Hannah Lords of Stanwood, Washington who, after raising six children, decided to devote themselves to working with the poor. They gave away all their household things and opened a storefront coffeehouse that they called The Refuge. They lived in the back rooms of the storefront and applied Bills’ wages as a truck driver to their work with the homeless of Everett, Washington.
“Our desire was to give one hundred percent of ourselves for the Lord,” said Hannah. And so they did, ministering to everyone who walked through the doors.
One day, a group of young people had come to help out, they were all caught up in a really sweet time of worship as the day began. The prayer continued until noon and they all felt as if they were suspended between heaven and earth. Hannah realized however, that ‘she had left Bill’s lunch on ‘low’ in their rusty oven. By now it would be a dismal dried-up mess: Two small slices of meatloaf and a little scoop of mashed potatoes from last night’s dinner. How could she possibly feed everyone with this little bit?
But she and her daughter, Linda, went ahead and set twelve place settings anyway. Hannah prepared to place a tiny dollop of food on each plate. She hated not to serve everyone, so the little bit would just have to do. But when she dipped into the pan of dried- up meatloaf with her serving spoon, she pulled up two large juicy slices of meatloaf! And the original slices were still in the pan! Astonished, Hannah moved to the next plate, and dipped her spoon again. Two more juicy slices of meatloaf appeared! On and on it went until all twelve place settings held servings.
The same thing happened with the mashed potatoes. She dipped into a dry stiff crust, and pulled up fluffy servings of moist potatoes! Twelve plates full!
Impulsively, Hannah remembered she had some frozen lettuce. As she broke off chunks of the frozen green leaves for a garnish, they turned into fresh crisp leaves on the plates!
Everyone who came to the table was amazed by what happened. They all rejoiced and gave thanks for the remarkable provision of God’s bounty. (I don’t know if there was any mayonnaise to go along with the meal…). Commenting on the experience, Hannah said, “Linda and I hated to leave the praise going on in the outer room, but in serving others we had been given an experience that would cause us to praise Him even more!” (pg. 142).
Remember the feeding of the 5,000? And the similar feeding of the 4,000? Sound familiar? Those episodes were meant to be illustrations of this Eucharistic action we are talking about. At the Last supper, Jesus took, bread and wine, and when he had given thanks over them, he gave them to his disciples and told them to eat; that these elements of food and drink were his very lifeblood given for them and for the life of the world.
So here is the Gospel message: All things were given to mankind in the beginning as gifts for Communing with God, but man rejected God’s instructions for the right use of the world and attempted to make the fruit of the Tree Of Knowledge of Good and Evil to be his food. In so doing the whole human race became a slave to the material world and experienced a true spiritual death. Adam and Eve attempted to eat dollar bills and so had no Life.
Into this situation of despair and death comes Jesus and offering Himself, emptying Himself of all His divine prerogatives ( Phillipians 2:7) and giving of himself to be the Food and Drink of new and unending Life in God. Jesus gave us our Life back. He didn’t give us something extra to make our life better. He gave us Life in all its fullness. Everything in our lives has been redeemed so that we now may enjoy Communnion with God again.
But our right enjoyment and use of the world depends upon understanding this Eucharistic pattern and our priestly role in the world. We are not to be revelers at the world’s “Lucre-istic” orgy, but to be a kingdom of priests who receive everything gratefully from God, give thanks over it and offer it back to God, so that it might be multiplied and become Life for many. Remember this every time you give your offerings and partake of Communion. In Him is Life!
Now hold up your dollar bill. Silently, in your heart give thanks to God for all of your Life and offer this back to God.
In application of our lesson today, I would like for these dollar bills to be offered as the first donation toward the purchase of the house on 1410 Charleston Avenue in Huntington. The house is listed with Fannie Mae for $17,900. We’re going to gather these dollar bills up as a special seed offering, and as we do so I would invite you to add any of your additional dollars to it – only dollar bills now please, of any denomination. And I would challenge us to eventually raise a ten percent down payment - $1790.00 as our initial commitment to creating HOPE House, a place that will memorialize four fallen young people and serve as the headquarters of an organization that will help to reverse a pattern of death and give Life instead.
An offering was taken and consecrated it to the special work saying,
“All things come from Thee O Lord and from Thine do we give unto Thee”. Amen.
Note: The congregation of 22 people offered up $255.00 for this special intention. Thanks be to God!
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