Sunday, November 10, Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

“Little Gifts”

Psalm 146; 1 Kings 17:8-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

Divine Service III without Communion

Hymns: #852 “O God of Mercy, God of Might”; #507 “Holy, Holy, Holy”; #786 “Lord of All Good”; #787 “The Temple Rang with Golden Coins”

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

     Our LWML, our “Lutheran Women in Mission,” make great use of these little mite boxes. Take one home, fill it with spare change, and bring it back again. One little box of coins might not seem like much; but start piling them up, and adding them together, with all the Ladies groups from all over the country and all over the world, and BIG things get done. Missions get funded. Missionaries are supported. Relief is sent to disaster zones. The hungry and the poor get clothed and fed. And it all starts with putting a coin in a little box. Amazing, isn’t it, how God blesses and honors little things?

     Our Old Testament reading this morning is part of the story of “Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath.” King Ahab, King of Israel, was leading his people into sin. He’s married a Sidonian woman, an evil pagan princess named Jezebel and made her his queen. At her urging, he’d set up altars to Ba’al, and to Asherah, the gods of the Sidonians, and commanded their worship, and even had Israel practicing child sacrifice and throwing infants into the fire.

     God sent Prophet Elijah to announce to Ahab that there wouldn’t be a drop of dew or rain in the land for the next three years, until he should repent. God shut up the skies in Israel, hoping to bring them all to repentance. Elijah, not for the first time or the last, had to run for his life from Ahab and his wicked queen. God sent Elijah to hide in a ravine, where he could drink from a brook, and there the Lord sent ravens to feed him. Then the brook at last dried up, and the Lord sent his prophet to a widow who lived in Zarephath (a Sidonian city, in pagan territory, in Jezebel’s homeland).

     Keep in mind that the drought and subsequent famine, brought on by Ahab’s sin, was causing suffering all over, particularly for the poor. (Innocents are always the first to suffer from such things). All of which only compounded Ahab’s sin; all he had to do was repent to bring the rain, but he would not.

     So Elijah went to Zarephath, and there he found the widow God had told him about.

She was gathering sticks to make a fire, to make one last meal for her and her son, from the last of their food, and then they were going to die. Pure misery, total despair; imagine not being able to feed your only child to keep him alive; all because of circumstances well beyond her control, all because of a drought and a famine brought on by the sin of a wealthy and evil king, who lived in a palace far away, whom she’d never met or even seen. (You can bet Ahab and Jezebel weren’t missing any meals!) Whatever gods she worshiped or prayed to certainly weren’t listening to her or doing her any good; she was giving up; it’s an unfair world.

     Then along comes this Hebrew prophet, asking to be fed, asking her for a little water and a piece of bread. God had warned her, somehow, maybe in a dream, that Elijah was coming, and asked her to feed him; but what did that mean when she had nothing to give? She tells the prophet, "As surely as the Lord your God lives, I don't have any bread - only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it - and then we’ll die." She’s at the bottom, at the end of herself, beyond desperation, resigned to her fate, hopeless, believing there was nothing left to be done. “I give up; world, you win.”

     Elijah comes to her not just asking for bread, but promising a miracle from God. In the middle of hopelessness and despair, there is mercy. The Ahab’s and Jezebel’s of the world do much to bring on the suffering and the misery we see all around us, but God still has room to have mercy on the poor. And He does it by His prophets, by His messengers, by His Church, and by ordinary people like you and me.

     Elijah says to her, "Don't be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord , the God of Israel, says: 'The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.'" The widow believes him; at least, enough do as she’s asked and share the last of her bread with him. What does she have to lose? And there was food there every day, from the jar and from the jug, for Elijah and for the woman and for her son.

     Little gifts are rewarded. God honors the little things we give, and the little things we can do. A little money for the church out of a budget that’s already tight. A little time given to someone on an already busy day. A little mercy given to someone who you don’t think quite deserves it, but you do it anyway. A little bit of Gospel in a simple conversation. Little acts of lovingkindness, little droplets of grace in a world that’s so often dry of such things. It’s good if we can do great things for God now and then – and better still if those little things we can do every day start to add up. Maybe, little by little, together we can hold back the dark.

     Jesus taught His disciples, “Watch out for the teachers of the law.” He’s talking about the scribes, the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Israel. Their job, their place, their calling, their duty, was to open the Word of God to the people - to interpret and explain it to them and help them understand it. They were very much supposed to be in the “people business”;  that is, to care for the people God had given them, and especially to look out for the poor and the sick and the orphans and the widows. If people can’t count on the Church for help, what good are we?

     These “law teachers” Jesus was pointing to loved all the perks of their high office; the flowing robes, the important seats, the places of honor. They could put on a good show on the Sabbath day of being pious and devout and holy. They could pray long prayers, and preach long sermons about how everyone else ought to behave. But during the week, it was all about the money. They had no qualms about taking advantage of the poor; “business is business,” right? They’d even foreclose on a poor widow and put her out for her house, if there was money in it for them. The ordinary people knew what they were doing, and what hypocrites they were; they weren’t fooling anyone. Not exactly a way to draw people to know God.

     Jesus, with His disciples, sat down by the offering box in the temple, watching as people were putting in their money. (Just sitting on a bench “people watching” can be entertaining sometimes!) Some of the rich threw in large amounts – but they could afford it. Some were no doubt giving quietly, giving in faith, and for the right reasons; but others were giving out of pride, to be noticed and seen and praised. Some of the money gained from “devouring widow’s houses” must have been going into that box.

     And who should come along next but the poor widow, down to her last two half-pennies. Why was she so poor? Because no one was caring for her or defending her, or looking out for her interests. The people that should have been caring for her, the “church people,” didn’t even know she was alive. She was a nobody; she had nothing to offer of value, and very little to give.

     Nobody even noticed her walking up to the treasury box – no one but Jesus. She had two coins; she could have given one and saved the other – but what difference would that have made? Like the widow of Zarephath, she was at the end of herself and resigned to going home to die. All because there are men in this world who care about money than they care about people, and about gathering possession for themselves more than they care about being right with God. (Jesus says their judgment is coming one day, but today they’re still doing what they do.)

     Mark’s Gospel doesn’t tell us what happened to the widow; I’d kind of like to know. If you’ll forgive me for it, I have an idea what might have happened, though it’s only a supposition on my part. Do you think Jesus, knowing what we know of Him, was going to let that poor woman go home to die? I don’t either. I think, maybe, Jesus just sort of elbowed old Judas a little bit, and told him, “Judas, open that money bag you’re carrying and give her a little something; we have to help her out.” Mercy; mercy forever.

     What actually does happen next, according to Mark’s Gospel, is that as Jesus and His disciples were leaving the temple, His disciples were going on and on about how magnificent the building was, how grand and glorious and beautiful. The Jews were so proud of that place, certain they’d built something that was going to last forever. And Jesus tells them, “Not a stone here will be left in its place; every one will be thrown down.” (The Romans brought that to be just 37 years later, in 70 AD, when they came to Jerusalem with their armies and razed the temple to the ground. Be careful what you choose to put your heart in; be careful what you trust). 

     Our Lord knows what matters and what doesn’t, and what will last and what won’t, and how much it hurts us when we give our hearts to things that aren’t going to do us any good. God sees and values the little things - the little acts of love and kindness that nobody notices, the little things done in love and faith that maybe no one will ever notice but Him. Little acts of mercy, like mites in a box.

     Jesus did the big thing, the biggest thing of all. He came down here to this world to give His life on a cross for sorry and sin-broken people like you and me. The life we have, we have because of Him - because He loved us to death, and still does. And everyone we meet, rich or poor, a widow or a king, He loves just the same. And God calls us to have mercy on them all. “What you did for the least…” As we’ve been shown mercy, we’re here in this world to give mercy. It has to start somewhere. Let it begin with you and me. In Jesus’ name; Amen.