“A Matter
of Faith”
1 Kings
17:1-16
Mark
12:38-44
Picking out
sermon titles is not always easy.
Sometimes they come quickly, other times I wrestle with finding the
right one. This one I had to wrestle
with. I always try to pick a sermon
title that both leaves a little wonder in your imagination about what the
sermon might be about, and also points to the main thrust of text, after all
that is what I’m preaching on. A sermon
title is never just picked out of the air.
It is always grounded in what I believe the scripture is about, and it
comes from my engagement with the text over the course of the week. The problem comes when, after I have read the text several times, a sermon title will come
to my mind that I’m not sure I want to use.
In other words, the problem comes when the Holy Spirit is saying
something through the text that I don’t really want it to say, or more to the
point that I don’t really want to hear.
So the sermon title for today is a product of my week long wrestling with
today’s texts, and a willingness to let the Holy Spirit speak through the text
without filtering it through my safe-sermon firewall.
If you have
been following along in your bulletin, you should have already been able to
pick up the single thread that has been running throughout the service so far,
the single thread that has been the theme of the service and is the theme of
the text and my sermon. It is the single
thread of giving. Why is talking about
giving, or hearing a sermon on giving, or preaching a sermon on giving, such an
uncomfortable issue for us? I think it
is because it is an area of our faith that is in most need of healing.
To talk about giving, especially
giving our money, is like going to the doctor with a
sore spot and having the doctor say, “I’m going to poke around on you and I
want you to tell me when it hurts.” To
talk about giving is like the doctor poking and prodding on our faith until he
finds that sore spot, the sore spot that is usually the spot where we need the
most attention. And that is why I did
not want to use this sermon title, because I didn’t want any talk about giving
to be a matter of our faith. I would
rather it be a matter of my checkbook, or my bank accounts, or my
forgetfulness. After all, that is much
safer and much more comfortable.
To say that giving is a matter of
my faith hits my sore spot, that area of my faith that is in most need of
healing. But I’m a big boy and I can
take pocking and prodding, because I know that is how growth occurs and faith
is matured. And that is why I used the
sermon title that I did. It is a
reminder to me that giving, whether it be my time, talents, resources, and yes
even my money, is not a matter of anything else, it is a matter of faith and
faith alone. But that doesn’t mean that
giving has to be a sore spot. It can be
a glorious reminder of what it means to trust in the power and provision of God
at work in us and through us.
In our Old
Testament passage this morning, Elijah has declared to Ahab King of Israel that
because he married the foreigner Jezebel, who worships and serves Baal, there
will be drought upon the land, which does in fact come. Because of the drought, God sends Elijah out
of the city into the country where Elijah, always trusting in the power and
provision of God, lives on water from the wadi and food from the ravens. But after a while, even the wadi dries up and
the food stops coming, and so the Lord sends Elijah to Zarephath outside
Israelite territory to a widow who will provide for him, a widow who is down to
her last mouthful. She only has enough
meal in a jar and a drop of oil in a jug to make one more dinner for her and
her son before they await death by starvation.
She is certainly not a person who is able to give anything to sustain
anyone let alone herself and her son. Yet, when Elijah sees her, he as the audacity to ask her for her
water and for her last morsel of bread in her hand.
But what the
pagan widow does not know is that the God of Israel, the God who Elijah
worships, is already at work in her and through her. All she knows is that she does not have
enough even for her own family to survive.
All she knows is that the final outcome is inevitable. One more meal and that is it. For her, death is knocking on the door. She is unable to perceive any other
possibility beyond the reality she lives in.
She is unable to perceive something, or someone, greater than herself at
work.
But Elijah
knows that the power and provision of God can be trusted, because trusting God
is a matter of faith and faith alone, nothing else. And so Elijah invites the widow to see a new
possibility, a new reality that is taking shape around her. Elijah invites her to make the situation a
matter of faith and to step out toward the one she does not know and cannot
see, and to trust in a God she does not worship. Elijah invites her to not let her poverty and
need keep her from discovering the great truth that when we trust in God, God
will provide all that we need and more.
And as the text says, “She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as
well as Elijah and her household at for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied,
neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that God
spoke by Elijah.”
This widow, who was down to her last meal, who was down to all that
she had left to keep her from dying, was willing to make giving a matter of
trust, a matter of faith. Even
though everything in her head was probably telling her that she was unable to
give anything, that she needed all of what she had, she instead broke through
the wall of fear and doubt, and stepped out into the new reality called faith,
and God provided, not just for her but for her whole household and even
Elijah. Through her self-sacrifice, she
became a witness to the fact that when we make giving a matter of faith, God
not only provides for us, but for all others who we might encounter, all others
whom God puts before us. And in doing
so, we will not only see God’s power and provision at work, but we also see the
abundance of God’s grace at work, the abundance of God’s grace that can turn
our giving into the very means of life for ourselves and others.
Writer, poet,
and civil servant, Sir Henry Taylor, once said, “He who gives what he would as
readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is
in self-sacrifice.” (New Beginnings)
Having faith in God and being a disciple of Jesus Christ is not
easy. It requires us to risk and sacrifice, not only our time, talent, resources, and money,
but even ourselves in order to live in the fullness of God’s power and
provision. Having faith and being a
disciple means that we are willing to trust and follow in times are hardship
and in times of blessing, in times of want and in times of plenty, in times of
drought and in times of abundance, as well as in times of crises and in times
of success.
Being good stewards means
remembering that God is not in competition with other people or other things
for out commitment, and that giving back to God all that we have should be the
hallmark of our devotion and loyalty and faithfulness. Does it hurt to give in a sacrificial way,
yes it does, but self-sacrifice is not without cost, it is not without feeling
the poking and the prodding and the tug of the Spirit pulling our whole being
toward the one who is to be at the center of our lives regardless of life’s
circumstances.
When Jesus
sees the widow put in the two, small, copper coins, he declares to his
disciples that she has put in more to the treasury of the synagogue than anyone
else combined, because she gave not out of what she had left over, but out of
her poverty, out of what all she had to live on. She becomes the model for the disciples about
what it means to give in a sacrificial way, to use all that we have, not just
what we have left over, not just our first fruits, but all that we have to
serve God faithfully, trusting that God will remain faithful to us.
And that is why giving is a matter
of faith, because it is a matter directly related to health of our relationship
with God and to our desire to live and to serve in the reality of new
possibilities that is God’s kingdom.
That is what the widow at the treasury knew, that the power and providence
of God is beyond our imagining, beyond even what we know to be true, beyond
what our own senses tell us. And yet,
she was willing to put herself on the line, put her very life on the line, as
an expression of her devotion and loyalty and faith in the one who was greater
than herself, in the one who is faithful to the end. Her act of giving was not just an example to
the disciples, it is also an example to us about what it means to life a life
under the faithfulness of God, what it means to trust the one who has called us
into relationship, the one who has given to us his very son, the powerful one
who can and does provide all that we need to live a life in the full abundance
of his glory and grace.
Are we
willing to allow the power and provision of God to work in us and through
us? Are we willing to break through the
walls of fear and doubt and envision the new possibilities of what God is doing
and will do in and through this church?
Are we willing to put ourselves on the line and give not just out of our
leftovers, but out of our poverty, out of all that we have to live on? Are we willing to make giving a matter of
faith in the God who is faithful to the end?
These are questions only you can answer for yourself. But know this, that if you are willing, God
promises that when we do give, the jar of grain will not go empty and the jug
of oil will never go dry. Amen.