Let me tell you a story. It’s a story that’s been around for a while so probably you know it. It begins with space, a beautiful deep space that was made sacred because the Spirit of God hovered over its face. To make something sacred is to sacrifice it—that’s the Latin root of sacri-fice—and so the earth was sacrificed for the flourishing of life.
We who dwell on the earth know something about sacred space—its matter is in our bones, literally—and so our kind have been making sacred spaces, mirroring God’s own sacred act of creation, for as long as we have lived together. And at one special time in this very old story, some of God’s beloved people built a temple on the land because they wanted to be reminded that God dwells close to the sacred earth. And because the people knew that they themselves had been made sacred for the love of God, they made sure the temple was set apart, with special rituals, and priestly guardians to ensure that it would remain sacred.
The temple too was for the flourishing of life, and for the love of God who makes holy places and holy people. But at some point in this very old story the priestly guarding of the sacred space and the coercive power of the king got all mixed up. So God called people to be prophets to remind powerful that their job was to steward and restore the flourishing of the earth and its people.
God, temples, priests and prophets. What a cast of characters! That’s where the prophet Elijah, whom we heard about this morning, entered onto the story in the ninth century BCE. But before I tell you anything more about this particular prophet, I want to make sure we are introduced to another important character in God’s great and ancient story. She doesn’t usually have a personal name, she’s mostly called “the widow,” but she is as important as all of the priests and kings and prophets in reminding the people of their sacred vocation.
Like in the story from First Kings that we just heard. When a nameless widow sacrificed her last meal—perhaps a little reluctantly—to the prophet, her gift allowed him to reveal God’s desire to feed the hungry and heal the sick. And if that sounds a little like something Jesus would do, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that our Gospel today—from another special point in God’s ancient story—also pays tribute to the faith of a widow. Because of the generosity of widows, God’s story continued.
In the first century Jesus—whom we call prophet priest and king—asked his disciples to pay attention to the extraordinary sacrifice of a widow, and the evangelist Mark wrote it down. And because of Jesus’ teaching, God’s very old story opened the heart of a wealthy young man in the twelfth century. Francis of Assisi might well have been like a scribe, walking around in long robes and being greeted with respect in the marketplaces. Except that he heard a call to give everything he had, all he had to live on—sound familiar?—and go rebuild the sacred space that was the church of San Damiano.
It was almost as if Francis assumed the poverty of a widow, in order to renew the church for the flourishing of the people, praying “make me an instrument of your peace” as he did it. Because of the courage of Francis, God’s story continued.
Which brings me to the most important point in the very old story, which is right here and now. Christ Church, you launched this season of generosity taking the witness of St. Francis as your model. Your beautiful sanctuary is a sacred space worthy of a people who know that God longs to be close to the sacred earth. Its walls are covered with the many blessings you recognize and give thanks for. Your priests do their best to make rituals that remind us of God’s holy-making sacrifice. And your ministries reach out to the widows and their contemporary equivalents: the young and the hungry and the homeless and the lonely. Your coins—be they a great sum or few—make all this possible. Because your faithfulness, God’s story continues.
Temples, priests, prophets, widows and scribes: they may seem like the stuff of ancient stories, but as I look around me, they’re all right here and now. And so I wonder: who will you be in this very old and always new story? And—on this Faith Full Giving Sunday—what are you called to sacrifice? By now you can probably guess that I don’t mean sacrifice in the sense of giving something up, but rather giving something over to be made holy, which is the vocation of God and God’s people from the beginning of the story until now.
Myself, I confess that I’m a bit of a professional scribe. For one thing, I wear long robes. And remember what the Bible says: beware of our kind! But in my better moments I can be something of a prophet, remembering that what God has made holy—which is everything in creation and everything in my own bank account—is given for the flourishing of life. And sometimes—at my very best—I can even be like a widow or like Francis. In touch with my own human vulnerability and yet courageous to give my all because I trust the generosity of God who has given all… a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.
Most of the time, however, I am a mixture of all these characters, and I’m guessing that you are too. And there’s nothing wrong with that: in this very old and very present story, God loves and makes use of all of us, prophets, widows and priests and scribes alike. But on this sacred day—the day we make holy by declaring our intention to give—let me invite you to step up. Embrace your inner widow, so to speak, and commit to giving a metaphorical two cents more than your last pledge, scribally large though the sum may have been.
Walter Brueggemann, the great Old Testament scholar, captured some of the complexity of our lives as characters in God’s ancient story in this prayer—
We will be your faithful people—
more or less
We will love you with all our hearts—
perhaps
We will love our neighbor as ourselves—
maybe.
We are grateful that with you it is
never “more or less,” “perhaps,” or “maybe.”
With you it is never “yes and no,”
but always “yes”—clear, direct,
unambiguous, trustworthy.
We thank you for your “yes”
come flesh among us.
Yes! Yes, I hope you’ll join your stewardship leaders and commit yourself to giving a tithe, or working towards it. Yes, I trust that this beautiful sacred space, which you papered with blessing cards at the beginning of this Faith Full Giving season, will be renewed when you bring forward your “intention to give” cards. Yes, yes, and yes to faith and courage and generosity in every form! Spoiler alert: “Yes” is the whole point of God’s story, from beginning to end. So whatever you choose to commit today, may our ancient stories remind you that its not just a pledge card you are filling out, any more than one widow’s last measure of meal was just a snack, or another widow’s two coins were just small change. Because every “yes” we offer back to God is a sure sign of—as well as a renewal of—the flourishing of life. For which God made all things, and made them holy.
