The stakes were high in Jerusalem: Jesus was within a few days of his betrayal and death, and—as Mark records it, his teaching in the Temple had become very succinct. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” Jesus says in response to a question about the first and greatest commandment. And the second is this, he continues. ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Since the Gospel passage we heard today almost directly follows that teaching, it sounds a bit like an object lesson. Don’t be like those arrogant scribes who seek attention and exploit widows and say long prayers, because that’s not how we love our neighbors. But do be like that generous widow who gave everything, because that’s how we love God. This kind of teaching might come as an uncomfortable rebuke to those of us who wear long robes in church, but it’s a great message for stewardship season, right? Just give everything you have and we’ll exceed our budget goal in spades.
But sandwiched in between his stern warning about the arrogant scribes and his witness to the generosity of a widow, Jesus did an interesting thing. He sat down and he watched. Take a look at your leaflet again and notice that odd bit of stage direction that Mark inserted Into the midst of all these dense teachings. That really caught me up short. How many times would I have been wiser to sit down and watch before opening my mouth? And not just because I’m an extrovert and I have a tendency to speak before I think. But also because if I slow down and watch, I might just see something new; something that actually needs to be spoken about. As the poet Mary Oliver wrote in “Instructions for living a life”: Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell about it.
Jesus sat down. He paid attention to what was going on in the temple. Which leads me to wonder if Jesus wasn’t so much using the widow as an illustration for his ethical teaching, but rather that he was simply astonished by her, and wanted to tell us about it? She gave everything she had; astonishing. She gave to a temple system that exploited her—recall that Jesus just said that the scribes devoured the houses of the widows—and she gave to a temple that would itself soon be destroyed. Astonishing. I’m not sure that I’d counsel you to emulate her profligate offering, and I’m not convinced that’s what Jesus was doing that either, but he did take the time to pay attention and tell about it.
One advantage of sitting in the best seats here with my fellow scribes is that we see a lot of what’s going on in the Trinity temple, so to speak. Our liturgy forces me to sit and watch what people what people do. And I’ll confess that I am routinely astonished by what I see. I am astonished by your care for each other, I am astonished by your generosity, I am astonished by your good humor and creativity. I am astonished by your best efforts—the ones that lead you to accomplishments which satisfy and delight you—and I am equally astonished by those disappointments and failures that lead you to acknowledge your dependence on God alone.
This is what happens when we do like Jesus and take the time to watch the crowd. We see astonishing things. Things that might be overlooked of we were watching only the attention-seeking scribes and their contemporary equivalents. When we give our attention to wholeness of the human community we live within, we begin to see astonishingly holy things in the midst of the ordinary. The true nature of things—especially the things we might be tempted to overlook—becomes visible through our patient regard for them. They are made sacred, which is the literal definition of sacrifice.
Today’s lessons are full of sacrificial themes, and I don’t want to let that that slide by without acknowledging how complex that word is. Both in theological and popular usage. We hear it every Sunday in our Eucharistic prayers, most of which echo the theology of the letter to the Hebrews, which tells us that he—Jesus Christ—”has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Sacrifice here referring to the ancient temple system whereby human sin was paid for, so to speak, by the ritual death of other creatures. Within this transactional understanding of reconciliation with God, Jesus own death could be understood as the perfect sacrifice, the one that renders all other sacrifices unnecessary. That’s some complicated theology of salvation, and not one we all necessarily share, but it is coherent.
And our tradition offers other complicated examples of sacrifice. Today’s lessons pair, certainly not by accident, two stories of widows who gave everything they had, of meal and oil and money. These stories—alongside countless other examples from Christian and popular culture—might lead us to believe that sacrifice is what happens when women or other marginalized people are asked to give more than they reasonably can or should.
But there’s another way to understand the offerings these humble woman, and for that matter, Jesus himself, gave. What if sacrifice doesn’t mean giving what a sin-accounting God requires of Temple-goers, or giving more than we ought to, but rather means giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God’s purposes? As best we human beings ever know God’s purposes, that is. The hard good news being that we don’t always understand what we’re doing. Sometimes we give our all to a cause we believe in and we don’t get it the outcome we want. I’m not at all convinced that the widow got what she wanted from her gift to the temple. But I am convinced that when we give our all, God is paying attention to us, and recognizes our offerings as holy.
Wilfred Owen, one of the great English poets of the First World War, wasn’t at all convinced of the outcome when—just a week before Armistice Day in 1918—he joined the seventeen million who sacrificed their lives to the great war. But nevertheless, he paid attention to the holy in the midst of the hellish, and he told about it. In his poem “Spring Offensive,” he wrote of the countryside stained by blood of his compatriots—
So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together/ Over an open stretch of herb and heather/ Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned/ With fury against them; and soft sudden cups/ Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes/ Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.
Of them who running on that last high place/ Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up/ On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge/ Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge/ Some say God caught them even before they fell.
I’d like to believe that in in his poetic imagination, Wllfred Owen saw things as God sees them. Saw the wholeheartedness of the gifts made by the most vulnerable of humankind. And told about it. From the temple to the battlefield to our homes and workplaces, God notices our sacrifices. Even when we don’t know what we’re doing or even question why we’re doing what we’re doing, God notices the wholeheartedness of the offerings we make.
On this eve of Veterans Day, let me assure you that God notices the young woman and men who give themselves to battles. Even to the ones they might not have chosen, God notices what they give. God notices each of us when give our best to care for a disabled child or an aging parent or a partner at the end of their life. Even if they are never in a position to thank us, God notices. God notices that we stay late to help a colleague get the job done. Even if the end product isn’t successful, God notices. God notices when make the effort to understand a neighbor who is difficult; even if the relationship remains conflicted to our dying days, God notices what we give.
In a few minutes we’ll gather around this table to remember when the “time came for Jesus to complete upon the cross the sacrifice of his life,” as our Eucharistic prayer calls us to. And we’ll also offer ourselves, “a living sacrifice.” This is what I am paying attention to in our Temple this morning: Jesus’ whole life being met by our whole hearts. This is our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. And Sunday after Sunday, it invites us to give no less than everything we have, all that we have to live on.
