Mark 12:38-44

As [Jesus] taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Many of us have heard this one before, haven’t we? This story of “the widow’s mite” is pretty popular in Christian circles. She’s one of the superheroes of the faith. She does a lot with a little and her story has gone a long way for generations to teach us about giving and generosity and faith and sacrifice and more. I’m not sure what’s left to be said on her behalf…what I and others haven’t said before…so I thought I’d tell a different version of the same story…a modern-day example, like this woman from the Gospel, who gives in ways that are faithful, inspiring, generous, sacrificial, and surprising.

See, all of this made me think about one of my favorite widows – Madame Jean, the grandmother of Bervincia, the little girl my family sponsors in Fondwa, Haiti. (You may also know her as “the cutest little girl on the mountain,” but that’s not really what this story is about today.) Madame Jean raises Bervincia because Madame Jean’s daughter, Bervincia’s mother, died giving birth to another child when Bervincia was about 8 years old. That was the same year Madam Jean’s own mother died, from grief as much as anything, it seems, because of the losses they all suffered as a result of the earthquake that rocked their world, in 2010.

There is no father or man or bread-winner around to help. As far as I know, the only job Madame Jean has is to sell coffee to mission trippers, like us, when they come for a week at a time, a few times a year.

The last time we were in Haiti, I spent a couple of hours one afternoon, with Madame Jean and Bervincia, and some of the boys from their family, while Madame Jean worked on dinner. By “working on dinner,” I mean she was pounding dried kernels of corn into a powdery meal, using a tree-stump and a small log as a mortar and pestal. Like your fine china, or best hammer or saw or screwdriver; rolling pin, cookie jar, or mixing bowl, maybe – this tree stump and small log – turned mortar and pestal, were tools handed down from Madame Jean’s own mother and grandmother.

Anyway, she would pound and pound and pound. And pound and pound and pound. And she would sift and shake the powder through a rusty colander. And then she would pound and pound and pound it out, some more.

I get the impression Madame Jean is pretty efficient at all of this, because when one of the older boys would offer to help, she either wouldn’t let them, or she would steal away the tools after giving them a shot at it for a spell and, with some measure of exasperation, a smile, a tsk, and a roll of her eyes, she would show them how to do it the right way.

Even done the right way, it takes a long time – and and some serious elbow grease – to turn dried kernels of corn into a powdery meal you can eat for dinner, using a log and a hollowed out tree stump, anyway. And it’s surprising, too, how much corn it takes to make a small amount of meal and how far she must have to stretch a bowl of powder into some kind of supper.

Even more surprising was that Madame Jean insisted I – her well-fed, soft, and pasty, uninvited guest – take a mug-full of that meal, the hard-won fruit of her labor, and eat the whole of it while she finished pounding out the rest of her dinner.

It looked like her last two copper coins. It felt like all she had to live on. In her poverty, she gave me something as valuable to her as anything else she or her family could get their hands on, really.

Today, Jesus has a seat across from the collection box where the people come to leave their tithe. Remember, back in Jesus’ time, it was the religious law for Jews to give 10% of their livelihood to the Temple. Their tithes to the Temple were as expected of them and accepted by them as their taxes to the government.

But the tithe had lost its meaning. The tithe was supposed to be seen as an opportunity for people to give back to God in thanksgiving for the many gifts God had first given to them. But, the people had forgotten what their 10% was all about. It no longer had the sense of gratitude and thanksgiving attached to it, as had originally been intended.

And it’s become that way for too many in the Church today. “Tithing” is a dirty word in many congregations because it has the feeling of “mandatory” and “Law” attached to it. Too many of us give reluctantly because we feel like it’s something we have to do. Too many others refuse to give generously because we don’t like to be told what, when or how much to give. Too many of us give the bare minimum and expect accolades and applause. And too many others don’t give what’s right because we’re too busy trying to figure out what we have left. What was happening back in the Temple when Jesus was around is still happening in churches all over the world today.

Enter the poor widow with her two copper coins.

She makes her way to the treasury and drops in the last of what she had. Not because she had to – otherwise she would have done the math and only given 10% of the penny they were worth. Not because she wanted to be noticed – otherwise we might know her name. And not because she couldn’t find something better to do with that money – it was everything she had to live on, remember.

As we dream and pray and plan for the Building Fund commitments we’ll make next weekend and in the days to come, let’s look at our offering not as an obligation but as an opportunity; not as a judgment but as a joy; not as a hardship, but as hope for what God can accomplish – for us and for others – through our giving. Let’s not make our gifts stubbornly because we have to, but generously and with happy hearts because we get to.

Because giving to the Building Fund or to the General Fund or to the temple treasury is never just about those things. Giving to God is about learning a new way of being in the world, and today’s widows have a great deal to teach us about generosity and gratitude and sacrifice and God’s kingdom, right here on earth.

- So, let’s learn that our faith and our lives aren’t to be staked upon money and things and stuff, no matter how much the world or our own selfishness and fear try to convince us otherwise…

- Let’s learn that the things and stuff in our lives are all gifts from God in the first place, and that it’s not a sacrifice to give away what isn’t really ours…

- Let’s learn that we have more than we pretend to have so much of the time and that it really can be a joy to share it …

- Let’s learn that when something truly is a gift, the recipient matters more than whatever is in the box or the bag or the coffee mug or the coffers…

- And let’s learn that, when it comes to the love of God, there aren’t enough coins – or corn meal – or Building Fund commitments – that could ever overstate our gratitude, or out-give our God, for the blessings in our lives anyway.

Amen

John 11:32-44

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone."

Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Death sucks. And if you’ve never heard a minister say that, it’s about time you did.

Or, allow me to put it another more eloquent and powerful way. It comes from the beginning of a poem that was written by Erin Walker, Pastor Fred Hubert’s granddaughter, for his funeral service yesterday. She writes,

“Another soul has passed,
causing everyone around them to feel like crap.
No longer is there laughing,
instead it’s replaced with crying.
You will be greatly missed,
we all just wish
that there was more time.”

A grandparent, a sibling, a celebrity, a long-lost friend, or a pet… an unexpected accident or a long-awaited end to suffering; death is all its forms is agonizing, heartbreaking, terrifying, and earth-shattering. Which is why, in most of my pastoral care and funeral preaching, I make a point of encouraging and affirming the natural process of grief.

This can come across as a radically counter-cultural message because over the course of our lives we’ve been fed the lie that grieving is a sign of weakness. This message gets communicated in subtle and often well-intentioned ways.

My wife’s grandmother’s funeral was the first time my boys saw an open casket at a funeral. Kyle, my three-year-old saw it and stood there trying to make sense of it. Then, slowly, he started to walk backwards, one step at a time, eyes still fixed on the face of his great-grandma. Other people saw this too and swooped in to rescue him, saying things like “That’s not really great-grandma” and other well-meaning sentiments. They meant to comfort him but what they were doing was robbing him of the chance to grieve.

There are other subtle ways we subvert the grief process. Think about how often you hear people say, “When I die, I don’t want anyone to be sad. My funeral should be a party and everyone should be happy because I’ll be in heaven.” I’ll be honest…I just hate it when I hear that. Don’t tell me not to be sad when you are gone; because the truth is I will be sad when you die. I will miss you terribly. Please don’t make me feel guilty on top of my grief!

Grieving is part of what makes us human. We’re genetically hard-wired to grieve over people and things that we have lost.

Grieving is not a matter of flipping a switch or burying our sadness over the sands of time and hoping it either rots or grows into something beautiful without needing to be tended. Instead, grieving is a gut-wrenching series of complex emotions that must be acknowledged and shared.

Have you ever known someone who wouldn’t let themselves grieve? Someone who never let on that they were feeling sad or lonely or confused? Someone who tried to keep their head up and pretend as if nothing happened? Perhaps either they didn’t want others to think they were weak or they simply wanted to show others that grief can be dealt with privately, so as not to burden others.

In my experience, it’s only a matter of time before people like this let all their suppressed emotions come out in unhealthy and unproductive ways like addiction or outbursts of misplaced anger and violence. Often when people suppress their grief they also suppress their other emotions – ending up feeling nothing – going through life numb to sorrow or joy – completely apathetic to the joys and the struggles of their neighbors.

Today’s gospel story from John paints a beautiful picture of healthy grief. Any of us who has ever felt that God was entirely absent in tragedy can sympathize with Mary and Martha’s claim, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is a fascinating statement in scripture because it is simultaneously an indictment of Jesus’ inaction, as well as a confession of faith in Jesus’ power. Mary and Martha have not lost faith in their savior, they are simply disappointed in his tarrying and lack of immediate action.

We curse God when tragedy strikes, not because we fear God doesn’t exist at all, but rather because God apparently failed to show up in time.

Mary and Martha’s faithful questioning of God’s decisions and lack of action is a beautiful antidote to the common refrains of “Everything happens for a reason” or “God’s timing is different than our timing” that we absent-mindedly toss around in tragedy. These are two of the most unhelpful things we can say to anyone who is enduring tragedy. People who are living in the emotional ruins of tragedy need to be able to lament and complain and be heard. Only then can we direct them to the source of hope, comfort and understanding.

Jesus listens to Mary and Martha’s confession and upon being invited to visit the tomb of their dead brother, Jesus weeps. This is the shortest verse in the Bible but it is also one of the most important verses because it speaks to the truth that God identifies with us and feels our hopes and hurts. Through Jesus, God knows what grief feels like. Through Jesus, God knows what death feels like. Through Jesus, God weeps as we would at the passing of a loved one.

Jesus’ tears give us permission to bring our prayers of lament and petition before God, to lay all our doubt, fear, and anger at God’s feet, and trust that God will listen. God has been there. And, as Jesus points out, God is able to do something about it.

Death may have had its say; but, as we heard in today’s gospel text, death doesn’t have the last word.

In the midst of death, God is at work creating life. God, through Jesus, gives life to Lazarus. God, through Jesus, gives spiritual life to his people. God gives life to the crucified Jesus. And God, through the resurrected Jesus, gives the free gift of grace and life to all who desire it.

Time will not heal your wounds. Only grieving will heal your wounds. Because it is through grieving, by acknowledging and sharing our sadness and fear, that we realize God is with us in our pain. God does not stand in a distant land of healing and joy and beckon us to come; not does God point to that place and tell us to journey there alone. Rather God is with us the whole time, in the darkness and the light, in the pain and the comfort.

Pastor Mark and I want to hear your stories about those people, things, memories, and ways of life that have passed away. We want you to grieve with us. We want to be people who you can come to and say, “death sucks.” To which we'll respond, "It certainly does; I couldn't have said it better myself."

Amen.

"Coins and Corn Meal" – Mark 12:38-44

"Death Sucks" – John 11:32-44