Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
November 18, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day. (Scriptures for the 25th Sunday were used.)

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Jesus calls our attention to a widow who gives her whole life. That isn’t clear in the English translation, but that’s what the original Greek implies. Jesus isn’t just talking about money, He’s calling our attention to a woman who offers her whole self to God.

We are all called to entrust our lives to God, and this woman does something beautiful and Christ-like by giving of herself so fully. Yet I wonder if it is wise for a widow to give everything to God by way of what had become a corrupt religious institution? Especially because Jesus has just been talking about religious leaders who are devouring widows’ houses, exploiting them. Will she be a victim of those leaders? We never come across this woman again in scripture, and we don’t know how it all went for her. There are so many questions here.

So, today as we think about God’s invitation to trust and give freely, I find the story of a widow in our first lesson much more helpful. It gives us a fuller picture of trusting and giving.

We hear the story of a widow who is literally starving to death at a time of drought. She is gathering sticks to prepare the last of her food so that she and her son can eat a final meal together before they die. Then a stranger comes along and asks her to make him some bread.

Is it wise to share the last of what she has? Is that faithful to her dying son? She doesn’t think so and she says as much. She tells Elijah she has only enough for one last meal for the two of them. She has real concerns and she expresses them.

Notice what happens next.

This stranger, who turns out to be God’s prophet Elijah, doesn’t critique her, he isn’t frustrated that she won’t just blindly give him her last bit of food.

Instead, he promises her that God is about to do something wondrous and that she can take part in it by giving freely of what she has.

He speaks words of promise from God saying, “Do not be afraid, for thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” 

The widow trusts this promise and gives what she has; she entrusts her life to God.

As she does, she gets to participate in what God is doing and her needs are met. We’re told, “She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail.” The widow becomes no longer just a victim of the drought, but rather an agent of God’s work of feeding the prophet Elijah. And she and her son are fed.

The good news of this story and the good news of Jesus is that God is up to wondrous things in this world, and we get to participate. God is at work feeding, healing, loving and transforming the world and God uses us as agents of this work. We don’t have to live as victims, at the mercy of what we lack. No matter how meager or abundant our resources, God can and does work through us. God can and does work through you.

Yet, so often we feel we are lacking when it comes to time, money, energy, power, health, or faith. Our culture tells us that we don’t have enough, that we aren’t enough. We’d better hold on tight to what we have and work like crazy to make sure that we get more and more and more. Only when we have a whole lot can we share what we have.

This isn’t actually a wise way to live – all the great wisdom traditions advise against it. Grasping, hoarding and refusing to share don’t work out well for us or our society. This is a soul-crushing way to live.

We become victims of our fear of scarcity and miss the opportunity to participate in what God is doing around us.

I believe that’s why God asks us to give of our very selves for God’s work of loving the world. As we give, we find that our needs are met as well. We are fed and nourished. We are set free from our fear of scarcity. God asks us to give because it helps us and the world.

Even still, it is hard to give, hard to trust. So, God comes to us as other people who ask for our help, who invite our giving. God comes to us through scripture, speaking words of promise like those given to the widow: “Do not be afraid”, “Do not worry about tomorrow”, “You shall not be in want.”

And most of all, God comes to us in Jesus, the one who gives his very life, all that he has, so that we can experience and be drawn into God’s healing and life-giving work. Jesus comes to us today to say, “This is my body given for you, this is my blood shed for you.” This food will not run out, this meal will not fail – we have all that we need.

We can entrust our lives to God. I can’t wait to see what God will do in and for us all.

Thanks be to God.

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 11, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Texts for 24^th Sunday after Pentecost: Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Really? This shall happen? How?

Some days it takes all our heart, soul, mind and strength just to get out of bed and face the day. It takes a lot to even be pleasant to others, especially before coffee. The news of the world is so disheartening. The challenges we face can seem insurmountable. We aren’t sure we can even trust God in these times. So how are we supposed to love God and other people with our whole selves?

I imagine the first people to hear these love commands probably wondered the same thing. How are we supposed to do that?

These commands are given to God’s people as they are wandering in the desert, after God has led them out of slavery in Egypt. God has promised to bring them into a good land flowing with milk and honey. But they, too, have trouble trusting God, much less loving God. They grumble and com- plain. They rebel against Moses, the person God used to set them free. They build a golden calf and worship it.

So, God lets them wander in the wilderness for forty long years. Along the way, God instructs Moses to tell them, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And, as they are preparing to enter the promised land, Moses says to the people, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”

These seem like really big asks. The people don’t even say thank you for the manna God sends to feed them in the desert and yet, God expects them to jump in with both feet to love God and other people wholeheartedly? Maybe God should have more realistic expectations: “Be nice, don’t hit, clean up after yourself”. Those seem like more reasonable commands for these difficult people, more reasonable for us.

We, too, are wandering in the wilderness – so much about life these days is uncertain and frightening. We as a species are so often unkind, violence is all around us, we leave mess and destruction in our wake. How can God really expect us to love so wholeheartedly in this wilderness?

And yet, what a relief it would be, what a joy it would be to love with our whole selves – to devote our hearts, minds, and strength to loving God and God’s ways of love. What peace we would know if we could all love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. What a glorious world this would be.

God longs for us to know the joy of living in the way of love. God longs for us to know a world where love reigns.

And so, God commands us to love. God sets the bar high – love with all you’ve got, with all you are.

But God doesn’t just command love and say, “alright, good luck with that.” God begins by loving us completely, fully, wholeheartedly with all of God’s self.

God also gives us the words of scripture, commands and promises that teach us to love. We are instructed to place these words upon our hearts, the ancient rabbis taught, so that when our hearts break with the pain of the world, God’s word of love will fall into our hearts. Then our hearts will be broken open to more fully love the world rather than shattering into pieces that harm others. So, the pain of the world doesn’t have to prevent us from loving, instead, with God’s word of love, the pain of the world can open us to love more.

Most importantly, God enters into the wilderness with us in Jesus. God, in Jesus, shares all of the pain and struggle of our lives. And Jesus gives of his whole self, his very life, in love for us. When we are loved so deeply, so thoroughly, then loving wholeheartedly becomes a possibility for us – a life- giving and healing possibility.

As author Frederick Buechner writes, ” ‘You shall love the Lord your God’ becomes, in the end, less a command than a promise. You shall love. And the promise is that, yes, on the weary feet of faith and the fragile wings of hope, we will come to love [God] at last, as from the first [God] has loved us—loved us even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, because [God] has been in the wilderness with us. [God] has been in the wilderness for us. [God] has been acquainted with our grief. And, loving [God], we will come at last to love each other too.”

Buechner continues, quoting Deuteronomy, “And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And rise we shall, out of the wilderness, every last one of us, even as out of the wilderness Christ rose before us. That is the promise, and the greatest of all promises.”

Beloved, you are loved, God is with you, you will rise again and again from the wilderness to love God and love others.

That is a promise.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.