“Why Give?”

Mark 12:38-44

11/8/09

    Among the most irritating and annoying sermons I’ve ever heard or had to preach are those sermons that have to do with giving.  I remember one church I attended way back when I first joined the Lutheran Church where every year (about the end of the fiscal year when the congregation had to meet its budget) the pastor would preach at least a couple of sermons on tithing.  In those sermons he would tell us that Christians must give 10% of their earnings to the Church, which meant that if they didn’t give at least this amount, they were sinning.  But the more adamantly he proclaimed this, the more adamantly I kept my wallet closed, angry that such legalism was being preached, while at the same time wondering where the Gospel about Jesus Christ was in all of this.

But today we have two texts before us - the O.T. lesson as well as the Gospel reading - that have to do with giving.  Both involve two women, both of them widows, both too poor to give anything (let alone 10%), and yet, for some reason, both of them give all that they have to live on - the widow of Zarephath gives the last of her food to the prophet Elijah, while the widow at the temple gives the last of her money to the Lord.  Why do they do this?  What lesson do these two widows, these two saints, have to teach us about giving?  And with such a lesson, do they also teach us something about Christ?

First, what they do not teach us is that we earn our salvation by giving.  These ladies did not give in order to get something back, least of all God’s favor.  Such an attitude was held by the Pharisees, but not by these women.  What the Pharisees hoped to get out of their large contributions was recognition and praise from both God and others.  They might have even tried to outdo each other in their giving, so that the winner might boast in the fact that he could hold the title of Greatest Giver.  Perhaps people would congratulate him and throw him a feast.  But elsewhere Jesus says to His disciples, “When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.  Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  The Pharisees had no intention of giving in secret; they wanted everyone to know how generous they were, so that they might be rewarded somehow for it.  By contrast, a poorly dressed widow, who threw in a couple of small coins amounting to less than a cent, would hardly attract anyone’s attention, let alone gain any reward or praise.  If they noticed her at all, the Pharisees more than likely would have thanked their god that they weren’t poor like she was and perhaps might have even reasoned in their minds that she was poor, because she deserved it on account of some sin she’d committed.

So, these widows weren’t trying to gain recognition and praise for what they had done, least of all from God.  They weren’t trying to impress Him or anyone else, for that matter.  Had they been, Jesus would not have taken notice of them.  They would have fallen under the same words of condemnation that the Pharisees received from Him.  Yet the widow at the temple was recognized and praised by her Lord.  God had taken note of what she’d done, yet from afar.  She was unaware of the fact that Jesus had seen her and that He had praised her for what she’d done.  She hadn’t given to get this reward, however.  She’d given solely out of her love for her Lord for the treasures of His mercy which He had lavished upon her by His grace.

Both the widow of Zarephath and the widow at the temple gave because of the riches God had promised them in His Word.  They didn’t give in order to obtain these promises; they gave because they had these promises already.  In the case of the widow of Zarephath, she gave to God’s prophet, Elijah, because through him God had given her His promise that her jar of flour would not be spent, nor that her jug of oil would be empty, until He sent rain again on the earth.  In the case of the widow at the temple, St. Mark doesn’t record the words of promise that she was clinging to, but we know they were the words of God which Moses and the prophets had proclaimed to God’s people in the O.T., words which reminded them of how God had saved them from their slavery in Egypt and brought them into the promised land, words by which He promised to be their God and they His people, words which promised that He would provide for their needs, words which spoke His forgiveness and mercy to them for the sake of the sacrifices offered there at the temple, and words which promised a Messiah, who would atone for their sins with His blood, suffer, die, and rise again, that they might be raised from the dead themselves and live and reign with Him for all eternity.  Such promises this poor widow would have heard from God’s Word as she worshipped at His temple, and in response to such lavish giving on the part of her Lord towards her, she gave what she could to Him, which was all she had to live on.  It was because He had given Himself so completely to her, that she then gave herself so completely to Him.

And here her lesson on why we should give directs us to our Lord’s giving.  Both of these widows teach that it’s because the Lord has first given to us, that we now have the joy and privilege of giving to Him.  In their giving, these ladies reflect the way the Lord has given to us.  They show that He wasn’t stingy about His giving, nor did He give reluctantly.  What He gave wasn’t worth much to the world.  It wasn’t earthly treasures like gold, silver, or precious jewels.  Nor did He give like the Pharisees gave, who just gave a portion of their wealth in order to show off.  Instead, He gave like these widows gave.  He gave all He had to live on.  He gave Himself completely into death on the cross as the sacrifice for your sins.  And He did this not for Himself but solely out of His love for you, so that you might receive the treasures of His righteousness, in order that you might not perish, but have eternal life.  The epistle lesson for today from the book of Hebrews speaks of this giving of our Lord, when the author writes that Christ “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”

But His giving didn’t stop with His sacrifice on the cross.  Risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, He still gives Himself and His treasure to you today.  Like the flour and the oil that He gave the widow of Zarephath, He gives you the Bread of Life and the oil of His Word and Sacraments to feed on, in order to sustain you in the faith.  And just as He continued to provide this food for her and her son to live on until He sent His rain on the earth, so He will continue to provide you with the spiritual food you need, until the day He sends His Son for you, so that where He is you might be also.  And the writer of Hebrews makes mention of this Day as well, when he writes, “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.”

And so, it was because these widows realized how much they had been given to by the Lord, that they then responded with their giving to Him.  And this what St. Paul reminds the Corinthian congregation of, when he encourages them to give.  He points out that giving is a sign of love:  First of all it’s a sign of God’s love for you, but then it’s also a sign of your love for Him as you give to His people, your brothers and sisters in Christ, in their need.  In this giving Jesus is not only our example, but it’s His Gift of Love to us that motivates us to give our gifts of love to Him.  As Paul writes, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.”  The widow at the temple may have been poor in the eyes of the world, but she was rich in God’s eyes, because she had the riches of Christ.  The same goes for you.  You, too, may not have much in the eyes of the world, but you have Christ, and with Him comes all the riches of His grace, mercy, and peace, as well as the inheritance of the life of the world to come.  Giving of your time, talents, or treasures to meet the physical earthly needs of your neighbors in this life will not and cannot impoverish you in any way.  It cannot diminish your riches in Christ.  And so, having been given much ourselves, we may give much to those who need our help, and in so doing we will reflect God’s love to the world.

In the past, perhaps we have given for the wrong reasons.  Maybe we looked at giving as a Law sort of thing, where we had to give, and, what’s more, that we had to give a certain amount.  Perhaps we looked at giving as a way we might get something back for ourselves, either from God or from those whom we helped.  Or maybe we didn’t want to give away too much, for fear that we might impoverish ourselves.  But Paul writes, “whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”  Not that you should expect that if you give $10.00 you’ll get $20.00 back!  The bounty that you reap can’t be measured in terms of money, but in terms of the praise you will receive from the Lord, just as the widow at the temple did, along with the joy you have in participating in your Lord’s giving, which includes giving people the Gospel about how He gave Himself into death for you to reconcile you to God.