Trusting God - The Faith of the Widow

Title: Trusting God – The Faith of the Widow Sermon by Pastor Lohn Johnson
Text:  Mark 12: 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.  44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."   INTRODUCTION:  My dear friends in Christ, In this passage, Jesus and his disciples were in the temple courts. And the place where Jesus was teaching was near the Temple treasury. Scholars tells us that the Temple complex was made up of various courtyards which became increasingly exclusive the closer one came to the religious heart of the Temple the Holy of Holies: the place where God dwelt. This particular story is set in the Court of the Women one of the outer, less holy areas. In this area stood 13 trumpet-shaped, brass receptacles. There were little signs on each of these receptacles denoting how the money thrown into that particular receptacle was to be used. One said, for example, “Building Maintenance”; another said “Rabbis’ Salary”; another said “Widows and Orphans Fund”, etc. The room would have been absolutely jammed with people who had come to offer sacrifices during the feast of Passover.  The scene was a noisy, busy area.
I.  But from their vantage point, Jesus and his disciples could see what people were putting into these receptacles.
	A. There was a long line of rich people. They loved making a show of their giving. And some of them did, indeed, throw in large amounts of money.
			1. The religious leaders garments were ornate. They expected formal public greetings. They always looked for VIP seating.  They prayed publicly with eloquence. In short, they were consumed with abundance. They wanted prominence. They liked their high standing in society. 2.  They gave a lot but their giving was motivated by pride.  And because of their pride there was little room for God in their hearts.
		B. Then a widow came and put two copper coins into the offering.  And Jesus’ attention was drawn to a poor widow. What she gave was worth only a few cents, but Jesus recognized that her offering was far more valuable than the sum total of all the other coins offered up that day.
			1.  And JESUS WAS THE PERFECT PERSON TO COMMENT ON THE WIDOW'S GIFT, WASN'T HE?
					b. Here was a man who was to give “his all.” He was poorer than that widow. In fact, He gave up everything to become destitute for us. Like the poor widow, he had no financial wealth to contribute to the temple. Instead, He sacrificed himself for us. He gave his all, everything for us.   c. Somebody HAS died and left us a gift: Jesus. He died to leave us the greatest gift we can possibly imagine: salvation and eternal life. He Himself was the greatest Giver of them all!
			2.  The widow is noticed not only because out of her poverty and without reservation, but also because Her gift foreshadows the one Jesus is about to make. In Mark this poor widow becomes a “type” of Him who, "though he was rich, yet for (our) sake became poor, so that by his poverty (we) might become rich." (II Cor. 8:9)
II.  The text forces us to ask: What would cause a person to voluntarily give away her last two pennies, especially to a system that left her destitute?
	A. The widow was saying, simply “I TRUST GOD.”
				1. You see there was no Social Security, no pension, no monthly check she would be receiving now that her husband was gone. Widows were quite vulnerable. Unless her husband was a wealthy man or unless she had children to support her or perhaps other family members that would take her in, she was at the mercy of society.
					a. The widow's humility and Generosity grew out of her knowing God’s love for her. In his first letter, John says, "We love because God first loved us."   b. She isn’t just dabbling in spare change. She is, to borrow a poker term, “all in” with God, unlike the scribes and others.  She evidently didn’t worry about tomorrow. She knew that God held the future and she trusted God to take care of her in the future.
				2. Here's the final thing her offering said that day. SHE BELIEVED IN THE WORK OF GOD.
					a. The work of the temple was important to her and she wanted to support it. Doubtless, it was with pleasure that she dropped in her coins for she knew she was part of something bigger than herself.   b. She still believed that regardless of all that had happened to her, everything she was and everything she had still belonged to God. Despite the corruption and exploitation going on in God’s name there in the temple, somehow God was still going to set things right.
		B. Today and every Sunday we celebrate the giving nature of our loving God, much like that widow. God gives us love, life, hope, forgiveness and the promise of eternal life. God gives us His only Son as our Savior.
				1. We are brought to know that all we have and all we are is the result of God's gracious Generosity.
					a. God created us and God provides for all of our needs. Not our wants and desires, but our daily needs.   b. The talents we have are given to us by God. We use and build upon those God given talents and abilities in order to earn a living for our families. We may buy stuff with the money we earn but even those things can be attributed to God because we used our God given talents to earn the money to buy the things. There is nothing which we have which does not come from God.  God knows our needs just like parents know their children's needs.   c. Remembering this helps us focus our thoughts and our lives upon God. A life focused upon God is exactly what God most desires for each of us, because a life focused on God gives life joy, meaning, purpose and quality.
				2. And God calls us to be givers like Him out of response to the unconditional love we've experienced.
					a. You see, it's not what we have done but what has been done for us through Christ. It's not our love for God that makes us Generous, it's knowing that God loves us in spite of all the horrible things we've done.    b. And God calls us to believe in His work too.  We are part of something bigger than ourselves – a church which proclaims the love of God shown in Jesus – a church which proclaims the presence of God in Word and sacrament.—a church which gives the Giver to a world which so desperately needs Him.
		C. But so often we are not as generous as we ought to be.
				1. One reason some people are not generous in their giving is that they are “afraid.”
					a. They're afraid that the stock market will fail and they will not have enough to pay their bills. Some are afraid that what they have will be taken away.   b. And there are others who simply are uncertain that this Christianity business is real after all. And because of our fear and uncertainty there is little room for God in our hearts.
				2. Maybe it would help to look at it like this: Pennies From Heaven is a 1936 film starring Bing Crosby (not to be confused with the 1981 Steve Martin film, that shares only the title). The film's story -- of flawed but well-meaning people trying to do the right thing and stick together amid adversity -- has been largely forgotten, but the title song, emblematic of the Depression Era, has endured. The song's lyrics reflect on how the pre-Depression world had forgotten how "the best things in life were absolutely free." Because no one appreciated marvels like the blue sky and the new moon, "it was planned" (presumably by God) "that they would vanish now and then."  But even when marvels are hard to see there are "Pennies from heaven" That's what storms were made for, And you shouldn't be afraid for every time it rains, it rains, Pennies from heaven. Don't you know each cloud contains Pennies from heaven? You'll find your fortune's falling all over town. Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.
					a. Sure, the song's message sounds Polyanna-ish, but in the darkest days of the Depression, it was comforting to think that God still sends the many pennies our way -- many small, but tangible blessings, symbolic of the much more significant blessings He gives in Word and Sacrament.   b. In each situation we face, the problem is fear and uncertainty crowding out faith. Then we don’t see the pennies from heaven He sends.  And then we don’t respond.  But When in faith we see his pennies from heaven our faith is boosted and we respond.
				2. We need to be reminded of the many pennies we receive from heaven.  We need to be reminded to see that the faith we are given is from God.  Then we see the pennies flooding down to us.  We need to be reminded again and again that God loves and cares for His children.
CONCLUSION:     There's a Dennis the Menace cartoon, which shows Dennis and Joey leaving the Wilson's front porch, each with a handful of cookies. Joey has this surprised look on his face and Dennis says, "Mrs. Wilson gives us cookies not because we're nice, but because she's nice."   Dennis is right on target. It's not what we do but what God does for us. We love God because God loves us. Our generosity is motivated by God’s love for us. That's what motivated the widow. And Jesus noticed.   That’s what can and will motivate us and Jesus notices.  Amen.

Reformation 2012

Missed Reformation Sunday? Here is the link to the video sermon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuHNSjioPvw   Reformation Article from Lutheran Witness October 2009: October 31, 1517, the day on which Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, is remembered as the beginning of the Reformation. Luther protested the sale of indulgences, the then common church practice of selling the forgiveness of sins. His 95 Theses must rank with the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence as a world-shattering document. Unlike the writers of other pace-setting documents, Luther never intended that his theses would be so decisively ultimate. The 95 Theses turned Luther into the great reformer. He was not the first or the last to lodge a protest against church abuses, but five centuries after his birth, his reforms are influencing even the successors of those who rejected and condemned him. In the nearly 30 years that Luther lived after that fateful day, he was involved directly or through his associates in reforming the church and society. At first others were more aware of Luther’s world-shattering ideas than he was himself. What was for him the solution to an internal religious problem became for others a call for reformation. The printing press and the translation of his views from Latin into German spread his views so quickly throughout Europe that they soon came to the attention of princes, bishops, and even the pope. While Luther’s concern was the justification of the sinner before God through faith without works, the church authorities understood them chiefly as a direct attack on the church institution. This was so far from Luther’s mind at first, that he even appealed to the two popes as dear fathers in Christ. His religious concerns were, nevertheless, seen as treachery against the civil authorities, since the church and empire were unified under the pope and emperor. To protect this world, the authorities reacted to Luther’s concerns, first by debate and persuasion. Then on June 15, 1520, hardly a full three years after his original protest, he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X. After his courageous stand before Emperor Charles V on April 17, 1521, at Worms he was, until his death in 1546, an outlaw in most of imperial Europe. Bu this time Luther had set forth in many writings his ideas of reform. Because of his excommunication, Luther was put into the position of practical reformer, not his by personal inclination and education. He was trained as a scholar and teacher. His doctrine of justification, over which he had struggled for many years before 1517, especially in connection with his lectures on Romans and the Psalms, had unintentionally put him in opposition to the church’s understanding of itself as the only dispenser of salvation. The church’s hold on society from the humblest peasant to the emperor rested on this claim. This claim on Christians was exercised not only by indulgences but by the sale of masses for souls in purgatory, pilgrimages, prayers to the saints, and the maintenance of monasteries. Luther’s opponents, as the documents show, were not as concerned about his views on justification as about their negative effect on church structures. In a sense they led him to see the implications of his own teaching. This personal awareness turned Luther from a scholar with a solution to a theological problem into a great reformer of church and society. Many portraits and statues of Luther picture him holding the Bible in his hand as he is preaching. Recognizing the Bible as the sole authority in church life and making it available to the people in their language were some of the first reforms. Luther, like his contemporaries, recognized the Bible as God’s Word. However, they saw the Bible and teachings of the church, that were collected in tradition, constituting one authority, with the pope serving as the final arbiter. In a debate with John Eck in Leipzig in July 1519, Luther realized that popes, church councils, and accepted church teachings often flatly contradicted each other. Eck, wanting to show Luther that he was not a loyal son the church, led him in the process to the conviction that the Bible was the final authority. Luther also insisted on the Bible’s literal interpretation. Through the complex method of allegory, the priest exercised effective control over the people. Now the people--without the priests--could understand God’s will for themselves. This led later to Luther’s translation of the New Testament (1522) and the Old Testament (1534). Translation of the Bible into modern language began and has never stopped.

I do believe; Help me Overcome my Unbelief*

Title:  I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!* Sermon from *43 Matt Hoffmann sermons
Text: Mark 9:14-29  22 And Jesus said to him, “‘Everything is possible for one who believes.”  Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”.”   INTRODUCTION: My dear friends in Christ, Alexander the Great had supreme confidence in his friend and physician.  When the physician had mixed him a potion for his sickness, a letter was put into Alexander’s hand warning him not to drink the mixture, since it was poisoned.  He held the letter in one hand and the cup in the other and in the presence of his friend and physician he drank up the drought.  After he had drained the cup, he bade his friend look at the letter and judge of his confidence in him. Alexander had unwavering faith in his friend that did not include any doubt.  He said: “See now, how I have trusted you.” This is the assurance that the believer should exercise toward his God.  But so often it’s not the case.  Unbelief whispers in our ears calling us to hesitate and falter in our trust in Him.”
I.    Today our text from Mark 9 gives us words that express the tension that is more normal than Alexander’s faith in the doctor.
	A.  These Words spoken first by a man who had the courage to be truly honest with himself, and honest with God.
				1. Stripped of all pretense, he speaks so plainly, “I believe, help my unbelief!” This is real, gut wrenching truth, and it speaks to life in a real, gut wrenching world.
						a. The statement itself is loaded with tension. There is pretense in this man’s faith and unbelief. But he doesn’t hide it.   b. And I’m glad that he doesn’t, because don’t we all live with this kind of tension in our lives? We live as those who have the saving blood of Jesus poured out for us, and giving us the promise of forgiveness, life and salvation. And yet, don’t we still live with the daily struggle against sin? Don’t we still live in a very real world full of very real disappointments, and failures, and temptations? The truth is, in this world, we don’t always win.
				2.  What I love about the account of Jesus healing this boy is WHERE we find it in Scripture.  It’s important that we understand that this account is always found immediately following the Transfiguration of Christ.
						a. Why does this matter? Well, the Transfiguration of Jesus is where we are transported, along with Peter, James, and John to witness a preview of the heavenly reality that is waiting for those who have been redeemed by Christ’s grace.   b. But here’s the deal. At the VERY TIME that all this is going on, something very different is happening to the 9 guys who didn’t go with Jesus up that hill. It wasn’t other-worldly, it wasn’t heavenly. It was harsh reality,..
	B. The men walked down the mountain of Transfiguration, “And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.” A heated argument is raging all because a man brought his boy to be healed of a demon possession, but the disciples were unable to help. So the scribes rushed in to take advantage of the situation, to make the disciples look silly, and trivial in front of this big crowd. It had to be a truly crass scene.
				1.  Grown men, religious men, shouting at one another. Men throwing theological arguments back and forth, all the while, one man in the crowd can hardly watch.
						a. You see, his heart had been broken once again. He knew the feeling well. But yet it never seemed to make it less raw and dark, no matter how familiar he had become with the disappointment after so many years. If he were just fighting to help himself, and for his own problems, he would have given up years ago. But he wasn’t fighting for himself, he was fighting for his son, trying to help his boy. He would allow himself to get his hopes up, knowing that more than likely they would be dashed, because his son needed him to, so he would always try one more time.   b. But so far, nothing had worked. So far, he had no reason to have faith that anything could work. It’s not that people didn’t want to help, it’s that no one knew how. His son’s problems weren’t normal. He had demonic, induced epileptic fits.
				2. It only makes sense that this man had a bruised faith. His faith had a fresh wound on it when Jesus comes because to the disciples had failed to make any kind of difference at all. The evil spirit still gripped the boy as tightly as ever. It takes courage for him to even ask Jesus to help, and in his pain, you can see why his request of Jesus starts out guardedly: “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” If you can…
II. Jesus responds to the heart of the matter, ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” He says, the question isn’t about what I CAN do, the question is, “do you believe?” He doesn’t say this to be mean, or to challenge the man. Jesus says this because he knows what it will bring out of the man is something beautiful. A powerful confession of sin and a wonderful confession of faith. Both being exactly what this man so desperately needs.
	A. Desperation is the right word. The years of emotion well up from deep inside; all of the hopes that fell down so hard, all of the nights of tears, are forced to the surface, through his vocal chords, and come crashing out of his mouth:  and He said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
					1. It was the only thing he could say. It was all he had left in him to say, all that was left of his battered faith. All he had left laid bare, in just a handful of words, “I believe, help my unbelief!”   2. But where this man was weak, he found that Jesus was strong. That Jesus still heard his cry, and responded to weakness of faith in strength of love.
						a. And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”   b. And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
		B. In the end, we see what really matters. What matters is that Christ is strong, not us. What matters is what God can do, not us. What matters is that we come to realize that we can’t help ourselves, that we aren’t as in control as we thought.  Cartoons at times will have a scene where a character, let’s says Wild E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, falls off the edge of a cliff. As he falls, he grabs hold of a twig sticking out of the side of the cliff. He hangs there for a short time. Then the twig snaps and he falls. It doesn’t matter how strong his grip was. When the twig breaks, he falls.  It doesn’t matter how strong we are; all that matters is how strong God is.
					1. Where are you today? What do you think when you hear those words, “I believe, help my unbelief?”
						a. If you’re like me you’ve had doubts. You’ve had hopes built up and then smashed. You’ve wondered at times if God even hears you when you call on him. We’ve all been there. Because we are real people, we live life in this real world, and we’ve experienced real pain, and real fear, and real heartache.   b. This man’s simple words strike us so deeply because they are our words. They are honest words, they are real words, the words we’d like to shout ourselves, but are maybe too afraid what others might think.  The questions swirl in our minds.  It is really OK to admit that I have doubts? Is it really OK to say I need help with my faith? It is it really OK to be completely transparent about my struggles? The answer is YES!
					2. This is life, and this is what the journey of faith looks like sometimes.
							a. And this is a remarkable description of what happens in Holy Baptism: A sinner, who by definition is a child of the devil, is brought to the Lord God commands the evil one to release the sinner.  The sinner is killed. The sinner is raised to new life in, with, and by Christ Jesus. The father's confession, "I believe, help my unbelief" is the daily life and struggle of the Baptized. It was the struggle of the disciples. It is your struggle and mine.   b. I would love it if the path of the life of faith looked like you were baptized and launched out of a cannon in a straight line, and straight up to heaven. How great would that be! But that’s not how it goes for any of us.
			C. This is what the real journey of faith looks like sometimes. Sorry, but it’s true. Actually, I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all. Because something important happens in these dark moments.
					1. In these dark places, in these shadowy corners of our hearts we come to an important realization: That faith can’t be all about us. We have to fix our eyes on something greater, on someone greater.
							a. Help, faith, salvation. These things aren’t rooted inside of us. They are gifts given to us from our God. They are gifts rooted in our rescuer, our Messiah, our Savior. They are gifts found in the bloody soaked sacrifice on the cross for our sins, they are found in the empty grave clothes that once wrapped the body of the killed Christ now risen.   b. If you feel that all you have to offer God is a bruised, and battered, and beaten faith. It doesn’t affect at all what he has to offer you. It doesn’t matter if you feel that you are on the edge of your faith. It doesn’t matter if you struggle with deep doubts. It doesn’t matter if you have doubts about how long you can hold onto your faith in the storm.
					2. Because Christ will NEVER let go of you. Christ never has doubts about you. He never has questions about what you’re worth to Him. He knew what it would cost to make you his. He knew the price he would have to pay. He knew how far you’d wander from Him, he knew how much you would sin, he knew how much it would hurt.
							a. But he also knew he didn’t want to live without you. So he made your salvation real. As real as a cruel wooden cross. As real as a cold stone tomb, a place of darkness and death, that he would turn into a symbol of light and life for you.   b. And he hears you, he knows you, he loves you. Even in those moments when all you can say is what that man said so many years ago, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” Understand that even this is amazing. Even this is a gift from God. Even this is a blessing.
CONCLUSION: It takes courage to be that honest. To say out loud that things aren’t perfect, that my faith isn’t perfect, that I need God to intervene in my life, even now. Can you say those words? Can you let down your guard? Can you trust that the cross is enough for you? Can you look past yourself to find comfort in the empty tomb, in what Christ has done for you? Let’s say it together: “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!”   Christ’s response is always the same. “I know, I love you, You belong to me.” AMEN
*Reference: Raw Honesty Matt Hoffmann 43 Matt Hoffmann sermons Topic: #345 of 715 for Sermons on Doubt Scripture: Mark 9:14-9:21