Sunday, November 25, 2012

Out of this World




John 18:33-38a
Reign of Christ Sunday:  November 25, 2012

Christ the King Sunday is a great time to think for a moment about how we talk about God.  And this really isn’t just a little side trip, or a time out from the rest of the Sundays.  Since words about God are one of the primary ways we come to know God, the words we use to describe God, and our understandings of what those words mean, have enormous power over us and who we are and what our faith looks like.

For example, we say God is our father.  There is no way to use the word “father” without it evoking all of our associations with that word – whether we become conscious of that or not.  In fact, the only way this word can be helpful to us in getting to know God better is if we do have preconceived notions about what “father” means.  Otherwise, the word is, literally, meaningless.

But we always have to remember we are talking about God, and so any word we use for God will never finally describe God.  The language is symbolic, and when a word points to God it always both is and is not God.  God both is and is not a father.  God both is and is not a rock.  God both is and is not a judge.  And on and on.  There is simply no way around this.

But because we have a fairly small repertoire of images for God, we use them over and over until, I think, we lose the “is not” part of the whole thing.  The words become over familiar representations of God and over time become synonymous with God, not symbols for God.  When we say God is father, we usually only think about how God is like a father.  We haven’t trained our brains to immediately think about how God is not like a father. God does love us with the fierce love of a parent, so God is like a father.  But God is not a gendered human being that, treats us like children who can’t be trusted with our own lives.

This is the world of faith.  It comes with the territory.  And it’s not a problem to be solved by just looking for more precise words that get closer to defining God without having the “is not” problem.  In fact, the “problem” of the limitations of language and words in describing God itself points to a truth about God: God can’t be known fully through words.  They fall short – they obscure as much as illuminate.  That is saying as much about God as calling God father.  But we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about this or being conscious of this. 

I admit it.  I read a fair amount of the chatter online about the Tuesday night Grinnell basketball game this week.  I really enjoyed seeing what “the world” had to say about a basketball player scoring 138 points in one game.  I enjoyed it almost as much as being at the game when he did it.  I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much is because I am on the inside.  I am in the know.  I enjoyed watching people struggle to articulate why it bothered them, or why they loved it, when they didn’t know much – or anything at all – about Grinnell basketball. 

Understanding Grinnell basketball requires holding on to two realities that seem contradictory – it requires the “is” and “is not” thinking that we have to do with words about God.  What they play both is and is not basketball – and that’s what makes it so great.  It is basketball – it is in relationship with all the other teams and people who play basketball, it follows the technical rules.  To try and claim – as some people actually do – that it’s not basketball is to lose the ability to talk about it in any meaningful way at all. 

But in order to really be in the know about this team, to really “get” it, you have to know that what they play is not basketball – at least not in the sense that most people immediately associate with the word basketball.  It may follow the technical rules, but not the conventional ones.  And I would even go out on a limb and say David Arsenault is trying to be both in the world of basketball and upset the world of basketball by playing in a style that both is and is not basketball.  Because that’s the beauty of it – the “is” and “is not.”  It means it is doing more than just participating in something that is already determined…it is trying to shape, make more complex, interesting, and fun, disrupt and deconstruct the very thing in which it is participating.  In this case, not understanding this means one misses out on something fun.  Which in the scheme of things is a fairly trivial consequence.

But In the case of words we use to talk about the divine, forgetting the “is” and “is not” reality of those words means we miss out on connecting with God in meaningful ways.  For me, that is not a trivial consequence.

That is what we see in the conversation between Jesus and Pilate.  The author of the gospel of John uses this scene to help his readers better understand God.  Pilate becomes the foil, the example of what happens when we don’t understand the ability and inability of common words to describe who God is.  Through Pilate’s interaction with Jesus, the author is drawing on what the readers know of the world, but only to help them transcend what they know so they can grasp a little something of the transcendent God, the God that both participates in what we know and changes it.

Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you king of the Jews?”  And Jesus doesn’t answer directly.  He appears cagey, in fact.  But finally says “my kingdom is not from this world.”  The way Pilate hears that is, “Yes, I am a king.”  He can’t hear anything else.  When Jesus says, “my kingdom,” that means he is saying, “I am a king,” and that’s all Pilate needs to know to put Jesus to death.

My kingdom is not from this world:  When we hear this – this familiar, oft used verse – we are vulnerable to the same thing Pilate was.  When Jesus says, “my kingdom,” he is, in fact, saying that he is a king.  You can’t have a kingdom and not have a king, right?  But we tell ourselves, that means he is beautiful, sparkly, Jesus wears a robe and jeweled crown, etc.  His kingdom is out of this world, existing in some kind of parallel universe, but operates the same as the kingdoms we know. 

The problem is, when this verse is quoted, rarely do I hear someone go on to quote the next verse – the one where Jesus is essentially saying, “I am not a king, and my kingdom is not a kingdom…at least not in the sense that you, Pilate, understand those words.”  He says that if his kingdom were like other kingdoms, when he was arrested, his followers would have risen up and fought violently to the death in order to try and free him.  Because, that’s what you do when your king is captured by another kingdom. 

“My kingdom is not from this world,” does not just mean it exists in some other “world”.  It means it is right here, it grows out of this world, but shatters everything we know about kingdoms.  It teaches us new things about how we can be in this world, what power can look like, how we can live in community together.  Kingdoms were what people knew…it was the only organizational structure for living together people had.  Jesus had to start there in order to relate to people at all; it was the world in which they participated. 

But he was also turning it all on its head to say there is a new reality…an alternative to what we know.  It grows “out of this world,” but is radically different from this world, and that can actually change and affect the realm in which we participate.

Christ the king.  The kingdom of God.  We are well versed in the ways these things do describe Jesus.  Jesus is powerful because a king is powerful.  Jesus rules over people, because a king rules over people.  Disobeying Jesus will invite immediate judgment and punishment, because that is what happens when one disobeys a king.  You get the point. 

But the word king should also – at the same time – sound like fingers on a chalkboard when we hear it attached to Jesus’ name.  Jesus is not a king, because kings use force, coercion, and power to keep people in line.  Jesus is not a king, because kings are wealthy and better cared for than any person in the kingdom.  Jesus is not a king, because people aren’t required to serve him.  Jesus is not a king because he bows down at our feet and washes them.  And so the kingdom of God within this world is not like any kingdom we might know.  The rules are different.  That difference matters.  That difference means there are new possibilities.  We are not trapped only in what we know.  We are given access to something transcendent.

Over the years there have been both short and long conversations about God language in our church.  Over the years, choices are made each week about how to talk and sing about God, and those choices are made with great thought. 

But this conversation has at times been hard and frustrating.  There are no easy answers.  With each word we debate whether to use to describe God, something is lost if we don’t use it and something is lost if we do.  If we don’t use words that evoke easy associations in us – we risk losing the initial connection to God.  It reminds us God does participate in our realm.  But if we use it, its very familiarity, its conventional nature, can easily prevent us from remembering the “is not.”  We forget God seeks to transform this world. 

Again, this struggle is not a bad thing – not something to avoid, and certainly not a problem to be solved once and for all.  Our words will always both help and obscure; sometimes be well-chosen and other times not.  Imperfection is inevitable, but can be instructive at the same time.  Because the struggle itself is revealing something to us about God that is invaluable.

It is our tensions, even our disagreements, that illuminate God – that deepen our understanding of God, and that allow us to grow in faith.  We learn the necessary humility when trying to talk about God.  We learn that others bring a part of the picture we ourselves could have never had, we learn that different words affect people in different ways, and hopefully we learn that God is in it all, moving through it all, changing us all in marvelous, sometimes mysterious ways.  Amen.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Lilies Have it Easy




Matthew 6:24-34
Harvest Sunday:  November 17, 2012


Like most people, when I was a child, too young to decide for myself, my parents chose my clothes for me.  From the pictures that we have – and there aren’t very many since I am the third child – they did a good job.  But that horrible day came…I can’t remember the exact moment, but I know it came, because I can remember one day in the store with my mom when she was telling me I had to pick out what I wanted to wear.  I’m pretty sure she even made me try it on.  I don’t think my mom did anything wrong – I guess that’s just part of the natural progression of things.  It’s just that I would have been happy – quite happy – to have never crossed that particular threshold.  I’d have been happy to have had my parents pick out my clothes for me forever.

I’d have been happy to never cross that other, related, threshold either.  The one where you go from your parents choosing each day what you will wear, to you having to pick out clothes for yourself every single morning.  At a pretty young age, though, I had figured out how to game the system on both counts.  I just decided I would wear sweats – sweatshirt and sweat pants – every day.  Socks, tennis shoes, and I was set.  This killed a couple of birds.  First, shopping was a breeze – did I need black, grey, or blue sweats was all I had to figure out.  And of course, dressing each morning was easy – black on Monday, Wed., and Friday; grey on Tues., Thurs., and Sat., and my nice blue sweats for Sundays. J 

Then came the day…I must have been in early high school:  my mother handed me a credit card and said, “Kirsten, you have to go shopping, you have to spend $100, and you are not allowed to get any sweats!!”  Now it still took a little while longer before she could force me to wear any of these great, non-sweat clothes …but in the end, she must have figured something out, because there are pictures of me from high school in which I’m wearing jeans and button down shirts.

When I went to college, it was a glorious day.  I figured out I never had to shop again.  As long as I didn’t change size, I was fine.  But one weekend, I went home, and ever the typical college student, I brought my laundry.  My mom was helping me get my clothes from the car, and she stood at the trunk, looked into one of my clothes baskets, and sighed a very heavy sigh.  Then said, “Kirsten, your clothes are ….,” well, let’s just say her description of my clothes was not g-rated. 

To this day, I hate clothes shopping.  Hate it.  I also hate figuring out what to wear every day.  Any nice clothes or outfits I have I were undoubtedly given to me by someone with far more fashion sense than I have – which, if you haven’t guessed by now, is pretty much everyone.  I hate that I have to remember what I wore two days ago, so I don’t wear it again.  I hate having to match clothes.  I hate having to figure out what shoes go with what pants.  I hate that it’s apparently not cool to wear things with holes or stains. 

What, you might be asking by now, is my point?  My point is this:  Those lilies have it easy.  Don’t worry about clothing, Jesus tells me.  Look at the lilies.  They don’t have to do a darn thing, and they are clothed more beautifully than any human in the history of the world.  When I’ve gone the no worrying route on the clothing front – the one where I just buy and wear sweat pants – people do not stop their car when they pass me, get out and admire my beauty.  Instead, they look at me and say, “Kirsten, your clothes are….,” well, you get the point.  The lilies have it easy.  Never once have they had to step foot in a Younkers, or the hell that is a department store dressing room. 

Okay – I know.  This is poetry.  It’s not really about Younkers, sweat pants, or dressing rooms.  But, still, I take issue with Matthew and his sweet story of the lilies who have to do not one thing and they are cared for by God, created to be beauty itself, nourished by the ground they are planted in, no need to wander in search of food or water.  Best of all, no brain.  Consider the lilies, Jesus tells us, they don’t worry.  Of course they don’t worry.  They have no brain.  If God is going to give me a brain, then God does not get to tell me to not worry.  Period.

Am I right?  Isn’t this a frustrating passage, to say the least.  Don’t worry about your life.  Don’t worry about what you will eat or drink or wear.  At BEST this is annoying.  I’m human.  I have needs.  There are things I have to do to meet those needs, and sometimes that means I’m going to worry.  At WORST, this is grossly irresponsible and cruel.  I’d like to see Jesus sit down among children in parts of Africa whose stomachs are distended from hunger and say, “don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or drink.” 

In fact, I have grown to resent this passage, because too often I hear it referenced in a bumper-sticker-like way, telling me and others that the Christian faith can be summed up in a Bobbie McFerrin song from 1988:  Don’t worry, be happy.   

I don’t know if Jesus “worried,” in the 21st century sense of that word.  I don’t know if he had sleepless nights, or felt anxiety in his chest, or if he stewed about things over which he had no control.  But, I don’t think that has anything to do with what he’s saying here. I do think he longed for a world where people didn’t have to worry about where their next meal was coming from, or how they would keep their children healthy and warm.  I think Jesus longed for a world without cruel distinctions, or illnesses that made people outcasts.  He longed, in short, for the realm of God.  In the realm of God, people are like lilies planted in a field.  Without having to strive for it, they have what they need to live, love, and flourish. 

This passage this morning comes in the middle of the famous “Sermon on the Mount.”  The sermon on the mount is not really about individual instructions.  It’s not really about how I can personally be saved.  This sermon is a vision of a new world – a new way of being with each other as community – the vision and instructions are communal.  In this world, which he calls the realm or kingdom, of God, those who are hated and reviled are blessed.  The meek, the merciful, the peacemakers: these are the ones who serve as models for the rest of us.  In the kingdom of God, retaliation is not the order of the day.  In the kingdom of God, not only are you to love your neighbor, but you love your enemy as well.

Jesus is painting a picture that is more beautiful than any painting of a huge field full of lilies.  Human beings living with one another in such a way that no one has to strive for their daily food, no one has to worry about losing their land, no one has to worry about being “religious enough.”  The only thing people have to strive for is, as he puts it, the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness – God’s way.

Lilies need the ground and the dirt, the sun and the rain, to survive without striving.  People need community – community based on compassion, justice, peace, grace, and love.  That is how people grow and flourish – by being planted in communities based on God’s priorities.  If we strive for that kind of community…seek only the realm of God: then all these things will be given to you as well…no one would have to worry about their lives.  As easily as the lilies flourish in their fields, humans would flourish in the realm of God.  We would have what we need to survive. 

Without a community of people who care for one another, we do not know how to survive.  I don’t read this passage as a commandment to all individuals to “stop worrying.”  Instead, I read it is saying when people have to worry, that is a sign of something amiss.  It’s a sign that we have been uprooted from God’s intentions and God’s created order.  We have been taken from our field. 

The only difference between the lilies and humans seems to be that lilies don’t destroy their own field.  We do.  And it seems like one of the ways we destroy it is through love of mammon – wealth.  Through striving for individual gain or security instead of striving to create a field where anyone who is planted will flourish.

In his book, “The Working Poor,” David Shipler gets to know a number of families who struggle on the edge of poverty.  He looks at what factors lead people to never ending cycles of poverty and pain, and what kinds of things actually pull people out of a life of poverty into a life where they do not have to worry about mere survival.  His is not a research book – so his conclusions are based on observation and experience.  But what he decides is that the most important factor in whether or not people flourish is how good their networks of support are.  In other words, those who are – for example – a part of a faith community, or who have reliable friends or extended family fare much better than those who don’t.  It’s not a matter of intelligence, luck, work ethic, worldview, even education.  Those who are rooted in a community of love are better able to weather the storms that come into all our lives. 

I watched a video this week called “What is poverty?”  It’s a brief clip of a Brazilian pastor named Claudio Oliver answering that question:  What is poverty?  In the end, he said poverty is not just, or even primarily, lack of money, food, clothing, housing, healthcare.  Poverty, he said, is lack of relationships.  Now, he wasn’t some kind of out of touch, sentimental, privileged guy.  This wasn’t a sweet hallmark notion that friends are better than money.  He was pointing out the harsh reality that lack of resources could be a problem for anyone.  What makes someone poor is living in a world where you have to worry about whether or not, when you lack food yourself, you will have people there to help you and feed you when you need it.  If you don’t, that’s what leads to lack of resources – to vulnerability and at times death.

No matter how hard we strive, no matter how much we plan or save or whatever, a hurricane still might come and put us out of our home.  No matter what our best intentions, no matter how smart we are, the economy still might crash and leave us without a job or the ability to pay the bills.  Life is unpredictable.  We can’t plan for every contingency.  But, if we spend our time and energy building the community that Jesus envisions, planting ourselves and each other in fields of love, compassion, and justice, when those things happen, we will be as taken care of as the lilies are in their fields.

I have spent the week being somewhat irrationally giddy about the harvest dinner.  Now, I know this is a luxury I have because I do not have to be in charge.  It is a lot of work for the deacons.  It takes planning and cooking and people do, I can tell you first hand, worry about it.  Will there be enough food, will people like what’s there, will we have enough tables set up, who will cook the turkeys?  It is not a worry free endeavor.  But, for me – a non deacon – the harvest dinner is a taste of the kingdom of God.  That may sound overly dramatic, but let me explain.

I began working here in the middle of August, in 2005.  Three months after I started, I attended my first harvest dinner.  By then, I knew enough of this community to know it is not perfect, but that at times it is a sign…a taste…a glimpse of the realm Jesus envisioned.  And the harvest dinner was like a multi-sensory manifestation of that.  The sound, the smell, the taste, the feel, the sights…it’s all still with me.  I felt, to put it simply, at home at that first harvest dinner.

I’m not saying we are unique, or special – in fact, thank God, we are not.  And I’m not saying that only churches can be places that reflect the realm of God – thank God, that’s not true either.  But I do think we are trying to be a community based on God’s values, and that means, hopefully, people among us do not have to worry about whether someone will be there for them if the bottom falls out.  People do not have to worry that they are responsible for themselves and all their problems.  People do not have to worry that their neighbor cares more about mammon than their well being. 

The fact that people worry about the harvest dinner is a sign that people are striving not for wealth, but for the realm of God.  It’s a small thing: the harvest dinner.  I get that.  I know we fail each other sometimes.  I know some of you have had times of genuine worry and did not feel the church there for you.  But, I imagine Lydia, through all her senses today, experiencing the glimpse of God’s realm – even if she can’t put it into words yet.  I’m hoping growing up here will help her to not have to worry about striving for survival.  I’m hoping that she learns to worry about how to create a harvest dinner more than her own personal wealth.  I’m hoping she learn to create a harvest feast in the world, that others need not worry.

In fact, I’m hoping all of us experience this – and continue to strive for the realm of God.  The lilies have it easy.  I pray that our world becomes the field God intended for us so all human beings may have it that easy some day.  Amen.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Feeding the Hand That Bites Her





Mark 12:38-44
November 11, 2012


Today is pledge Sunday.  And, of course, the gospel lesson is a great one for pledge Sunday, right?  The widow’s mite…the gold standard of stewardship.

I can certainly tell you there is no shortage of sermons that have been preached throughout the years about the widow’s incredible generosity – and they end with an urgent call to all of us to be more like her…especially when it comes to giving to the church. 
One sermon – of many I found in a 4 minute search on the internet – put it this way:
 “Could there be a picture of someone more selfless than her? She doesn’t give out of her abundance, what’s left over, she gives from the very depths of her being.
Her giving is sacrificial.  We are to be the widow. Loving, living, and giving sacrificially.”

And the sermons often have a story of a modern day widow to emphasize the point…like this one: 
“A year ago, when her husband died, I found a widow living in a house without hot water – the heater had died four years before, and there wasn’t any money to buy a new one, so they’d been  heating water on the stove.  And all the while they gave a bit of money each week to the church, fulfilling and renewing their annual pledge.”

It almost feels manipulative to have this passage this week.  We come to offer our pledges and have to compare ourselves to the widow with her mite, or the incredibly faithful widow of today who shivers all Saturday night and brings her pledge card Sunday morning.  But, in my defense, the coincidence of these two things – pledge Sunday and the gospel text this morning – is just that: a complete coincidence.  Session decided when we would dedicate our pledges based on our budgeting process.  None of us, I suspect, had any idea that this was the text for this Sunday.  I certainly didn’t.

But here we are.  They do fall on the same day.  Given that happy little coincidence, the sermon should just write itself, right? 

Well, I’m not sure the coincidence is as happy as all that.  In fact, when I realized what the gospel passage was this morning, I almost didn’t use it.  I was worried you might go away comparing your life to that of the widow’s…wondering how you can be more like her.  It’s so ingrained in us to hear the story that way.  And who knows – maybe we should think that.  I know a lot of good has come from people trying to be more like this widow.  But when I read this story and think about each of you, all that goes through my mind is, I hope you are NEVER like the widow.  I hope no one  ever has to be like the widow.

I believe we should be generous for sure – and there are many biblical passages that speak of generosity: Paul’s exhortation to give cheerfully comes to mind.  But is this a passage about generosity with the widow as the ultimate model?  I’m not so sure.

In fact when I read this passage, pledging doesn’t make it on my radar.  Instead I find I can’t help thinking about Stockholm syndrome.  This syndrome was given its name in 1973 after hostages in Stockholm, Sweden were held for days by bank robbers.  During their time as hostages, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors, refusing help from government officials and defending the captors when it was over. 

Since then, Stockholm syndrome has been used to describe any situation in which someone, because of psychological dynamics built in to human nature, because an unwitting participant in their own captivity or abuse by becoming loyal to the abuser. 

This widow was a good Jewish woman.  But to say, as the sermon online did, that she gives from the depths of her being makes some assumptions. Don’t forget this was a required giving – it was a temple tax.  She had been taught her whole life that to stay right with God, the temple authorities required her to pay the temple tax, and make sacrifices, among other things.  And so she did. 

But, as Jesus explains right before the woman puts in her mite, the religious leaders – the ones who will collect her mite – are abusing the widow.  They “devour the widows’ houses,” he says.  Devour – in other words, forcibly appropriate the property and livelihood of women after their husbands die.

At the heart of the Jewish law – the covenant the Israelites made with God and with each other – is the promise to care for the vulnerable.  And the widow in Jesus’ day was one of the most vulnerable people there was.  A woman without a husband was not able to provide for herself, or any children she might have.  So the community – the church community – was to take care of her.  Instead, the temple authorities, in cahoots with the Roman Empire, through unjust taxes and land confiscation laws, were exploiting these vulnerable people as a matter of policy.  The widow, in the midst of that, walks up to the treasury and puts in, as Jesus says, everything she had to live on; money that undoubtedly came from begging in the streets – which she would do again when she left the temple that day. 

This widow is feeding the hand that bites her. 

When Jesus compares the widow with those who “give out of their abundance,” I don’t think it’s clear that the comparison is between those who are stingy and those who give generously and sacrificially.  Maybe.  But maybe the comparison is the one Jesus has been making all along: a comparison between what is – the current system: the kingdom of Rome, including the temple’s participation in that kingdom – and what should be – the kingdom of God.  In this scene Jesus shows the disciples a living, breathing picture of hell.  Those who are being devoured are giving money – essentially by force – to those devouring them.  This is not the world God intends.

If this is the comparison, between what is and what should be, then maybe our primary response should not be to praise the woman, praiseworthy though she may be: maybe our response should be to recoil from the scene in disgust.  I think that is what Jesus is doing in this passage:  he is recoiling…and he’s opening the eyes of the disciples so they will recoil as well. 

Remember where Jesus was when he sat with the disciples and watched this.  “He sat down opposite the treasury,” the author of Mark writes.  But the Greek word for “opposite” here is maybe better translated, “over and against.”  This word is stronger than just a word to place him geographically relative to the temple.   There’s another word for that kind of opposite.  This is adversarial.   

Which fits with the larger story in which this passage sits.  It is a part of a long commentary on Jesus’ attitudes regarding the temple.  Throughout Mark, Jesus is over and against what is going on in the government and the temple – which at that time were one and the same thing.  The first time Jesus steps into the temple, according to the gospel of Mark, he overturns the tables of the money changers in a dramatic protest of the corruption of the temple.  Then, he comes back the next day and confronts the religious elites with story after story and teaching after teaching about how they are violating every commandment of God, ending his day in the temple here:  sitting with his disciples “over and against” the treasury. 

The next thing he does, we read in the very next verse, is leave the temple, never to return again, and go with his disciples to the Mount of Olives to sit, the author of Mark tells us, “over and against the temple.”  While sitting there – over and against the temple – he predicts its complete destruction.  This passage, really the whole gospel of Mark, asks the disciples “Are you going to be a part of a system or a world that blatantly violates the commandments of God, or are you going to be a part of the kingdom of God – a world that stands over and against the kingdom of Caesar, no matter what that costs?”

And the same question comes to us…to the church today.

The church – our church – should stand as a witness against any system or organization that preys on the vulnerable to increase its wealth or power.  I don’t think it’s enough to just not be the ones who exploit.  We are asked to stand “over and against;” to be visibly different; to be a living, breathing example of the kingdom of God.

Remember the sweet story of the modern day widow: the one with no hot water…for four years.  The church in that story wasn’t like the temple.  They weren’t responsible for her poverty.  But they still failed – they glorified something that should be condemned, and fixed.  I get that we should remember that even those who have almost nothing to give often give more generously then those who have much, and that does make them heroic.  But if this story came to our church’s attention, I doubt we would stop at marveling at her generosity when she brought her pledge.  I’m pretty sure, if we knew what was going on, we would feel the injustice of the situation.  I’m pretty sure, I hope, we would try to get her hot water and a heater. 

The problem with those sweet stories about widows told at this time of year, during stewardship, is that they end with us romanticizing the widow.  The story needs to continue – she may be heroic, but the church should never let her continue to give to the community without supporting her when she is in need.  The story shouldn’t end where it does.  If it does, then the church is violating God’s commandments to care for the poor and vulnerable as much as the temple was – and doing so while filling its coffers. 

In the same way, we are fooled when the biblical story ends where it does this morning.  We are left with the heroic widow who outshines everyone by bringing her last mite.  But, the story goes on, and we see that not only is this not acceptable to Jesus, but the whole thing is abhorrant enough that the system that has been at the heart of the religion of his people for thousands of years needs to be destroyed.  It’s not a happy ending.

So, do we at 1st Pres stand over and against the kingdoms that destroy?  I suspect, like any human institution, we’re mixed.  We could do better.  But, what I know from my experience here and with you is that we try pretty darn hard to both respect and celebrate people – ALL PEOPLE – who give what they can; no matter how much or hot little.  And, we work hard to care for the vulnerable both in our church and in the larger world.

In fact, I’m going to let David Cranston finish the sermon this morning by talking about what we do with part of the money we receive in this church.  You see, this is a good passage for this morning after all – because it’s a chance to reflect not so much on if we are like the widow as we turn in our pledges – God willing we are NOT – but on how, with our giving, we stand as a witness to what God is up to in the world.