a sermon for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 27B/Lectionary 32]
1 Kings 17:8-16 and Mark 12:38-44
One thing I realized not too long ago was how much I love leftovers. I used to hate eating leftovers as a kid. When my parents decided it would be leftovers night I was always upset. I thought I deserved fresh food every night. I didn’t want to revisit chilled food, popped in the microwave oven, unevenly warmed up. I especially didn’t like leftover nights when it was leftovers of something I hated the first time. That was the worst!
But now, as a grown-up, leftovers are the best! There’s something challenging and satisfying about rummaging through the refrigerator and scraping together enough partial dishes to make a whole meal. Just this week for lunch I scrounged around and brought to church about a half a cup of lentil soup, some noodles and beef tip sauce—but there were only two pieces of beef in it—and the rest of some homemade guacamole. The guac was already turning brown on the edges, but I just mixed it in with the green. It was one of the most satisfying lunches I’d ever eaten. It feels so good to use it all up.
We have some good friends who are like extreme leftover eaters. We go on vacation with them every year and on the last day they’re always getting us to eat everything we’ve cooked and prepared through the week and shoved to the back of the fridge— They eat things way past the expiration date, which leftovers really don’t have, so you have to kind of guess. We kind of look at them in awe (and a bit of fear) as they make a sandwich with lunchmeat nine days old.
Leftovers for us and for our friends is something fun and enjoyable, but for a lot of people, it’s a way of life. There are people not only making one meal last for a whole week, but many people in many parts of the world are using food from other peoples’ meals and pantries and making that last throughout the week. They look at food from not the perspective of what do I have to eat but what do I get to eat.
Like this widow in Zaraphath, for example. She’s an extreme leftover eater. It is a time of famine across the whole eastern Mediterranean, and she has nothing but this one jar of meal and one jug of oil. It’s enough for her to make some bread and then wait for death. And God sends Elijah there to eat leftovers. God could have sent the prophet Elijah to anyone of Elijah’s own people for protection and sustenance, but instead God sends him to this foreign widow. She does exactly what Elijah tells her to do even though it means she has to make a cake for him first. She shares what little she has, and it somehow becomes enough for all of them.
Have you ever noticed how almost all the heroes in the Bible are the most vulnerable people? Don’t go looking in Scripture for superheroes to look up to. You’ll find widows and foreigners and poor people are the typical role models. This is especially noticeable with Jesus. A day or two, perhaps, after he and his disciples enter the big, bustling and wealthy city of Jerusalem, he points out a widow giving two small coins as an example of faith, as if she is who someone should model their life on. She is probably an extreme leftover eater too.
The scene is captivating: he and his followers are standing there watching scenes that they, being basically bumpkins from small town Galilee, probably have never seen. Dozens of scribes are possibly walking by, going in and out of the temple in long, flowing robes practically designed to catch everyone’s attention. Scribes were religious leaders who held a lot of power in Jesus’ society. Long flowing robes, long prayers, prominent seats in worship—wait, they sound a lot like a group of people I know!
As Jesus and the disciples continue people watching, they see different people making their contributions to the Temple treasury. The system the Temple had set up for receiving offerings was very public. The collection containers were designed to make noise when coins were placed in them, and so it was easy to watch and hear how much people were giving. Jesus calls the disciples after this one woman walks by just so he can contrast her with the others who are giving much larger sums of money.
On one level, Jesus might be calling into question a corrupted system of the Temple religion that might be taking advantage of poor people. If it’s true that scribes would often devour widows’ estates, and that widows had almost no property rights in the ancient world, then here is a woman who is contributing to the same system that is perhaps oppressing her.
Regardless of what is going on here, Jesus is clearly pointing her out as something to behold, something honorable. She would have probably passed by unnoticed in the hustle and bustle if he hadn’t called their attention to her. Now, with no money left to her name, she might stop by the food bank before going home to eat someone else’s leftovers.
Yet in both stories we read this morning, it is not really frugality that is lifted up as the virtue, the ability to survive on so little. It is, rather, these individuals’ generosity. And in each case we do not come to see these women as examples of pity and charity, which is what society would normally teach us to see in them, but rather as people who save the day. They are the agents of grace. Just as the Zarephath widow teaches Elijah to trust God’s providence, the widow at the Temple shows the disciples how to “put in everything you have.”
To put in everything you have. Jesus wants us to see that’s what the life of trusting God means, and it really doesn’t mainly have to do with money or food. It has to do with one’s whole life, seeing it as a treasure, seeing that it has value, seeing it as a gift, especially once it is placed in the service of God.
To put in everything you have. Normally, eating leftovers, I’m thinking about taking out and saving and consuming everything I have. That attitude is probably not just how I look at my fridge, but at my entire life. How can I make the most of what I’ve got? How can I make this all benefit me and my objectives? What a contrast to the attitude of those we honor today who’ve served in our nations armed forces, many of whom have literally put in everything they’ve had to serve others through our armed forces!
I’m inspired by the true story of one young single woman years ago who lived in a town in central Pennsylvania. Like the widow at the Temple, this woman was extremely devoted to the Lutheran congregation where she was a member. She was constantly thinking about how to put in everything she had in service to Christ. She was a Sunday School teacher, she helped at Vacation Bible School, she helped lead the youth group, she volunteered at just about everything the congregation was doing. She felt it still wasn’t enough. She had more to give. So one day she went to her pastor and said, “What else can I do?” It was the mid-1950s and the Korean War had just ended. The pastor, almost at a loss as to what to say to her, handed her a list of the congregation’s servicemen and said, “Write notes of thanks to these guys.”
So she did. She got to working on that list, reminding them of their congregation’s thankfulness for what they were doing, giving them encouragement. One of them she wrote a note to ended up writing her back. They had never met before, and she didn’t even know his name at first, but it stuck out to her. He was stationed in Okinawa, across the globe. When he came home, they ended up getting together just to say “Hi.” This past March Dale and Donna Raubenstine (who attend our first service) celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.
Putting in everything we have. We never know how much we really have until our whole life is in service to the Lord. We never know what amazing discoveries are wrapped up in faith and in following Jesus until we come to understand the waters of baptism are still drenching us, still dripping down on everything we are and everything we’ve got.
Putting in everything we have. We never know the richness of our lives until we start to give ourselves away. You have your own stories of looking at your life’s leftovers and seeing ways to hand them over in service and generosity, off hearing the call of Jesus not so much telling you what you have to do, but what you get to do.
For, as you might have guessed, it is not only to a widow that Jesus is pointing that day by the Temple, but to himself. The true superhero of grace finds his role model. The widow puts in everything she has, right there, out in the open, and so soon will he. He will put in everything he has on the cross because he treasures us. He will be the offering, and none will be held back. He loves us—both the scribe in us and the poor, both the taker and giver, the faker and the true-life-liver. Jesus loves us and he hands over all that he is so that his Father may continue to use us in his kingdom work.
And like Elijah and the widow who served him, we find that it somehow lasts. His love lasts and lasts and lasts, never gives out.
I realized not too long ago that there are really no such thing as leftovers. Just plenty. One loaf. One cup. You and me, claimed for him, and put all in to his body, given to the world.
Mo-o-o-re than enough to go around.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
Said Another Way 