October 15, 2023
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Stewardship Sermon – Week Three
1 Kings 17:1-16; Luke 21:1-4
Fearless Giving
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our fall stewardship theme is “Fearless Generosity.” As I’ve meditated on each week’s texts, I’ve noticed that they share a common theme: the effects of anxiety. There are things that make us anxious. Fear affects the decisions we make. But there are other dynamics that quell our fears. And when we live from these impulses, that also affects the decisions we make.
In our readings today, we meet two women who both live with a great deal of vulnerability. Their futures are far from secure. Both of these women are widows. Widows have always been particularly vulnerable, and in biblical times, that was very much so. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see a woman living independently, no matter her age. But in biblical times, that just didn’t happen. A woman had no means of making a living. She was dependent upon a man in her life: a father, a husband, a son, or some other relative. Without that anchor relationship, her situation was very precarious.
In the story about Elijah and the widow, her situation was doubly dire because there was an extreme drought going on at the same time. This widow also had a child whose welfare certainly weighed on her. All she had left was the food for a simple last meal. After she and her son ate this last meal of bread, they would have nothing else remaining. They were at the very end, and she saw death standing before them.
When she explains this to Elijah, he responds with a phrase we hear over and over and over in the Bible: Don’t be afraid. And whenever the Bible tells us to fear not, it follows that up with a promise from God. Promises bring hope, and hope does not disappoint us. Promise and its fruit, hope, dispel our fear. We make decisions, not based on anxiety, but rooted in fearless generosity.
Elijah tells the widow that God will make sure her jar of flour and jug of oil won’t go empty during the drought. This promise deeply affects the widow. Her fears are abated. Hope in God’s steadfast love allows her to move beyond her anxiety, and she responds with a gesture of fearless giving.
Jesus observes another widow as she approaches the offering treasury in the temple mount area. Many well-to-do people have made significant donations. By comparison, the widow’s gift seems trivial. She put two small pennies into the treasury.
But what seems insignificant to the world played a much greater role in this woman’s life. It was all the money she had. She gave everything she had as her offering.
Jesus drew a distinction between the gifts of the wealthy and that of the widow. The wealthy gave out of their abundance. But the widow gave out of her poverty.
The difference between the two is a matter of margin. The wealthier givers that day at the temple maneuvered through life with a lot more financial margin than the widow did.
The world’s poor are accustomed to living with little or no margin. When I was at a former congregation, I was part of a group who traveled to our synod companion, Malawi. We visited to our sister congregation there and saw the remarkable work they do in proclaiming Christ’s love and serving in his name.
Malawi is the fourth poorest country in the world. More than two-thirds of the population live in extreme poverty. It was quite sobering to witness their orphan feeding stations. Our companion synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malawi, provides food to the most vulnerable of the children living in remote villages.
On one day we visited with a gentleman who was an evangelist at his congregation. As he shared with us about life in Malawi and their challenges, we walked to the top of a scenic overlook. We drank in the beauty of the country. On the way back down, we noticed that this man had a hole in the sole of his shoe. If that happened to you or me, we’d get rid of that pair of shoes and buy a new pair. But that’s not the way life works in Malawi. There was a lot of life yet in his worn pair of shoes. It was a difference in the margin in his life and the margin in our own.
Despite their challenges, he shared with us his confidence that God would provide. Another pastor who was a part of our group told the man, “I think it’s harder for us in the United States to rely on God. We’ve learned to rely on other things, like the money we have in the bank and the food we have in our cupboards. We tend to rely more on these things.”
The man was intrigued by this. “In Malawi,” he said, “we don’t have those other things to rely on, so we can only rely on God.” But despite their lack of margin, they lived more joyfully than we do.
As one of the wealthiest nations in the world, in the United States we’ve been blessed with financial margin. But that blessing also comes with a curse. We become overly reliant on that margin and we forget about God’s faithfulness to provide.
The hazard to financial margin is that it’s like drinking salt water. Salt water will never quench your thirst. The more of it you drink, the thirstier you become. When we have financial margin, what we have is never enough. We want more. We can never be secure enough in our financial margin.
What the poor of the world have to teach us – what these two poor widows in today’s readings continue to reveal throughout the centuries – is that, in their greater reliance upon God’s faithfulness, they’ve been unburdened from anxiety. Their hands have been loosened from grasping and holding onto. They’ve unclenched into hands that can fearlessly give.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of God is theirs.” The poor bear a witness and challenge those of us with more margin in our lives. They compel us to release our anxieties and rely on God’s faithfulness. May their witness shine bright.
