RCL Year B Proper 27
I Kings 17:8-16, Psalm 146, Hebrews 9:24-28, Saint Mark 12:38-44
The Lessons today give us two widows, two poor widows. They do not have a fixed income or a pension. Whether you are male or female, widowed, single, or married, I invite you to try to identify with both of these widows.
The widow in the Old Testament Lesson, the widow of Zarephath, is poor, dirt poor. And she is living through a severe drought. She has a young son, and her handful of meal and her little oil are just enough to prepare a skimpy last meal. But God intervenes through his prophet Elijah. And you remember what the prophet says: “The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.”[1] And you know how her story ends. “The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.”[2]
What little she has is little enough. But it is enough. That’s the heart of the Lesson. She has little but it is enough. If you read about this widow past the confines of today’s Lesson, you will learn that her son dies, but Elijah resurrects him by the power of the living God. This widow and her son are going to come to no harm, because they know their need of God, and they know God’s loving kindness.
The widow in the Gospel, the second widow, is also poor, dirt poor, but like the first widow she is rich, rich toward God. She shows how rich toward God she is by putting two small copper coins, all she has, in the temple treasury. Like the first widow, she relies on God’s word to live, and live she shall, just as the first widow does despite drought and death.
Both widows are poor in money but rich in spirit. Both have little money but discover that little money is enough when one is rich in spirit. With faith and with confidence that God keeps promises, both widows discover that their true happiness is in God and in God’s will.
The world in which these widows live, and the world in which you
and I live, the world disclosed to us by the Word of God, is a world where we
have a choice to be rich in spirit. We have a big choice. We can live our lives
like these widows, putting our trust in God, or we can live some other way,
putting our trust in something or someone else. The choice is ours, and we work
out our choice in the decisions, large and small, that we make every day of our
lives. Your choices, your past choices, are written in your checkbook. But your
future choices, they are yet to be written. You can make whatever choices you
want. Remember those widows. The Scriptures definitely show us in their lives
that the smart money is on being rich in spirit. And for time and for eternity,
you can do it all over again.
[1] I Kings 17:14.
[2] I Kings 17:16.
hs3rd 