The most difficult thing I have ever had to sacrifice in following Jesus isn’t money, nor is it possessions, nor is it my time or my energy. In fact I have given abundantly in these areas to various things at various times, as I have been able.
The most difficult thing that I have had to sacrifice in following Jesus is exacting vengeance on others who threaten me or the people I care about. Make no mistake: I do not stand before you as a gentle soul. I am not a good person, even by the world’s standards. Under the surface of Christ’s armour I battle the continual temptation to assuage my fears, my terror of not being able to survive or have place or purpose, with violence, with the desire to use my intellect to control and manipulate others to my ends.
This example serves as an illustrative point that our readings - all about sacrifice this morning - aren’t merely about giving all of our money, or all of our time, or energy, or possessions. In fact our readings are not, in the first place, about us; they’re actually about how we respond to Jesus’s own sacrifice; and so our readings are really asking us to contemplate who we think Jesus is and what God, coming to us in Jesus, allows us to sacrifice so that we might receive him more fully, or as Hebrews puts it, “as we are eagerly waiting for him.” Can perfect love, come in Christ, truly cast out fear?
We hear in Hebrews that: “[Jesus] … appeared once for all at the end of the ages to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself … so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
We heard first about a very poor woman who had no food to eat but only a bit of meal and oil. Elijah nonetheless asks her for some bread for himself because the Lord has told him that this widow will provide for him. The widow protests and says, I have only a bit. I was going to go home and make some cake for my son and I and then die. Elijah says, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said, but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: 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." And sure enough, just as happened when the Lord gave the Israelites the manna from heaven, or just as Jesus told the woman at the well: the food and water of life that I give to you will never run out. Life is more than these things. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things you need will be given to you as well.
We hear this theme of God’s provision repeated over and over again in Scripture. Why? Likely for the same reason I used my own personal example: we are a people who are so often imprisoned in our own fears borne of life experiences that threaten our survival, our sense of being loved and accepted, and our sense of finding meaning and purpose, that we need this reassurance of God’s provision for us repeated in multiple ways, through the stories of many different people in many different situations so that we can begin to find ourselves in these people, before God. So that we can begin to believe that God’s provision for them, is also God’s provision for us. So that through them, we can find a glimmer of hope; to finally take the risk that God, not only knows our fears and will not leave us drowning in the sea of fear, but that he will provide for us with more than we could ever imagine or even ask.
Fear has a powerful and mighty grip on us. Most often, it causes us to hold back from giving what we have - like those in our Gospel who only give out of their abundance but not sacrificially. We are terrified to sacrifice what little we think we have, like the woman whom Elijah encounters. But we see through Elijah, and so then in Christ, that we can give fully - like the woman who gives all that she has, her two coins - when we come to understand that everything we have, everything we are or can be, the fact that we even exist, is evidence that God has us.
If Christ had held back from giving himself fully, in sacrificing himself for our sakes, we would be stuck with the consequences of our sin: death, perhaps eternal damnation or perhaps simply a return to nothingness. Yet through his sacrifice we receive life eternal, united with all God’s children: a gift of eternal, unsurpassable abundance, as Hebrews puts it. The point God is making with the widow in giving Elijah the cake, even though it is all she really has, because Christ gave himself for us, the widow’s sacrifice of all that she has is the reception of life, of a nourishment that is eternal. Her response to Elijah, to give of what she has, first to God, and by his command, to her neighbour, is precisely how she is able to receive God’s life, bread that doesn’t run out; so it is with the woman at the well, and the widow with the two coins.
The point God is driving at in all of these stories is that he has already come for us. We can find ourselves in these characters: maybe we are poor and wonder what we can really give. Maybe we are old and wonder what value we have left to give. Maybe we have been rejected at some point in our lives, or abused, or underappreciated, or maybe we’re ashamed of who we are and find it impossible to trust God’s love is actually for us because we think we don’t deserve it. And so we hold back from giving God everything we are, or worse, we arrogantly project our desire for attention, recognition, or value onto others in ways that kill. That alienate. That destroy. God has come for us, whomever we are, with what we have and are. The question is: are you willing to sacrifice those things in your life that stand in the way of receiving him? AMEN
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