The Widow's "Might"

This Sermon was preached on October 25th, 2009

Preacher: Rev. Dr. W. Mark Ralls

Text: Mark

THE WIDOW’S MIGHT

I’ve come to the conclusion that God likes to have a little fun with preachers during stewardship season. God knows we’re awfully uptight about church budgets and such and sometimes I wonder if God takes it upon Himself to lighten the mood a bit.

Last Sunday, I was preaching on everyone’s favorite scripture verse – the one about the love of money being the root of all evil. Well, somehow as I was placing my sermon notes in the pulpit, I suffered a paper cut that just wouldn’t stop bleeding. At 10:55, all I could find in the Pastor’s Study was children’s band-aid, emblazoned with a bright blue cartoon character. I convinced myself that no one would notice but after the service was over I discovered that almost everyone did.

If that wasn’t proof enough of God’s sense of humor, there was yesterday morning. I was in the middle of my Saturday morning routine. I was sitting at the kitchen table going over my sermon for Commitment Sunday with a blue pen in hand. I was marking some things out … adding others .. for a final draft.

When I left the table for a glass of milk, our hound-dog Moses scooped up my blue felt pen in his mouth and ran straight for Dining Room. The chase was on and on the fourth lap around the Dining Room table the blue pen began to drip. By the time I caught him, our white carpet had a bright blue circle around the Dining Room Table. After an emergency trip to Wegmans, as I pulled into our drive with bag full of club soda and 5 bottles of spot remover, there was Moses front paws on the picket fence to greet me. And I could have sworn that he was GRINNING at me with the biggest, BLUEST LIPS I’ve ever seen. So it is with fear and trepidation that I stand before you with yet another STEWARDSHIP SERMON.

At least this time, the scripture is innocuous. It’s quaint to tbe point of being precious. We find Jesus sitting near the front steps of the Temple. He’s quietly watching the people as they go in. One by one, they place their offerings in the treasury box. He sees one among the crowd – one that no one but Jesus would have bothered to notice.

She’s a widow – how Jesus knew this is anyone’s guess – perhaps it was her lined face and the frayed sleeves of her gown. And as Jesus watches, she takes two copper mites – a penny’s worth of coins – from her tattered purse and drops them in the treasury box. With that small act of generosity, she fades into the bustling crowd around her.

And, yet, there is a peculiar POWER in this moment. A thousand years from now when the world has forgotten the Rockefellers, the Gates, the Eastmans, people of faith will still ponder this poor widow and her gift of copper mites. GIVING DEEPLY – not out of ABUNDANCE – but from her SCARCITY, she has remained our model of generosity. Who could guess how many other gifts her seemingly small gift has inspired?

Granted, that’s a PECULIAR kind of power … but it is POWERFUL. It is the power to attract .. to inspire. Here quiet witness makes us long simply to be BETTER than we are. Blaise Pascal said that next to the might of God, “the most powerful influence in the world is the serene, silent beauty of a holy life.”

ONE SMALL ACT may open a hidden door in the universe that leads to INFINITE POSSIBILITY. That’s called “the butterfly effect.” The BUTTERFLY EFFECT goes back to a mathematician named Lorenz Attractor. He presented a mathematical model that successfully demonstrated how one seemingly insignificant action can have unimagined power. It is based on how tightly woven – how deeply inter-related – are the events of our world.

Attractor’s model inspired philosophers of science to ponder a bizarre question – whether the flutter of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil could trigger a succession of events that eventually results in a tornado in Texas. As outlandish as it sounds, for many scientists the answer is YES. One small action can ignite a whole host of unexpected events.

We have called our STEWARDSHIP INITIATIVE THE POWER OF ONE to remind ourselves of the POWER of seemingly small gifts. You may remember the children’s rhyme: Little drops of water, little grains of sand/ Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.

But you already know that. Our DINING AND CARING CENTER began over lunch day with sack full of peanut butter sandwiches. One expression of generosity, one act of compassion mysteriously attracts another. Each gift – no matter small it seems – opens a hidden door of grace with infinite possibilities.

When I pastored a church in Charlotte, North Carolina Hope Stout attended the United Methodist congregation down the street. When Hope was twelve, she was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. Representatives from the MAKE-A-WISH Foundation, showed up at her home to explore what final wish they might provide.

But Hope wasn’t interested in a trip to Disney World. She didn’t even desire a date with a BUBBLE-GUM POP STAR. Instead, she ASKED THEM A QUESTION, How many other children are waiting for wishes? The representative checked into it and discovered that one hundred and fifty-five terminally ill children in North Carolina were waiting for their own wishes to be granted. Hope responded with an unexpected wish. My wish is to raise enough money to grant all of their wishes.

News of her generosity spread from church to church, from girl scout troop to elementary school. Soon young children in Charlotte were donating the precious contents of their piggy banks and a group of youth organized a WALK-A-THON in uptown Charlotte. Vendors sold t-shirts with the words, A CELEBRATION OF HOPE. All told, 15,000 people participated and all of them gave deeply. When all the dimes and quarters were counted – along with a few checks – it was discovered that 1.5 million dollars had been contributed .. enough to grant two hundred and fifty wishes.

Folks don’t give more than you can, but give what you can. Every estimate you provide makes a difference. However small it may seem to you it opens a door to the mysterious power of generosity and grace. Amen.