CHRIST CRUCIFIED: Once For All

SERMON for the TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY after PENTECOST (Mk. 12:38-44)

 

WCHRIST CRUCIFIED: Once For AllW

Dear hearers of the word of God: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“A

 poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.” A penny. That’s all? How many of us would even consider it worth our time or effort to bend over and pick a penny up off the ground? Not many. Not me, anyway. So who can really blame the rich for not noticing such an insignificant amount being thrown into the Temple’s treasury? Isn’t it only fair to cut them a little slack? I mean, after all, the reason they didn’t notice was because they were too busy throwing in their “large sums” of money. What could be a more pious reason for their indifference to the widow’s offering than this? Even Jesus recognized that they were giving out of their abundance. They understood that they had much, and so they decided to give back to the church. Isn’t that precisely the goal of a good stewardship sermon anyway?

But, just when the surface of our text appears to have stilled, leave it to Jesus to rise up from its depths and shock us with a word: “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.” “Now hold on just a minute, Jesus!” we protest. “How can two copper coins that amount to just one penny be more than all of that silver and gold the rich are pouring in?” And so our inquisitive little minds begin to search out a reasonable cause for Jesus’ words.

Of course, being the sinners that we are, we begin our investigation in the wrong place. We begin by looking for something in or about the widow—perhaps a pure motive or something of the sort—that caused Jesus to praise her giving. So we might conclude, for example, that she gave the greater percentage of what she had, and for this reason Jesus said she gave the most. “See!” we assure ourselves, “It’s just mathematics!” We can then wrap it all up in a neat little package by turning the widow into a good moral lesson. “Be like the widow!” we might say. But this will no doubt involve some manipulation. After all, the widow did give away everything she had; “her whole living”, in fact. Certainly Jesus doesn’t expect us to give away everything we have! That would be asking too much of us, wouldn’t it? Let’s be realistic! What he meant to say, then, (that is, what we mean for him to have said) was that the widow is the perfect model of giving that only the spiritual elite can imitate—like those long-bearded monks who live in caves out in the desert. We common Christians, however, need only try to be more like the widow—making a fine start toward this goal by giving just a bit more of what we have to the church. And so, the Gospel lesson really has nothing more to say to us than does one of Aesop’s fables; a quaint little story with a quaint little moral: the end—or so we would have it.

But Jesus isn’t finished with us quite yet. As the letter to the Hebrews says, “Christ has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” “Yes, yes,” we say. “Jesus Christ died on the cross for sinners. I know all about that stuff already. Tell me something new; something different. Give me something to do! Of course we’ve been saved and forgiven by the blood and the cross of Jesus, but we’re Christians now, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we be moving on to bigger and better things; from milk to solid food? You know, like learning how to live the victorious Christian life?” Etc., etc., etc.

“Christ has appeared once for all…to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Here the text turns the tables, taking us as its captive. Here it is not we who interpret the word, but the word that interprets us. The widow’s offering, that weak, lowly, and—by all appearances—inconsequential gift, is none other than the Son of God wounded and crucified for you. Jesus does not offer bits and pieces of himself to us on the cross, as did the rich out of their abundance. Rather, he offers everything he has and is: once for all. Yet we sinners look upon this crucified and dying Jew from Nazareth with about as much indifference as a penny beneath our feet—it’s hardly worth the time or the effort to stoop down and grab it. As Nathanael rhetorically asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Here we have no moral lesson to cling to or hide behind. Here the cross lays bare our sin and exposes our unbelief. We are not like the widow. We are like the rich who try and fill God’s treasury with our large sums of good works and pious deeds. We are like the rich who are so busy trying to impress our neighbors—and with being impressed with our efforts to impress our neighbors—that we don’t even notice the true offering that occurs in our midst, right under our noses. “For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.”

Out of poverty, then, God, “found in human form”, in the form of a servant, “obedient unto death, even death on a cross”, gave himself for us, while we were yet his enemies. He has entered for us—for you—into heaven itself, in the presence of God on your behalf. And he will appear again, “not to deal with sin” (which has already been dealt with: nailed to the cross), but “to save” us “who are eagerly waiting for him.”

“Waiting?” we cry. “All God wants is for me to wait upon his Son?” That simply won’t do. We’re Americans, after all. We’re a self-made people. We can’t just sit back idly and wait on God to give us handouts. That’s cheap grace! We’ve got to do our part in this salvation business, don’t we? We’ve got to meet to God half-way there—or at least some of the way. We’ve got to walk down that old sawdust trail and make a decision, a commitment for Jesus; pick ourselves up by our bootstraps; be all we can be; help God help us by helping ourselves—and a thousand other pious sounding platitudes invented to protect us from grace—which is not cheap (it was purchased by the precious blood of the Son of God), nor is it costly (God doesn’t even charge us a poor widow’s penny): it is FREE! And so against all our attempts at escape, comes the word of the cross: “It is finished!”

We naturally object: “But don’t we have to do something?” No. Didn’t you hear Jesus? He said: It is finished! “But we do have to believe, don’t we?” Yes, but faith is not your work, it is the gift of God. Here the old Adam and Eve in us breathe their last breath: “But if I don’t do anything at all, then won’t I be reduced to nothing, to death?” There it is! Now you’ve got it! Everything depends upon God coming to you and actually doing the work of the cross to you, that is, actually forgiving your sins: here and now. When this Word of God breaks in to our self-incurved lives, it does so violently—crushing like a hammer all that came before it, and bringing into existence something genuinely new, something free, something living. And just as weak, foolish, and despised as those two copper coins were that fell from that poor widow’s fingers, so is the weak, foolish, and despised means by which God has chosen to give this word to you now: the mouth of a preacher!

So hold on to your socks, because here I am: the fool that God has sent to you! And here is my mouth! And here is the word that kills the old and raises the new, that calls into existence that which is nothing, and gives life to the dead: Your sins are forgiven! They are no longer yours! They belong to another: Jesus Christ: cursed, crucified, and risen for your sake! Because of him, you are forgiven, justified, snatched away from the jaws of death, hell, and devil! You are free—free to live as did that poor widow, giving up the whole of your life, now hidden in Christ, for the sake of your neighbor. So stoop down sinner! Lay hold of this offering: Christ crucified once for all! Grab it with both hands! Hold it in your heart! Cling to it in life and in death! It’s there for the taking! And it’s all yours!

May God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit preserve and keep you firm in this faith unto life everlasting. AmenW