Pentecost 23

Pentecost 23 Proper 27 "She put in all that she had."

The offering we place at the altar is an act of worship.

There are two aspects of life where most people resist advice, particularly religious based advice. They are also the two areas that couples tend to argue about the most.
One of these is finances, money.

The song, "Money makes the world go round" sums up humanity’s understanding of money. It is the means, the end and the goal in life for large numbers of people.

Since money has always been of great importance to people it should be no surprise that God has something to say about it. The first thing God says about money is that money is frozen energy. Money is the frozen energy of our time, talents and labors.

God did not create money. People created money. The small green pieces of paper in our wallets and purses have no objective value. They are just paper. Their worth derives from the value we place in them. That value is in part based on trust, in part based on anxiety, and in part based in the amount of energy we devote to acquiring them.

Money is the frozen energy of our lives. We dedicate a certain amount of time and effort to acquire it. We trade life force for green certificates. By common agreement, we have set a value on human labor and activities and frozen that value in money.

God never created money but he understands its origins and functions better than we do. One of the most misquoted verses in the Bible is" money is the root of all evil." Money itself is completely indifferent to good and evil.

The Bible teaches that the love of money is the root of all manner of evils. As money is frozen life energy, evil is a distortion of love. The two go hand in hand.

The Bible does not endorse any one particular economic system. It does identify the place money can have in our lives. That place is summarized for us by Jesus when he says love God with all of your heart, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.
God reminds us that we were designed to love. Our first love is God. God must be first or God will become last.

God must be first since God is the source of love. There can be no love apart from God. Love apart from God always suffers distortion. The greatest distortions of love are what people call evil.

The pre eminent way by which we reconnect to Divine Love and find transformation in Divine love is worship.

Some one once commented to me that they thought God was very selfish in demanding our worship. They asked: what is the point of telling God He is so great? For a moment I was horrified then the Holy Spirit reminded me that as long as people are still asking questions they are open to the Plan of Salvation.

Worship is not for God’s benefit. Worship is for our benefit.
Most religions people tend to forget this. Certainly, most religious people in Jesus’ day had adopted two basic distortions in their understanding of worship. Both can be summarized in the word "bribe".

One of the distortions looked at God, perceived God’s power and reacted with fear. For this approach, the bribe in worship is to placate a very powerful being. The further assumption is that God is unpredictable and potentially vindictive. If we do the wrong thing God will punish us. So, to placate this powerful being we build altars and offer sacrifices.
For much of human history the sacrifice of choice to placate God was a child, usually the first born male.

The concept was that when people killed the first born male infants on the altar of sacrifice that would prove to God that we respected him and feared him. In that proof God would be satisfied and would not bring natural disasters to punish people.

The second distortion in worship is the pay off. The concept is that if I bring something of value to the altar of sacrifice and offer it to God, then God will owe me something of value in return. This is religion as the expression of self will. We worship God so God will give us what we really want, usually more money.

There is a third distortion that emerges from these two. We see the third distortion in the gospel reading this morning. That distortion is pride. The concept is that the act of worship is like tipping a waiter for good service. It says: I am so rich and powerful and important I can afford to give a large gift at the altar.

The wealthy religious leaders in Jesus’ day made an ostentatious display of presenting their gifts before the altar of sacrifice in the Temple. Now, the standard God had set for the offering was the tithe, ten percent. And we read in other parts of scripture how the wealthy religious leaders had devised very clever interpretations of this very clear and simple standard in order to evade it.

The wealthy who contributed large sums of money to the Temple generally were not offering the Biblical tithe. They offered far less proportionately than the working poor.
Compared to the large numbers of working poor they offered significant sums of money. But, they did not bring the tithe. They were not interested in worshiping God as much as they wanted to gain respect and admiration from the people. For them, the money they brought to the Temple was an investment in their pride and prestige and power.

This is not worship. Worship is not a bribe to placate divine wrath or to obtain divine favor. It is not an expression of pride. Worship is the total immersion of the soul in Divine Love and Holiness.

God knows our weakness. He knows our need. He knows that despite the amazing abundance of resources he placed in this world for our benefit, we still live with the fear of scarcity. He also knows that when we created money we made a choice to freeze our life’s energy into stagnate forms.

The command God gave Moses for humans to offer the tithe at the altar is not for God’s benefit. It is not even primarily for the benefit of the Temple or the priests who serve in the Temple. It is for our benefit. It is the first step in helping us move from the distortion of self will, fear and pride, from the experience of life as scarcity, into a new experience of abundance. That abundance is eternal love.

The tithe is preeminently designed as an act of worship by which we take the frozen energy of our lives, place it on the altar of sacrifice, and release it into God’s hand by faith. As we do that God invites us to release our attachment to the experience of life as scarcity. In this act of worship God invites us to experience the new life of abundance in infinite and eternal and ever renewing love.

God tells us we can keep 90 % of our income to spend as we choose. He asks for a tithe, 10%, of our frozen energy to be placed on the altar of sacrifice. It is there that frozen energy will be transformed and released back into our souls as living dynamic and creative life force.
The religious people of Jesus day did not believe this. They believed the money was a bribe to avoid punishment or to get a reward. They gave just enough to impress other people, but never what God had commanded.

The widow did not just give 10%, or 30%, or 50%, or 75%, she gave 100%. She far exceeded what God commanded. The amount was small but it was all she had. It was so small no one noticed, except God.

Jesus declared that those two copper coins that together were worth a single penny were in fact priceless. They far exceeded the value of the silver and gold the wealthy brought out of their abundance. Those two coins were priceless because they represented 100% of the frozen energy the woman held in her hands. Those two coins were priceless because they were a genuine and sincere offering of love and worship.

The widow is enshrined in holy scripture. There are no memorials to her, no churches built in her honor, no hymns or poems or plays. We don’t even know her name. But she shines in the brightness of eternity with a radiance of divine love that reaches out across all cultures and all times.

She put in everything she had. She gave her all to God. She released her meager resources to God and God has blessed those two copper coins in an amazing and ongoing outpouring of grace that will continue until Christ returns to all people every where.

That is love. That is worship. That is what the tithe God invites us to bring to the altar of sacrifice can accomplish when it is presented with the extravagance of steadfast holy love. Out of her poverty, the widow gave her all. God has transformed that gift through eternal love into infinite grace.

For, she out of her poverty gave God everything.