2024 11 10 Proper 27, Pentecost 25 B
The readings today bring our attention to three widows
– Naomi and her daughter in law, Ruth, and in our Gospel reading Jesus points
out the widow who puts money into the treasury.
Jesus points out that this widow has put in more than all the others
because others put in money from their abundance… their extra “funny money” if
you like. Where as the widow has no
abundance… no extra funds and she puts in all she has to live on.
To fill you in on the operations of the temple, according
to the Mishnah, (the Jewish writings about the law,) the temple treasury
contained what was called the 13 trumpets.
These trumpets were the collection vessels for the people’s offerings. There were 11 out of those 13 that were for supposedly
“voluntary” offerings of money and two that were for the temple tax. Of those
11, nine were for receiving what was legally due from worshippers and 4 were
strictly voluntary.
This was a society with different ways of operating from
how we are today. The centre of modern
life is certainly not church for most, but probably our media… social or television,
whereas the life of people in Jesus’ time, completely centred around the
temple. What they believed about God was
the most important aspect of life, as they lived acutely aware of the reality
of death and therefore, spiritual belief was of utmost importance. Modern humanity, in contrast, seems to live
in denial of death and mortality, and in denial of anything concretely
spiritual.
Church life ruled every other part of their life also. If one was sick, they needed to present
themselves to the priests before they could be declared clean and once again
take part in life. And there was always
an offering that needed to be given as part of that “being declared
clean”. One could not simply go freely
to church, but it was a culture where church was everything.
The widow putting in all she had to live on, in our
culture, would seem strange and foolish, but to live in that time meant to go
to the temple and to go to the temple was to live! And to go to the temple meant that something
needed to be placed in those trumpets. Also, it was not really a good news
story, because it operated on a system of sacrifice in order to gain God’s
acceptance.
The Good News is explained in our letter to the
Hebrews, “he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to remove sin by
the sacrifice of himself.”
The widow put in all she had to live on, but Jesus
gave, not just all he had to live on, but his whole life… and his spiritual
life too. Jesus was born Spiritually
alive as he is the son of God, born by the Holy Spirit. Jesus did not need to experience separation
from God the father, because he was without sin, yet he cried out on the cross,
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me”…. Why? Because he was at that time baptized into the
sins of the world and he took the punishment for sin upon himself. – That
is, by the way, the one baptism for the forgiveness for sins that we declare
belief in, as we recite the creed.
Some of these things are hard to understand
physically… because we are talking about a spiritual realm and how things work
in the spirit. Sin, which began, back at
the beginning of time, with doubting God, brought death. And then the death of Jesus, who was without
sin, brings life to those who choose to accept and follow him. Notice too that there is no other way, and no
second chance as we are told; “just as it is appointed for mortals to die once
and after that the judgment,…” Just in
case you didn’t catch it, let me clarify; this means there is no re-incarnation
and no past life. Mortals die once… NO
second chance to get it right…. But the Good News, is that we don’t need to… we
only need to reach out to God through the sacrifice of Jesus. It is done!
No other sacrifice is needed. We
are also told that Jesus will come again.
We are told that he has dealt with sin in his first coming. In his second coming it will be to save those
who are waiting for him.
God doesn’t expect us to not think about the
future financially or otherwise. Quite
the opposite, in fact, as we read that Naomi said to Ruth, “I need to seek some
security for you, so that it may be well with you”. However, we need to understand and have a
proper vision of the future. How can a
widow give away all she has to live on?
Only because she has understood the future and is totally believing in
God and trusting in his provision. Only
if she has an understanding of life and life eternal and completely trusts in
God. We are challenged today, to have
this understanding and also completely trust in God.
There is a children’s story that I think, illustrates
this; Be Brave Little Penguin, by Giles Andreae. A little penguin is afraid of water, and
imagines all the scenarios of monsters and things in the water to harm and eat
him. In the end he discovers that
sometimes you have to just be brave and jump.
And, OH the Joys that you discover when you do!
All of our widows were people who trusted in God, but
this doesn’t mean their life was without grief.
Our younger Old Testament widow is Ruth.
She was not even an Israelite, but a Moabite woman, who married a man
from the line of Judah. In fact, her
husband’s family were from Bethlehem.
The husband and his family had been living in the country of Moab due to
a famine in Bethlehem. Unfortunately,
the father-in-law had died and then the brother-in-law and Ruth’s husband also
died. Three widows were living
together. Naomi, the mother-in-law, told
the two younger women to return to their father’s house, as both were young and
could remarry. You see, the law was
that, if there was a brother alive, then that brother would take the woman as
his wife, to care for her and also have children, but the children would be
reckoned as the dead brother’s offspring, so that the family line could be
preserved.
There were no other brothers. One of the younger ladies returned to her
father’s house, but Ruth had declared that she would stay with Naomi, her
Mother-in-law, and serve the God of the Israelites. The famous line from Ruth is; Your people
will be my people and your God will be my God.
Ruth cared for Naomi and the two returned to the land
of Judah where Ruth went to work gleaning grain in the field of a man named
Boaz. This was a law of provision for
the poor in Jewish law. The owner was
not to harvest to the very edges and was not to go over the field a second time
to pick up what was missed the first time, but instead the poor and the widows
could do this for providing a living for themselves.
My guess is that this could have been dangerous work
for a young beautiful woman. But Boaz
was a good man and instructed his men not to touch Ruth, and he also instructed
them to allow extra wheat to fall to the ground for her to collect.
After a while Naomi decided on a plan to secure Ruth’s
future – looking after her superannuation, you could say. Boaz was what they called a Kinsman
Redeemer. This meant, in the absence of
a brother to take on the widow, a kinsman redeemer could take her, with the
understanding that her child and property would be considered belonging to her
dead husband.
Not every Kinsman Redeemer would want to do this, but
we see that Boaz did. There is a little
more to the story. In order to evoke
this response from Boaz, Ruth went and lay down next to Boaz at night. This was also a dangerous act and it meant
being completely vulnerable and at the mercy of Boaz. He could have taken advantage of her and
ruined her reputation as an honourable woman, but she asked him to “cover”
her.
Ruth is another woman who gave all she had to live
on. She had to trust in Naomi, her mother-in-law,
and trust in God and trust in Boaz. It
is a frightening thing sometimes to trust in others…. And to trust in God. Trusting is hard when trust has been
betrayed. But when we step out in faith
and trust God, amazing things happen. How amazing?
Check out what happened to Ruth!
Ruth is significant in our story of faith because she
is the start of an important lineage of faith.
She maintained the lineage of her first husband, a man whose family home
was in Bethlehem – THIS IS IMPORTANT - and gave birth to Obed, who was the father of
Jesse, who was the father of David.
David became the King of Israel, and described as a man after God’s own
heart. David is the ancestor of Christ. This is why Mary and Joseph had to travel to
Bethlehem and why Jesus was born there.
Today’s message is about those who are at risk of harm,
but who have such an understanding of our future in God, and such a sure trust
in God, that they bravely step out in faith.
This might be us. We make this
time to worship God our priority. We are
trusting in God’s provision for our own future and for the future of the
church. We might be reading at church or
welcoming or doing other jobs, because we know the importance of eternal life
and that eternal life is of the utmost importance.
God will not let us down. God loves us and has made us to be His
precious and royal family. Scripture
tells us in 1 Peter2:9; “But you are a
chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,
that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his
wonderful light.” WE are called by God
to declare the praises of God. Are we
doing this? It involves stepping out in
faith… being brave. The widow at the
temple gave all she had to live on for the work of God who was her life. Jesus gave all for love of us. Let us take a moment in prayer to consider
the love of God for us. Two things that
I believe God is saying to us today; One is to know that He loves us and
assures us that he will provide for us. The second is to encourage us to step
out in faith, even when it seems risky, like the widow putting in all she had
to live on and Ruth lying at Boaz’s side in the night. Just be brave and JUMP… Today, can we say, “Yes
God, I will go where you call me.”
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