Not Enough

Mark 12:38-44

How many of us have been in a situation where nothing you could do seemed to matter?

Maybe a good friend from college has cancer, or a difficult pregnancy, and you live halfway across the continent and can’t offer rides to chemo, or babysitting the other kids, or homemade soup – or whatever you do best to care for a friend in need.
All you’ve got is calling or texting or maybe DoorDash, and it’s just not enough.

 

Maybe you’re watching someone you love tank a relationship over a misunderstanding, or get scapegoated by a system you and they have no leverage to change.

 

Maybe your garden, or your time sense, are really distressed by 80 degree days in November – but is reducing your home power use and driving less really going to matter enough to change the climate for the better?

 

Maybe you’ve spent four days, or four years, or more, wondering how the government and people of your nation can be so misguided, or neglectful of real people’s needs, or incompetent or dangerous – and frustrated with how little there seems to be for you or me to do to change that.

I strongly suspect many of us have felt that way at least once in the past few years, however we feel this week.

 

And how many of us have asked ourselves, at least once, why we should bother to pray, or to give, or to work, or to try, or even to hope – when nothing I, or you, can do could possibly make the difference?

 

If that’s never been you, God bless you.

I want to know your secret, and I have some challenging tasks I’d like your help with!

 

But when I – and maybe you – feel like we have no power to matter, well, those are the times when it might be helpful to notice what Jesus is noticing in the story we just read today.

 

When Jesus sat with his friends in the Temple, watched as folks came and went, presenting their offerings for the glory of God and the ministry of the Temple, and noticed the one person among them all whose offering could not possibly have made a difference.

 

Noticed the widow – a term which flags for us that this person was one of the least powerful and most vulnerable people to come into the Temple – the woman who offered two basically worthless coins.

 

No power; no visibility and influence; no possibility of making an impact.

And she gave everything she had.

 

Maybe there was someone in the Temple treasury or administration who knew this widow – knew her faithful commitment and dedication, paid attention over the years. Maybe there was a group of other worshipers who loved her, prayed with her and shared jokes, valued her in the community, like so many of our faithful people here at Trinity.

 

Maybe there wasn’t.

Maybe no one else would have ever realized she existed, if Jesus hadn’t called our attention to her.

 

Or maybe Jesus calling attention to her sparked a change in the scribes and other Temple leaders he was calling out just before this scene. Maybe some of the scribes and leaders listening heard Jesus comparing this widow to the people who care for their own ego and prestige instead of caring for the vulnerable, and changed their own behavior from “devouring widow’s houses” to supporting and sustaining widows and all the vulnerable people God has always told us to care for, and attend to as God’s beloved – even if they thought they couldn’t change the whole system.

Maybe not.

We don’t know.

 

We do know that Jesus noticed.

That God notices.

That the little, useless-feeling things we can do; things that couldn’t possibly make a difference to the world, or the system, are noticed by God.

Matter to God.

Perhaps mean everything, with God.

 

There’s nothing wrong – there’s much that is good – about “giving out of our abundance”.

When we have the money, or the time, or the influence, or enthusiasm – when we have the power to make a difference what we do absolutely matters.

When we give out of our abundance, we also get to enjoy the rewards of unstrained generosity, the fun of making something better – and perhaps even the public recognition of, and respect for, our contributions and efforts.

 

But when we give our “not enough to matter”, our “nothing” that costs all we have, God notices.

Jesus pays attention.

And God can make our nothing into everything.

Can make your not-enough, and my nothing-left-to-matter, into the thing necessary in that moment for God’s love to change the world.

 

Our abundance and poverty – our power to matter, or our lack of it – is not distributed evenly.

Some of us have abundance of money, but poverty of time.

Some of us are rich in time, but desperately in need of emotional resilience and hope.

Some of us are rich in resilience, and poor in health or physical strength.

Others have strength, and need relationships. Others have love and connection overflowing and no cash at all. Some of us are rich in all those areas, some of us are strapped for everything.

 

And what many of us need to hear - what I need to hear from Jesus – is that where we have nothing to give, and we give it anyway, God sees it. Jesus notices.

And God can make it everything.

 

The powerless private joke (or meme) that’s all you’ve got might become the silver bullet a friend needs against despair.
The lunch invitation you don’t know how to find the time for, or the phone call you can scarcely muster the resilience for, might become the conversation that turns a tide.

The one meal you can make, or serve, to feed a hungry neighbor;

the single day of shelter or the brief window of protection you can scrape together; the one letter you can barely write;

the one meeting you can squeeze out the time to attend;

or the last scrap of guts or hope you can muster to speak up or speak out –

any of these might be the tiny right thing at the right time to save a life or move a metaphorical mountain.

 

The last two half-pennies in your hand might be an inspiration of systemic change, or a pebble that helps turn some inert weight of others’ abundance into an avalanche of good.

 

And your noticing - my noticing - when someone else is giving all they can, might just magnify “nothing” into enough to heal a heart or spark a fire of hope.

I don’t know for sure.

I do know that Jesus notices.

That God cares.

And that when there is nothing we can do that matters, what we do still matters, with God.

Might be everything, with God.

Hardness of Heart

Mark 10:2-16

Does it ever frustrate you when the church seems to get caught up in political issues, and wind up getting involved in things that should be someone else’s business?

 

As often as not, it’s because people come – as they do in today’s gospel story – and demand an opinion on the issues of the day:

Tell us, Jesus, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?“Is the king’s marriage legal?” they are asking. “Is it holy?”

 

Herod Antipas, after all, was a divorced man married to a divorced woman (a woman who had been previously married to Herod’s brother).
Jesus’ cousin John has already gotten himself beheaded for his fierce criticism of this post-divorce marriage (among other things).

And now, we’re demanding that Jesus publicly wade into this mess.

 

There’s no good answer to this question. So Jesus, as he usually does, takes the intended trap as a starting place, and leads off into a wilderness no one was planning to have him get us into.

 

He starts with “well, what does the scripture say?”

He knows – and his questioners know perfectly well – that the Torah, the law of Moses, accepts divorce as a fact.
For as long as God’s people have had written law, written guidance on relationships acceptable to God, divorce has been a part of the fabric of society.

That’s the “don’t bother to try to trap me” part of Jesus’ response. And then he launches his real point.

 

It’s lawful; it always has been, because of your hardness of heart.

Marriage, in its right and holy state, is a lifetime unity. That’s the whole and perfect relationship God created to nurture and strengthen humanity. That’s what we dream of, what we intend, every time we come to God, to the church, to enter marriage these days, too.

 

But humanity is broken and imperfect. And God knows it.

Knows it, and creates a set of systems and holy law around our broken imperfection.

 

Jesus has not sought out an opportunity to shame people who have experienced divorce; or to scold those whose marriages are broken – or those who are broken by a marriage that’s not whole, not perfect.

Jesus responds to those who want to use divorce as a political trap, and chooses to remind us that none of us live up to the wholeness and perfection that God creates.

Because of our hardness of heart.

 

Our cardiosclerosis (almost literally, in the Greek).

The drying and hardening of the muscle of life and of love.

All the kinds of love that connect us in human relationship, not just in marriage.

 

For all that Jesus is laying down the law about divorce in the story we read today – and laying down new law, more egalitarian and more stringent about the possible injuries to others – I don’t think that divorce itself, or the institution of marriage, or the preservation of any particular marriage, is the point he’s focused on.

 

Instead, I think his focus – the focus he wants us to have – is on generosity of heart. Lively flexibility of heart. Like the heart of God.

The heart that flexes, grows, and strengthens in the face of humanity’s constant imperfections and failures and breakages, as well as in joy and in unity and completeness. The responsive and generous heart of God, that does not clog and dry up as our human hearts so often tend to do.

 

Our hearts – mine at least, and I suspect I’m not alone – our hearts do get broken.
In marriage and out of marriage, in all our human relationships.
And many of the injuries to our hearts – the little ones, the daily ones, often – scab up; harden. Clog up, just a little bit, our empathy, our generosity toward others.

It’s our self-protective instinct to not get hurt again.

 

Or we clog with just a garden variety solidifying of a resistance to irritations and annoyances. Because all these humans we live with and try to love are…full of annoying or irritating habits and needs.

 

Or there are times when the muscle of love for our siblings, our neighbors, feels overworked; when our compassion feels weakened because there are so many demands on our empathy and generosity.
So many devastating losses to the winds and waters in our news feeds and our family and friend stories.
So many illnesses and injuries and losses that come to friends and family members in waves and floods – that we want to support, to respond to with generous hearts, and are just too much at once, and our hearts feel stiffer and slower when the next one comes, or the first one drags on. And we ourselves get tired, and sore, and brittle and clogged.

 

And sometimes, honestly, our hearts get stiff and slow because we don’t take them out for exercise often enough. Just like my physical joints and heart and lungs, my emotional heart, or yours, can get slower because it’s more comfortable to sit still than to seek out the emotional exercise – the new relationships, the hard conversations, the actions of giving and caring, the sharing of joys – that keeps our muscles pumping and compassion flowing.

 

Jesus pushes us – today, all the time – to expect more from our hearts than we are used to. To expect and intend our hearts to be more and more like the heart of God.

That’s often not an easy thing to do. It requires attention and intention.

But we do not have to do it alone.

 

For many of us – not all, but many – marriage itself can be the relationship in which we renew, and heal, and strengthen our hearts, growing more generous and flexible in a working, living love that mirrors the generous heart of God.

 

For many of us – intentionally, for all of us – the community of disciples, the household of God should be a place of heart renewal. A place and a practice of softening and strengthening our muscles of compassion and trust and generosity, of love. Love for one another, and for God.

And of flexing that muscle of life inside us that receives love from God and one another.

 

I look for that, and I find that at Trinity.

At our practices of exercising our compassion and generosity together, seeking out ways to care for strangers, and for one another.

At our common prayer, meant to heal and stretch our scar-tissue and give us flexible hearts, more ready to love, and give, and receive.

I hear the strengthening beat of our shared heart, as we meet challenges together, adapt to changes together, welcome new friends, nurture our children together.

I hear the sound of God’s whole and generous heart in our shared song and praise in worship, and in the joys we share with one another.

 

I recognize myself, broken and imperfect, in the hardness of heart that Jesus calls out, today.

I recognize us, together, in the whole and generous heart of God that Jesus reminds us we are created to share.

The divine heart that doesn’t harden, but makes space for our broken imperfections. And still demands that we grow, no matter how often we break. Grow stronger, and truer, and more whole and perfect and holy, together.

 

The Good Life

Mark 9:30-37, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Proverbs 31:10-31

Who wouldn’t want to live “the good life”?

 

Searching that hashtag on Instagram gives results that are at least two-thirds pool and beach-related. A quick “good life” browse on Facebook trended more toward photos of food.

But the good life comes in many varieties, and lurks in the subtext, if not the actual text, of the scripture readings assigned for today.

 

If you were to ask Jesus’ first disciples about the good life – at least at the beginning of today’s story – they’d probably tell you about being recognized in their rank and status – holding positions of honor and greatness.
Any one among us or our friends with an eye on a particular promotion at work, or an award in our field – or anyone unironically enjoying their “World’s Greatest Coach” or “Grandpa” coffee mug – might be sympathetic to how those early disciples were thinking.

 

Jesus isn’t, of course. He has no hesitation in telling those first followers – and us – that lack of status is an earmark of the holy life – or at least the kind of holy life Jesus expects us to want and to imitate.

(Of course it didn’t take long for the corporate followers of Jesus – the church – to start reinventing servanthood as a status symbol of its own. There’s probably a set of “world’s greatest servant-leader” mugs out there by now. It’s hard to resist imagining some kind of recognition being part of the good life.)

 

And nobody asked James, the epistle-writer, to describe the good life, but he calls it out today, inviting us to display our “good life” rooted in “gentleness born of wisdom” – rooted in the inner peace of a life devoted to God.

And there’s a portrait of that wisdom-life in the final poem of the book of Proverbs, which we started with, today.

 

The one about the amazing woman who does everything well.

The “capable wife” language in our English translation transforms a call to seek a “woman of valor” into a dryly functional, colorless job title. But the job description – the portrait of this woman of valor, the good life to be fervently sought – is full of color and detail.

 

This is the woman who has it all.

Or, maybe, the woman who does it all.

It’s an extraordinary list of tasks and accomplishments: executive management, sharp business leadership, active charity and service, excellent handcrafts, teaching and coaching - a role model – whose lamp never goes out and who is never lazy. No personal days and me time, just success and fulfillment in everything she touches.

 

You see versions of her on Instagram these days – at the head of an “influencer brand” everyone’s supposed to want to imitate.
See versions of this woman whipping up a picture-perfect breakfast for her smiling, prompt children with one hand behind her back prepping a several million dollar presentation at her high-powered job, organizing a food drive at the kids school and a benefit gala for a medical charity, while supporting her husband’s run for governor or something.

 

I

Am

Exhausted

just reading this scriptural portrait.

Or contemplating the current-day equivalent.

 

I’m from a generation that grew up shaped by the expectations that wherever our mothers fell short of having it all, we would cross the finish line and Win Everything.  That we’d be the ones who finally made having a perfect family and high-powered career (and perfect body, but we didn’t talk about that explicitly) all at the same time normal and achievable for every woman, and the promised land of Equality would be come.

 

And when I saw this scriptural Woman Who Does It All coming up in the assigned Sunday readings, I cried.

 

The lived experience of a generation – or a hundred generations – has affirmed that this glorious portrait of the woman of valor is fantasy. A standard to which no actual human woman can live up.

No human person, female or otherwise, honestly.

 

None of these scriptural descriptions of the holy human, the person of wisdom, fit normal human beings, honestly.

James tells us a life rooted in “the wisdom from above” is pure, peaceable, gentle, open and flexible, full of mercy and good results without a trace of bias or hypocrisy.

Raise your hand, would you, if you know people just like that: Universally pure, peaceable, productive and perfectly, constantly objective and always sincere.[know more than one person like that?]

 

We do need ideals to strive for, and a life that’s halfway to peaceful, fruitful, gentle, welcoming, honest and generous is a more pleasant life to live than one that’s a quarter of the way there, or one that’s mostly disrupted, cranky, hostile, shady and distorted.

 

But what James, and Jesus, and the compiler of the book of Proverbs need us to do when we read their words is to desire that good life of wisdom, to seek that fruitful, generous, welcoming life as a gift of God, as the way of life of God’s household that embraces and supports our faithful living. 

Not as some accomplishment or goal we create, achieve, or own for ourselves.

 

The faithful reader and responder of Proverbs is the one who seeks, loves, and makes a commitment to a life with the wisdom of God – the wisdom which is and does all those glorious things. The wisdom of God protects, provides, gives, produces, cares for all – not we ourselves, as individuals. We seek to join her household. To move in to the world shaped by this pure peace, this fruitful gentleness, this wholehearted openness and grace.

 

To let go of having the success for ourselves, and commit to supporting God’s success in everyone around us, participating in God’s generous care for everyone unworthy of that extraordinary glory.

 

In that household of God, we find ourselves becoming more like that amazing woman, more steeped in James’s “wisdom from above”. We become more fruitful, peaceable, generous, capable, oriented to the service of all, not by our individual efforts and achievements, but together, as the household of wisdom we become extraordinary. Together, in the household of God, we become the people of valor. 

 

That good life is waiting for us.
Calling to us.

Inviting us to welcome it as a gift, and to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to join in.

To become a part of the whole of God’s wisdom, protecting and promoting and providing for the strength and joy of all God’s people.