Sermon Title: "Elizabeth's Gift"
Date: November 8, 2009
Minister: Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Mark 12:38-44

In all of Jesus’ teachings, I don’t think there is a more memorable, more vivid, and certainly no more succinct portrayal of a person that the three verses which depict a poor widow dropping all she had—two copper coins—into the temple treasury.  Now some scripture scholars speculate that this incident did not really happen.  They believe that what may have been a parable got lifted into the realm of reality.  Part of their conviction is based on similar stories of small gifts given out of poverty appearing in Jewish, Greek and even Buddhist literature.

Which may be true.  But such an incident actually did happen.  I’ve told this story before, but I believe it bears repeating for its semblance to today’s lesson.  It’s about another widow, a woman who was a long-time member of my last church.  I’m not normally in the habit of using former parishioners for sermon illustrations.  But I can repeat this widow’s story today because she has since died.  Yet more importantly, I can tell it because she gave me permission to do so. 

When I first called on Elizabeth, it was on a beautiful autumn day in upstate New York.  The fall stewardship letter had been sent by the church a week or so before.  As I rose from her sofa to leave after visiting Elizabeth in her neat little clapboard home a few blocks from the church, she asked, “Would you take my pledge card back to church with you?”

As she handed me the pledge card, I noted this widow had pledged $37.50 a month to the church.  I was puzzled because it was an odd amount.  Most of us would round it off to $37 or $38 even, or $35 or $40 for ease of balancing our checkbook.  I asked Elizabeth, “Do you mind if I inquire why the odd amount with fifty cents?”

“Because I tithe to the church,” she replied, matter-of-factly.  “Every month I get $375 for my pension.  I give the FIRST 10% to the church—that’s thirty seven dollars and fifty cents.”

“Elizabeth,” I said with wonder as I sat back down, “you give our church 10% of your income every month?  That's very kind of you.  How long have you done this?”

“Ever since I joined the church.  A canvasser came around one fall and said she wished she could do that, but she couldn’t afford to.  I told her, ‘You can!  I give away the FIRST 10%.  All the rest is more than enough to live on.  God provides me with everything I need.’”

I left her home that day with a new respect for this modest widow’s monthly gift to her church of 10% of her income.  I always enjoyed the afternoon visits I would make to her home a couple of times a year.  I would call ahead to make an appointment.  I invariably found myself standing on Elizabeth's front porch wearing my navy blazer.  In fact, I wore one today in honor of Elizabeth.  It’s significant that my blazer was dark blue, for Elizabeth had a white cat!!  As Elizabeth suffered from severe diabetes and crippling arthritis and used a walker, she was never once able to worship with us in the eight-and-a-half years I served that church.  But she always kept up on what was happening from the church newsletter.  She also watched several religious programs on television, and would ask if I had seen this religious preacher or that one.

Since she wasn’t physically able attend the church of which she was a member for some forty years, she faithfully sent in her check every month, until I conducted her funeral shortly before I left that church in 1986.  While pledges there, as here, were kept confidential, one day while sorting the mail I inadvertently opened a plain envelope which contained Elizabeth’s offering, and noticed that her check no longer had $37.50 written on it, but $50.  I decided if I once asked Elizabeth why her monthly pledge amounted to precisely $37.50, I could ask her again why it had increased to $50, in mid-year!

So the next time I visited her, I did.  She looked at me, shrugged her shoulders in her matter-of-fact way, and replied simply, “Because my pension was raised to $500 a month, of course.”

I realized I had a rare stewardship resource there, better than any books on the subject or guest speakers.  Here was a modern-day widow of modest means who gave her church 10% of her monthly pension income.  What if everyone else were to do the same?

“Elizabeth,” I asked her, “would you mind if I tell your story someday?”  “That’s okay,” she replied.  “But you have to tell them that if I can do it, they can too, because God will provide you with everything you need.”

That widow, not unlike the widow in today’s Gospel lesson, gave a significant portion of her monthly income to her church.  It didn’t matter how much it was, for it was all in proportion to her income.

Now it is not lost to me that those of you who receive Social Security checks will receive no increase in 2010.  Many of our salaries are frozen for the next year.  Some of our members have to deal with furlough days and a subsequent reduction in their income.  These are indeed challenging economic times.  But the point is not how much you have, but how much you choose to give away for charitable purposes, whether to the church or your alma mater or your favorite charities.

When you make your giving commitment this month to Bay Shore Church for 2010—whether you feel like the poor widow with only two copper coins; a modern-day widow who cared enough about the church she couldn’t even attend to give 10% of her income; or someone who is financially able to give substantially more than $37.50 or $50 a month—each person’s individual gift is valuable when it is seen not as a stark dollar amount, but in proportion to what you possess.  For the widow who gave two coins gave more then anyone else; she gave all she had.

To give as generously as the widow in the temple or as the widow Elizabeth is to give up the notion of possessing, just as if you were to imagine a magnet yielding its drawing force.  To give as they gave is to become wholly a giver, to decide first how much you want to give based on your own need to give, instead of giving away what is left after nearly everything else is spent.  Elizabeth found that when you choose your giving amount FIRST . . .

“God will provide you with everything you need.”

Reflecting on the widow—whether the one Jesus observed or Elizabeth—Jesuit scholar Joseph Tetlow wrote:  “Becoming such a giver is a gift to the Lord incomparably greater than the gift of anything.  Becoming such a giver is, further, a mighty gift to the world.

“The widow has become such a giver.  This is her gift.  This is why she gave more than all the rest.  This is why it is very wise for us, who have rather more than she had, to give very, very generously whenever we have a chance to give at all.”