Two little copper coins (Click on the sermon title for a .pdf copy)
Mark 12:41-44
November 8, 2015
Which hand has the penny in it? Both! I have two pennies, two little copper coins in my hands, just like she did, just like you do. Take out your coins. Put them in your hands. Look at them. Admire them. Cherish them.
What are you going to do with them? You could give them both away. You could keep them both. Or you could keep one and give the other away.
But now imagine. Imagine that these two little copper coins represent all you have, all you have to live on: your job, your savings, your home; your passions, your skills, your relationships; the people you love, the things you love; all that you cherish, all that you need to live.
Now, what are you going to do with them?
All that I have, all that I have,
I will give Jesus, all that I have.
I sang it. You sang it. But we didn’t mean it, did we? I have no intention of giving Jesus all that I have. Do you? I will be generous. I will be more than generous with what I give to Jesus, but I will not give all that I have.
So, what’s wrong with that? Nothing. Jesus never said the rich men making generous gifts of money to the Temple treasury were doing anything wrong. He only said the poor widow gave more, because they gave of what they had to spare while she gave all she had, all she had to live on.
She gave all she had to live on! How could she? Why would she?
Because when she let go, when she let both coins drop into the Temple treasury, when she had nothing at all left to live on, what did she have left? To whom did she belong?
Most of us can probably only guess at what that means, guess at what it feels like to be left utterly at the mercy of God’s mercy, guess at what it means to give ourselves, body and soul, to God, to rest wholly and completely in the love of God.
But we can guess, we can imagine, because Jesus shows us what it looks like. Jesus was not giving his disciples a new rule. He was showing them, he is showing us, what loving God looks like, loving God with all your heart, loving God with all your soul …