Sunday 10th November – All Heart – Pastor Adrian Kitson

Do you find yourself people watching?  When at the airport, in the mall or eating out somewhere, you find yourself observing people – there are little kids and parents over there, old friends there, business meetings in progress there, a family gathering there, a person alone there …

Of course, it is embarrassing when you are observing someone and they turn and look straight at you. You quickly look away desperately trying to discipline yourself to not look at them again … For a while anyway!

Jesus is in the city at the end of his mission. He is sitting in the temple court people watching. He is watching people give their offering.

Of course, he himself is being watched by many. Mark tells us in this last visit to the city Jesus has been under the microscope. He is being watched closely both by those who have most to lose by his presence (Political/religious elite) and those who sense they have much to gain from him (everyday folks).

Most days people have been privy to a verbal showdown between the “heavies” and this rabbi from the North. Some seem delighted that Jesus is doing well! Every time those who are trying to incriminate him by clever argument, Jesus befuddles them. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” he says. “The stones the mason threw out is actually the cornerstone for the whole new building”, and “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12). Jesus is quickly becoming the small-town hero rising to fame in the big city, but it is getting more pointed – more dangerous.

We hear that he sits with his followers and watches this business of paying your offering …

What he observes about his people triggers a teachable moment.

He notices the Scribes. They are easy to spot. They want to be seen!

These were the lawyers of God. They had given their professional lives to attaining an elite status in their community as experted in religious law.

Leon Morris, the biblical scholar says,

Not unlike most human beings, the people around Jesus were trying to find physical representations of godliness in one way or another. For the people in this city, the scribes were just that – carriers of God’s holy words and God’s holy Law. They were more than willing to enjoy the benefits of being the object of people’s affection and adoration.

So, we have some scribes in their long robes giving their offering in public view. Jesus concludes that they are giving what they would hardly even miss.

But, he also observes a woman who has lost her husband, and so is likely living on the edge of poverty giving what would she surely would miss …

Quite shockingly, instead of praising the amount given, he commends the woman who gave so little, but so extravagantly. He says, she gave “all she had left to live on”. The others did not. They gave only a bit of what they had and would hardly miss.

You can tell. This giving business is not about the money. It is about the amount of heart.

One trusted enough to risk plenty. The others gave enough to avoid risk.

Why risk plenty? Jesus seems to suggest that she was able to do this because she trusted that God makes her live. She can risk giving her well-being and safety to the Lord, because he is her well-being and safety.

But giving for outward show or buying God’s blessing or just to get a better tax return or whatever is very limited trust, or no trust for your life. When you really believe that this life is yours to make and God’s to take, then you will have little freedom to be generous toward the Lord and others.

The outcome for a person who carries a belief that ‘everything I have is actually mine’ (and not the Lord’s) is that I believe I am only giving what is mine to the Lord, rather than, I am giving back to the Lord what is not mine – but only what has first been freely given to me.

With that heart, Jesus says we usually “gobble up” each other. The Scribes were doing just that …

She has lost her breadwinning husband in a community with little safety net. Like many a young couple at the moment facing huge cost of living increase, exorbitant rent and fading hope of ever getting ahead, people like this vulnerable woman in this city are made to pay exorbitant taxes to the institution in which these wealthy scribes sit atop as the cash pours in to build this massive temple.

But their pressure has the worst thing attached to it – a spiritual sting. The money is exacted unjustly ‘in God’s name’!

These ‘white washed walls’ are loading her up with endless expectations and rules so that she is in a perpetual state of guilt and fear that God will judge her for not giving enough; not being good enough.

We should know what that is like. Luther has that same fire in his belly about how the medieval Roman church was “gobbling up” the poor of Germany in the relentless fund raising by dishonest means (mainly the selling of fake salvation – Indulgences) to build what we now marvel at – St Peter’s Basilica in Rome!

Why do we ‘devour’ each other?

Because “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart”, Jesus has already said.

If your heart is not willing to acknowledge that all good gifts are given in love for you by the “the Father of lights”, as James names God (James 1:17), then you will find it very difficult to trust that he has you covered; that he will meet your needs for living out his calling on your life, especially when you are a bit financially, physically or reputationally exposed.

And then when you can’t or won’t trust that the Lord will keep you and provide for you in times of plenty and times of little, you will replace him and do it yourself, even if it means cutting a few corners in business, or stepping on a couple of “less important” people, or giving up the joy of living in the generosity of a God who promises to keep you more than the “birds of the air”, as Jesus promises (Matthew 6:26).

I hear the Lord calling me to himself today – with all my heart. I am hearing him teaching me to live generously in all his generosity to me.

I hear him calling me to trust that despite my circumstances on any given week, financially or relationally, in our mission here locally or in this tough time in the LCANZ more widely, he will provide what he knows I/we need (which may be different to what I/we want).

I hear him reminding me that everything I am, all the people I love, everything I own and value, every part of my body, and in everything I experience; good and bad, easy and hard, is first owned and gifted by him to me. He “owns”, he gives, he calls, he loves, he prays for me.

I trust this because I know he would soon have no time to watch others as he is handed over to the clutches of greed and power. Any attention he does receive from these city dwellers and Scribes will be derision and shaming as they pass by his bloodied cross.

This was his offering – not coins, but broken body in blood, into death’s greedy clutches.

His gift is now light in that death, hope in that end, life in that hope. Death itself has been gobbled up!

So, I can’t pay him off to get more. I don’t need to be seen to be good. He gifts me all the good and calls me to extend the good – to do more with the gifts.

He does not devour people, imperfect and self-orientated though we can be. He gives and gives and gives to us. He speaks his good words of grace one to another and here in his special presence. He forgives our lack of trust and calls us back to it. With the Lord, “tomorrow is another day” where his grace makes us new every morning and, as the 18^th century poet, Alexander Pope said, “hope springs eternal”.

So, I give money. I give time. I use the skills and abilities I have ended up with, and all these are a sign of one thing; the giving of myself, in the heart to the Lord who has given above and beyond what he had for us all.

As a result, we are one very generous community and we are open-hearted generous people where we live – not for our sake, but as St Paul says, “for the Lord’s praise and glory” (Ephesians 1:12).

We might end up with a motto like John Wesley, the great 18^th century church leader who is purported to have said, …

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