Yesterday Art and our friend, Charlie Johnson, headed up to the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. Not a bad thing to do on a sunny and beautiful November day and on a day so close to Veteran’s Day. In reading the literature from the Memorial, we learned that Bedford, Virginia was chosen as the site for the Memorial because on D-Day in June 1944, some thirty young men from Bedford were deployed in Company A, and at the end of the day, Bedford, Virginia had lost more men per capita than any other town in the nation.

In the 227 years since our nation’s founding, thousands of American citizens have made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives in service to our country and in defense of our freedoms. We will remember them in our prayers today.

Sacrifice is a theme running through our lessons today from the Bible. In the Old Testament lesson, the starving widow is willing to sacrifice the only food she and her son have left, giving it to Elijah. In the gospel from Mark, Jesus points out and holds up as an example a widow who sacrificially puts two small copper coins into the temple treasury. Her sacrifice is overwhelming because she’s given every last cent she has. Jesus compares that with others who may give a lot, but who also have a lot left.

This gospel episode takes place during the last week of Jesus’ life. As you remember, he’s teaching right and left, trying to get everything in because he knows how little time he has left. He moves through Jerusalem and around the temple with the disciples in tow, giving object lessons as he goes, wanting to make sure his disciples are taking note. He points out the arrogance of the scribes, who care more for outward appearances of religious prestige and privilege rather than for inward hearts of humility and true concern for others, and for whom the notion of personal sacrifice wouldn’t even compute. He points out that the size of the offerings given to the temple treasury isn’t in and of itself what matters most – but instead – the sacrificial proportion of the gift to the resources at hand is what matters.

In stewardship season or in any other season, that is a challenging and judging teaching for us. Money matters are faith matters, Jesus is quick to point out. Our hearts are a better indicator of the nature of our beliefs than our outward religious observances and practices.

But the main reason Jesus is in a hurry to point out these faith essentials is because he is on his way towards making his own sacrifice – the ultimate sacrifice of his own life for the sins and shortcomings of humanity. The radical gift of the widow giving all she has is but a small, small foreshadowing of the radical gift of Jesus in giving his whole life for us all. The Letter to the Hebrews reads, in part: “…he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
So, in thinking back through the examples we find in scripture, or indeed in any part of life past and present - what is it that makes sacrifice possible? What motivates even the possibility of sacrifice - the sacrifice of the two widow women we hear about today, the sacrifice of veterans, the sacrifice of Jesus? We can all name examples from our own lives of people who sacrificed enormously – maybe for us and maybe for others. I think of the Montagnards we have met and those we have heard about, who fought with American forces in Vietnam, who sacrificed their futures and their freedom and were herded into refugee camps because they were not only enemies of the state, but Christians as well.

I think what is underneath the willingness to sacrifice is, quite simply, is the ability to trust wholeheartedly. The starving widow put her trust in God and in Elijah, as God’s agent, and was willing to sacrifice her only food. The widow in Jerusalem put her trust in God and gave up her money, knowing that God would provide. Jesus trusted in God’s plan for him and for all humanity and gave up his life.

The freedom to give and not count the cost is possible only when we trust. Perhaps that is where we go back to the Psalm for today and are reminded in such beautiful poetry that God is in charge and at work in the world – and he is to be trusted. “Happy are they that have the God of Jacob for their help! whose hope is in the Lord their God. The Lord who made heaven and earth. The Lord who gives justice. The Lord who lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord who loves the righteous, The Lord who shall reign for ever.”

Not only are we NOT in charge, but we don’t need to be and indeed it is arrogant to think we should be. We CAN trust that God is for us, that God is on our side, that God at work in our lives and in the world. Everything that Jesus said and did that we have recorded in the gospels is a reflection that Jesus knew, lived the reality that God can be trusted.

The first and most important sacrifice that each of us is called to make is to sacrifice our need to be or believe that we are in control. When we live as if we’re in charge, we calculate everything – doling out our money, our time, our abilities, as if we owned them and were in charge of them. When we acknowledge our sinfulness in hanging on so tightly to what is in reality God’s gifts to us and let the control go – we are free to be the people God calls us to be – finding the true place he has set for us in loving and serving others.

There is such a powerful symbolic image in visualizing the widow woman at the temple treasury opening up her fist to LET GO. That is trust, that is freedom, and that is the sacrifice that makes our own new lives possible. Each of us is called to stand at the equivalent of the temple treasury with all the things we think we need, want or deserve balled up in our fists. And each of us is called, by remembering Christ’s sacrifice of his life for us, to open up those tightly clenched fists and let go of it all. And we find, in trusting God in Christ, and sacrificing the need and desire to be in control, that we really are free to be in the world as God created us to be – being loved by him unconditionally and reflecting that unconditional love towards others. And I think we find, ultimately, that the sacrifice we’ve made is really rather small in comparison to the joy of living life unencumbered.

Living sacrificially begins with letting go of our stubborn and ingrained sense that we are or should be in control. Living sacrificially begins with the awareness that God can be trusted and that everything we are, all that we have, and all that we do or might do in the future are from God and belong not to us, but to Him. Living sacrificially means putting our whole trust in God, and finding in that perfect freedom and perfect peace.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, give us the faith to commit our lives to you without question or reserve; that, trusting only and wholly in your love and wisdom, we may meet all that life may bring with serenity and courage; through the grace of Christ our Savior.

Amen.