A sermon by Alison Sampson on Mark 12:38-44
Acknowledgement
This sermon draws heavily on, and quotes extensively from, Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1972)
I would be ashamed to admit just how often I sit in the silence before the sermon and contemplate shoes or ‘shoulds’ or shopping lists. I love shoes, and think about them often; and what with three kids, I am forever making shopping lists. As for what I should do – exercise more, pray more, give more away, call this person, email that person, weed the garden, clean the house, radically change my life for the sake of the gospel – well, what I should do is endless. I will never, ever get through the list of things I should do, no matter how hard I try.
Even so, I would like to talk about the ‘shoulds’. Tonight’s story from Mark’s gospel catapults many preachers into a minor ‘should’-frenzy. They conveniently ignore the bit where Jesus says that religious leaders devour widow’s houses, and go straight to the bit where an impoverished widow gives her last two coins to the temple. Jesus holds her up as an example, say the preachers, so let’s talk about tithing. At the very least, we should all be giving the first ten percent of our income to God and God’s work in the world, by which we usually mean the church!
And then what happens is that the generous members of the congregation – often, I suspect, the ones with less financial resources – nod wisely, and dig deeper. I can’t help but think of Frances, one of our local widows and saints. She was never very well off, but she took in kids who had nobody else to look after them, and raised them as her own. She was always happy to throw an extra potato in the pot to feed whoever turned up at dinnertime. Like the widow in Mark’s gospel, her generosity was a model for many of us.
Meanwhile, those of us who struggle with generosity – the theological term for this is ‘tight-arses’ – defensively remind ourselves just how many dollars we have donated to TEAR or Oxfam or the Nepali earthquake relief, and what enormous incomes we have foregone with our career choices – and we don’t change our giving at all.
That is the problem with ‘shoulds’: most of us will defend ourselves against them, or find a sneaky way to understand them so that they don’t apply to us. The rich among us are especially good at this, and I place myself well and truly in that category.
So I am not going to talk about tithing or any other ‘should’. Jesus did not come to make us feel even more defensive and guilty. Instead of making a list of demands for us to manipulate, resist or reinterpret, he instead turns us back to God, and to love.
But how do we know God? How do we love God, or know that we are loved?
And now we come to another thing that Frances was very good at: the hard work of prayer. Maybe some of us find it easy. But for many of us, prayer is difficult, very difficult. For to pray, we must open ourselves up. We must be vulnerable to the core, and let the light shine in places we desperately want to keep in shadow. And so we resist. We resist in a way that is like having tightly clenched fists. Rather than open ourselves up to the one who loves us, we think of shoes and ‘shoulds’ and shopping lists and hope God will go away.
Our clenched fists show how tense we are, how afraid, how reluctant to let go of ourselves and the illusions we hold dear. Imagine that these illusions are coins. Perhaps you are holding onto a past hurt – something you pretend no longer matters, but which rears its ugly head every time you come to pray. Perhaps you are holding onto fear: fear of loneliness, fear of financial insecurity, fear of betrayal. Perhaps you are holding onto envy. When you come to pray, you find yourself focussing on someone who seems more attractive or more wealthy or more important or more holy than you.
Most of you are clutching a hundred coins, a thousand coins, in your hot and clammy hands. And when you come to pray with your fists full of coins, you don’t want to let go. You say to yourself, “That’s how I am. That’s the way things are, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” You give up now, rather than trust in hope. The coins are cutting into your palms, but still you will not let go. Even the idea of surrendering them causes you pain. Better the devil you know, and the sins you are comfortable with, than the healing which is the gift of surrender. It feels safer to hold onto the past, the hurts, even the things you are ashamed of, than to trust in a new future. So there you are, with balled up fists, closed to the one who wants to heal you.
How, then, do you open your hands?
Knowing you should will never open your hands. No one else can make you open them. Perhaps, then, begin at the beginning: The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. Not just the pretty things, or the good things, or the kind things, but all the bitterness and rage and anguish and suffering and jealousy and hatred and despair. Not just beauty, but ugliness. Not just hope, but futility. Everything, absolutely everything, belongs to God.
That is why all the tithing in the world, and all the ‘shoulds’ in the world, are never enough. That is why two little coins, when they are everything you have, are always enough.
And you are here. You have come to worship the Risen Lord, who reaches out his arms towards you and says, “Be not afraid.” Be not afraid to offer everything to God: all your anger, all your hatred, all your lust, all your envy, all your guilt, all your fear. Every coin you are holding already belongs to God: every bitterness, every hurt, every disappointment. Do not hold a single one back.
It takes time and practice to let the coins go. Most will appear over and over, and every time you will need to let them go once again. But each time you surrender – a fear here, a hurt there – your hands will relax a little more, and your palms will unfurl in a gesture of receiving.
How many times have you been told to forgive yourself? How many times have you tried, and failed? Because you cannot forgive yourself. You cannot sanctify yourself. But you can open your hands, and offer everything to God. And as God takes everything away, you are freed from your burdens. Your sins are taken out of your hands; there is nothing to fear.
Where once hot coins cut into your palms, now cool breezes caress your outstretched fingers. With open hands you can receive the gift of abundant life, the gift which is already yours; you can place your hand in the hand of the One who loves you, and let him show you the way.
You do not need to carry your burdens. You do not need to be afraid. So I ask you this: What grubby little coins are you clutching so tightly? What are you holding onto? Every last one of them already belongs to God. So let them go, my friend. Just let them go. Ω
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