1 Kings 17:10-16
Psalm 146:7-10
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-444

Giving All,
Even Your Whole Living

We have learned the attributes of God. God is Omnipotent, Almighty. He is Omniscient, far beyond the wisest and deepest of all Minds. He is Omnipresent, is able to number the hairs on each of our heads making each of us the center of His attention, all at the same time. His Name is I AM, for He alone is Being, while the rest of us, His creatures, have being. He is All-powerful and is always already the Master of every question and problem and challenge. Yet, in His complete and all-reaching Sovereignty, He has granted a gift to His beloved human creatures that is also sovereign: freedom.

What more powerful gift on this wide earth, in this universe, is there than freedom? I say these words on November 11, a day commemmorating veterans who poured out their last full measure of devotion to preserve our freedom. Freedom. Without it we are nothing, mere robots or puppets, and He would be the Puppet-master. But our God is not interested in wooden dumbshow. His main interest among His creatures is only in .... choosing, acting life. And for humans the essence of life is freedom — to decide where we will go, what we will do, what we will say, when we want to say it. It is the judicious exercise of this freedom that sorts out all humans, the foolish from the wise.

As the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom (Proverbs 9:2), the wisest of human creatures directs his freedom entirely to seeking and doing God's will, for God alone knows our right paths. This has given rise to an ancient prayer:

Almighty and Everlasting God is always already the Master of every challenge ever set before Him ... every challenge except Himself, for He has granted the irrevocable gift of human freedom. And in the face of rebellious freedom He is powerless on account of the love He bears toward us, who have received this gift and on account of His own integrity, for He will not abridge or take back His gift.

This is the answer to the riddle of Heaven's War. What?! Apostate Angels able to wage war in Heaven?! God might sweep these rebel troops off the heights of topless Heaven and send them falling from dawn's first light to dewy evening. Milton pictured the angel Lucifer's fall in words memorized for generations:

God's only challenge is on account of His love and its fruits — the freely given, divine gift of freedom. For, as we know, to have complete freedom is an exhilarating, even inebriating, thing, to the point where we enter an illusion: that we have complete control, which few will relinquish. Few will look at God's Law, will contemplate God's ways, and then follow the only One Who truly knows the way ahead. Of course, there is a fine line here, to be sure. Retaining control, being slow to decide is all part of prudence. We must discern for weeks and months sometimes. Yet, once God's will is known, to retain control is to rebel. Once things become a matter of right and wrong, to go one's own way is an affront to Heaven closing off all the blessing He had intended for us ... if only we would have trusted Him.

For those who decide to "keep my options open" in rebellion, a hard lesson will always be learned: they were never in control in the first place. And this is the devil's bargain: to induce us to trade away God's abundant blessing in exchange for what turns out to be nothing, an illusion.

Many years ago during my ministry as a university chaplain, a teenager, a first-semester freshman, came to tell me with a secret. She loved a boy. She had given him .... everything. And now she had discovered that she was having a baby. The boy? Well, he had viewed their embraces merely as pleasure, entertainment, not a holy act offered in holy life. "What should I do?" she asked me. "I don't want to ruin my whole life. I don't want to lose control, but I ...."

"But you love your baby," I said following her long pause.

"Yes, I love my baby."

"Then choose for love. May I revisit something you just said? You told me that you didn't want to lose control. But control over the really big things is an illusion. Trust God. Choose for what is right. Choose for love. You know, He is Love. Choose for God, and never choose against Him. He is trustworthy. Trust Him."

"But look at your life," she challenged me. "Look at all that you have achieved!"

I replied, "Every big thing that has ever happened to me I did not plan. And every big thing that I planned never came to be. The story of my life, really, is the story of trusting God, Who was leading me the whole time. I cannot take credit for the things that happened. Yes, I worked hard, but each time it was God Who led me up the hill, Who inspired me, and showed me the way ahead." Yes, it is true. In my life, all is well. In any life that trusts in God, trusts His love, and depends upon Him, and Him alone, all will be well. 'And all manner of things shall be very well indeed,' said a great woman who trusted God."

Here on November 11, 2018, I can say that it has never been any different. Always God. Never me. And I can say without hesitation, looking back, that all my dreams have come true. All my dreams have come true. Trust God. Love God. He will never let you down. And it might turn out that at the end of your life, you will look back and say, "He is the only One Who never let me down."

There were two widows: one lived about thirty centuries ago, the other, twenty centuries ago. In the patriarchal society of those eras, the widow's visage could quickly become the face of the blasted, the homeless, and the lost. A woman without a husband or sons to care for her, protect her, provide for her was vulnerable, living from day to day, never knowing when she might starve to death. We read today, I will take the last food that we have, prepare our last meal, and my son and I will die. (Read God's Law if you want to know how things stood with widows. We wouldn't have these statutes in Leviticus and Deuteronomy if it were not the case that the widow's plight was a hopeless one.) The widow we read of in the ninth century B.C. had no son to protect her, but rather the opposite, a little boy she had to protect.

A wandering man of God came into their midst. And He challenged them to lay down everything for God though they had one last meal remaining in her pantry: a handful of meal and a little oil a few sticks to make a fire for cooking. And what does Elijah tell her? "Be not afraid." You see, it is not good news when you have everything to be told that you are not in control. But when you have nothing, this is the most wonderful news in the world. God is in control! I can trust in God! Be not afraid.

Is this not the true picture of most of us? Whatever it is we might have laid away against disaster, disaster might quickly deplete. And who might claim to have security for their health or against the general collapse of the economy? Besides, whatever we have laid away, what is that compared to eternal life in God's abundance?

The man of God tells her to trust God. And trusting God turns out to be the only thing that counts, the only security, the only way ahead. And she learns that day by day, beyond her rational knowledge or power, God does provide and God does show her the way ahead. Day by day.

Now, I do not know how many Mother Teresa of Calcutta stories you have heard. But it does not take many before you realize that she was a flinty, frequently hard, and always brusque personality. People were always coming to her religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, with offers of help. One priest came from the United States and wanted to volunteer. At first, he was received with the usual (unspoken) expectations: "Oh, great! Another ego-filled, do-nothing priest who will burden us even further with his constant questions and needs!" But this priest was humble. The sisters saw that he would be a help, a great help as it turned out. In time, they were grateful for his labors but also for his humility and kindness. So at the conclusion of his stay a year later, Mother Teresa came to see him off. "It has turned out that you have been a great help to us," she said. "Now what can I do for you?"

"Mother Teresa," he said, "I know that God is constantly leading me. Please pray for me that I might have powers of clear discernment."

She replied, "When you ask the wrong question, you always get the wrong answer. You don't need clarity of discernment. You need to trust God. Trust Him. For all you know, you are already on the path He has given you to walk in. Give thanks for this path. Follow Him each day. And trust Him."

At the dawn of the American nation, money was minted in the territory that would become the State of Maine bearing the inscription on each coin,

Here are two very different ways of living:

Our readings this morning go the center of all Christian life. They raise the main question: Who is in control? Our two widows stand out in both Old Testament and Gospel lessons. The Lord draws attention to the widow's last penny that the Disciples might understand a divine principle. Today, Catholics call this principle the preferential option for the poor. What is it about the poor? Why should the poor hold "the keys to His City" (as Menotti wrote)? In the Second Giving of the Law, the first thing that the Son of God proclaims is, "Blessed are the poor!" But why? It is because the poor depend entirely on God. This is the highest wisdom. And it is the poor who have been granted the gift of depending entirely on God, which is to love God and to look for His provision in all things.

And the girl? Well, she had the baby. And then later she met a boy, the kind of boy who was worthy of any girl's admiration and love. And, you see, he met a girl, the right kind of girl, the kind of girl who would lay down her life, and all her future options, for the one she loved ... and whose face shone with the radiance of goodness and faithfulness that the right kind of boy never misses.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.