New Consecration Sunday 11/11/12

New Consecration Sunday 11/11/12 Mark 12:38-44 Title: Uncertainty Made Certain On this very special day; New Consecration Sunday let us begin with prayer. Lord God, heavenly Father, your Word touches the very thoughts and intents of our hearts, and no creature is hidden from you. We pray that this morning the uncertainty of life will be overcome with the certainties and assurances of your promises, as you strengthen us in faith through your Word. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. My dear fellow disciples of Jesus this is a special day. We are celebrating New Consecration Sunday. It is that Sunday when we reflect on our baptism and once again consecrate all we have and all we do to the Lord. We do this not because we owe it to our Lord to turn our lives and all we have over to him, although we do owe him for his wonderful gift of salvation. No, we do it because he has chosen us to be his chosen sons and daughters; chosen to represent him, or as Martin Luther once said, “Be little christs.” You know the story that is referenced in our Gospel reading this morning. It is about a poor widow giving all she has, which by the way is 100th of a day’s wages which was in Jesus’ day a day’s wages was just enough to keep body and soul together with no money left for savings. She was dirt poor while, as Jesus points out the others were just giving out of their abundance. In other words they were giving out of their leftovers, not even their first fruits as God’s law commanded. I know it is hard for most people to decide what to commit to the Lord’s work in the congregation because life is so uncertain. None of us know what is going to happen today, tomorrow, this month or coming year. We just don’t know and so we operate out of fear whether we have little money or a lot of money. That does not make for joyful living, especially the type of joyful living that God wants us to live trusting in him to take care of us. As much as it might seem like it the story we are looking at this morning is not about giving. It is not about all those rich guys putting money in the offering boxes or about the woman giving her little, almost nothing money. It is about the condition of one’s heart and mind toward God, for you could give 100 percent of all you have and still not be praised by the Lord. No, this story is a story about faith. Faith is recognizing what God has done for you in the past and believing what he will continue to do for you in the future. Living in faith, is, as they say where the rubber meets the road. Just look at the widow in our text had. What did she have; nothing but faith. She had lost her husband, which in those days meant she’d lost her source of income. Yet somehow this woman believed God was still doing right by her and trusted that he would continue to do so in the future. Christian living is always a matter of faith. Do you recognize what God has done for you in the past? What he has done for the congregation in the past. Do you trust what he will do for you and the congregation in the future? God has given you, he has given all of us, all we need and will continue to do so in the future. Do you believe he’ll continue to provide and save you in the future? If you do, as the widow did, your whole life will be one of faith. This brings me back to the story. What happened to her after she gave? We like to think we know; surely Jesus and the disciples took her under their wing. Maybe she became part of their entourage. Maybe she did, maybe she did not. We just don’t know. She, like the widow in the Old Testament reading might have left the temple prepared to die. We like to think not, but it could be so. I don’t think we are to know, for if we did we would miss the whole point of the story. We would think that it is about God blessing us, if we do good things, particularly giving for the Lord’s work. Things like tithing. Tithe and your income goes up. Pledge a certain amount of money and God will see that you keep your job. Obey God and he will care for you, for doesn’t God love and thus care for those who love him? Nope, God loves and cares for you because he loves you, not because you have made a deal with him or are lovable, as much as that might sting and hurt your feelings. Mark fully intends to leave us in uncertainty about what happened to the widow, because we live our lives in uncertainty; they are always to be an exercise in faith. We simply don’t know about our jobs next year. We don’t know if we will fall behind on our bills. Losing your job and unexpected bills are absolutely possible. Losing your health, especially for us who are older is always a possibility because God doesn’t promise us that kind of security. What we do have is a far greater security; one that is altogether certain. Our Epistle from Hebrews 9:28 reminds us, “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time . . . to save those who are eagerly waiting for him”. That my dear fellow disciples is something that you can absolutely depend on. It is our sure hope. There is no uncertainty in that promise. Christ is coming back for us. The new heaven and earth is one certainty every Christian can hold on to. Jesus has secured it for us. He came to be one of us, for our sake. He lived what at times was a not a comfortable life which ended, as far as those of world believe dead, but he did not stay dead. He came out of that tomb victorious, for you. If you, mattered that much to God you can be certain that he will take care of you every day in the meantime. This was the faith of the woman. Not that she’d have a meal tomorrow; she really didn’t know where her next meal was coming from—or if there’d be one. Not faith in the next meal, but faith that God would take care of her—his way. Maybe a well-to-do widower would walk into her life tomorrow. Maybe friends would take her in. We don’t know the whole story, and she couldn’t possibly know it. She was giving into uncertainty, wasn’t she? Maybe she would starve, but if so, it would be the culmination of what she’d really been trusting all along: provision, security; that would be perfect, complete, would never end. This is the certainty by which we give into uncertainty: when God tells us he’ll take care of us, You don’t know you’ll have a job. You don’t know what your expenses might turn out to be. But you don’t have to give in to that uncertainty. You do know you have the Lord. You do know he has earned for you eternal life, and that’s absolutely certain. And you do know he already cares for you and that he’s going to care for you. That’s certain too. Unlike the woman who probably did not know that her Savior was there that day, we know that Jesus, the one that we trust in is here with us in his Word and the Sacrament. He understands financial uncertainty; his whole ministry was spent traveling, living day to day by the good graces of others. He understands our struggles against doubt, our fear about really committing our lives to him. He was tempted just as we are—but without ever giving in! He is here with us today, and we can be certain he’ll be with us in the future. Our uncertainty has been turned to certainty. Amen.