This widow in the gospel story we’ve read this morning has always amazed me.  Widows and widowers all amaze me.  I have never been able to figure out how out someone lives with another for forty or fifty or sixty years or more and suddenly finds them gone and goes on living.  I have stood in awe of and with profound respect for widows and widowers all these years.  Not only in the way you’ve gone on with your life but even gone on to find meaning and joy and happiness again.  I cannot imagine my life without Nancy.  She has been in Ft. Worth this weekend as her mom underwent surgery.  She won’t be back until tomorrow and I’ve been feeling like a BB bouncing around in an empty tin can in that empty house.  I cannot imagine her not coming home tomorrow night.  Like the poet said, “My house has lost its soul, she is not there.”  So, I don’t know how widows and widowers do it.  My only guess is that there is a grace for widowhood just as there is a grace for everything else.  You don’t have it until you need it but when you need it you’ll have it.  This widow in the scripture has always amazed me. 

There is a great deal we don’t know about her.  We don’t know how old she was.  We don’t know why she was widowed.  We don’t know if she was wealthy or poor before she was widowed.  We don’t even know this widow’s name.  Her story is a lot like one of those movies that ends at the highest moment of drama and leaves you to your imagination to decide what happened in the end.  For all we know this widow gave what the Bible describes as her last penny and went home and starved to death.  We don’t know.  I do know that the 1-800 tele-preachers who promise you that, if you’ll plant your seed of faith, a check for ten times that amount will mysteriously arrive in the mail a month later could never use this widow’s story as an example of that kind of faith.  We don’t know how her story ended.  What we do know is that she gave her last red cent, if you will, and Jesus was watching, like he is always watching every time we give, or don’t.  The silent witness to all of our giving is the risen Lord Jesus.

Her life stands in contrast to these wealthier people who were obviously more concerned about what others thought about them than they were about what God thought about them.  Jesus reserved his blessing for what was the smallest of the gifts, nonetheless, the most significant of gifts.  Jesus said, this woman gave “‘all she had to live on.’”  Those with those the most wealth and power received the greater attention from others.  Nothing has changed.  Even today, even in the religious culture, things are judged as more significant the bigger they are.  Yet, while this woman gave a gift that would have never gotten her name on a building at a famous university or hospital it did get her name on a story that is still being told two-thousand years later and still shaping and transforming the Christian community to this day. 

What does it take to get to the place where you do that kind of giving?  I can’t speak for anyone but myself.  One clue I have to the answer to that question goes back over ten years ago when my marriage was coming apart at the seams.  I met every week for two hours with a couple of friends and we talked and prayed and told each other our secrets.  We felt free to say whatever we wanted without fear of judgment, much like what we’re trying to accomplish with our home teams where people gain such a trust level they’re able to tell the truth about themselves.

One week, one of my two friends invited another out of town friend of his to join us.  By this time, we’d gained such a trust level that this stranger’s presence didn’t change anything about what we said or how we said it.  By this time I was really hurting and desperate and I just told the men that all I felt like I had left in my life was my preaching.  It was the only thing I felt like I could do with some competence.  Regardless of how the rest of my week went, on Sunday morning at 11:00 there was one place I felt like I was capable.  And, this stranger told me, “Then, let go of it.  Because until you are willing to let go of the one thing you think is holding you up you will never know what only God can do.” 

His words pierced my heart like a hot iron through butter.  I didn’t want to hear them.  But, they turned out to be prophetically true. 

“Let go,” he said.  It’s a very biblical command.  Jesus said, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 16:25).’”  What is Jesus saying when he says that all of our efforts at self-preservation are counter-productive?  What does he mean?  All we know is that Jesus lived out what he commanded us to do (see Philippians 2:5-11). 

What would you do with your very last penny?  Would you bring it to church and put it in the offering plate?  Would anyone rather hear a sermon about tithing?  The benchmark in the New Testament for giving is not tithing.  The benchmark for Christian is death to self.  So, what would you do with your last penny? 

Jesus had nothing but condemnation, not a word we hear coming from his mouth often, for those who gave “‘out of their abundance,’” but still had plenty to live on.  We’re not certain what Jesus meant when he said of them that they also would “‘devour widows’ houses.’”  There is a widow in this story and there are those who consumed “‘widow’s houses.’”  In that day and time, when a woman was widowed, because she was not educated and did not have a profession, she had very limited options.  She could return to her father’s home or, in many cases, would turn to prostitution in order to survive.  It’s very likely that some of those who came to the temple to give their wealth were also the ones who were taking advantage of widows in their poverty.  Jesus never has a kind word for people who kick others when they are down.

Yet, this widow, whose own home may have been devoured, went to the temple and gave her last penny.  She did exactly what Jesus commanded.  Instead of trying to save her life, she was giving it away.  Though we don’t know this woman’s name, we’ve never forgotten her story. 

This past Friday night, Nancy and I had the privilege of attending the T.B. Maston Foundation awards banquet.  Linda and Millard Fuller were given the Foundation’s award for public service, for helping call people to a greater level of social consciousness.  Millard once had a very lucrative legal practice.  About twenty-five years ago they had everything money could buy but their marriage was falling apart.  Somewhere in that crisis, God used it to reclaim their lives and they decided, in their own words, “to sell out to Jesus.”  In that process, they met Clarence Jordan, the founder of the Koinonia community in Americus, Georgia.  They went to spend one day with him and ended up staying a month.  During this experience, Millard told Clarence that he didn’t know what he should do with his life.  Clarence told Millard to give his money to the poor and go do something good for God.  So, they did.  And, they started Habitat for Humanity.  Our church is participating in building a Habitat house in west Dallas, along with Wilshire Baptist Church and others. 

Millard Fuller has a modest dream.  He only dreams of eradicating all substandard housing in the world in the name of Jesus.  Since 1976 they have built 150,000 homes for the poor.  Habitat is now in 89 countries and if they continue on their present course, by 2026 on the 50^th anniversary of Habitat, they will have built two million Habitat homes. 

Millard Fuller explained his theology the other night.  He said that what changed his life was when he realized that the gospel does not move from earth to heaven but from heaven to earth.  He said he grew up in a faith tradition where all the emphasis every Sunday was on getting saved, about staying out of hell and getting to heaven after you died.  But, he came to understand that our responsibility after we get saved is to make certain that we bring heaven to earth.  So, he’s given life over to this truth, “whoever says, ‘I abide in (Jesus),’ ought to walk just as he walked (1 John 2:6).’”

The call of Christ on us is to walk as he walked, which means, to die as he died so that we might live as he lived.  Our calling in this world as his church is not to make money or to preserve history.  Our calling is the commission of Jesus which is, “‘Go . . . and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).’”

So, I ask you this morning.  What is the one thing that Jesus and this widow and Millard Fuller have in common?  As I see it, this is it.  They all three let go of the very last thing they thought was keeping them alive and what God resurrected from that has been changing the world ever since.  Whoever saves his life will lose it.  Whoever loses his life will find it.

Our own Weston Ware was the emcee the other night at the Maston banquet.  He quoted Reinhold Neibuhr who once said, “Nothing worth doing will ever be finished in our lifetime.  Therefore, we must work with hope.” 

That means at least this much.  We have to let go of our lives knowing that the greatest part of the story that happens when we let go won’t be told until after we’re gone.  Until after we’ve gone from earth to heaven.  But, if we let go in the name of Jesus and we follow his call wherever it takes us and whatever it costs, then, when our story is told after we’ve gone from earth to heaven, it will be said of us that, while we were here, we were a little bit of heaven on earth. 

That’s what I want my story to tell.