25th Sunday after Pentecost – November 10, 2024

Mark 12:38-44

Many years ago…I went back to visit and preach at my home congregation in Green Bay.

The sending hymn concluded…I stood in the back of the sanctuary…next to the baptismal font…greeting worshipers.
A woman…I recognized from growing up in the congregation…approached me.
She was crying too hard for me to totally understand what she was saying.
So…I hugged her instead…and asked if I could give her a blessing…which she accepted.
And then…here is what she shared with me.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

“As a lifelong Lutheran grace has been a part of my faith that I’ve never really noticed.

Until recently…my fiancé was killed in a car accident on the way to our wedding rehearsal.
Now I see God with tears running down His face when I am brought to my knees sobbing and I hear Him whisper in my ear:
‘Child…see what I have brought you’ …
When someone drops off a casserole…or a gift card…or just scrubs my floor.
And maybe that is the meaning of this awful storm.
God is here and I feel Him like I never had before.”

What this young woman did not realize is that what she shared with me was the casserole from God I needed…saying:

“Child…see what I brought you?”
As it was during an exhausting part of my ministry when we were very short staffed in the large congregation I served.
I was totally burned out and this pilgrimage back to my childhood congregation was a healing balm.
And ever since I keep seeing these widow’s mites…
These easily overlooked gifts…these casseroles from God in the form of simple things.

The young woman who had lost her fiancé reminded me of the thing I tend to forget all the time…

Which is that God shows up in my life repeatedly…in the little things.
And yet so often these little things are overlooked or under-appreciated by me…
Because all I can see is what I wish I had…instead.
My desires keep me from seeing the gifts of God in the present moment.
A desire for an event to unfold in a certain way or my desire for a person to act in a certain way…
Or my desire for things in my life to look a certain way.
It is like I already have a picture painted of what everything should look like…and I hold that up against reality.
And then judge reality according to how much it resembles the picture I painted.
And every time I do this I miss something important…or beautiful…or redemptive.
Because even though it is right in front of me…it was not what I was looking for…so I don’t see it.
Or…all I can see is what is missing.

The story of the widow’s mite is one that is familiar to us.

How often have we heard it used for sermons on the importance of giving.
How…even when we are poor…we should be giving to the church.
And how it is important to give sacrificially.
But what really strikes me about this story has nothing to do with money.
What strikes me is that Jesus notices the stuff we tend to not even see.
The main action that day revolved around the scribes in their fancy robes and their fat wads of cash.
It is so easy for us to only see the big…flashy fast-moving object.

And yet Jesus sees the smallish things: the tiny copper coin…the widow who is so easily ignored.

Jesus sees what we hardly notice is there.
The stuff he uses is not mountains and superheroes and massive SUVs.
Instead…Jesus uses common…daily…almost unnoticeable things that are hardly worth mentioning.
Coins…tiny little seeds…yeast.
Jesus notices what we have a hard time seeing.
It is…like…you know…turn the page and Jesus can pretty much always find Waldo right away.

Several months ago…when I was behind a brand new…shiny Cadillac SUV…the vanity plate read: bcauseIpray.

Like we are all complete idiots and could easily have a Cadillac SUV if we just prayed hard enough.
We recoil from this idea of God as divine vending machine…
Who dispenses cash and prizes to the most righteous.
But that’s not what I’m talking about here.
What I am talking about are those stories that are so easily unnoticed…
And the sneaky ways God brings us what we need.
For me…those moments happen…the most…when I am smack in the middle of wallowing in self-pity.

A few moments ago…I shared that I had been suffering from burn out.

And the reason that this journey back to my home congregation was so refreshing.
I had been ministering for weeks on end without being able to withdraw.
But the little things.
My friend Jerry would come into my office and say:
“Let’s get out of here…let’s go get a cup of coffee…I’ll buy.”
Or someone would come into my office with a bag of butterfingers.
They all knew I liked butterfingers.
Or a family would call and say:
“You and Susan come on over tonight…have some supper with us…and then we’ll put on a movie.”

That tiny piece of home…that casserole from God got me through the day.

All I have needed thy hand hath provided.
Our Lord God works through the small things we so easily do not even take notice of.
The casseroles…the notes of encouragement just when we need them.
Paul writes in Hebrews: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers…for by so doing…some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it”.
It is also true…that sometimes…we are the ones doing God’s desire for someone else…and we do not even know it.

We suddenly think:

I’m going to reach out to that person.
Or…I’m going do that kind thing for someone else.
Or…I’m going to ask this person how they’re doing.
Those nudges are meant to be paid attention to.
For when we do these things we never know when unknowingly we are the casserole of God.
We are the one being used to show God’s love to God’s child.

I have been given small kindnesses… casseroles…that mean a great deal to me…