It haunted me for years. I saw my friends do it. They talked about how thrilling it was. But when I looked, I could feel the fear
clinch inside of me. Now, I didn’t say
that. No, I just told people I wasn’t
interested in doing it.
I even came up with a substitute activity to show my
courage. I swam across the lake while my
dad paddled along beside me in a canoe to make sure I didn’t drown. I told myself. Certainly, what I’m doing is harder than what
they were doing. I’m swimming over a
mile through deep water. They are just
jumping off a small cliff. But I knew
the truth. I was scared to jump. So, I didn’t.
I carried that regret for years, until, I had another
opportunity to take such a leap. I was
still scared, if anything more scared than I had been those years before. But this time, I did not let my fear stop me.
I still remember the relief, the
exuberance, the sense of triumph I felt after that leap. And
it reminded me. The greatest enemy any
person faces is often their own fear.
Have you ever had a moment where you wished you had
taken a risk and didn’t? How did it
feel? And have you ever had a time
where you did face your fear, where you took that leap? How did that feel?
Fear rarely helps
you. More often, it actually hurts you.
Physically,
it increases your risk of heart disease and other health problems. It can even damage your brain, including
your ability to remember. Practically,
it usually leads you to not make better decisions, but worst ones, even ones
that can kill you.
Before I came to the church I once served on Long
Island, one of their former pastors had lost his wife, Marjorie, to breast
cancer. The loss devastated everyone,
especially her two sons, who lost their mom right in the middle of their
teens. But years later, I heard a
tragic twist to that terrible loss. I
was talking to the church’s music director, Lorna, about Marjorie’s death. And as we talked, she paused, and said
quietly these words. “Kennedy, do you
know that she knew?” Puzzled, I
asked. “She knew what?” Lorna explained. “Marjorie was a nurse. So she knew to do
regular breast self-exams. That’s when
she discovered the lump. But she didn’t
do anything about it. And by the time, she
did, it was too late.”
When Marjorie delayed that visit to the doctor, she
probably said to herself that the lump was likely nothing to worry about. She may have thought that she didn’t want to
unduly alarm the family. But none of
that was true. She simply was too scared
to discover the truth, and by the time she overcame that fear, it was already
too late. Fear can be that dangerous. Not only does it rarely tell you the truth, it often stops you from seeing
the truth you desperately need to see.
It does fit the acronym for FEAR, False Evidence Appearing Real.
That’s why the most
common command in the Bible is simply this.
Do not fear. Yet, fear can be so
insidious that, like it did with Marjorie, it can capture you without you even
realizing it. So, how do you live a
life where you conquer fear instead of getting captured by it? How do you live a life where you take the
risks that will enable you to grow, to blossom into who God created you to
be? In this simple story, Jesus shows
you the way. Let’s listen and hear what
Jesus has to say.
How do you not let fear limit your life? How do you prevent it from taking you
captive? In this story of the brave
widow, Jesus tells you. In this story,
Jesus points to how fear can take control without you even knowing it. And at the same time, Jesus shows you the
path out of the fear. Jesus tells
you. Freedom from fear begins with one
step, one step that then leads to many.
But before you and I look at that first step, we need
to look at how subtle fear can be, how it can decide things in your life,
without you even realizing it.
This story that we just heard occurs in a strange
place. Before Jesus talks about this
woman, do you know what he’s been doing?
He’s been arguing. He’s been
having one argument after another with people who have questions about who
Jesus is, what Jesus is doing. Then in
the midst of all these arguments, Jesus turns and notices this widow throwing
two pennies into the collection plate.
It almost seems as if Jesus got distracted from his
main job, facing down his opponents. But
in reality, Jesus was showing his opponents what lay behind every argument that
they laid out. Yes, one had this
objection, and another, had this concern.
But no matter what differences each opponent had, their opposition had
one common source. They were scared
that Jesus was right, that indeed God had come in the flesh. And if this was true, then that would force
them into a decision they’d rather not make.
Deciding to follow Jesus meant all sorts of sacrifices, all manner of
disturbing change in their lives. So,
what did they decide to do instead? They
decided to come up with all sorts of excuses, all sorts of rationales to avoid
taking that risk, all sorts of reasons why Jesus couldn’t be right.
So, what does Jesus do? He points to someone who is taking a far
more radical risk than simply believing.
He points to a poor woman, bereft of anything but a half penny, but who
takes that minuscule amount, and lays it before God. And Jesus sees her sacrifice for what it
is. Now, what Jesus saw, even the
translators have difficulty facing. They
soften Jesus’ actual words. In the
translation we heard this morning, we read “she gave all she had to live
on.” That comes close, but it doesn’t
give Jesus’ description full justice.
Jesus says that she gave more than what she had to live on. Jesus says that she gave her bios, the Greek
word for life. This widow in those two
pennies was risking her very life. She
was placing everything on the line.
And in pointing out the radical courage of this widow,
Jesus was pointing out what lay behind all his opponents’ objections, their
fear, their fear of taking anything close to the step of faith this woman did.
Yet Jesus’ doesn’t simply call out those opponents,
Jesus calls out pretty much everyone. How many of us have come anywhere close to the
courage of this widow?
When I think of her story, I remember the popular
business fable of the
chicken and the pig. Do you know it?
A
pig and a chicken were walking down the road. As they passed a church, they
notice that a potluck charity breakfast was under way. Caught up in the spirit,
the pig suggested to the chicken that they each make a contribution.
“Great
Idea!” the chicken cried. “Let’s offer them ham and eggs!”
“Not
so fast.” said the pig. “For you, that’s just a contribution, but for me, it’s
a total commitment.”
When it comes to giving,
almost everyone falls far more into the chicken category than the pig. You and I may believe that God will provide,
but we’re not so interested in testing that belief out too strongly. So yes, we give, some of us more generously
than others. But do you give like the
widow? Does your gift take away from
your ability to put food on your table or to pay your rent or mortgage, or even
to take the vacations you desire? And
sure, you and I might say, that such giving would be reckless or foolish. But beyond that rationale, is there a deeper
reason? Are we scared to trust God that
much?
On
June 30th 1859, the great tightrope walker, Blondin,
did his most daring feat ever. He
walked on a two inch rope across Niagara Falls, a distance of over a quarter of
a mile. 25,000 people witnessed the sight. Blondin, being the showman he was, didn’t
just walk across. No, in the middle he
sat down, and called for the ferry boat Maiden of the Mist to park below
him. He then pulled up from the boat a
bottle of wine on a rope, and after a nice swig continued his journey to the
Canadian side of the Falls. On his way
back, he hauled a camera with a tripod on his back, and in the middle, set down
his balancing pole, and setting up the camera took a picture of the crowd on
the American side.
But
Blondin wasn’t finished. Five days later
on July the 4th, he went again, this time without a balancing
pole. Halfway over, he lay down on the
cable, flipped himself over, and began walking backwards. On the way back, he took it one step
further, wearing a sack over his body the whole way.
Every
two weeks or so, Blondin would go again, each time doing something crazier than
the time before, like somersaulting and backflipping his way across or pushing
a wheelbarrow across. When he reached
the other side with the wheelbarrow, he invited someone to jump in, but go
figure, nobody took up the offer. In
fact, while everyone believed that Blondin could carry someone across, no one
but his own manager, Harry Colchord, ever had the courage to take him up on the
offer.
Now,
you may not have the dream of crossing Niagara Falls, but your fear can stop
you from fulfilling the dreams you do have.
And you often won’t even realize it is your fear that is stopping
you. No, you will come up with some
other reasonable explanation for your reluctance to risk, but if you’re honest,
it will be rarely that. It will be your
fear, lying to you, holding you back, giving you false evidence that appears
real.
And
if you’re honest too, when it comes to your giving, it will be
your fear speaking to you there. But what would it look like to take a step through that fear, one step closer
to the faith of that widow. What would it be like to take an honest
look at what you are giving, not simply as an amount, but in the same way,
Jesus looked at the widow’s gift in terms of proportion. Out of what God has provided you, what
percentage do you give back to God, 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%? Whatever that amount is, what about giving more, maybe instead of 1%, it becomes 2% or even 1.25%, or instead
of 5% it became 6 or instead of 10, it becomes 12. Or if that math gets too complicated, let’s
make it simpler. Just give more, enough
more that it makes you a little nervous.
Why? Because in that step, you
will be taking a step through the barriers of fear that hold you back not only
here, but in other areas of your life too.
And you will be doing it for the sake of the One, who has broken through
every barrier, to shatter those very fears.
In
Jesus God went beyond even the gift of that widow. In Jesus, God didn’t risk his life. God gave his life. He gave his life for you. God gave his life to free you, to free you
from your false fears so you can live in the freedom and security of a love
that knows no bounds. Let God give you
that freedom. Let God show you his
faithfulness. And what better place to
begin than with one small step of faith with our money, one of the areas where
many of our greatest fears live.
God
isn’t asking you to become the widow today.
But God is asking you to trust, to trust just a bit more in this God who
has given everything for you. As the
writer Ruth Senter puts
it:
God’s call to you, his child, is not to safeness, but always to
something more – always upward, higher, further along. To bypass the call is to settle for
mediocrity, complacency, and dormancy.
And should you choose not to risk, you will
more than likely wake up some morning with the haunting question on your mind, “Could God have had something more for me,
if only I had dared to trust?”
Dare
to trust today. Take that step in your giving to God that
moves you a bit further from the limits of fear into the freedom of faith. And see how God will use that step to break you out from the fears that hold you captive.
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