Sometimes people do the most extravagant, excessive and over-the-top stuff!! A young couple, Carrie and Jonathan, just celebrated their second wedding anniversary this past month. I have known Carrie since she was just a few months old and I got to perform her wedding.

Carrie and Jonathan do not live an ordinary life and do not do just ordinary things. When they told me that they had gotten engaged I asked them about the event. They encouraged me to go to their website (Ya, they have their own website!!) and view pictures of it. Jonathan asked Carrie to be his wife as they climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa!! What happened to going to a nice restaurant and pulling out the ring?

A little over-the-top, huh? Did you know that Jim Shelton and Mary Farley are wandering around Egypt these days and George and Dorothy Heyliger are hiking in South America? Now both of these couples are old, they have been receiving retirement and Social Security benefits for years, maybe even decades, and they are doing such things?? I think the most extravagant, excessive and over-the –top thing that I ever did was to vote for a Democrat – once. You Democrats might want to try voting for a Republican. (Not going to happen, huh?)

I think this account of the widow and the giving of the mites is just a little excessive and extravagant and over-the-top. Jesus is sitting opposite the Temple and is watching as people come and place their offerings into one of the 13 different receptacles. Some very wealthy people come in and give large amounts, but then a widow, poor as can be, comes in. She has two coins, each worth less than a penny a piece and she puts both of them into the offering plate. All she owned were those two coins. Now that is a little excessive, isn’t it? She could have kept one.

The Old Testament guided God’s redeemed to set aside 10% of their income as a gift to the Lord. Now that is pretty generous. The New Testament doesn’t give a percentage for gifts but always encourages us to make our gifts from the first part of our expenses. But she gives everything!! What happened to moderation in everything? The only time I see that everything has to be handed over is an e-mail that circulates around April 15^th of every tax year. The e-mail says that it is the revised IRS 1040 form and it only has two lines. The first line says, “How much did you make this last year?” And the second one says, “Send it in.”

After watching what the widow did Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:43-44) Such extravagance doesn’t seem to make practical sense!!

But don’t we see this extravagance, this excessiveness in the life of Jesus Christ? We see our great God as not One who is bland and boring but who goes over-the-top for our very life. Our text is recorded in Mark 12, right between the parade of Palm Sunday in Mark 11 and the giving of the Lord’s Supper in Mark 14. This is a Holy Week Conversation. And Holy Week is amazingly excessive. Holy Week is the week for a cruel death, an amazing resurrection and a rescue for all mankind.

The disciples of Jesus battled this excessiveness of Jesus. When Jesus told the disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life, He was chastised by Peter. Peter raised his voice to Jesus and said, “Lord, this will never happen to You!!” (See Matthew 16:21-22) Peter felt Jesus was going too far in this stuff. But Jesus takes everything He has in His pocket and throws in into the offering.

The early church wrote a number of creeds into the Scriptures. One of the greatest is found in Philippians 2, there we find these words about the person and the work of Jesus Christ, “Who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Verses 6-11) He had the two coins and He gave them both. The One who emptied Himself, who made Himself nothing could only trust in His Father, His God for all that He needed. And He did this for us. Our forgiveness, our hope of everlasting life comes through what Jesus did when He gave Himself totally for us by carrying our sin and death. In the Epistle for today we heard, “He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.” (Hebrews 9:26b-28)

Our little old lady in the Gospel reading wasn’t very practical. Jesus in this action of sacrificing all, facing damnation and being stained with our sins was not very practical!! We find accounts of those who are amazingly excessive in what they do and how they live. But can we live in such a way? In light of her example, in response to His gifts, can we have such a heart? Can we live with such sacrifice?

I imagine that all of you have had to sacrifice in your life. Ryan Newman, one of our youth, is quite a good hockey player. A few years ago when he was taking Confirmation instruction he would appear tired at times during the class. When I asked him about this he told me that he had to get up at about 5:00 in the morning to go to hockey practice. The loss of sleep for a teenager is quite a sacrifice. Lauren Huggins, another of our youth, is quite a basketball player. For years now she has played club ball. Being on a club team nowadays means a year round commitment to that sport, many extra practices, lots of games, trips to play the best teams in other states. Sacrifice for kids and their parents, with time, energy and money is made.

If you have gone to get an advanced degree you have had to sacrifice to achieve that. If you go to the gym you push yourself to reach your goals. You go in early to work, stay late, agree to do some overtime – hopefully someone notices your dedication. But our sacrifices can be a calculated investment. We practice hard and the coach will reward us. We earn the degree and we get the job. We work harder and we get to keep the job and maybe get an advancement. Sometimes our sacrifices are all about us.

The widow is commended not for the amount of her gift but for heart. They weren’t about her, but about Him – her great God. There was a farmer who wanted a big farmer’s breakfast – eggs and bacon. So he went out to the barnyard to ask the chickens and the pig for a contribution. The chickens readily agreed: they would give him a dozen eggs if he wanted them. But the pig, on the other hand, refused the request!!

The chickens really got on the case of the pig – “Farmer Brown, (that was his name), feeds you everyday, he cleans your sty, and takes care of you. The least you can do for him is give him some bacon. We are giving him our eggs.” “That is easy for you to say,” the pig said the chickens. “For you, the eggs are a gift. For me, the bacon is a total commitment.”

We get to live our life with an extravagant commitment to the One who was extravagantly committed to us!! Last Sunday we recognized All Saints Sunday. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, people of faith who lived with a great passion for God, who gave their all to the God who they adored. It says of the saints, “They shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword.” “They faced jeers and flogging…stoned, persecuted by the sword…destitute, persecuted, mistreated.” (Sections of Hebrews 11:32-38) Bland? Boring? Ordinary? No, they were excessive in faith, life and commitment!!

Some years ago I went to a dinner and Bill McCartney, former coach of the Colorado Buffaloes football team, (when they were much better than they are now) was the speaker. McCartney is a dedicated Christian, powerful in his presentation and quite dramatic. As he spoke I felt that I was in the locker room at halftime, ready to take the field again for the second half. He excited us about living our life fully dependant on our God who would provide for our needs and meet the challenges that would lay ahead. That day, following that pep talk we were all in!!

On that day years ago Jesus witnessed a widow giving her offering. The account is not about the amount she gave, but about the heart she had. You see, little things do count!! The two coins she gave showed an excessive heart and a confident trust in her God who was excessively generous to her. Christ gave Himself totally for us, we respond with a complete life of sacrifice, love and faith to Him and for Him. Amen!!