Who is Generous?
This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church on Sunday, 11/10. The text was Mark 12:38-44, At United Lutheran Seminary, each year there is the Luther Bowl, the annual flag football tournament that the Gettysburg seminary hosts each year. One year, after the game, was Eucharist and dinner. I had volunteered to make chili. One of the necessary ingredients for chili is onions. I picked up a nice, fresh looking onion and cut it open. It was all black and moldy on the inside. I could not tell that from the beautiful exterior, but only from going to the heart of the onion. That onion was not suitable for chili because it was rotten. I obviously needed an onion that was good on the inside to accomplish the task of flavoring the chili. And by the way, that year, Gettysburg lost. In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus shows us that the heart of true discipleship is not about what’s on the outside, but what’s on the inside of us, our hearts. In this passage, we first hear Jesus’ d