This Wednesday marks a day of national remembrance, and rightly so. Because we as a nation live in a season of monumental forgetfulness. By contrast, in the days of my grandparents no one needed to be reminded what happened on the 11th day of the 11th month, at exactly 11 a.m. That was the moment in 1918 when the Armistice was announced, the long-awaited news of an end to the war that was fought “to end all wars.” The remembrance of that day, which shone briefly as a hopeful star in the early 20th century, would in the 1950s come to be called Veterans Day, perhaps because we as a species kept on creating wars and thereby successive generations of veterans. Today, our marking of the distant echo of Armistice Day, this reminder of the hard-won freedoms we all enjoy, seems now more important than ever. For I suggest that it is hard for a person to be grateful when we live in a season of great forgetfulness.

For a moment, let us look back to another season. In 1918, about the time my grandparents were getting married and contemplating beginning their families, the typical American work-week was 60 hours. (That was if a person had work, and in fact many did not.) The most common American household appliance in those days was something called a wife, and she worked a lot more than 60 hours. The vacation and leisure industries barely existed in any form, because most people didn’t have leisure or take vacations. For more than half the population of the US, the family bathroom was a privy in the backyard (if you don’t know what privy is, just ask Bob Young, who I believe celebrated a birthday this week!). And lastly, in 1918 the life expectancy of the average American was 54 years - which frankly was just as well, since the average person had no pension coming.

So it’s fair to say that in 1918, the year of the Armistice, folks didn't have much. What they did have was memory. The memory of immigrants who had come to a new land and worked without ceasing on farms, in factories, all in the hope that their children might get an education and by means of hard work, one day do better. In all likelihood, it never occurred to the World War I generation to ask themselves if they were happy; that was not their goal. Their goal was to live honorably, fulfill their commitments to family and community, and for each to do his or her part even if it killed him of her. Which quite often, I expect, it did.

Today, the generation which will observe (or in many cases overlook) Veterans Day has vastly more than our grandparents probably could ever have imagined. With a few exceptions, we here at St. Mark’s are not immigrants, and we are certainly not poor. Some in our community are, to be sure, but not we. Instead, however fragile we feel, we lead comfortable lives. We are even tempted to believe that this was our goal, our dream, our reason for living - to save, to amass, to enjoy our wealth.

But of course, this is a pretty pathetic reason for living, and despite the magnificent efforts of the advertising industry, most of us (Christians and non-Christians alike) know better. After all, do any of us really want someone to stand up one day and remember us by saying, “Well, one thing’s for sure - he sure managed to get comfortable.” “You can say this about her: she may not have done much, but she did a great job taking care of herself and her own.” Deep down, inwardly, though we don’t often say it aloud, we want for our lives to have a greater, more lasting consequence.

Once upon a time, Jesus went to church. In reality, Jesus had been to the Temple at least once a year for his entire life - his parents took him there before he could crawl. By now, this son of a humble carpenter (or so the world saw him) was used to the daily spectacle of worshippers filing into the Temple courtyard to pay the Temple tax. Sitting within view of the fourteen designated-offering boxes of the Temple, into which Jews were invited to put voluntary contributions above and beyond their tithes, Jesus and his friends watched the wealthy giving large amounts.

Jesus did not criticize the gifts of these wealthy persons. Some of them were no doubt genuinely generous. But that particular day, an all but invisible person caught Jesus’ eye, as she meekly made her way between the men in their fine linen robes. Jesus watched this shadow in a shawl, who left as quickly and quietly as she entered. If it wasn’t the plink of her two copper coins, worth less than a dollar by today’s standards, what was it that drew his attention?

It was all about the timing. What we’re witnessing is not just Jesus’ 33rd trip to the Holy City - it is also his last. Jesus alone knows what virtually no one else does: he is about to willingly give his life away. One can only imagine the boundless loneliness in his heart, knowing that he will offer himself for these very people who are going about the sacred motions and mind-numbing routines of religion.

Maybe it is this hyper-vigilance of a man who is seeing things as if for the last time that enables him to see in the widow’s simple act of faith something memorable, beautiful. This destitute person gives away for a godly purpose all that she has to live on that day. (Indeed, the Greek actually reads here, “she put in her living” for that day.) I think Jesus felt a flicker of recognition, a kinship with her, as a man who was about to give away his own life.

Perhaps it seems strange to us today that Jesus, a man who seems to have had very few worldly possessions, had so much to say about money. Roughly one-fourth of all that our Lord has to say in the Gospels deals with matters of poverty, generosity, taxes, greed, giving, and money. Generations of Christians who have owned clothes and homes and land have struggled with what it means to follow the Messiah who once told an eager young man to give away everything he had. Today, Jesus praises the reckless generosity of a woman who had very little to give and even less reason to let it go, since it was all she had.

But someone once said, where your treasure is, take a look: there will your heart be, also. He was right, of course. The real money crisis confronting our society today isn't to be found in the housing market, or on Wall Street, or tied up in the cost of health care. It’s found in the human heart, having to do with stewardship - the wisdom to see that what we have, what we hold, what we give, as all belonging to God.

Last month we spoke of the biblical custom of tithing - of giving ten percent of one’s income. This spiritual practice raises reasonable questions like “is that pre-tax or post-tax income” or “does my giving to other charities count as part of my tithe?” - questions that have no pat answers. As many here have heard me say before, I believe tithing to be an important discipline, like prayer or serving others in Christ’s name through hands-on mission. But at base, there is no mathematical formula that makes us ‘right’ in our giving. Giving is a matter of the heart, a disposition of the spirit.

The question, therefore, is not ‘pre-tax’ or ‘post-tax.’ The question is, do we suffer from the mass forgetfulness that afflicts our society, or do we remember Who has provided for us this abundance? If the practice or goal of a tithe helps you to welcome God’s love and respond to it, then in Heaven’s name, tithe. If for your part you can bring yourself at present to give only 2 percent, or 5 or 7 percent, then give freely and gratefully this amount.

In doing so, we are invited to remember, as Paul reminded the Corinthians, that we have nothing that God has not already given us (1 Cor. 4:9). Today we will, at the time of our offering, receive the cards you have been invited to use in order to estimate your giving to Christ’s Church for the coming year. The invitation to think seriously about giving, to think seriously about proportional giving, is not one we make merely to keep the church afloat - though most of us like having a church, certainly. The invitation to give, to live freely and generously, is really given by Christ as an overture to participate in our shared mission, the proclamation of Jesus’ Lordship to the ends of the earth - and to Daleville, to Troutville and Cloverdale.

To me, Armistice Day - Veterans Day, as we are called to observe it - has to do with a vanishing national virtue called gratitude. All that we have, we have because someone else has toiled and bled and done without. No one should understand this lesson better than we who follow Christ. As we watch the widow fade quietly back into the crowd, we are left with Jesus’ joy and praise for her, very near to his own time of giving his life away.

Just so, may God take all that we have, one day at a time, even our lives themselves, in fulfillment of bringing a forgetful world that much closer to the Kingdom of Heaven.

For the Giver, for the Gift, thanks be to God.