"Christian Vocation: Widows" Midweek in Lent5 April 9, 2014 1Timothy 5:5–6
The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. 1Timothy 5:5–6 This is our last look during this Lenten season at specific vocations. It goes without saying that there are many others that are not listed in the Table of Duties in the Catechism. It also goes without saying, although it probably is not emphasized enough, that whenever we hear the Gospel proclaimed we are learning the most important vocation of all, that of being a hearer. A recipient of God’s Word, most prominently proclaimed and taught in His message of the Law and His message of the Gospel. We are called to the life-long vocation of hearing and taking to heart the Law of God which convicts us of our sin and draws us to repentance and of hearing and receiving consolation in the Gospel which forgives our sin and renews us and strengthens us in faith. This brings us full circle. We started by saying that it all began with Adam. He was a recipient. God had given him everything. He was called to continue to receive God’s many blessings. God spoke and Adam listened to God. It was when he did not listen that he strayed into sin. All of the many other vocations God had given to him flowed from his vocation as a hearer of God’s Word. Now that everything he did was tainted with sin his carrying out of his vocations were tainted as well. It is so with us and we cannot truly serve in any of the vocations God has called us to unless we are hearing and receiving from God His word and His forgiveness. When we are forgiven we can serve. When we are forgiven we see that we are not here to get stuff from God but rather that it is a blessing to receive from God His blessings and that it is a further blessing to share those blessings. We do this in vocation, the callings He has given us in this life to love and serve others. This last vocation we look at this evening, that of widows, may seem to be to a very specific group of people. It may seem that it doesn’t pertain to most people. It also may seem a bit odd that it doesn’t include widowers. Why focus only on the vocation God has given to a wife who has lost her husband and not to a husband who has lost his wife? All these are good questions and deserve careful attention. As always, we look at this vocation based on the Word of God. This evening we see that the apostle Paul’s exhortation to widows carries this form, from 1Timothy 5: “The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.” Paul’s call to the vocation of widow is that she “puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help.” Without a careful reading of Scripture this would seem unnecessary to single out widows in this regard, as this exhortation should be one which all of us as Christians heed. The key to his exhortation, though, is in what he first says about them: “the widow who is really in need and left all alone.” This gives us the proper perspective for understanding why widows were given a special vocation. In ancient times there were certain members of society that needed the help of the rest of society for their very survival. In the Old Testament we find God’s judgment upon those who did not care for these members of society, namely, widows and orphans. A woman who lost her husband might very well have lost everything if there were no other family members to care for her. An orphan might very well go hungry on the street if there were no relatives or others in society to take care of the child. These two groups in society were the most defenseless and therefore others were called upon to help them in their need. In our day we have orphanages. We have adoption agencies. In our day many widows not only are able to take care of themselves, often they live very fulfilling lives in their widowhood. In our day the defenseless members of society are those who are in the womb and those at the end of life who are subjected to euthanasia. These two groups of people truly need others to step in to help them for their very survival. In this way, then, we see what Paul is talking about when he talks about those widows who are really in need and left all alone. How are they to live their lives? By putting their hope in God and continuing night and day to pray and to ask God for help. Those who were being taken care of by their husband and now find themselves without this care are to trust in God. He will provide for them. As we have seen, one of the ways He does this is by calling upon others to help them in their need. If society is not doing this, shame on it. If we as the Church are not doing this, we are to be doubly shamed. Thus, the widow in need entrusts herself to God, that even in her need, God will provide for her spiritual and eternal needs. And she prays according to His good and gracious will that others will carry out their vocation of helping her in her need. In contrast is the widow who, as Paul says, “lives for pleasure [and therefore] is dead even while she lives.” Back then, losing your husband, and with him the possibility of losing everything, could tempt a widow to live in such a way as to maintain her life in ungodly ways. At the same time, not all widows back then were left defenseless when losing their husband. Those who saw this as an opportunity for living for themselves were called out by Paul as alive but spiritually dead. Losing your husband was not a green light to live for yourself but rather to continue to live in God’s care and grace. Since we are in a different age today and widows so often in our society are able to live productive and fulfilling lives we glean from this exhortation to widows the calling to living a godly life as a widow whether you are in need or not. Certainly if there are widows among us who are in need we as the Church ought to help them. For those who are able to take care of themselves after their husband dies there are many opportunities to serve others. What this looks like is that instead of a widow who is really in need praying to God for help, a widow who is blessed to be able to live a full life prays to God for help for others. When God blesses you, even in the loss of your spouse, you are given opportunity to serve others and one of the greatest ways to do this is to pray for others. For both widows and widowers, the loss of a spouse is a major change in life and the grief is not easily assuaged. But filling up your life with the things of God, being a hearer of His Word as well as a servant who is faithful in prayer for others in need is a way that God provides for those who have lost their spouse in their grief and sadness. In conclusion, this vocation of widow and all the vocations we have looked at in the past few weeks show us something that we often forget. We have been called by God to eternal life. Having eternal life we have been called by God to serve others. It’s easy to think of the Christian life as being one in which we’re saved and then there’s also all those other things in life such as our job, our family, our activities, etc. Vocation permeates our entire Christian life. We are not called to eternal life so that we can live to ourselves. We are called to eternal life so that we may live in God’s grace. It is God’s grace that we continue to receive His blessings and this includes the blessing of serving. When we consider that there are those who are really in need, whether they be widows, or orphans, or the unborn, or those at the end of like, or anyone who is in need, we see the blessing it is to serve them as God has served us. We see also the blessing that God gives when others serve us in our needs. Ultimately, vocation is about the Gospel. Vocation is not something we do because we’re supposed to, it’s something we do because God gives it to us to do. It was God’s vocation to serve and He served joyfully. Christ suffered, died, and rose for our salvation and it was because it was for our salvation that He served joyfully. Because He joyfully served us in this way we give thanks that He gives us joy in the many vocations He gives us. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
