In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to God.

What if that young man in the Gospel reading we just heard, when the Lord said to him, "Arise," what if he responded, "No thanks. No thanks. It's too much work"? It would be a rather different story. But let's think seriously about this, because while we hear the amazement of all those gathered around this widow, and surely she is relieved and grateful at this amazing mercy of God, and all the people are saying that God has visited his people—what this all means for this man is that now he's got to settle down to some hard work. Because now that God has visited his people, he's going to have to labor every day to make sure that not only does he have enough to live, but also his widowed mother does. So, the whole rest of his life is going to be labor, hard work, care for others, obedience to God.

When we consider our life in the church, oftentimes we see it as mostly hard work. Where is it that we witness this great wonder? Where do we see that God has visited his people?

And the secret is given to us by the Apostle Paul in the epistle today: He who sows bountifully will reap bountifully.

For us, life in Christ is so hard. To the world around us, it's stupid. What is this business about saying that we have the truth? It's so judgmental. And we're pulled in so many different directions every single day. We have all these people and institutions and bosses and so on demanding things of us. And we have all these priorities, things that we feel we ought to be paying attention to in our lives. We've got to put in all this effort every day. And then we're supposed to show up and go to all these services Sunday morning, and you know, maybe even come Saturday night. We hear Father saying, "That's a good idea, too." And holy days? Come on. This is getting completely out of hand here, expecting us to do all this for the church.

And meanwhile, we're being asked to put in all this time and energy and effort and money to serve the church, too. To love God and love our neighbor with all our heart. What's that all about? I can barely make things work as it is, and I'm supposed to think about God and his church first. This is unreasonable.

And so very often our solution is to put all kinds of—spread everything around, this just kind of like this little smear of our life across everything. Just kind of give everything just inadequate attention, and touch everything a little bit, and God gets whatever's left over after we've hit everything else that we know will get us into trouble if we don't handle that.

And what do you know when we do that? We find that it's still hard. We still find ourselves stretched, and our life in Christ somehow is dry, uninspired, inadequate. It's not strengthening us and lifting us up. It's not giving us that sense of the presence of God in my life, transforming it and making it new.

The Lord asks us to try a different way. It's bold. It requires great faith, great risk on our part. But he tells us this way actually works: to give not sparingly but abundantly.

And we are to do this not because God needs what you have to offer. You can give him a million bucks and he's not one cent the richer. You can work every day of your life for the service of the gospel, and God is not strengthened one little bit. He doesn't need you. That's not the point. He wants you. He loves you. And you giving generously out of your very heart is good for you. You are better for giving generously.

And so he invites you to give of yourself generously, to sow bountifully, so that you may reap bountifully out of all the gifts that he is ready to pour out upon you.

Certainly he does ask us to care for our mother, the church. And we have to be honest that this little parish has a very small budget compared to many, many organizations that we're familiar with, that perhaps we support in our minds. And although we do have a small budget, we struggle to meet it because all of us together are still having a hard time figuring out: How do we do this? How do I give faithfully, generously, abundantly, cheerfully, with faith and confidence that if we put the Lord first in our life, everything else will actually fall into place? We're not sure that that really works. And because we're not sure, we're not sure what we're doing with our priorities. And we find that when it comes down to it, we don't have enough to support the mission of the church.

But here's the thing. Take anything in your life, anything that you care about, and think about something where you really poured yourself into it 100%, threw yourself in and not worrying about the time, about the cost, but just making it beautiful and excellent because you love it. What happens then in those parts of your life? You find that they are filled with gladness, that in a big way you get more out of it than you put in, because you forget yourself in the giving and just do it because it's good.

And now consider what it would mean to do that kind of work collaborating with God, with God beside you, and what that would mean. Because when we are co-workers with God, then we're not just relying on our own gifts, our own efforts, our own resources, because the God that we trust in is blessing us abundantly and multiplying our efforts even as we pour them in to this work. And we find that in fact we literally cannot give more than we receive. That we are all the time being blessed more greatly as we give to the work of the Lord.

That's what he promises us, and that's what he shows to those who truly put their trust in him.

And as we hold fast to this perspective, as we make it our own, we are transformed from the inside out, and we find strength for the whole of our life. Not merely the thing that we're doing in that moment, but by putting our hand alongside the Lord's, by relying above all on his strength, his goodness, his will, the work that he does through us and in us then overflows into the rest of our life. So that everything that we touch is touched by God. And we find that in fact we do have an abundance for every good work. That if we seek the Lord and his righteousness and his kingdom, all these things that we truly need, God provides us. They are added to us as well.

And then we recognize the truth that God has visited his people. God is here with us now, because we see the activity of his loving hand right here in my life today.

And as we make this discovery that we are not expected to do this work alone, that it's not drudgery for us to somehow grind our way through life with responsibility and obedience and all the rest, but that we are children of the Most High God who loves to give gifts to his children and supplies an abundance for all our needs, we discover that we have exactly what we long for.

That all of us may reap the harvest of our labors with thanksgiving and gladness for today, for all the days of our life, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.