[Ed. note: The first several paragraphs in boldface were omitted from the audio recording of this sermon.]

"And she put in everything she had…"  Can you imagine loving God like that – completely, freely, with all you have and all you are?

I met a little girl once who did.

It was early that Sunday morning.  I was there, setting the hymn boards and straightening chairs in preparation for the service.  Adult Sunday school, which was always before church, didn’t start for another 30 minutes. 

I turned as the front door opened, and there peering in, was a girl of about 9.  I smiled and motioned for here to come in.  She was by herself, no parents or friends.  Just one lone girl in a pretty white dress. 

She had come by herself, her mother’s latest boyfriend dropping her at the nearest crossroads, and she walked the rest of the way to the church on her own. 

She helped me lay out bibles and set the altar that morning, talking as we worked.  I asked her about school and her family and what she wanted to be when she grew up.  So she talked about her favorite class, and her worst subject.  She told me about her mother and her struggle with alcoholism and that her father had left long ago.  She told me that she didn’t know what she wanted to be when she grew up, she figured she probably just work at the grocery store like her mom. 

And I asked her what had brought her to church that morning.  Her answer still makes me want to cry.  She said quite simply, "I just wanted to come this morning and hear about Jesus."   

And so she had come.  And she had put on her best dress for it.  A pretty white dress that had mismatched buttons, and a small tear where the sleeve was coming away from the shoulder, and a hem that was falling in places. 

And at the offertory I saw her put in a handful of small change, probably coins she had found or the remnant of a tiny allowance.  And when she came to the rail for her blessing at Communion, she handed me the colored sand cross that she had made in Sunday school.

No she didn’t have much, and her home life was by all standards a tragedy, and she didn’t have much hope for what the rest of her life would bring.  But that morning in a small desert parish, she brought her best for God; she gave her all to Jesus.  Her prettiest dress, her few coins, her broken home life, her small hopes, her need to hear about Jesus. 

She brought it all and gave it all to God.  And it wasn’t because she thought she’d been so blessed that she would be nice enough to give a little back to God.  And it wasn’t because she thought that if she gave God something that he would double her money or give her a Disney Land fantasy life. 

She gave her best because she knew that Jesus loved her and she wanted to love him back and perhaps to rest in his peace and love for just a little while.

That little girl was so much like the widow from today’s Gospel. 

That widow who had so little to be thankful for by worldly standards.  Who had lost her husband and had therefore by the customs of the place and time lost her home, her land to grow food, her hope in man-made security. 

And yet in the face of all that she still knew that God loved her.  She still knew that God was God and that brought her with undivided heart to worship Him, to give her heart and live to him. 

And so she faced the ridicule of the world as she came poor and humble to have her two small coins clink oh so lightly in the trumpet shaped collection boxes in the Temple, having stood in line behind the wealthy and the important as they dropped in weighty offerings, smiling and nodding at each other at their benevolence to God.

And yet there across the way stood God the Son, watching and seeing and knowing.  Hearing the light clink of her offering in the box, yet also hearing the heavy echo that it made in heaven because of the total, undivided love because of and for God with which it was offered. 

Both the widow and the little girl, so not sensible, so extravagant in their desire to be with God, so foolishly exuberant in loving Him.  So sure that He loved them, and so loving him back with single-minded focus.

Do you love God that much?

No? 

No is the answer that we all give too often.  We forget, we are busy, we can’t believe it that He loves us, so we aren’t sure how to love him.  We lose sight of Him in our daily chores.  Or we only love Him when things are going our way, when we are getting what we want out of this life, or when things aren’t going our way, so we are sending up those extra prayers so that things will start going our way. 

How rarely it seems that we love Him simply because He is God, simply because he loves us.  And yet when we do, those moments when our hearts are filled with the overwhelming love for God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit it transforms our lives. 

I saw the truth of that on the face of that little girl that morning at the communion rail.  As she knelt there in prayer I saw a moment of perfect peace and perhaps real communion with Jesus.  If only for a moment, I saw what it looks like when someone really loves Jesus with all their heart and mind and soul, simply because he is the Son of God, who gave his life for her, simply because He loved her first.

And that is I think what we are all seeking.  To know and feel the fullness of God’s love for us and to love him back with undivided heart.  And yet we are only able to love Him when we know in our very bones that He loved us first. 

So, do you know how much God loves you?

No?

But He does love you more than you can imagine. 

How do we know?

We know because God the Son was made man, he let go of his equality with the Father and came to dwell with us, to reach out his hands to touch us, to sit beside us, to walk the road with us.

We know because He shows us how much he loves us.  There on the cross – when he allowed his arms to be nailed wide, so that when we ask the question, "How much do you really love me Lord?" He can say this much, and even unto death.

We know because He tells us how much there in the Bible, "For God so loved the world…"

That is how foolishly, how extravagantly God loves you.  So much that the one who need never have died, died on a cross for you so that you might live.

Do you love God with everything you have?  With all that you are? 

However you may answer, know this – He loves you with all that He is.  He always has and He always will.

Amen.