(Isaiah 61:1-4; Psalm 22:12-15; Mark 14:1-11)

Lent 4 ~ 10:30 am, Sun, March 10, 2024 ~ FBCA

On Friday I made my first visit to the Amherst Food Bank, as a volunteer. It was so good – not just to help out – but to see what is there, and how it operates. I found out that people call ahead to place their order in the morning, and are given a time of afternoon to pick up their food. Starting at one, the workers arrive, and start bagging up the items for each order, putting the bags in a shopping cart. Then, the greeter at the door – me – meets each person who knocks, and wheels out their cart for them to take their bags. A few clients brought in some empty bags for the Food Bank to use.

I am so grateful for our local Food Bank: well run, affiliated with Feed Nova Scotia, and well connected to the local congregations, including First Baptist. It is not so with every food bank! It was not so in Digby, nor in Windsor, NS.

“You will always have the poor with you,” Jesus famously says, in today’s Gospel reading. This is the fourth Sunday in Lent, and we have looked at the fourth day of this week in Mark, when Jesus is in the Jerusalem area for Passover. It is Wednesday, He’s at someone’s home in Bethany village, and He gets anointed with extremely costly ointment of nard. ‘Why waste it!’ Someone says. ‘The poor could have been fed!’

‘Yes,’ we might agree. We are told the bottle of perfume costs about a full year of a day labourer’s wages. Yet Jesus receives this gift from an unnamed woman. He praises her. He says she has begun to anoint His body for burial. It is as if she is the first person who truly believed the things Christ had been saying all along – that he would be handed over, suffer and die, and rise up again. It is Wednesday; Jesus will be executed, in two days time.

Jesus counters the criticism of this ‘wastefulness,’ of not helping the poor, by declaring what we all seem to know. Needy people will always be in the human family. Eradicating poverty never quite happens. So there will always be other opportunities to help, to give, to bless someone in the neighbourhood.

“You can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.” (M 14:7) Look at the whole collection of Jesus stories, as well as the First Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures: remember what’s been called God’s preferential option for the poor. God & Jesus, are on the side of the neediest people. Always have been; always will be.

We are in a moment to consider how we can show kindness to those in need. It is the Church season of Lent. What’s that about? It is forty days to focus upon prayer, and fasting, and almsgiving (to use an old word). Giving alms to the poor – helping those in need.

Perhaps every religious tradition has this, built in. Today is the start of Ramadan for our Islamic sisters and brothers. What is the Muslim month of Ramadan about? It is a special time of prayers, and fasting (from sunrise to sunset every day) and for giving to the needy.

I consider how we, a Christian congregation, train ourselves, and model the ministry of giving, of generosity, of sacrifice, of sharing. Most of you know what preachers have taught from pulpits all our lives: the money we give to our Church is at least a ‘tithe,’ ten percent, our first ten percent that we make. So, above that, the local Church, as a whole, can give away ten percent of our income. Do we? Or do we have a goal?

How does First Baptist give to those in need? Where do we give away some percent of what we have and receive?

We do support our local Food Bank, the Amherst Food Assistance Network. $ 2,500. We also volunteer –wonderful!

Our Benevolent Fund and Benevolent Committee work includes food baskets at Christmas, ‘Christmas Cheer,’ and aid to local people every month, who need help with rent or utilities, travel to medical appointments, and so on. (I did not find the amount this week for 2023.)

We support relief and development work around the world, through CBM, Canadian Baptist Ministries. Long ago this was called The Sharing Way, and though the work continues, that name is long gone. Maybe First Baptist sent about $150 to CBM to help with feeding people and drilling wells and so forth? That’s .05% of First Baptist’s 2023 expenditures.

We support other work that does all manner of things. The Divinity College that trains people for Christian work. Camp Pagweak, our local Baptist camp; most of what happens there is for children and youth. We support Baptist chaplains in our Halifax hospitals, so that when one of you is there, and it is two hours away for me to get there, a Baptist Chaplain can visit you and bless you. We help our prison ministry, just down the road in Springhill. They have chaplains working there, and volunteers. We are part of a Baptist denomination, CBAC, and a special Baptist Association, CABF, that each have their own ways of bringing people together for wonderful work.

So, I’m not sure. Perhaps all these things make up $12,592, about 4.3% of what we spent in 2023.

Then we have our Christie Fund. Surely at least ten percent of that income is given away for good work around us and far from us? Yes, more than $21,300 last year, which was almost 17% of the income. 83% we kept for ourselves.

This is some of our kindness to the poor, and to those helping serve others in the name of Christ Jesus Himself. We are part of a team in our own town. This week, on Thursday at one, the new shelter will have an open house. It is called Prince Arthur House – that’s the street it’s on. Keep in prayer this important and challenging work: helping the unhoused here.

Kindness and generosity can seem more difficult when we are not miracle workers. ‘It was easy for Jesus to hang out with the destitute,’ we might think, ‘those who were sick, those who were shunned by the rest of the town. He worked miracles, after all. He was immune to catching their diseases. He could make five loaves feed five thousand people. We can’t.’

Maybe... or maybe not. Together, and together with Christ, we are able. Able to make a difference in people’s lives. Able to give. Jesus did not resolve every need and heal every illness. As He says here, we will always have the needy; we will be able to show kindness again and again, every year, forever. There will always we someone who needs something.

And so, there will always be people who can give something. We get to be part of that team. That Holy Team. We spend some of ourselves to enjoy God and praise Jesus, and we spend some of ourselves to make a difference in the world. This troubled, messed-up, anxious, angry, hurting world. We call for help; we pray for help. We are part of the help. ‘Love God and love others.’

Spiritual author and speaker, Jan Phillips, has told the story often of a terrible accident she suffered years ago. Traveling in a desert in the southwest USA, she had pulled her car off the road and was out, with binoculars, watching some beautiful birds soaring. A speeding car came along the highway, and a confused driver drove off the road, and right into Jan’s car, which hit her – and both went flying. Her car land on top of Jan!

Not that long after, another car came along and stopped. Jan called out to the two fellows who got out and were looking around. ‘Help! I’m under the car!’ Jan cried. She was in pain. The muffler of her car was burning her.

‘We’ll go get some help!’ the fellows said.

“No!,’ Jan exclaimed. ‘You can help me. You are the help.”

And they were. They were able to lift up her car just enough to get her out, and take her to a hospital.

We are the help. We are filled with acts of kindness, when someone is in need. We must prepare ourselves to be the help.

The prophetic words of Isaiah come to life again in us. Good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, giving freedom to captives, declaring the end of evil actions, promising God’s favour, comforting the mourners.

This is the work of Jesus in us, today; the Jesus whom we worship, even as He becomes utterly poor, and suffers, and dies.