We are also in the midst of Native American Heritage Month, which has been observed in this diocese by daily posts about the history and cultural achievements of the first peoples who lived in the Americas and in Hawai’i.
November 11 is St. Martin’s Day, and also is Veterans’ Day, which originally day of the armistice that ended World War I. Most people do not know that these two commemorations do not just coincide: they were MEANT to coincide. So we also marvel that our patron saint is associated with a day of great thanksgiving, a day in which we recognize the real sacrifice, honor, and obligation of those who serve in the military of this country. And our gospel reminds us of the terrible cost of war and military service that Martin himself knew.
Our patron saint, Martin of Tours, was born to pagan parents from Hungary in the early 4th century of the common era, with a father who was a senior military officer in the Roman imperial guard. As a child, he grew up in Italy, where his father was stationed, and at age ten it is believed he attended a Christian worship service. He did this against his parents’ wishes, and he became a catechumen, or someone undergoing religious instruction to join the Church. Back then, the minimum time for the catechumenate was three years but was often longer.
Then, at 15, Martin was required to join the army as well, and he became a cavalry soldier. It is said that while he was stationed in Gaul, near Amiens, a beggar approached him in the cold and asked for some alms. In response, Martin cut his military cloak in half with his sword. Later that night, Christ appeared to him in a dream, clothed in the half of the cloak he had given the beggar. Martin then determined to be baptized, and he was.
Martin then made his way to Tours in what is now France, where he studied with Hilary of Poitiers, and eventually made his vows as a monastic, but gained a reputation for piety and holiness. He established a monastery there called Marmoutier, where his holiness attracted several hermits who lived in small cells around him.
The people of Tours decided to make Martin their bishop, but he wanted nothing of it. So the story goes that he was tricked into the church to be elected bishop on the excuse that someone needed healing. One popular legend claims that he was so reluctant to be elected that he hid in a barn full of geese, who ratted him out by honking at him. And so the townspeople dragged him out, covered in feathers and probably goose-poop, and finally persuaded him to accept election as bishop. This is why, by the way, it is a tradition to this day in Europe to eat goose on Martinmas. Revenge CAN be, if not sweet, then at least tasty.
Nonetheless, even though bishop, he still lived in Marmountier in his humble cell. He was known for travelling to every parish in his diocese once a year, often on foot. In all things, he was led by a sense of duty, a sense of compassion, and a sense of conscientiousness that gazed outward with humility.
Martin is the patron saint of, among other things, tailors, beggars, soldiers and conscientious objectors, winemakers AND recovering alcoholics, which just goes to show that the people in the Roman curia who decide these things know a multi-tasker when they see one. He is the patron saint of geese, whose migration is usually simultaneous with his feast day, and although he is that patron saint of France, in England his emblem is a goose, and it is said that traditionally, the geese begin their migration south on St. Martin's Day. The newborn baby of Hans and Margaret Luther was baptized on St. Martin’s Day in 1483, and thereafter bore the name of Martin Luther into history. It is said that the trees bloomed on the day he was buried, even though it was November 11; and one term used to describe what some call “Indian summer” days at this time of year in Europe is “St. Martin’s Summer”—one we got to experience for two glorious days last week, including on St. Martin’s Day, before God turned on the cold Friday night.
The horrors of mechanized trench warfare, machine guns, and poison gas left a lasting impression on the survivors. Some villages in England lost every single young man between the ages of 18 and 35 to this war as either wounded or dead.
As the war dragged to a terrible end, the cease fire eventually was declared at 11:11 am on November 11, 1918—St. Martin’s Day—specifically, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The French people had a resurgence of piety regarding the saint, with some believing that his intervention had helped spare France from any more of the horrors of the conflict, which was fought largely on French and Belgian soil in the European theatre. St. Martin’s feast and the celebration of peace and those who sacrifice to defend peace are forever linked. The feast day of the soldier and conscientious objector is also the day that this horrific war came to an end.
Therefore, every time we celebrate St. Martin’s Day, we honor also those who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice upon the fields of battle, even while we fervently give thanks for peace—real peace that is grounded in abundance for all because we realize the interconnectedness of all. We remember the fast in the midst of the feast.
This is where this morning’s gospel comes in. Interestingly, this pericope contains all of chapter 21 EXCEPT that it omits the first five verses of this chapter:
[Jesus] looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; 2he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.3He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; 4for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’
Think of these two small copper coins as pennies. Jesus sees this, and comments on it. The rich have given from their extra, but the widow has given all that she has to live on. Hers is an act of absolute faith and trust in God, while the rich are giving what they will not miss, what will not affect their real comfort and their bottom line.
The widow understands that she has an obligation to help maintain the Temple. Not only that, she has the FAITH to fulfill that obligation because she has an absolute trust in God. But we make our first mistake when we look at annual giving as only giving to this parish. Our giving to this parish is our giving to God.
The widow gives of what she needs, and does it without fanfare, and without hesitation. In this way she demonstrates great faith and faithfulness. The same faith Martin displayed when he gave up everything to follow Christ.
The anecdote about the widow is important in understanding the verses that we just heard. Where and how we worship God is a matter that we should have at the forefronts of our minds. And for the original audience of Luke, the answer to this question, even as followers of Jesus, had been the Temple. What is NOT spoken of, and what we have to keep at the forefront of our minds, is that Luke’s audience has already witnessed the very calamities and destructions that Jesus speaks of in this day’s gospel. Luke has Jesus speaking of things that happened after Jesus’s own earthly ministry, but within the life of the Lucan community. In 70 CE, the Temple WAS destroyed by the Romans, and not a stone WAS left standing. The beautiful treasures and ornaments that Luke has Jesus’s followers describe in those first words had been gone for years by the time Luke’s gospel was written. The only knowledge some of Luke’s community had for what the Temple had looked like in all its glory was probably memories from their elders, or the accounts of the Jewish historian Josephus
What Luke has Jesus describing had already happened. And I wish I could say that we ourselves have no knowledge of such calamities, as did our patron saint Martin as he experienced in his military career. But we do. Russia is committing the same kind of destruction and calamities in Ukraine right now. The last century alone has witnessed attempted genocides and slaughters of the Armenians by the Turks; the Jews and Gypsies and LGBT people, among others, by the Nazis; Stalin’s starving years; Pol Pot’s fields of blood in Cambodia; the Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda; Muslims by Serbs in Bosnia; 300,000 residents of Nanking by the Japanese…. The list goes on.
And this month, we acknowledge and dedicate ourselves to becoming more educated about the violence, dispossession, and often outright murder that was visited on and still continues in some places toward the Indigenous people in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. As we hear Luke’s passage, we think of people who have been persecuted for their faith throughout history, especially our Jewish kindred as anti-Semitism is on the rise in the US and other western nations again. As Martin was when he asked to be released from his military obligations based on his conscience.
So what is the good news? What do we “do” with the first verses of Luke chapter 21? What is its call to us?
First of all, we are reminded that faithfulness and generosity cannot be an afterthought, as the story of the widow, the story of Martin, and the story of Jesus himself illustrates and calls us to imitation.
We are also reminded that even when we encounter wars and calamities and destruction, God is still with us. I think we are reminded that the destruction of the Temple also ended up reminding us that we worship God not in a certain place, but in approaching Jesus and inviting him to live and guide us. In a way, WE are now called to be the Temple to the world as Christ’s body—to be the insistent reminder that God lives among us in creation and is forever making it new, as our Native kindred insist to this day, and as our passage from Isaiah proclaims.
So let us live lives of real sacrifice, real gratitude, real connection with each other and with our God. Let us pray for the wisdom and courage to make this parish stronger and on a more stable footing than ever. Let us honor the sacrifices of those who have gone before us in faithfulness both in our nation’s history and in the history of this parish, and put our empathy into action before the eyes of the world. And in all we do, may we proclaim boldly our commitment to God and each other with gratitude for our blessings, steadfastness in hardship, and see our responsibilities to each other as never a burden, but a joy. May we follow in the example of Martin, and live s life of faithfulness and dedication to God, all our lives.
Preached at the 505 on November 12 and at the 10:30 Eucharist in November 13, 2022, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville,
Readings:
