Text: Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

In May of this year, a team of climbers descending Mount Everest left climber Lincoln Hall for dead near the summit. The next day, another team found Hall still alive, but badly frostbitten and delusional from the effects of low oxygen. Turning aside from their goal, they brought the supposedly dead man down to a lower camp. Against all odds, he survived. One of the rescuers was interviewed on CBC Radio last Monday. He described their action as a sacrifice, which he defined as "Giving up something you want in order to do what you must do." In more theological terms, I would phrase it as "… to do what God calls you to do."

These climbers had invested much time, money and personal energy to achieve their goal of climbing the world’s highest mountain. One of them said, "The summit of Everest will always be there. Lincoln Hall had only one life."

They gave up a long-cherished personal goal to do something that they knew they had to do—saving the life of another human being. They turned aside from the goal they had set themselves, for the fulfillment of a holy purpose.

Truly, they made a sacrifice.

We hear this same word very often when we recall our war dead, referring to them as having paid the "ultimate sacrifice." They did not give their lives because they wanted to—no soldier goes off to war intending to die. Rather, they died because the fulfillment of their mission demanded it. And let us never forget that their sacrifice was compounded by the fact of those who mourned their loss at home. The current conflict in Afghanistan has made us even more mindful of that fact.

With our poppies and our ceremonies we remember and honour those who made this "ultimate sacrifice." But I would submit to you that the most important remembrance should be found in the lives of those who remember. As their lives were sacrificed for the greater good, so we are called to live sacrificial lives, giving of ourselves for the accomplishment of God’s great mission in this world. "Lest we forget" means keeping alive that hope in which we send men and women off to fight and sometimes to die—the freedom we so cherish.

The freedom for which those we remembered today died is not the illusory freedom of anarchy, in which everyone does whatever each one wishes. It is the freedom to work together to build up God’s people. This freedom is based on sacrifices, both great and small, made day by day and year by year by people seeking the good of all.

This kind of sacrifice is the giving up of something you want in order to accomplish what God calls you to do. There is, of course, another sense of the word, in which something is offered in order to propitiate God. The letter to the Hebrews tells us that the system of propitiatory sacrifice based on the temple came to an end with Jesus, who made once and for all on the cross, a "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice." God does not need to be appeased by our offerings, but God is glorified as we give of ourselves for the good of God’s people as Christ gave himself for all.

Christ’s sacrifice was once and for all, and unrepeatable. Nonetheless, his self-offering calls us into lives of sacrifice, not seeking reconciliation with God, but living out the reconciliation already effected for us on the cross.

We give of ourselves because Christ gave himself for us. We give of ourselves in praise and thanksgiving to God. As we experience our lives and our salvation as gift, so we are called to respond in lives of giving, placing our trust in God.

It is of the nature of a gift to be unearned and to be given with no expectation of return. Every true gift is an invitation to the recipient to enlarge our circle of relationship—to build up the community of God’s people. Nonetheless, I believe most of us would acknowledge that we do at times give in ways that violate the nature of a gift.

Sometimes we give because we feel others expect it of us.

Sometimes we are looking for praise.

Sometimes we are trying to influence the receiver to respond or behave in some way.

In all of these, the reason for giving is centered more on the giver than the receiver—giving to meet one’s own needs, and not those of others. They are more "deal-making" than sacrifice.

In today’s Gospel, a widow makes a gift to the temple. Jesus holds her tiny gift in higher esteem than the large amounts poured into the treasury by rich people. Why? She gave all she had, placing her entire trust in God. The coins would buy almost nothing, and there would be no brass plaque by the door commemorating her gift. Nonetheless, she had given her all, inviting God into her life.

Every gift opens the door to new relationships with each other and with God. Whether it is two small coins or our very lives, every gift made in the love of God renews and rebuilds God’s people.

Today we honor the dead, who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Let us then rededicate ourselves to being a living sacrifice. Let us not count the cost as we give of ourselves, but let us instead count the blessings on those who receive.

We make this sacrifice, giving of ourselves and knowing that all that we have and all that we are gifts of God. All we are doing is returning to God what is God’s. All we are accomplishing is the mission God has entrusted to us.

As Jesus prayed in Gethesemane,

Amen.