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Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Mark, the twelfth chapter, beginning at the verse numbered 41. Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.

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Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.

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They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything, all she had to live on." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I would not call him back even if I could. I really mean that.

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I would not call him back even if I could. I'm referring to Bill. Many of you called him Willie. His full name was William J. Carson.

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And he used to sit right where you're sitting, most often just about there. If you don't recognize him by his name, perhaps you will recognize him by description. He stood about five feet high. He had cerebral palsy with severe spastic overtones.

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Now I'm sure that many of you remember him. I never knew Bill very well. In the days when I would come here as a visiting clergyman, never knowing at that time that God and his providence would bring us together in what is the happiest ministry that I have

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ever known, I thank God every day for my fellowship with you in this place. But back in those days when I was a visitor, I wouldn't go to the door following the service. I think that's largely a pastoral prerogative. I would instead stand right here to greet those who wanted to speak to me.

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Bill always came by to say hello. Always words of welcome. So I missed him when I came to take up my work here, and I inquired and discovered that he had died on July 28, 1983.

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Since that time, I've done some research into Bill's life, and I'd like to share with you this morning the gospel according to Bill. He was born on Christmas Day in 1933, and the tragic extent of his infirmities and handicaps were immediately obvious.

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His mother died when he was very young. He was reared by his father. When he was nine years old, on the 10th of October in 1943, he entered the D.T. Watson home for crippled children.

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Today they take children and adults there, but then it was almost entirely young boys and girls crippled by polio. Bill was the 1,204th person to be admitted to that facility. He stayed there for four years.

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He left on September 30, 1947. His father had made arrangements for Bill to live in the Masonic home once the father had died. But Bill never did that.

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Instead, he chose to live in his father's little home in Beachview. And he lived there alone until the ongoing nature of his problem led him to more and more serious falls. Finally, he moved to the Midtown Towers, just about a block from the church.

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On July 1 of last year, he suffered a stroke, lingered in a coma for almost four weeks, and then died. And I would not call him back again, even if I could. You know, C.S. Lewis, in the greatest of his books, Miracles, has a paragraph that reads,

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"These small and perishable bodies which we now have were given to us much as ponies are given to schoolboys. And we must learn to manage, not that we may someday be free of horses, but that someday we may ride bareback, confident and rejoicing, knowing those greater moments, those winged,

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shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now are expecting us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the king's stables." I picture Bill as one riding a stallion in the sky. The pony, the body that he had on earth, was a crippled and a twisted thing.

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But now he has a new body, a spiritual body, which is perfect in every way. If we look forward to the new spiritual bodies which will be ours, how much more must Bill have looked forward to his? And how much rejoicing must be his now, as he moves in heaven with all the glory and

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the beauty and the strength that he never knew on earth? I read once about two caterpillars that were crawling across the lawn, and a butterfly flew over and one looked up and said to the other, "I wouldn't go up in one of those things for a million dollars."

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Well I suppose as we contemplate the spiritual bodies which are going to be ours, we wonder about it. There may be some fear and some anxiety in us, but the promise is that we will be given new bodies, perfect in every way.

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So I would not call Bill back again, even if I could. If he were to come in his spiritual body, we would be struck dumb with amazement. And if he were to come in the body he had on earth, well I wouldn't call him back to that, even if I could.

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And I of course don't have to, for he, though dead, yet speaketh. There are people, you know, who tend to incarnate within themselves personalities in the scripture. There are people who help us to understand the men and women that we meet on the pages of the sacred book.

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Now Bill knew his Bible. He had read it through many, many times. And he did not hesitate in the John Knox Forum, of which he was an active part, to ask questions, often deep and profound questions, supported by his knowledge of scripture.

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So it shouldn't surprise us that looking at Bill should teach us something about the scripture, and I think specifically of the passage of scripture which is before us today. It was the last week of Jesus' life, and he had come to the court of the women in the temple.

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He had just known an intense debate with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And as he sat in this court, perhaps leaning up against its cool stones, trying to gain some rest, some repose, he looked across and there were 13 offering boxes. They were called the 13 trumpets because they were narrow at the top and broad at the bottom.

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Now that's where you put your offering into those trumpets. And which box you put it in depended on where you wanted the offering to go. One box was to buy wood for the sacrifices, one to buy incense for the altar, one for the care of the upkeep of the golden vessels.

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In any case, Jesus sat there and he watched. And a poor widow came, and she put into one of the trumpets two small coins. They're called lepta. Together they were worth about one-eighth of a cent.

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And Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "This woman has given more than all the rest because out of her poverty she has given everything she has." And you know, Bill helps me to understand that woman. In the first place, they both were handicapped.

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They both speak to us of the courage of the crippled. You see, in the first century, the lot of a widow was very, very hard. A widow was not allowed to receive any inheritance from her husband. But through his prophets, often spoke to the people of Israel about the terrible way in

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which they treated widows. There were some rules for their protection, but in general their straits were dire and poverty-stricken. Indeed, when the prophets wanted to describe what would happen to a nation condemned by

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God, they would say things like this, "Babylon shall be as a widow without children." So here is this woman going through a very handicapped life as a poor widow. But she does not permit this to isolate her. She comes instead to the temple, and there is faithful.

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Now Bill speaks to me of that. Bill was handicapped and crippled, yet he was active in the John Knox Forum and he worked in the Hub at the camp. And he took trips by himself, never asking anyone to go along, once he went all the way

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to Michigan and back alone. He sold brooms over the telephone. That's how he made a living. And I've checked with others and they agreed with me that when Bill spoke, because of his

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condition, his voice was slurred so that he sounded as if he were drunk. And can you imagine how many times he must have called someone up and begun to go into his pitch to sell a broom, and had some impatient, angry, insensitive person slam the phone down in his ear?

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In the latter months of his life, he often went on Sundays here and also to Trinity Cathedral next door. They offer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper there every Sunday. And I think there was in Bill, from what I've been able to learn, a desire to be closer

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and closer to Christ. And he felt him and he experienced him in the sacrament. Perhaps there was some unconscious yearning in him already, knowing that his death was near.

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But there was great courage, you see, in Bill, because he was here and he was about the business of the faithful. You often see the courage in the cripple. Homer and Milton were blind.

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Alexander the Great was a huntsman. Epictetus was beaten by his master and made into a cripple. Sir Walter Scott was lame, and so was Lord Byron. Elizabeth Barrett Browning spent most of her life as an invalid.

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Kagawa had only one lung. Darwin was ill most all of his days. Steinmetz was a cripple. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a cripple.

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Beethoven was deaf. Helen Keller, shortly after her birth, was struck dumb, deaf, and blind. And yet what things came forth from these lives. It is almost as if their handicapped and crippled state made them try all the harder.

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There's a great nobility in that, in these who do not look back in resentment or inward in self-pity, but who look forward, who go on to overcome the obstacles that are there. They understand themselves to be made in God's image. Whether that image is broken or twisted or not, it is His still, and they are beloved

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of God, and they return that love to God. I think they identify very much with the Apostle Paul, who was handicapped. You will remember, it says in Scripture, that he had a thorn in the flesh, and he could not get rid of it.

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And whatever that thorn was, it was his handicap. And yet it was Paul who wrote, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God." And that's what this widow did, and that's what Bill did.

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There's great courage in those people. And I think there's also in them a great spirit and willingness to sacrifice. I think it interesting that this widow woman had two coins. Now if she would have only had one coin, it would have been difficult enough to put that

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into the box, giving everything she had. But when she had two coins, you see the temptation immediately entered to put one into the box and keep one for herself. How easy that would have been, to have given one half to God and kept one half for her

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own use. The two, you see, opened the temptation to double-mindedness, to having a double heart. But she resisted that temptation and she gave it all. And so did Bill.

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He was generous in his giving throughout all the days of his life. He often used his home for the John Knox group to meet. And when he died, he wrote a will. I have a copy of it here in my hands.

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He directed first that all of the expenses of his last illness and funeral be paid. Second that all of his tangible property be sold. And third, he divided his total estate in two. One half he gave to the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh for young people who

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are going into the mission field. And one half he gave to the D.T. Watson Home for Handicapped Persons, the place where he had been taught how to cope. The will was executed for Bill by our good Church attorney and brother in Christ, Warren

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Redding. He gave everything, you see, to a full-orb gospel. The full-orb gospel is concerned for the spirit and also the body. One half of what he gave, he gave to the missionary gospel.

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And one half he gave to the care of those who were handicapped like himself. The total estate came to $22,875.05, which isn't very much until you measure it in brooms. You see, the devotion that was there, the offering of the total self, there are many who do not live that way.

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One coin people, they give something to God, but they are essentially double-minded. They keep more or as much for themselves. Friends, the only thing we have that we can really give to God is our love. You cannot give him a possession, because all the possessions that we have are the fruit

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of the earth, and the earth is his. He's got the whole world in his hands. The only thing which he asks us for, and which it is in our power to give or to withhold, is our love.

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And love, if you're going to give it, and love, if it's going to be worthy of its name, must be a total thing. That's the reason when the Bible speaks of our relationship with God, it so often speaks of it in terms of marriage.

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It is a love which exists in all situations, in sickness or in health, in plenty or in want. It is unconditional. It is unqualified.

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It is total. It is utter. Oh, I know people are divorced, but that does not mean that the picture of marriage is any less than it ought to be.

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When a man and a woman become one, they offer themselves totally to each other. And that's what this woman did to God. And that's what Bill did, giving both coins in splendid sacrifice. I think that's the key word, the word "sacrifice."

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You can give, you know, without sacrifice. Andrew Carnegie, who made so much of his fortune in this city, once wrote in a moment of astonishing candor, "I gave some people some bonds yesterday. I never saw the bonds.

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I never saw the people. They were just pieces of paper to me. And if I go to my vault, there are more pieces of paper like that there than I could begin to count.

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I really didn't sacrifice at all." It's possible to give that way, but the people about whom we speak this morning, people like the widow and like Bill, they gave it all. They articulate to me, they personify to me what Gabriel Marcel, the great Roman Catholic

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French existentialist, called "believing in rather than believing that." When you believe that, you believe in certain propositions, certain dictums of faith. I believe that, I believe this, I believe so on. But when you believe in something, you invest your whole life in it.

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There's an existential character to that kind of believing. It is the belief that captures you utterly, everything that you are. And it's just here that so many Christians are weak, because they're double-minded, and their offering of themselves and what they have to God is not total.

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They may have great skills, they may have abundant wealth, but they hold back with these things, and that's the fatal flaw in their discipleship, a divided loyalty which does not treat Jesus Christ as the King of kings, but breaks him to the rank of corporal, and permits him to conduct drill for the troops for an hour on Sunday morning if they choose

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to come, and nothing more. That's the kind of devotion you see. Put the Lord of glory second or third or fourth, and you know as well as I do, when the budget of your time or your money or your skills get tight, what do you give up?

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You give up those things that are second or third or fourth. That's the reason Jesus said to us, "No man can serve both God and mammon." If I may use an illustration from the world of sport, on professional football teams there comes a time each week when the coach and the players sit down and they look at the

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film of the game from the week before. Now it's a silent movie. The only voice that's heard while the film is being shown is the voice of the coach, and he's saying things like, "Show that part again, Fred, so Harry can see just how bad

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he blew it." And there's nothing Harry can say. I mean, Harry can't say, "My cleats got stuck and my ankles went out from under me." And Harry can't say, "I didn't hear the play," or "I didn't hear the whistle."

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The whole game is simply played out, and only the coach can speak. In other words, there's no opportunity to say, "I believe that I'd have done better if this or that had happened." All that can be shown is what you actually believed in, what you actually did, how you

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played the game. That's what the film, this silent film, shows. And what I'm asking this morning is, is there really any difference in the way we use our money from the way a pagan uses his?

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Is there really any difference from the way in which we use our talent and the way a pagan uses his? Is there any discernible difference between what makes us glad and what makes us angry and what pleases or disturbs a pagan?

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What I'm saying is, if someone watched a silent movie of your life—not a movie with sound, not your saying, "I believe this and I believe that." If someone watched a silent movie of your life, would they be able to tell whose side you're on?

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If someone watched a silent movie of your life, would they be able to tell whose side you're on? They could tell that from looking at the life of the widow or the life of Bill. You know, sometimes when you're in very rugged mountainous country and there is nothing about

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you but hard stone and icy peaks where storms gather and form, sometimes you come upon a little valley, a green and fertile place where it is warm. Well, in the last week of our Lord Jesus' life, there was about him all the icy scorn of the Sadducees and all the cold shoulders of those who betrayed him and then treated

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him most cruelly, but suddenly, into the midst of that stormy, craggy wind, there was a valley. When he sat down in the court of the women, and out of the frozen mist came a woman who gave everything that she had, and then she was gone again. There is nothing which suggests that she heard what Jesus said that day.

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It says he spoke to his disciples, not to her. She disappears into the shadows, and we never see or hear of her again. She had to fight out all her battles within the chambers of her own soul. But there was a morning.

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There was a morning when she wakened in the presence of Christ and heard him say, "I saw what you did." And that was her reward. Soldiers don't get their medals in the middle of the battle, but when the battle is done,

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and laborers are not paid in the middle of the day, but when the sunset comes, that's when the great reward is given. So Bill, full of grace and truth, was handicapped. And his handicap never got any better.

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Indeed, it got worse and worse until he died. But then he heard the words, "I saw what you did." So I have come to believe that Bill was handicapped, yes, but this church would have been handicapped had it never known him.

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This one who now has his reward and who rides a sky stallion and whom I would not have known what to do. I would not bring back even if I could. Let us pray.

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We thank thee, our Father, for those beautiful people whom you put into our midst. We thank thee for the Old Testament and the New Testament, but also for the Now Testament, for those who by their living echo the living of those whose lives are spread on the sacred page.

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O God, if it is possible, somehow, someway, let Bill know that we remember. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

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[Music] [Applause]