Text: Mark 12:38-44
So, in case you hadn’t
noticed, here’s something to note: apparently, the world is going to end. This is not a repeat from last October. Or, last May.
Or, from any other time when people have said that the world is
ending. Nope. This time, it’s for real. December 21, 2012.
In the disaster movie 2012, the opening scene is of New York city
What? I think that’s a pretty simple way of looking
at the gospel lesson for today: the widow gives her two coins – all, Jesus
says, that she has to live on. And he
likes that. What he doesn’t like is the
scribes, or the rich people, the comfortably middle-class making between
$200-$250k, and just give a little bit off the top.
But something doesn’t sit
right with me about that. In fact,
there’s something about that particular way of teaching that irritates me. I think that I find it irritating because
there have been times in my life when I’ve made a choice between giving to the
church and buying milk for my children – and let me tell you, the children win
out. There’s no way of glossing over
this: you can’t ‘but if you give more, you’ll be blessed more’ your way out of
this. There are two ways of interpreting
what Jesus says about giving:
1) that you should give sacrificially, even to
the point of abandoning all that you have to live on, to support the structure
of the church; or
2)
that perhaps the widow is an illustration of Jesus’ words – not an example of
the godly life that is characterized by giving the church lots of money.
I’m not intending to directly
challenge a good two millennia of teaching on this passage. I’m not; there’s an important dimension to
good spiritual discipline that is tied to giving of financial resources;
perhaps especially when those resources are abundant. But I do think that it’s time to liberate
this poor widow from the shadow of money, and let her bask in the light.
Jesus is talking to the
disciples. Now, if you have disciples,
you’re pretty important. If you hang
around people that you admire; chances are, you’ll come to copy. Consider Republican presidential candidate
Rick Santorum and his sweater-vest army; Justin Beiber is surrounded by
fresh-faced young people who buy his brands; and even Prime Minister Stephen
Harper is surrounded by young and vibrant staffers who start wearing bad suits,
fluffy sweaters, and not making a lot of sense.
Those disciples are maybe getting
a bit tired of following Jesus. He’s
poor. He’s dirty. He stays in others people’s houses and eats
with tax collectors and sinners. They’re
looking around at the other successful religious types in their neighbourhoods;
the private plane, mansion on the hill, scores of admirers; snappy dressers,
the lot of them. That’s looking a little more like the sweet life; why toil for
little or no pay, get a lot of people mad at you, and get threatened; when you
can be the go-to person for all of life’s little conundrums? You can pack stadiums, rather than packing
groceries.
Jesus sees them looking, and
adds a warning: you don’t want to be like those people. Sure, they dress nicely. Yes, they’re well-respected in the community,
and are invited to the best parties.
But: they devour widows’ houses
and the for the sake of appearances say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.
Here’s the problem: the
scribes aren’t scribes because they’re good people. They’re not successful because they’re good
preachers, theologians, or pastors.
They’re successful because they use the religious law to help them get
ahead. People didn’t give to the temple
out of their generosity: they were taxed, and the scribes and Pharisees were in
charge of administering the tax.
So if, say, your husband
died, you were left a lonely widow on your own.
Their interpretation of Scripture then held that you were inferior; and
for your own good your property should naturally go to someone else; say, a
trusted religious authority. In the face
of people looking and saying, gee, I
don’t think that’s right, they could stand in their piety and offer up
prayers as a testimony of their own devotion to the law – so nobody questions
such a good believer.
Does that sound familiar?
So I wonder, is the house
that the scribes devoured the one that offered shelter for the widow? Is she at the treasury to offer her last two
coins because she’s compelled too? I
don’t see the widow in this story as an example; I see her as a tragic figure,
and I think Jesus does, too. In Mark’s
gospel, the next thing Jesus teaches is that the entire Temple Temple
So, what is it that the widow
is giving that Jesus sees as good? The
Greek text literally reads, but out of
the poverty of her all, as much as she had, cast all the living of her.
Jesus isn’t talking about her
money, beloved. He sees her greatest
contribution as her life; that as one oppressed and abused, that woman was
still keeping the faith. It is one thing
to be the scribe, wealthy and powerful as long as the temple was there to be
the symbol of religion for the people; but that widow’s faith was in God and
not in the institution.
It seems, beloved, that
around us all sorts of institutions are crumbling. Indeed, there are earthquakes on the west
coast. That’s going to happen when you
have a dense population on a fault like.
Yes, New York city United States
Today is Remembrance Day; a
time to remember the sacrifices made by members of the armed forces’ who fought
to preserve some institutions, but also to destroy others. As the world rushed towards war in their day,
preachers proclaimed the end of the world as confidently as they do now. And I wonder: what lessons have we learned
from those who ‘cast all their living’…perhaps the most profound lesson learned
is truly to beware those who use religion for power and influence. In the First World War, armies on both sides
marched to triumphant battle hymns that promised the continuation of their
faith; by the time of the second the lines were just as clearly drawn and
again, both sides marched to the assurances of divine favour and victory.
The reality was a bitter,
bitter, pill to swallow. But in the
decades since then, conflicts have only gotten murkier; lines are not so
clearly drawn. Almost a decade in Afghanistan
I don’t believe that Jesus
looked at the religious world of his time and said that people who gave their
lives to the system were more worthy that those who knew how to work it; I
think that what Christ longed for and desired to see was one faithful person to
actually trust God to fulfill the promises God has made, even in the face of
oppression and evil.
On this day, may we all find
that we can prepare ourselves to cast our lives to the care of God, even as we
remember those who gave their lives for something greater than themselves: the
lives of others.
May we all find, one day,
that we would wake up to a world in which our Lord has returned; that tears are
no more, that suffering, sickness, and death are no longer; that the sea and
the grave have given up their dead; and that truly, the home of God is among
mortals.
May we lift our voices then
in the old prayer of the church: maranatha:
our Lord, come.
Amen.
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