November 11, 2012 – Mark 12:38-44
Mark 12:38-44
The Widow: Cause for Praise? Or Cause for Lament?
24th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 32] – November 11, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Okay: here are two stories about Jesus that Mark wants us to read together.
The first: about the scribes.
The scribes were experts in religious law employed by the Temple.
They are frequently in conflict with Jesus in Mark’s Gospel.
Although he has just summarized the whole law well to a scribe as loving God and
loving neighbour, here he points out that those who should know better
frequently fail in doing just that.
They’re interested in the law for the position their status gives them,
for the perks of their job, for being praised by everyone and having seats of honour.
They’re also interested in exploiting their position for their own advantage.
Because widows could not be entrusted to manage their deceased husbands’ estates,
scribes had the legal right to administrate those estates for a percentage of the assets.
But this system was rife with abuse and embezzlement: the scribes were often corrupt.
That’s why Jesus condemns the scribes for “devouring widows’ houses.”
After warning the disciples not to fall into the same trap when
they come into positions of responsibility,
he sits down across from the temple treasury,
where people put their offerings for the upkeep of the temple and,
indeed, the salaries of the temple employees, including the scribes.
Jesus sits there, and he watches.
And from where he’s sitting, he can see who makes offerings to the temple treasury.
And he can see even how much they put in.
How comfortable would it make you to have Jesus scrutinize your offering?
In any case, he watches, and thinks, and reflects as he watches people put in their offering.
What’s he thinking about?
He sees lots of wealthy people putting in large sums.
And then he sees a single widow put in two pathetic coins, two leptons, which really are meagre:
you would need 128 of them for a single labourer’s wage for one day.
But it’s all she has, all she has to live on, says the NRSV translation, but literally what it says is
“she put in her whole life.”
She had two, right? She could, therefore, have put in 50% of what she had.
But she puts in both coins, 100%, her whole life.
So now what’s Jesus thinking as he watches this?
Scholars are of two minds on this.
On the one hand, there is the Door A interpretation, which you are all familiar with.
The widow is amazing: she’s exemplary.
Even though the others put in far more than the widow,
they were just putting in their extra wealth, stuff they had left over:
it didn’t really cost them anything to give.
The widow, though, didn’t give out of her excess: she gave out of her poverty.
She gave a much larger share of her income: 100%, as opposed to one or two.
So, Door A concludes, it’s not enough during the annual stewardship emphasis to
consider giving to the church out of your excess, you gotta try to
live up to the widow’s standard and give till it hurts.
Well: we’ve all heard that one before.
Ah, say the Door B people, that is just not a good interpretation.
Jesus cannot possibly be thinking the widow’s actions are praiseworthy.
In fact, say the Door B people, he is lamenting what she is doing.
She is foolish, not praiseworthy.
Considered in light of the previous story, the widow is giving her money to an
institution that is impoverishing her:
she’s paying the salary of the guy who is embezzling money from her
late husband’s estate, with the result that he walks around in
long expensive robes and she is about to die from hunger.
Far from praising the widow, Jesus is condemning an unjust system.
Hasn’t he, a few chapters ago, told the Pharisees that it is hypocritical to
give money to the temple while your parents starve?
Hasn’t he already shown what he thinks of the corrupt temple practices by
seeking to cleanse it and calling it a den of robbers?
Won’t he shortly say that the temple will be torn down and replaced by
a better place to pray?
Jesus isn’t praising the widow’s actions: he’s lamenting that she’s been duped into
supporting an unjust system that is impoverishing her, that is literally taking her life.
So: Door A? Or Door B?
Is Jesus praising the widow’s actions as a model to be followed by us?
Or is he lamenting them and calling us to action,
to transform unjust economic systems that impoverish the poor?
What, exactly, is he thinking?
Well, Jesus being Jesus, he’s probably inviting you to consider both.
I mean, think about this.
This is Jesus’s last public teaching in Mark’s Gospel.
He will shortly be arrested.
He will shortly be unjustly tried.
And he will shortly be executed by self-serving religious leaders in collaboration with
an empire ruled through violence.
He will shortly give his whole life to that corrupt system for love of those corrupt people.
In short, he is watching this widow give her whole life to a corrupt system that is
devouring her and he completely identifies with her.
He gives his life because he loves this world that God made,
this world that has fallen into such a sad state.
A world in which we have to have remembrance days so we do not forget those who
have fallen victim to the outrageous violence of this world.
A world in which there is so much poverty and so much apathy about poverty.
Wouldn’t it have been easier for both the widow and Jesus to have just walked away?
Well, yes: it would have been much easier.
The good news – the gospel this morning – is that he simply doesn’t.
Jesus does not walk away from those who are about to devour him.
He loves them, and will not walk away, and will not draw down the wrath of God on them.
He will go through what he’s about to go through, and hope beyond hope that
when he forgives them that they will change.
That they will see on the cross just what this world so often comes to:
that the innocent, the poor, and the vulnerable often suffer unjustly.
That they will see on the cross the extent of God’s love for this world:
a love that is 100%, a love that holds nothing back.
A love, as Martin Luther said long ago, a love that doesn’t love what is already lovely,
but rather a love that seeks to make lovely the unlovely that it finds and loves.
Friends: there is tremendous grace and gift and good news in this story,
but make no mistake: this is a challenging text.
It invites us as a congregation to ask whether, as an institution,
we are making good use of all those coins placed into our offering plates.
I think we are, and I think we’ve done wonders with the gifts we share with one another,
and I think we’ve been good stewards of all that God has given us.
But this story will never allow us to be complacent and always seeks to ask us:
how can our yearly budget better reflect our primary task of
furthering God’s mission to love, bless and heal this world and every person in it?
As individuals, I think this story is reminding us that all we have is gift from God,
whether it’s the wealth of the well-to-do or the two leptons of the widow.
While it’s true that the Bible gives a benchmark of giving 10% of one’s income for
the benefit of ministry, it’s also true that not just 10% belongs to God, 100% does.
Your whole life is gift: how you spend the other 90% of your money matters.
Your passion, your energy, your daylight hours.
Your ideas, your talents, your brain, your imagination.
They are all 100% gifts from a gracious God who gave them to you,
we just care-take them for a time on God’s behalf,
and try to figure out ways of exercising them for the benefit of our neighbour.
Your whole life is gift.
Jesus discovers a truth that I think we all know deep down.
The more you love something, the more you will give to it.
And the more you give to it, the more you will come to love it.
Feelings often follow commitment:
the more you give in marriage, the more you come to love your partner.
The writer Kathryn Huey writes movingly about deciding to follow the example of
a couple of her church members in tithing, or giving a 10% portion of her income
as her church offering.
Increasing to a tithe was a challenge, she writes, but it surprised me that my feelings followed after the action, or after the commitment, if you will. I found that I loved my church more when I gave more to it, much as we love our children more after giving ourselves to them over many years.
Jesus continues to come, and continues to give.
It wasn’t enough for him even on the cross.
This morning he will come again, and give himself to you, 100%, pure gift,
so that all he has is yours: life, hope, faithfulness, courage, forgiveness, grace,
steadfastness, empathy, and generosity.
He gives it to you, all of it, 100% of it, so that it might live in you,
and so that you might give it all away for the benefit of your neighbour,
not only because Jesus loves you, but because Jesus loves your neighbour in need.
Our congregation is becoming a place of healing for the many people who come here,
and it’s becoming a centre of very meaningful neighbourhood ministry
Turns out Door A and Door B are two sides of the same door:
Your generosity with your time and passion and money is making a huge positive impact on
Your neighbours: in the lives of one another,
and in the lives of 1000s in this neighbourhood:
we are a community with purpose.
Jesus invites us to give 100% of ourselves and generously of our income
for the sake of a world that is not yet as God intends,
for the sake of our neighbours who suffer in that world,
for the sake of a world that God still so deeply loves.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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