widow’s mite — Andy James

a sermon on Mark 12:38-44
preached on November 8, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There are few stories in the Bible that can be immediately recognized through a single phrase, but our reading from Mark this morning is certainly one of them. If someone mentions “the widow’s mite,” this story almost immediately comes to mind. It seems to be such a simple tale, with Jesus commending a poor woman who has given a very small coin at the temple treasury because she has given a far greater sum than anyone could imagine. Her generosity, so seemingly small, has come out of her deep poverty. Jesus proclaims that she is to be emulated, and so we assume that her generosity gives us a model by which we can shape our own lives.

This is a lovely version of this story. I think we like it because it gives us permission to recognize the importance of even very small gifts that all too often affirms an ethic of scarcity over an ethic of generosity. Thinking about the story in this way is especially easy because it shows up in the lectionary every three years about this time, around the time of stewardship Sunday, in that season when the church asks us to consider how much we will give for the coming year, so we can tell ourselves that it will be okay if we can only give a small amount this year, for Jesus so greatly honored this poor widow’s small gift.

But reading the story in this way is an exercise in self-deception. None of this matches up very well with the story of this widow when we put it in its context. Before Jesus pointed out this poor widow giving her penny in the temple, he had been engaging with several scribes, answering their strange questions and addressing their challenges to him and his authority. After he had finished with them, Jesus offered his warning about the scribes that opens our reading for today. He is rightfully frustrated at their self-righteousness, for they manage to set aside real concern for those in need and instead place themselves at the center of everything. In their careful attention to the minute details of the law, they have missed its larger point of bringing care and comfort to the poor and needy. They seek out respect and honor at the expense of others and do everything for the sake of appearance. Ultimately, they use and abuse the gifts of God intended to be shared broadly, even “devouring widows’ houses” rather than glorifying God in their care for others. Only after noting all this does Jesus turn to the widow he sees at the temple treasury. He points her out to his disciples, though he does not commend her. Instead, he simply tells them that they ought to pay attention to her gift, for she “out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Jesus’ words here say less about the widow and more about the religious elite of his time. When we focus on the widow and her gift, we miss the challenge that he offers to our own ways of being. First of all, Jesus notes that the widow’s gift is the very thing enabling the scribes to continue with their troubling actions. The scribes “devour widows’ houses” just as one widow “puts in everything she had.” The religious establishment that Jesus criticizes here uses the gifts of the poor once intended to support the poor to destroy them all the more. As commentator Rodger Nishioka puts it, “Together, these two sections read as a lament for and an indictment upon any religious system that results in a poor widow giving all she has so that the system’s leaders may continue to live lives of wealth and comfort.” (“Pastoral Perspective on Mark 12:38-44,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 286)

Such behaviors and practices are not limited to the scribes of Jesus’ time. I think there are plenty of practices in the church today that would make Jesus similarly furious: giant personal expense budgets for overcompensated pastors, ostentatious displays of wealth in the ways we decorate our churches, even some direct misuse of funds. I hope and pray and believe that our own practices do not fall into these categories, but Jesus might still have some concerns about more familiar and common practices that are a little more comfortable for us. What would he say about churches insisting upon owning and maintaining expensive property that only gets used once or twice a week? What would he say about large endowments and savings accounts held for a rainy day when many of our sisters and brothers are getting drenched today? How would he respond to the rising tendency of the church to raising money like other nonprofits, focusing greater attention on large donors and allowing substantial gifts to gain greater access to the life of the community? The very necessary systems of our world that shape our life together promote oppression in unexpected, sometimes even unknowable, ways. We must live in the necessary tension of supporting the financial necessity of our ministry while not exploiting or plundering our society and our creation. Rodger Nishioka again offers us a helpful word:

Many of the scribes whom Jesus condemned also thought they were doing what was honorable, right and good. Perhaps they too were caught up in a system over which they felt they had little control. But Jesus does not condemn only those who are aware of how they benefit from systems of violence and oppression. Jesus condemns any who benefit from such systems, whether they are aware or not. Ignorance is no excuse here. (“Pastoral Perspective on Mark 12:38-44,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 288)

So we are called to examine ourselves and our actions carefully. Where have we abused the poor and powerless, intentionally or unintentionally? How can we allocate our resources of time, talent, and money to promote the common good and especially for the protection of those in greatest need? What changes must we make to be better stewards of the gifts that God has given us so that we can not only avoid the condemnation facing those who misuse these resources but also promote the flourishing of our whole world and all who live in it? I for one am grateful that we will hear one person’s perspective on this after worship today. As we welcome Dan Turk, one of the Presbyterian mission co-workers we support in Madagascar, I pray that our eyes will be opened and our hearts set afire within us to join him and his wife Elizabeth in greater and deeper support of God’s transformation in this corner of our world.

Amid the condemnation Jesus offers these scribes, he offers us all a challenge. Jesus calls us to transform the self-righteousness that so easily infects our institutions and our lives into God’s righteousness. He calls us to listen to the cry of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the hungry, the refugee, the undocumented immigrant, the stranger in our midst. He calls us to recognize the places where we are complicit in oppression and to step in and act where we can to respond. And he calls us to work each and every day for things to be different—and to challenge our world to join us in that work, too.

So may God strengthen us for these challenges ahead—for the difficult examination of our faith and practice that he calls us to do and for the deep giving of our whole selves that we offer in response as we seek to join in God’s transformation of our world through Jesus Christ our Lord even as we wait for him to come to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

a sermon on 1 Kings 17:8-16 and Mark 12:38-44 for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time
preached on November 11, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There are lots of ways to look at stewardship season. We can talk about things from a purely financial perspective, noting that we need a certain number of dollars to meet our budget and other financial commitments. We can take a biblical perspective and look at texts from the Old Testament that instruct us to give ten percent of everything we have to God. Or we can look wonder how to implement the New Testament’s description of the early Christian community where “those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” We can focus on our humanity and encourage everyone to give according to their ability—“not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice,” as one church I know once described it. Or we can talk about how all things that we have come from God, and so our giving to the church is an expression of our gratitude for all that we have received. All of these approaches have their merits from practical and biblical standpoints, but our texts today suggest something different.

These two texts from 1 Kings and Mark tell us of two widows who are commended for their faithful stewardship of what God has given them. In biblical times, widows were among the most vulnerable people in society. Women of any sort had few rights, and they generally depended on their husbands and male relatives to care of them. Most widows, then, were left without anyone to stand up for their best interests, and in those days before a governmental safety net in Social Security or Medicare, they were often left to fend for themselves. Yet these two stories show us a dramatic portrait of generosity and hospitality—first of a widow who finds that her small supply of meal and oil is not depleted even when she adds a hungry prophet to her household, then of a woman who offers a gift to God even when it puts her own survival at risk.

These two women are certainly wonderful models for our own lives of generosity. We would be deeply blessed as individuals and as a community if we all took their example seriously and gave so deeply out of what we have. However, I don’t think that these texts are telling us that we are simply supposed to be like them. More importantly, I think they are offering an antidote to a more dangerous and all too common perspective on our world.

These two generous widows stand in stark contrast to seemingly righteous people around them who claim to be faithful but who are unable or unwilling to put their money where their mouth is. The religious leaders of Elijah’s time refused to provide any support to the prophet who was questioning their way of life that had little concern for the poor and powerless. The scribes of Jesus’ time liked to put on a show of their holiness and righteousness, but they could clearly care less about others along the way—instead they themselves bore the full benefit of their good deeds and obedience to the law.

While the specific actions of these religious leaders and scribes aren’t quite as common around us, I have to wonder how often we fall into similar traps. How often do we become so focused on taking care of ourselves that we miss the care and concern that we need to be showing to others? How often do we quiet those voices we don’t like by taking away their support network and dismissing or destroying their humanity? How often do we do the right thing not because we really want to but because we want to be seen and noticed by someone along the way? How often do we convince ourselves that our priorities are in order when the only possible result is one that places our own needs and desires above the good of the community? The kind of good stewardship we consider today, then, is not simply endless generosity but also attention to the needs of the whole of the community and especially the least of these among us.

So then, as we think about our stewardship commitment for the coming year today, we who have so much must think about more than imitating these widows who gave out of their limited resources—we must remember that we are responsible for the well-being of the communities entrusted to us. Good stewardship is not just about meeting the budget of the church or giving some percentage of our income—it is about offering ourselves to meet the needs of the community and caring for those around us

This year, as our stewardship task force looked at the needs of our community of faith and out beyond into the community around us, we saw that money wasn’t so much our problem. With the sale of the manse, our cash flow issues have eased substantially, and we are on target to meet our budgeted income and expense for this year and next as we plan to spend down a reasonable and measured amount from the proceeds of the manse sale. However, even though our finances look pretty good, the broader stewardship of our community is much more troubling. When we look at the various tasks that must be done for us to be church together, we see the same faces doing the same things they have done year after year. We look around on a Sunday morning and see fewer people in the pews, even as we know that we haven’t really lost all that many members lately. People who are asked to help out with projects or to serve in leadership roles often come back with reasonable excuses that nonetheless leave us with great needs for our life together. And even our best moments and most effective programs and projects are in jeopardy because we don’t have anyone to be a backup for the very effective but nonetheless limited leaders that we have. We can’t look beyond our doors to meet these needs. While we always must be living out the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a way that we hope that others will consider joining our community, we cannot depend on people who are not currently connected to us to meet these very practical needs. If we can’t do it ourselves, how can we ask people we don’t know to do it for us?

The stewardship we need in these days is not so much bottomless pockets or new people but a deeper commitment to our life together and to God’s work in the world like that demonstrated by these two widows. They show us both financial generosity and deep commitment, recognizing that they have something however small to offer that others deeply need. They show us that we can give amazing gifts even when our first assessment of our situation might suggest that we have nothing to share. And they help us to see that even the least of these among us can contribute something very meaningful and important to our life together.

So in this stewardship season, as you know, we are looking both for a financial commitment and something more, for a faithful and joyous response to the amazing grace that God has shared with us, showing both financial support and a commitment of time and talent to our life together. We desperately need this renewed and deepened commitment to the life we share in this place, a new recognition that we all must step up to offer something more if our community is going to thrive as it can, a more complete embodiment of our joyous and heartfelt response to the deep grace of God that we see at work in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So as we bring our expressions of stewardship commitment today, in the coming weeks, and over the next year, may God’s grace be abundant among us, and may our response be filled with joy and hope for the life of this community and the remaking of our world until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Small Gift, A Big Challenge

The Widows and Us