Mark 12:38-44
The story we have just heard is a gospel classic—one of the few that is so well known that—like the feeding of the 5,000--it can be brought to mind by its short title. How many of you have heard of “The widow’s mite”? Let’s have a show of hands. Any young people? If you’ve heard it, you might wonder where it comes from. We who remember the King James’ version of the Bible remember that word, spelled m-i-t-e. It was the smallest coin in the Roman Empire. The translation we read today uses the less poetic, but more easily understood word “penny”.
It’s not surprising that we remember the story: it’s short but evocative and strikingly visual, filled with sharp contrasts. It’s a cinematic vision—can you see it? Close your eyes. Jesus is teaching in the vast spaces of the Jerusalem Temple. It was lavishly ornamented—soaring columns made of beautifully cut marble painted in bright colors, floors that were also brightly colored, inlaid with glass mosaic or such semi-precious stones as porphyry, lapis lazuli, malachite. Crowds of people mill about, gathering in groups according to their wealth and social status. There are the scribes, whom Jesus describes—wearing long robes, going about with a self-important attitude, expecting others to defer to them. There are the rich folk, wearing finery—silks, satins, gold and precious stones—who make a great show of the gifts that they put in the temple treasury. And in the midst of this display of power, privilege, and wealth, a single woman comes to the treasury. Poor, perhaps elderly, surely simply dressed—unnoticed by anyone but Jesus--she makes but a tiny offering, a couple of pennies, and goes on her way.
A deeply touching story, contrasting the proud parade of the rich with the humility of this poor widow. It’s easy to sentimentalize. I guess that Disney would do it best.
But what did Jesus do with this story and what did Jesus intend? Let’s be clear. It’s not about sentiment. It’s about the radical edge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to look at three aspects of that gospel today.
1) Jesus’ denouncing injustice in differences of power
2) Jesus’ lifting up the lowly, turning the tables of social status upside down.
3) Finally, a simple person making a commitment that puts her very life in God’s hands.
First the differences of power. In this culture of ours we have some idea about the differences between rich and poor. And, because until very recently here men were the only wage-earners, we know that women could be devastated, be left without income, without any financial support when their husbands died.
But in Jesus’ time and culture, it was much worse. Women weren’t really people to begin with—they had no rights, no status in society independent of their fathers or husbands. Widows were even further down the social scale, both financially and spiritually. Financially, they were ruined. According to Jewish law, widows had NO RIGHT TO INHERITANCE. Let me say that again: when a man died his widow had no right to the things she had shared with her husband: their house, their land, their furnishings, their money—nothing was hers by right.
If that weren’t bad enough, spiritually a widow might live in disgrace. That’s because—in that culture--pre-mature death was seen as God’s judgment, God’s condemnation of the man who died. So the widow of a young man was ashamed. She survived, but she bore the stain of her husband’s supposed sin.
Remember in this text, how Jesus denounced the scribes, saying: “They devour widows’ houses…”? Now we get it. That might not be a figure of speech. It might be reality. The religious authorities might somehow take the property of a man who died, whose wife had no claim on the house.
With all that in mind, let’s revisit our Disney movie for a minute. Close your eyes if you like. At first we might have imagined the scribes’ and other people’s reactions to the widow in a couple of ways: either ignoring her in a snobby way, or patronizing her, looking down on her with pity. Is it different now? There they are: finely dressed scribes and wealthy men, walking about in the lavishly decorated, palatial halls of the temple. Now can you see their contempt for the widow? Their surprise that she would dare come to the temple? Can you see them shun her as they might a leper or a notorious sinner?
Contrasting the scribes with the widow, Jesus was pointing out extraordinary differences of power, differences that we have to strain even to imagine but that we truly cannot understand.
Second point: Jesus was lifting up the lowly. Remember that the disciples would have shared the society’s prejudices about widows. If the widow were normally a figure of shame and disgrace Jesus might have shocked them by lifting her to a place of honor. Jesus did that to his disciples all the time, remember: women, lepers, tax collectors, children, widows, Gentiles—none of them had a place at the table, a place in God’s kingdom, until Jesus made one for them. As present-daydisciples, whenever we begin to look down on someone or to think that they are less a child of God than we, we had better remember that. We have to remember that, friends, if we’re going to follow Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Everyone belongs.
It’s impossible to know how the disciples understood the radical re-ordering that Jesus put before them. As modern people, we would already look on the widow with respect and sympathy. Now even we can see her differently, though: as someone of incredible courage and self-possession, who comes faithfully into the Temple to make her offering regardless of what other people think.
Third point brings us to the amount of the widow’s offering. It’s not a coincidence that this gospel lesson comes in the stewardship season. It helps us preach about sacrificial giving. But when really read this gospel, it’s a shock. Jesus tells us that even though it was only two coins, the widow gave “everything she had, all that she had to live on”. This is really strong stuff, the kind of message that—if we really listen to it—gives us pause to say the least. What do we do with it? As a self-supporting woman, I cannot take it literally, cannot take it at face value. Nor, as a pastor, could I recommend it to any head of household. I’ll bet that even the most committed fundamentalist wouldn’t preach it literally, much less follow it. But then, as Merrill has pointed out lately, we tend to soften the hard edges, to get around the gospel messages that ask more of us than we can give. One way or another we explain them away.
Several modern commentators have seen this whole lesson as an attack on the temple authorities, who exploit the faithful, like this widow by persuading them to give all that they have. I like that explanation. It’s in keeping with Jesus’ critique of the religious establishment. And it gets me off the hook. It helps explain away the most demanding and baffling claim that the gospel makes on me—the claim of putting my whole trust in God’s provision.
I’d like to tie this up for you all, and for myself. I’d love to hand you a neat package with a tidy moral--no dangling ends, no sharp edges. But I can’t. And I shouldn’t. Jesus didn’t. In this story, and in so many more, Jesus gave us such powerful food for thought that after 2000 years of commentaries and preaching and explaining, we’re still chewing on it. We still can’t really swallow it.
Our Old Testament lesson from 1 Kings gave us another story about a widow: a story with a happy ending. Because the widow of Zarephath stepped out in faith, because she fed Elijah from the small stock of food that was to be her final meal, God refilled her supplies. God saved her and her son from starvation. Her faith was rewarded.
We don’t know the end of the story for the widow whom Jesus honored. We don’t know. The people who put the lectionary together, who gave us these two texts today, may have wanted us to transpose the happy ending from 1 Kings to Mark. Or maybe they didn’t. We can talk about that another time, maybe three years from now when they come around again.
In the meanwhile, I want you to join me in meditating seriously from time to time on this gospel—on the widow’s gift of everything that she had to live on.
And, in closing, let me say just this. In my mind and in my heart I know that everything I have and everything I am comes from God and belongs to God. One day I hope that I can live in the radical faith and trust in God that the widow in the temple showed us. That is my prayer.
