November 10, 2024
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott
Mark 12:38-44
All week, I’ve been thinking of widows. I’ve been thinking of the widow in our Old Testament reading who gave her last bit of food and water to Elijah. I’ve been thinking of the widow in the New Testament who gave two copper coins, all that she had, to pay her temple tax. It wasn’t until the end of the week that I returned to the New Testament reading and saw the mirror image here, the behavior of the hypocritical scribes, the behavior of the widow.
In our Gospel text for this morning, it’s tempting to focus on the widow who gave all that she had. After all, we’ve been here before. Just a few weeks ago, we had the story of the wealthy man who approached Jesus wanting to know what to do to get eternal life. Do you remember the answer? Give all earthly wealth to the poor.
And here’s a widow, doing just that, giving up everything, in contrast to the rich who are plunking money into the Temple coffers. Why, the sermon practically writes itself!
For all of you anticipating a good old-fashioned stewardship sermon, I’m about to disappoint you. I don’t think that Jesus is telling us that we must give up ALL that we have. Go back to the text. He observes the widow’s actions. He does not say, “Go and do likewise.”
So what is the point? What are we to learn? Let’s look at the passage again. Let’s look at the contrasts.
The first contrast is easiest to see: rich people giving large sums vs. widow woman giving 2 copper coins. She’s not tithing. She’s giving all that she owns. And for what? Two copper coins would buy nothing. She’s not required to give all that she has. We might build a back story for her. Maybe she gives all that she has because she believes in the mission of the Temple in a way that the rich people do not. But we don’t know that—we don’t have that insight into either the rich benefactors or the widow.
Who gets that level of backstory? It’s the scribes in the beginning of today’s Gospel. Please note that Jesus is not condemning all scribes or all religious authorities or every member of an elite class. Jesus condemns the ones who like the attention that they get because they have authority. They get to wear the robes and eat the food and have the best seats and be treated with respect—and Jesus seems to suggest that they are holding their office for all the wrong reasons, so that they can get the high regard of their society—and so that they can get rich.
And how do they get rich? By robbing widows. By taking from the poor, from people on the lowest rungs of society, from those who can least afford to lose what they have. By taking from the very people that they are supposed to help. This Gospel is less about giving all that we have and more about hypocrisy, in some ways, and you don’t need me to preach a sermon on the perils of hypocrisy. Every day’s news cycle offers at least one warning about the perils of hypocrisy.
As I’ve been thinking about the widows in this week’s readings, I’ve been thinking about all the ways that our societal structures put people in danger, particularly people with little political power. An election season might make us think that we have the power to change things, and sometimes we do. But Jesus reminds us again and again that the system is rigged. Our earthly empires, whether it’s the Roman empire of Jesus’ time or various societal systems of our own time—our earthly empires are not looking out for the powerless. On the contrary, they are getting rich by exploiting those who have so little.
I hear the words of my Preaching professor echoing in my head: where is the good news in all of this? The widow in the Old Testament gives us the good news that although we may not be able to reverse earthly empires who prey on the weak, that it is God who is in charge. The widows in both of our texts for today give all that they have. Maybe it’s because they have faith in the Temple system or maybe it’s because they were expecting to die anyway. They give, and God transforms.
Let’s be very clear on this. With both widows, we don’t know their mental state. God doesn’t reward them with abundance because of their trust or their faith or their good works. God gives them abundance because that is what God does. The proper response to God’s abundance is to share.
I have seen this dynamic in action this week, very far away from the corridors of political power that were playing out across the nation and the airwaves and social media. I have spent this week not only with Biblical widows but with 21st century widows and older women. I have seen the Kingdom of God this week, because I have been at Quilt Camp at Lutheridge.
In the three days before Quilt Camp, we got a message from one of the leaders. Wouldn’t it be great if we brought any extra quilts we have -- we could share them with people in the western NC area, like the Lutheridge staff, people who have suffered so much loss and have still showed up to work. On the first night, the leader who had sent out the message confided in me that she thought we didn’t have enough quilts even to share with the Lutheridge staff.
But it was early in the retreat, and by the morning, after everyone had a chance to get settled, we had more than enough. Plus, one of the other leaders went through her own fabric stash and organized it into a pillowcase project for us to do. We each received a ziplock bag with 3 pieces of fabric cut into the pattern we would use—plus, there were extra bags, just in case. And by the end of the retreat, we got them all made so that they could be taken to a local quilt fabric shop to be given to community people who had lost their houses.
You might say, “You were making pillowcases for people who have lost everything? Talk about two copper coins! What kind of stupid offering is that?”
It is the kind of offering that we have. We have fabric in abundance, we have time, and we have skills. And a pillowcase can be used for so many things beyond just protecting a pillow.
As I watched us working on our own projects while also spending time on projects to help others, I thought of what Jesus so often said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand”—or as I so often paraphrase: “This is what the community of God looks like.” We had women of various ages and all sorts of backgrounds and out of a wide range of political and religious beliefs. In a different setting, we might not have much to say to each other. But at Quilt Camp, where we worked on projects to help others, we connected in a way that was even deeper than it would have been if we had just worked on our own projects.
This is what the Kingdom of God looks like: giving to those who have less, giving what we have, pledging our allegiance to the vision of community that Jesus tells us is possible.
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