I am so very excited by the way this Narrative Lectionary is
opening up things I haven’t seen before in the Bible! I cannot believe how often I have both read
and studied the Gospel of Mark, and it was only this week, when studying that
it occurred to me that Jesus, after his entry into Jerusalem, methodically
works his way through all of the religious leaders who were at the Temple that
week of his death. We found the first
trio to be: the Chief Priests, the Scribes and the Elders. Then Jesus moved onto the Pharisees and the
Herodians; and in this morning’s text he takes on the Sadducees. Plus, we move back around to encounter a
sincere conversation with a Scribe who as Jesus says of him, “You are not far
from the kingdom of God.”
Who? Who is
next? No one! It says…After
that no one dared to ask him any question.
Does this mean that Jesus is done?
Oh no! He goes on to have
conversations with the crowds about David’s line and his standing in it and
finally he has a conversation with the disciples before he leaves the temple
that day. Jesus observed a widow. Debi Thomas shares some of her insights in
this story in such a new way, that I am happy to share them with you this
morning. She says:
[i]"The
Widow's Mite" is a classic Gospel story — a go-to for churches during
Stewardship Season. Who hasn't heard the moving account of the widow who
slips quietly into the Temple, drops her meager offering into the treasury, and
slips away? Who hasn't squirmed when a well-meaning pastor saddles the
story to its inevitable "so what?" question: "If a poor widow
can give her sacrificial bit for the Lord's work, how can we — so comfortably
wealthy by comparison — not give much, much more?"
I'll admit it; I've squirmed, but not because the question
indicts my giving. I've squirmed because this woman's "mite"
haunts me; her story is harder-edged than I'd like to admit. And yet
something in me doesn't want her reduced to a moral, or exploited for the sake
of capital campaigns and annual budgets. I wish I knew her name. I
wish I knew for sure that her real-life fierceness exceeded the piety we've
imposed on her. I hope — I hope — she died with dignity.
Died? Yes. Died. She died, probably
mere days after she dropped those two coins into the Temple treasury.
In case that's a surprise, consider again what Jesus said about her
as she left the Temple that day: "She out of her poverty has put in everything
she had, all she had to live on."
As far as I can tell from reading the Gospels, Jesus wasn't
given to exaggeration. If he says the woman gave everything she had,
well, she gave everything she had. We know she was an impoverished widow
in first century Palestine, a woman living on the margins of her society.
She had no safety net. No husband to advocate for her, no pension to draw
from, no social status to hide behind. She was vulnerable in every single
way that mattered. Two pennies short of the end.
If I'm getting the timing right, Jesus died four days after
the events in this story. I wonder if the widow did, too.
Here's what makes me squirm: what does it mean to applaud a
destitute woman who gave her last two cents to the Temple, and then slipped away
to starve? Is this really a story of selflessness, or is it a cautionary
tale about naiveté? Should we cheer or weep?
Let's complicate the question further. St. Mark
prefaces the story of the widow with an account of Jesus blasting the religious
leaders of his day for their greed, pomposity, and crass exploitation of the
poor. "Beware of the scribes," Jesus tells his followers.
"They devour widow's houses and for the sake of appearance say long
prayers."
Their piety, in other words, is a sham, and the religious
institution they govern is corrupt — not in any way reflective of the God
the Psalmist calls a "Father of orphans and protector of widows."
Indeed, in the days leading up to the widow's last gift,
Jesus offers one scathing critique after another of the economic and political
exploitation he witnesses all around him. He makes a mockery of Roman
pomp and circumstance when he processes into Jerusalem on a donkey's
back. He cleanses the Temple's money-mongering with a whip.
He refuses to answer the chief priests, scribes, and elders
when they demand to know the source of his authority. He confounds
religious leaders [the Pharisees and Herodians] on taxes, indicts them with a
scathing parable about a vineyard and a murdered son, defeats them [that is,
the Sadducees] on the question of resurrection, and bewilders them with riddles
about his Davidic ancestry.
So why on earth would he turn around and praise a woman for
endangering her already endangered life to support an institution he condemns?
The simple answer is, he doesn't. Read the story
carefully; he doesn't. Centuries of stewardship sermons
notwithstanding, Jesus never commends the widow, applauds her self-sacrifice,
or invites us to follow in her footsteps. He simply notices her, and
tells his disciples to notice her, too.
This is a moment in the story when I'd give anything to hear
Jesus's tone of voice. Is he heartbroken as he tells his disciples to
peel their eyes away from the rich folks and glance in her direction
instead? Is he outraged? Is he resigned? What does it mean to
him, mere seconds after he's described the Temple leaders as devourers of
widows' houses, to witness just such a widow being devoured? And worse,
participating in her own devouring?
Here's a telling postlude: immediately after the widow
leaves the Temple, Jesus leaves, too, and as he does, an awed disciple invites
Jesus to admire the Temple's mammoth stones and impressive buildings.
Jesus' response is quick and cutting: "Not one of these stones will be left
upon another; all will be thrown down."
Ouch. I wonder if the widow is still on Jesus's mind
as he predicts the destruction of the Temple. He has just watched a
trusting woman give her all to an indefensible institution, one that refuses to
protect the poor. No edifice steeped in such injustice will stand.
Back to my earlier question: should we cheer or weep in the
face of this story? Or — here's a third alternative — should we
call out (as Jesus did) any form of religiosity that manipulates the vulnerable
into self-harm and self-destruction?
Jesus notices the widow. He sees what everyone else
is too busy, too grand, too spiritual, and too self-absorbed to see. For
me, this is the only redemptive part of the story — that Jesus's eyes are
ever on the small, the insignificant, the hidden.
What did Jesus notice? I don't know for sure, but I'll
hazard some guesses.
I think he noticed the widow's courage. I imagine it
took quite a bit of courage for her to make her gift alongside the rich with
their fistfuls of coins. Even more to allow the last scraps of her
security to fall out of her palms. And more still to swallow panic,
swallow desperation, swallow the entirely human desire to cling to life no
matter what — and face her end with hope.
I think Jesus noticed her dignity. Surely she had to
steel herself when widowhood rendered her worthless — a person marked
"expendable" even in the Temple she loved. Surely she had to
trust — in the face of all the evidence piled up around her — that
her tiny gift had value in God's eyes.
And finally, I think Jesus noticed her vocation.
Whether she knew it or not, the widow's action in the Temple that day was
prophetic. She was a prophet in the sense that her costly offering
amounted to a holy denunciation of injustice and corruption. Without speaking a
word, she spoke God's Word in the ancient tradition of Isaiah, Elijah,
Jeremiah, and other Old Testament prophets.
But she was also prophetic in the Messianic sense, because
her self-sacrifice prefigured Jesus's. Perhaps what Jesus noticed was
kinship. Her story mirroring his. The widow gave everything she had
to serve a world so broken, it killed her. Days later, Jesus gave
everything he had to redeem, restore, and renew that world.
And, he still does.
Amen
[i]
Journey with Jesus. By Debie Thomas.
Posted 01 November 2015. For Sunday
November 8, 2015 Lectionary
Readings (Revised Common Lectionary, Year B)
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