MARK 12:38-44

GRACE TO YOU AND PEACE FROM OUR LORD AND SAVIOR, JESUS THE CHRIST. AMEN

Some passages of scripture make us nervous. When we hear them, it’s easy to wonder, “How does this apply to me?” The story of the poor widow who deposited two small coins in the temple treasury is one of those “NERVOUS” passages. Jesus is in the temple sitting and watching the people make their contributions to the treasury. He sees rich people placing large sums of money into the collection box. Then along comes a poor widow who gives only two small coins, but Jesus tells his disciples that this woman has given more than any of the others, for she gave everything she had. That’s what makes us nervous.

Are we expected to be like that widow? Am I going to tell you this morning that if you want to please Jesus you must give up everything you have? If so, I’d expect you to look me in the eye and say, “BE MY GUEST! AFTER YOU! LEAD THE WAY!” I don’t believe Jesus asks everyone to do so. Although he did demand such a sacrifice once of the rich young ruler, major surgery to save the man’s spiritual life. “Go sell all you have, then come follow!” And he went away sadly, because he had much.

Can it really be that the poor are praised? That this widow is lifted up because she gave every bit of money in her bank account? Is this what it takes to follows Jesus? Why this preference for poverty in Jesus’ teaching? Does it sometimes seem that Jesus is romanticizing and idealizing the poor? Surely the poor would be the first to object. Life in poverty is what we all want to avoid, not aspire to it. No one dreams of growing up poor, living from moment to moment, one day to the next, living from hand to mouth.

The woman at the temple was not a POOR widow. She was POOR because she was a widow. If I understand the economics and society of 1st Century Palestine, it tells me there was no such thing as a RICH widow. Women were totally dependent on their male relatives for their livelihood. To be widowed meant not only losing someone you may have loved, but more tragically, it also meant that you were losing the one on whom you were totally dependent. Widows were forced to live off the good graces of other male relatives and anyone in the community who might provide a meal here, a little money there.

The two little coins in her hand were probably all she had. The truth is—and the extremely poor know this well—those coins weren’t going to change her life. When you’ve got so little, a penny or two isn’t going to move you from welfare to work. But she could be at peace and be joyful knowing she was able to give to the temple treasury. With the coins or without them, she was still going to be a dependent person.

Mark doesn’t tell us what Jesus was looking for. Watching the ushers take up the collection is hardly exciting, unless someone drops the plate and quarters get scattered all over the floor (with carpeting we probably wouldn’t even notice it). We just know that he was watching, silently…as people made their contributions to the treasury. Some were giving large sums of money when suddenly there comes along this widow, who drops in the coins, which animates Jesus.

And to the disciples he says, “TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THAT WOMAN OVER THERE. THE ONE JUST NOW WALKING AWAY…SHE HAS GIVEN MORE THAN ANY OF THE OTHERS. THEY GAVE OUT OF THEIR WEALTH WHAT THEY COULD AFFORD. BUT SHE GAVE OUT OF HER POVERTY. WHAT SHE COULDN’T AFFORD. WHAT SHE JUST GAVE AWAY WAS HER LIFE!”

Not exactly what he said…I know. But that’s where the story may make us nervous, or at least raise an eyebrow, or make us a tad anxious.

Jesus makes his point. “She gave out of her poverty, and put in all she had, all she had to live on.” An extraordinary thing for a widow to do. If Jesus isn’t trying to make us anxious what can we learn from this short little episode and encounter in his ministry? I believe there are several poignant lessons for us to consider, particularly at this time of year as we prepare for thanksgiving in anticipation of calling to mind our many blessings. It’s also the time when we consider what God is calling us to do as we contemplate the sharing of our gifts. The most obvious, simply stated, SHE GAVE ALL SHE HAD. SHE TRUSTED GOD! Pretty extraordinary! Don’t you think? One writer put it this way, “SHE DIDN’T TITHE! SHE TOTALED!” She gave her earthly goods. How could she do that? Maybe when you’re that low on the economic scale, giving isn’t the problem, but getting is! She wasn’t dependent upon her money or her station in life because she didn’t have either. She was dependent upon God and her neighbor for everything. She didn’t have two feet to stand on. No bootstraps to pull up. She was totally dependent—and that’s what Jesus pulls out of her story, like a pearl of great price. She gave, but knew someone who gave even more generously, namely a God who would care for her needs.

Isn’t that what the Bible says? As in the 23rd Psalm…“THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT.” Or that sweeping sentence in Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount.

“THEREFORE I TELL YOU, DO NOT BE ANXIOUS ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WHAT YOU SHALL EAT OR WHAT YOU SHALL DRINK, NOR ABOUT YOUR BODY, WHAT YOU SHALL PUT ON. IS NOT LIFE MORE THAN FOOD, AND THE BODY MORE THAN CLOTHING? LOOK AT THE BIRDS OF THE AIR; THEY NEITHER SOW NOR REAP NOR GATHER INTO BARNS, AND YET YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER FEEDS THEM. ARE YOU NOT OF MORE VALUE THAN THEY? (Mt. 6:25-26).

This is where true giving does start, with trust in God. It is about life-style. Where we place our trust. “Where you place your trust you place your love. Where you place your love, you place your life!” If we trust in God, “as our coins say,” if we have committed our lives to Him, then our gifts become a measure of our trust. When she gave, she had to trust. She had no other place to turn. It’s what we are to be like before God—dependent on nothing but the grace of God.

Are we dependent on what we possess to give us all we want and need from life, or are we dependent on God to enrich us? We are to live our lives in ways that show and tell that we are dependent on our God for all we have and all that we are. It all belongs to God. “We give thee but thine own, whate’er the gift may be. All that we have is Thine alone, a trust O Lord from thee.” We’d be hard pressed to find anywhere in the scriptures where it says, “THE LORD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES.” Having isn’t a sin—but it is a temptation! It tempts me to put my trust in what I have rather than in the one who has me!

Our culture/our world counsels us to become like the honored scribes, but they were anything but dependent upon God and lacking in humility. Jesus counsels us to become more like the dishonored widow. To model our lives on one we would normally overlook, since we are so busy admiring the lifestyles of the “rich and famous”.

The widow tossed the only shred of independence into the offering plate, but kept intact her dependence on the one who provided for her. I like to think of her as a spiritual mentor—standing there on the margins of all we hold dear. Her life of faith grounded in the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. It’s a life lived with the conviction that we are stewards of all we have in our hands and our lives, not the owners of all things. Had she kept her money, no one would have been the wiser. The temple treasury would have suffered only a very small loss. She must have loved God, otherwise, she would never have made the sacrifice.

Faith doesn’t suddenly reach that level, but most often blossoms after being nurtured. It most often grows through the years finding that God keeps God’s promises. You don’t part with your last penny, except for someone you love. Someone for whom you care deeply. Someone who CARES DEEPLY FOR YOU!

Paul Sherer, Lutheran Pastor/writer,preacher once said, “LOVE IS A SPENDTHRIFT! LOVE LEAVES ITS ARITHMATIC AT HOME. AND LOVE IS ALWAYS, “IN THE RED!”

There are two images here; both powerful and worthy of our consideration. The first is the powerful image of what it means to be “empty before God”. “Nothing in my hands I bring”. To be empty is to have the capacity to be filled. That means receiving, not giving and doing. The Kingdom of God is received in and through Christ. Having been shed of everything, having stood empty and childlike and poor without claim before God, we are able to receive, even our own life as a GIFT. Such a person is rich, even if you have just placed your last penny in the plate. It reveals a faith so sacrificial, that it does make most of us anxious and nervous.

A second image, is when we consider that maybe, in the widow’s “giving her all”, she she foreshadows a scene that will take place before long in the life of Christ, the Cross. Maybe, Mark is pointing us forward to that cross, upon which another placed everything, His life, His ALL. The was for you, for me, for all, the church--for the sake of the world. That cruciform shadow falls upon the widow, as she places her whole living in the hands of God. The words of the hymn writer come to mind: “WHEN I SURVEY THE WONDROUS CROSS ON WHICH THE PRINCE OF GLORY DIED, MY RICHEST GAIN I COUNT BUT LOSS, AND POUR CONTEMPT ON ALL MY PRIDE. WHERE THE WHOLE REALM OF NATURE MINE, THAT WERE A TRIBUTE FAR TOO SMALL LOVE SO AMAZING SO DIVINE DEMANDS MY SOUL, MY LIFE, MY ALL.”

In Christ we have seen a God who gives us life, provides us with all we need from day to day, and continues to give us this gift of life with the hope of life yet to come. We walk in the footsteps of the widow.

Garrison Keillor, in one of his Lake Woebegon stories tells about a Sunday morning in Lake Woebegon Lutheran. Pastor Inkquist is droning on far too long, waxing eloquently. Clarence Bunson has “checked out early” and realizes its almost time for the offering. So he quietly reaches for his billfold, and opening it realizes there’s no cash. He takes out his pen and checkbook, hiding it in the middle of his Bible, next to one of the Psalms. He begins to scratch out a check for $30, because he almost had a heart attack that week. Also, because somebody in church will count the offering and he wants to see he gave $30. He tries not to be too obvious, but the lady to his right sees him, and Clarence can tell she thinks he’s writing in the pew Bible. So he doesn’t look at what he’s doing. She’s giving him a funny stare and turns back to the sermon. He tries to quietly rip the check out of his checkbook, with limited success. He is still not looking at what he’s doing, so the lady in the pew won’t know he has written a check in church. The offering comes by and Clarence proudly puts in the check, but as he does he glances at the check, now starting down the pew. Only to realize a moment too late, that he’s just written a check for $300. He accidentally, in trying to be secretive, wrote 3-zero-zero on two different lines. What could he do? On the one hand, he couldn’t go downstairs after church, find the deacons counting the offering, and say, “FELLOWS, THERE’S BEEN A MISTAKE. I GAVE MORE THAN I REALLY WANTED TO DO.” On the other hand, he gave all he had in the checking account, and a little more. Perhaps his family would have to eat oatmeal and beans the rest of the month. The gift was going to a good place, he thought. One thing was for sure, noted Keillor, CLARENCE FELT MORE FULLY ALIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME ALL DAY.

I believe that Jesus shows us that our dependence on God leads to joy and to thanks-giving. If God is running the universe and ruling our lives, we no longer have to save ourselves, prove ourselves, or justify ourselves. We are the work of God’s hands. Resting and working in those hands. We give thanks for the widow’s great witness. And we offer our gifts…freely given. In response to the greatest love we can ever know. The love of God in Christ for the sake of world.

As we prayerfully contemplate sharing our gifts and anticipate our Consecration Sunday financial commitments for the New Year, may our gratitude overflow in generous response to the mission and ministry through our congregation. MAY OUR GIVING TO GOD AND GOD’S MISSION IN OUR WORLD MAKE US MORE FULLY ALIVE EACH AND EVER DAY. AMEN.

Pastor Clark Cary