The Widow Proper 27B

 The Widow’s Mite

That’s what the church traditionally calls the story in Mark 12:38-44. Which is to overlook at least half, if not all, of what this little episode may really be about. Appearing in what we euphemistically call “stewardship season,” when we not only urge but honestly need people to reconsider their annual support of the local church and its mission to the world in which it lives and moves and has its being, we have tend to trumpet the extravagant, if not downright foolish, generosity of this poor widow who puts he only two coins into the Temple Treasury. I say “trumpet” because evidently in the Court of Women in the Jerusalem Temple there were a number of large trumpet-shaped containers in which people would place monetary offerings to support the administration of the Temple and its system of sacrifices – burnt offerings believed to make the One God of Israel happy and therefore continue to send rain and sunshine to produce an abundance of crops, and good luck in dealing with neighbor countries which often sought delight in plundering Israel’s good fortune. 

The general arc of sermons in this season often say something like, “Look, if this poor widow can give everything she has to the Temple, you can certainly increase your pledge to your local congregation so we can keep the lights on and to heat and air condition our buildings to keep ourselves cozy and comfortable – which surely must be an important component of being God’s covenant people in today’s world.” I will confess to being guilty of turning this poor widow into a hero of sacrificial giving to support the institutions we love to think of as ours; as our own little real estate holding in the emerging Kingdom of God. 

Upon closer review, this turns out to be a fumble that ought to be recovered by the other team. And yes, that other team would be Jesus’s team – those seeking, as he will say later in the Passover week ahead, a kingdom “not of this world,” much to the bafflement of one Pontius Pilate, representative of the Emperor Caesar, whose face was on all the coins of the empire proclaiming, “Caesar is God!” Which of course raises the question already raised earlier in chapter 12 of Mark’s Gospel – why would the administrators of the Temple, the Chief Priests and Sadducees, and of course the Scribes, those arbiters of what the Torah scrolls say and mean, why would these folks be so insistent on gathering as much of these Roman coins as possible if indeed said coins proclaim that a mere mortal like Caesar is God? 

Again, just a few verses earlier in Mark chapter 12, Jesus is asked by a Scribe what is the greatest of all the commandments, of which in Torah there are 613 – 365 “thou shalt nots,” and the remaining 248 “thou shalts”. Jesus answers correctly, reciting the one prayer recited several times a day, the Shema, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And then adds, from Leviticus, “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” The Scribe is impressed, and goes so far to say, “…this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question. This Scribe represents the critique of the Temple’s sacrificial system lodged by all the prophets of the previous six or eight hundred years! That to put all our energy into sustaining this sacrificial institution is to imperil the neighbors we are meant to be loving as God loves us – especially for those who by circumstance and no fault of their own have no male patriarch to look out for them, no pater familias as the Greeks and Romans would have it.

 Of these neighbors in need, it was understood that God had repeatedly commands that widows, women who had lost their pater familias, as well as orphans and aliens - sojourners, strangers in the land fleeing poverty, warfare, or any number of conflict and problems in their own countries - were all to receive the same love, sustenance, and care as one’s own family and fellow Israelite neighbors. All of these particular circumstances – widowhood, orphanhood and migrant worker-hood– had no benefit of a pater familias, and therefore are to be cared for by the community at-large.   

Admittedly it is strange, that after Jesus had such a meaningful encounter with a Scribe who was understood that the Kingdom of God means to care for these marginalized groups of people like the widow in our story, that Jesus would then rip into the Scribes for wearing long robes, saying long prayers, and demanding preferred seating in synagogues and banquets. I confess, every time I read this and similar instructions from Jesus not to wear two tunics, etc, I tremble each Sunday morning as I put on long robes to lead our worship, to sit in front of even the front row week after week, and recite long prayers over our sacred meal we share – a meal that calls us to care for those without resources like our widow and her fellow orphans and resident aliens. Indeed, this story is meant to hold a mirror before each and every one of us. Most especially me. 

For the central question in this would be: to what degree do we participate in sustaining institutions that allow there to be individuals in our society that have nothing more than these two little coins which even in today’s world would be worth a little less than two dollars? 

As we were sharing in Holy Communion at Diocesan Convention on Friday, I found myself jotting down in my notes: Just what kingdom do we support and serve? The Kingdom of God? Or, the kingdom of presidents; the kingdom of Congress; the kingdom of Wall Street; the kingdom of corporations; the kingdom of Church? Or, the kingdom of those in need? 

The Widow’s Mite. I suspect Jesus does not mean to make her the hero of the story, or even a role-model for disciples of his. The widow is, and ought to be, an embarrassment for the Scribes and all of the rest of us who fail to honor her need and follow in the Way of Jesus. She and her cohort of orphans, and sojourners in the land, the homeless, the hungry, and any and all who have no source of family and friends to offer them sustenance, support, and a place to rest their weary bones should not exist if we were to honestly love God and love neighbor.

 Every day on social media I read scathing and even hateful critiques of “the church” and religion, and religious institutions. Yet, it is a fact, that in The Episcopal Church, a percentage of each dollar one gives to the local church goes to the Diocese, and a percentage of that goes to The Episcopal Church Center, to support programs that serve those in need at home and abroad, programs that no local congregation could sustain on its own. We are a mutual aid society. Our official corporate name is: The Foreign and Domestic Missionary Society. We serve people in our community, across the state of Maryland, and throughout the world with each dollar we pledge right here in Rock Spring and all Parishes. And this is for all of us and our small and mighty parish, Good News – the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God according to Mark.