Pentecost 25

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 25
PROPER: 27 B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 9, 1997

TEXT: Mark 12:38-44 - The Pharisee’s Injustice and The Widow’s Offering

As Jesus taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes . . . . They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” . . . . . . “For all of them have contibuted out of their abundance; but she out of her powerty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

See also: I Kings 17:8-16 - Elijah and the Widow

ISSUE: The passage reveals an unrighteous behavior on the part of the scribes who are self-serving and unjust. They give but it is out of an abundance accumulated out of their own greed. The widow, who herself has been victimized by the system, still gives her whole living out of her poverty. She is devoted and faithful to God. She represents, as Jesus, the Elijah-like figure reveals, a deep sensitivity to human need out of her own poverty. The passage raises the issue of how we as individuals and as a church act as good stewards in today’s world, and how we need to wrestle with our own values of giving and sacrifice.
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Today’s passage from Mark is fascinating in terms of what it was like to be, or to have known the scribes in Jesus’ time, the 1st century Mediterranean culture. Jesus was really at odds with their behavior, and surely his condemnation of the scribes as we have it here in Mark’s account of the gospel is good reason for Jesus to have been sought out by the scribes and crucified. The passage is also disturbing to our culture as it challenges motives and behaviors around how we live out our lives in meaningful and giving ways.
Jesus and his disciples have now arrived at the Jerusalem Temple, and the passage from Mark is really scathing criticism of the Scribes by Jesus and the early church. The scribes in this period were lawyers. They were a learned class of people who taught and interpretted the Law of Moses. People turned to them for explanation, interpretation, and understanding of the law. They were probably also used to mangage the accounts or estates of widows who had no sons.
From the point of view of this passage today, there were many at the Jerusalem Temple who were considered to be a rather unscrupulous bunch. The scribes were in a position of honorby virtue of their superior knowledge of the law, and they persisted constantly in grasping for more and more honor. They like to wear their long prestigious robes even in the marketplaces, like a priest wearing his cassock to the super market today. It gave them great attention. They were awarded the best seats in the synagogue where they could rest the backs against the wall where the Torah was kept, and they sat on a platform above the people facing them. At banquets, the scribes were given the best seats of honor. They attended many feasts as a result of the many sacrifices that were offered. Jesus concludes that by virtue of their rich long robes, their conspicuous consumption at banquets, they were also devouring the estates of widows to support their extravagant life styles. While they claimed to support or give to the poor, the giving went largely to themselves.
In contrast, widows (a word in the Hebrew which means “silent one” or one unable to speak) were often vicitimized. A widow without a son had no honor status, and no voice in public matters. They were women, and women without the protection of a son or husband, and therefore were very vulnerable to the unscrupulous. They were not included in Hebrew inheritance laws. Their resources were very limited, and they often returned to their home of origin.
In the story as we have it this morning, Jesus is condemning the scribes for their conspicuous comsumption habits and devouring the living of widows. Furthermore, Jesus points out how a widow is so very oppressed by the system. People contributed in the temple by pouring coins into a metal funnel, trumpet like, where they fell into a thief proof container. The rich would pour in their coins and it would make a great racket of noise. Everyone would “oooh” and “aaah.” They would receive their honor and reward by the crowds. Jesus, however, points out that a poor widow has gone to the trumpet to contribute her share, and by the sound of the “tinkle” you can tell that it is no more than two tiny copper coins, about 1/64th of a days wage. Jesus makes the dramatic point that the woman is thereby being robbed by this corrupt system. She is totally dishonored in her poverty! She had already been required to pay to have her money changed into temple currency at an exhorbitant rate. This corrupt system is abusive and demeaning. She is totally victimized by a legal system and a way of life that destroys the poor, which is supposedly intended to help it. The woman is the stereotypical symbol of the exploited and the oppressed. Jesus hated it and exposed it, and was ultimately crucified for doing so. Jesus was very very disturbing and challenging to his culture and its ways and traditions. He was very critical of a system that fed itself to the exclusion of the poor and the oppressed. Jesus saw this woman as totally victimized! Jesus predicted its decline and the very fall of the Temple itself.
The story of the widow in the temple for the early church made still another important point related to the widow’s contribution. Jesus makes the point that the widow actually put in more than anyone else in the community. In fact her offering was the most significant. She gives out of her poverty. All the rest, the rich, the affluent, and the scribes and pharisees gave according to the law and in some instances beyond the laws requirement and received their honor for doing so. They gave their tithes. But they gave because they had it to give. They gave out of their abundance. They gave out of what was left-over. The widow on the other hand gave out of her poverty, and what’s more she gave everything she had left to give. While at one point in the story, she is the victimized symbol of the exploited and oppressed, now she is the symbol of total and complete faithfulness. She gives all she has to God, even in her victimized widowhood, in complete trust. For Jesus this is the new, genuine, real, and authentic honor! She risks her whole life, meagre though it is, in complete faith and trust in God.
Incidentally, the story of Elijah and the widow from I Kings 17:8-16, is a very similar story. Elijah the prophet comes to a foreign widow woman in a time of famine. In great trust and faith, the foreign woman supports the prophet until the famine ends, and she experiences the miracle of the meal and oil that never runs out. In the Mark story, Jesus, that Elijah-like figure, sees in the widow of his time this great trust that in God she will not know emptiness, but fullness.
Did I not say that this passage is a very distrubing one? As we consider the various systems of which we are part, like our country, our businesses, our church, and as individuals in community, the passage challenges us to see ourselves in the light of the Gospel. It asks us to consider where we stand as a just society? What of our values and our expression of godly living that reflects a generosity and a deep appreciation of the oppressed? How do we really reflect our commited trust and faithfulness?
Consider some of the things going on in our own time and in our own culture. I have heard it said that Michael Jordon, the famous basketball player, receives more money advertising for Nike, the atheletic shoe maker, than they pay all of their employees in wages in one of their foreign plants.
Many CEO’s reportedly make a disproportionate amount of money in comparison to the people who work under them.
Many people, widows and the elderly, here in our own country receive minimum wages in some of our fast food establishments, while wealthier people feast on very low cost food. Local food producers are often at the mercy of imported foods.
Recently we have heard of Ted Turner’s enormously generous contribution to the United Nations. We hear of others giving large grants of money to colleges, universities, to the arts. We think of these people as the great philanthropists of our society and time. They are. They receive great press and honor. But notice too that many such gifts are out of the abundance of the wealthy giver who writes the check and then sits down to a sumptuous dinner in a mansion. It’s like the baseball player who makes ten million dollars each year and then says I can afford to give away a million dollars. That’s all well and good, but he can well afford to do so out of his wealth. Their real fair share is in a very different category from the average person’s income.
There are, of course, those who will say, I don’t have or make much money so I will keep mine for myself and let the fat-cats do the giving. But this attitude is hardly in keeping with what Jesus saw in the enormous generosity of the widow lady in the Temple who gave away her two copper pennies.
We must also consider what our churches are doing in terms of being faithful to their mission. It is tempting to become isolated, and to enjoy all the energies we put into our rituals, our church buildings, and our long robes. In recent years there has been a sad retreat and abandonment of the city of churches where members have fled to the more comfortable suburbs. We have left a vacumn there, a void of Christian influence where it is most desperately needed. This issue is one that may well need the attention of the suburban churches if they are to be genuinely oriented in Christian mission. With the advent of Christendom and the church’s fascination with long robes, sumptuous living, and the heirarchical structure that leads to competitiveness, and protection by the state, the church has not always been true to its greater sense of serving others as it has been to serving itself.
Even as individual Christians we may well need to reflect on our own selves in terms of what it is we give as Christians. Do we give and live meaningfully out of just what is left over, our abundance, or do we give and live out of sense of what is first and foremost in our lives, a sense of being God’s people and his own instruments and agents in the world that God can use? Do we live and give out of trust that God has already given to us more than we can desire or pray for? Remember the story of the Feeding of the 5,000. The boy gives his lunch of two fish and five barley loaves. He is fed and so is a multitude down through the ages. We still gather here on Sundays to feed on the wealth of God’s love expressed out of a little boy’s poverty of some 2,000 years ago.
Similar to the scribes, it is easy to think of ourselves as better than others, more deserving than others, more righteous than others, more right than others. Like the scribes we want to see ourselves to be the honorable. Yet real honor was the old widow lady, “the poor in spirit” who only had her poverty to offer. All she had was her emptiness and she becomes a sign for the ages, a sign of faith and trust that God can use to awaken hope in others. Compassion and sensitivity to human need often becomes desenstitized by rationalizations to keep things the way they are.
The scriptures today calls all of us to a self-examination of who we are and to consider the motives and values which drive us. It challenges our complacency. It makes us look at who we are and what we are able to give to God’s world, how we are a meaningful part of that world. It helps us once again to see that Christ in his own poverty and out pouring of his life brought hope for all and a deeper more profound justice for all. We are called to be responsible in terms of what God has given us, and that means a lifetime of consideration of Jesus Christ in the Gospel and our faithful response to it.