Gary Hall - The Widow's Mite sermon
Although I’m not particularly proud of them, I do have certain pet peeves. One pet peeve of mine is clergy who shout “The Lord be with you!” to quiet a noisy room. Another is going trick-or-treating and getting handed a pencil rather than a candy bar. And a third is preachers who try to use the story of the widow’s mite as an opportunity to talk about stewardship.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not one of those folks who think that Christianity is too spiritual an enterprise for us to talk about money. Far from it. Money is the medium our culture has invented to represent value. So it’s not surprising that, since money symbolizes what we value, Jesus talked about it a lot. I believe that those of us who work with money in the church need to get clear about what money means for us. So we need to be able, as Jesus was able, to talk about money in an open and adult way. It’s just that I get a little squeamish when the church turns to the scriptures to validate its fundraising needs. There are people I know who are more skeptical than the Jesus seminar about the authenticity of almost every statement in the Bible who hold up the example of the ten percent tithe as a bedrock principle of biblical faith. They employ a hermeneutic in regard to stewardship which they would laugh at if it were applied to human sexuality. There’s a lot of stuff in the Bible about money, but we need to be careful about how we apply it to our own institutional needs.
The story of the widow’s mite occupies an interesting place in Mark’s and Luke’s gospels. (Matthew left it out. I wonder why.) In both Mark and Luke, the story comes at the point in Jesus’s ministry when he is near the end of his public ministry, in Jerusalem. This is not a story he is represented as telling; it’s an event he sees and comments on. He has just told us to beware of the scribes and our own internal tendency to desire the reputation of being pious. And then he sits down opposite the temple and sees a poor widow putting two copper coins into the treasury. He is clearly so struck by what he sees that he calls his disciples to him and then says this:
Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. –Mark 12.43-44
Now I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist or a postmodernist deconstructor to see that Jesus is talking less about institutional stewardship here than he is about his own existential situation. Jesus looks at this widow in the context of his own journey from Nazareth to Golgotha and sees something of himself reflected in the widow at the temple. Like Jesus himself, the widow is giving abundantly out of what looks, from the outside, like scarcity. Like Jesus himself, the widow’s gift is “all she had to live on.” I think the event of the widow’s mite is so arresting to Jesus because in it he sees something about his own life and experience that can be represented in no other way. Let’s look briefly at these two things.
The widow gives abundantly out of what looks, from the outside, like scarcity. Seen from the outside, the widow is someone you or I would probably pass by on the street. She is not notable in any outward sense. And what she has to work with–two copper coins–is about as small as you can get in the realm of resources. And yet Jesus sees great depth and power in her gift. In the same way, Jesus and his movement, from the outside, don’t look like very much in the human scale of measurement. They are a bunch of Palestinian Jewish peasants. They lack Roman imperial status and the trappings of importance and power. The scribes, talked about earlier, carry all the markings of socially prominent human beings. Jesus and his movement do not. When Jesus sees the widow giving her two copper coins, I believe he sees this as an image or metaphor for himself. Like him, the widow gives out of what seems, in human terms, almost nothing. And like him, her gift is the most powerful and revolutionary of all those put into the treasury.
That’s the first point, and here is the second: when Jesus sees this woman give her revolutionary gift, he calls it “all she had to live on.” I don’t think it’s a very big interpretive jump to see that Jesus is talking about a kind of generosity which equates with giving one’s life, as he is about to do on Calvary. The reason this story does not work as a stewardship story is that it’s about much more than giving ten percent of your resources for the church and its mission. It’s about giving your life. There is always a deep sense in which Christianity will remain countercultural, because, dress it up as we will with user-friendly enhancements, at the core of Christianity stands the cross. I believe that we need to do everything we can to grow our churches, but there is always a point at which some folks will simply not go any farther with us, and that point is usually the cross. Jesus looks at the widow and sees someone who gives her very life–all she had to live on. Clearly he looked at her and saw something of himself. And just as clearly, when you and I look at her, we need to see something of ourselves, too.
I think what makes a seminary community unique is the way it gathers people who have gotten what Jesus gets when he sees the widow at the temple. You and I are those who realize that, for us, Christianity is about giving our lives. That may mean, quite literally, dying for some of us, though in this time and culture that is usually not the case. But it does mean stepping out of the craziness and comforts of the culture we inhabit and giving ourselves over to Jesus and his kingdom and the serving of people more like the widow and less like the scribe. When you and I look at the widow, we should, like Jesus, see ourselves there. All of us are people who have answered this outwardly absurd call to drop what we were otherwise doing and follow Jesus. We, all of us, are in the process of giving all we have to live on. Seen from the outside, on human terms, this looks like a foolish gesture. Seen from the inside, on Jesus’s terms, this is the very meaning and purpose of life.
When Jesus sat down across from the temple he saw a woman making an offering that told him two things about himself. It told him that a low-status gift can be revolutionary, if seen from God’s point of view. And it told him that he would be called to give all he had to live on in the service of that revolutionary purpose. As we rest here with Jesus, across from the temple, let us recognize one more thing. Jesus is grateful for the widow’s gesture and what it teaches him. In the same way, the God we meet now in the Eucharist is grateful to you for the way you have chosen to give yourself for the furthering of God’s mission. Eucharist, of course, is about thanksgiving. We often remember the reasons that we are thankful to God. We less often remember the reasons that God is thankful for us. As we gather at this table, may we experience both our own gratitude and God’s. Amen.