So
Jesus sits down opposite the treasury of the temple, and here he is opposite
again, here he is apart . . . he’s not part of the temple apparatus, not part
of the scheme, the great engine that keeps the whole thing running . . . For no
matter what else controlled the Jerusalem Temple—whether it be the Lord in his
holy of holies or the high priest just outside—you couldn't buy calves without
copper, you couldn't burn doves without dollars, couldn't pay priests without pennies. So while God may have sat on the cherubim throne, the seat of the temple’s secular might was right there in the
treasury, in front of Jesus and his disciples.
And
I like it that our translation says he sat opposite,
‘cause wasn’t he about as opposite to the wealth that kept the whole ball
rolling as you could get? Wasn’t it he who drove the money-changers out of
that same Temple? Didn't he tell the
rich young man to sell everything he had to the poor? Weren't the rich and famous the fall guys in a
much of his teaching?
And
so he sits there watching the crowd putting money into the treasury, and he’s
not just seeing them, he’s observing them,
he’s taking it all in, not missing a beat . . . “watching” is too passive a translation
of the Greek, which implies more that he is absorbed
in it, even fascinated by it . . . I couldn't swear to it, but I suspect that
Jesus the man was like that, whatever he was looking at, whoever he was looking at, got his total attention . . . Can you
imagine being observed that way, receiving the observer’s whole attention? Nothing in the other’s mind but you, all her
cares, all her thoughts, all her dreams put away, shunted aside, so she can contemplate
only you? The Greeks had a word for that:
it's kenosis, emptying, and Jesus’
whole life was one of self-emptying, self-kenosis. As Paul put it, Jesus “though he was in the form of
God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied
himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Jesus the human being lived his entire life
that way, constantly emptying himself—or as he himself put it, dying to self—so that he might be filled
up with us, contemplating only us in the perfection of his unity with
the divine.
And
that's how I imagine Jesus observes the scene before the Temple: not only
missing nothing, but seeing into
everything, seeing beyond the surface, and it is a seeing of infinite compassion,
a complete seeing, full of
understanding . . . And look! although Jesus talks in dualisms, about the
behavior of the rich as opposed to the widow, he does not condemn them for it. Like the rich young ruler, who couldn't
give up his stuff to follow him, Jesus looks at them and loves them, just the
way they are.
He
sees into the hearts of everyone putting coins into the treasury, it's as if
there is a field around him, an empathy-field, a heart-field, and what does this deep seeing tell him about the
widow? What does he perceive about her act
(in the Greek she’s throwing money
into the pot)? Well, he doesn't say . .
. He just states the obvious, or what should
be obvious to anyone with any brains, that she’s given more than all of
those they’ve spied on up to this point, ‘cause she's given all she has. He doesn't condemn her for it, asking the
same questions I just did, but he doesn't praise her for it, either. Nor does he condemn all the others contributing
out of their abundance, either, not really—he just states the obvious, that
she’s contributed more. He leaves his
disciples—including us modern-day ones—to figure out what he's getting at.
And
so, this passage has been a blank slate, a great tabula rasa upon which preachers can write whatever we need at the
time. Most of which, of course, revolve
around stewardship; a version of it comes up every year about this time, just
by coincidence, I'm sure. And most
sermons take one of two variations—first, as a call for sacrificial giving,
which she certainly does: giving up all she has is certainly a sacrifice. The other variation is an intensification of
the first—we’re called to give up our life. And Jesus might have had something like
this in mind, because though our translation has him saying she put in “all she
had to live on,” a more literal
reading of the Greek is that she put in her entire life.
And
many of you can certainly feature that
. . . Many of you put in long hours and gave large chunks of change to keep
this church afloat over the years . . . And every hour you gave, whether in
money or in sweat, is an hour of your life, which you could have been spending
on something else, on dinner or cars or sleep.
Thus, in a certain, real,
sense the church—this building, it's programs, it's people, even—have become your life, or at least a part of it, and
here’s this widow, giving it all . .
.
But,
to what is she giving that all? Jesus has made it pretty clear that the
Temple, hub of the Israelite religion of the time, is a corrupt institution. After all, he marched into that very Temple
and overturned those money changers’
tables. He criticized them for being in
bed with their Roman oppressors, and in the episode right before this one, he warned his disciples about the Temple scribes,
who devour the houses of widows just like this one. And to top it all off, in the passage right after this one, right after she gives
her life for it, he predicts the
Temple’s destruction.
So
it makes me wonder: just what is
Jesus trying to say here? The picture of
the widow giving her all is surrounded by
bad things about the temple: first, that it is full of corruption, that it
devours the houses of the most vulnerable, then that it's headed for imminent destruction. The widow is shown giving
her life to a corrupt institution that is going to be destroyed anyway by—his
disciples would assume—God.
Let's
look at in a slightly different way: first, Jesus warns his disciples about
scribes in the Temple, who devour widows’ houses. Next, he points out one such widow, giving all she has to that corrupt
institution. Then, he predicts its
destruction. It seems to me that the widow
giving her life to the Temple is
simply another example of its extortionate nature, that induces a widow, in
that culture a symbol of the least of the least of these, to give to it more
than the rich—remember: that's what Jesus says, that what she gives is greater,
as in more, not better. And because she gave all she has to live on,
she presumably starved.
Another
thing to remember is that giving to the Temple was not optional for Jews. For example, the Temple Tax, which Jesus indirectly
protested by turning over those tables, was required of every person, and
Jesus’ disciples—and the people for whom Mark wrote 35 years later—would have
been aware of this, they would've known that what the widow did was not
voluntary.
And
so, far from being a picture of stewardship, where the widow’s small sacrifice
is more faithful than all the rich’s giving from their abundance, what we have
is another example of the corruption of the religious institution that would
make one of the most vulnerable of society pay the last of her money. And then it was destroyed.
This
was likely a great comfort to the folks for whom Mark wrote this, Mark’s
congregation, who were likely more like the poor widow than the rich folks,
but this is stewardship Sunday, and where does it leave us looking for a model of faithful giving. Well, I don't think it's the widow who gave
her life for a worthless institution, but just as she's not a model for us, the
Temple isn't exactly a model for our church,
either. Greenhills Community Church,
Presbyterian, has been a faithful outpost for Christ for over seventy five
years. It has served and ministered to
this community, and to its own members, for three-quarters of a century. And, as I always say, we’re all adults here:
we know that the lights must be kept on, the heat fired up, and the staff
paid. We're all adults, and we don't
need to be reminded that our pledges are the main things that keep this
operation afloat.
And
there’s another thing: we don't need another
model of stewardship, we don't need another
model of faithful service. Because we
worship and study and praise the ultimate model in Jesus Christ, who like the
widow, gave his all for us. So once
again, as I do every year, I ask you to prayerfully pledge what you will give
for the coming year. Amen.
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