The story of the Widow’s Mite is one
of the most well-known in the New Testament, and it gets drug out about this
time every year for stewardship season.
It’s so iconic that the Lectionary obligingly places it at about the
time churches are working up their budget.
The word “mite” comes from the King James Version, there were no coins
called that in Jesus’ day, but there was a “mite” in 16th Century England. The Greek word that is rendered in our translation as “small coins” is lepton, which means small in Greek . . .
they were minted in vast numbers by one Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judea from
103 until 76 B.C.E. There were so many
of them made that they abound even today, and you can pick up a couple of
widow’s lepta on the internet for $20 or so.
You can even find fine widow’s-lepta
jewelry, a fact in which I find a certain irony, because the widow of this tale
certainly couldn’t afford such a thing . . . she was poor as a church
mouse. If two lepta were all she had to
eat on, she must not have eaten hardly at all . . . together, the two were
worth about the same as a quadrans, the smallest denomination of Roman coin,
which I guess is why the our translation says they’re worth a penny. Almost all the paintings of the story—like
this one—show her with a child, but it’s not in the text, either here in Mark
or over in Luke. I guess it’s to
increase the pathos of the scene, as
in “look, she’s got a child, for gosh sake . . . are those rich folks heartless
or what?”
Actually, pathos is probably the least of what Jesus is going for here. Widows—along with orphans—are stand-ins for
the poorest of the poor in first century Palestine. Whenever Jesus—or another storyteller—says “widow”
or “widows and orphans” we’re meant to think of a whole class of people, a
whole substrate—the people whose backbreaking labor supported the few at the
top, the few like the scribes, the story of whom our lectionary (rightly)
includes in the passage. They like to
wear long robes—a symbol of wealth and piety—and walk walk around the
marketplace and be greeted with respect . . . I can see them now, the most
learned men in Judaism, cruising through the stalls like ships of state, giving
the queen’s wave . . . Jesus says to beware of these folks, don’t get tangled
up with them . . . they go to church on Sundays, and sit at the best pews, and
say wonderful, sonorous prayers—almighty Creator, we come to thee humble and full
of wonder, and thank you for all with which you have blessed us—and then on
Monday they go to work and foreclose on that single mom, or pick up a piece
of “distressed property” from an
out-of-work dot-commer, or cut another couple thousand jobs ‘cause profits are
down—got a fiscal responsibility to the stockholders, you know . . . and the widow is an icon, a placeholder,
an avatar for the poor of the time.
And Jesus said beware of them,
because they will gut you like a fish, they are only concerned with themselves
. . . they will callously discard you, foreclose on your house at the drop of a
hat . . . but I wonder if that’s the only reason . . . could Jesus mean that
we’re to beware of people like that because if we get tangled up with them, if
we do business with them, we’ll become like them? There seems to be something of that sense
about it, else why would he tell us what fate awaits them? Why tell us that they will receive a greater
condemnation if he’s not warning us not to be like them?
The scribes are engaged in the
time-honored practice of compartmentalizing their religion and their secular
life, separating them out so that they do not conflict. It’s convenient that way: their beliefs don’t
have to infect how they live their day to day lives. Even though Jesus is very clear about what
awaits those who deal harshly with the poor—we can only imagine what “the
greater condemnation” entails—we Christians, just like the scribes, are very
good at not letting that sort of thinking get in the way of making money.
Well.
Just as the scribes can be considered an object lesson for a certain
type of behavior—beware!—so can the widow, because conveniently, here comes one,
one of the very embodiments of the poor and exploited . . . and has this widow
had her house devoured lately? Has she
been swindled out of it, or just couldn’t pay the mortgage? Whatever has happened to her, we know she
doesn’t have a lot, cause as we saw, those two lepta aren’t worth much. And while Jesus and the disciples watch, rich
folks come along and put a lot of money into the pot, doubtless after looking
around to make sure the right people are observing them, but the widow puts in
those two lepta, worth together a Roman cent, the last penny she has.
Who do you identify with in this
story? If you say “the widow, of course”
I say “Not so fast” . . . I know who I
identify with, and I squirm when I think of it.
As you can see, I haven’t missed many meals, and my family’s always had
some kind of health insurance. I can go
out and buy triple-mocha decaf lattés, if I want, and see a movie if I want,
and I can even buy a book or a DVD once in a while. I know on what side of the equation I belong,
and it isn’t with the down-trodden. But
to be fair, if I can’t identify with the widows and orphans, I can’t identify
exactly with the scribes. I mean, I
haven’t devoured any widows’ lately, I haven’t foreclosed on any single mom's
houses . . . I give to charities, volunteer my time for those less fortunate .
. . and that’s probably where a lot of us are, we’re not bad people, in fact
we’re good people, especially by our society’s standards . . . so if we’re not
widows and orphans, and we’re not really those hungry scribes, who are we in
this passage? Well . . . we’re us,
that’s who we are, we are ourselves . . . and there really was no counterpart
for us in those days, there was no middle class . . . we have disposable income
and leisure time, but most of us are hardly rich . . . but we do support the
rich, don’t we? We buy their products,
we shop for bargains, we drive the great, consumer engine that produces the Ken
Lays and Bill Gateses . . . we are the consumers, and we have the power to
change things, if we would . . .
Jesus calls over the disciples – he
doesn’t say this to the crowds – he calls them over, and the disciples know
that this is a teaching, because he begins with the words “Truly I say unto
you” and the Teaching goes “this poor widow has given more than all those
contributing to the temple, for they all contributed out of their abundance” –
and other translations here call it surplus or money they could spare – “but
she had put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” In other words, the rich put in from their
disposable income, from money they could spare – and remember, only they had it
– while the widow gave all she had to live on.
Whoa!
All she could live on! What is
that supposed to mean? Surely not what
it says, not the plain sense of it, surely not that we're supposed to give all
we have . . . Ah think ah’m gonna be faint . . . but that's what Jesus says,
and we could mince words, we could parse it and claim that Jesus didn't
actually say that everyone had to give everything that they owned, only that
because she did, her gift was more important, we could try to interpret it
away, but the essence of the teaching remains the same: the widow was being
more faithful by giving two measly pennies, because they were all she had, than
the rich who gave huge sums.
The psalmist writes: the earth is the
Lord's, and all that is in it . . . Paul speaks of our lives – of our lives –
being bought for a price, which is the life and death of Jesus Christ . . .
this widow's giving shows that she knew this fundamental reality beneath all of
stewardship: everything we have, all our money, our houses, even ourselves – is
not our own, it belongs to God. Sorry,
folks, but it's true . . . all the money
we'll ever earn, all our stuff, everything, is the Lord's.
The rich, who gave only from what
they could spare, their disposable income, held themselves up against God, they
balanced their own selves, their own needs with God's. And holding your needs, your money – indeed
yourself – up in balance with God is idolatry, plain and simple, and God
doesn't like an idolater.
We might say that this notion that
all belongs to God is the first principle of stewardship, and the second is
this: who’s on first? The answer of the rich, who gave only from what they
could spare, was clear: they came first, not God. They held themselves in higher regard than
the Almighty. The widow showed – by very
drastic action, designed to drive the point home – that (1) everything belongs
to God and (2) with her, God came first.
In the Old Testament, where the notion is first seen, a tithe is to be
the first fruits of the labor of the people of God, in other words, the stuff
off the top. Whenever they got the
harvest, or money from selling, their goods, they gave first to God, and they
gave the most choice, un-blemished goods, the
before-any-other-tax-or-expenditure cream off the top. Then they fed themselves.
And
that is the idea historically behind a Christian tithe as well . . . it's a
before-tax, before anything else offering to God . . . And we like to think of
it as a gift, as if we're being generous, as if it entitles us to be first in
line, or have a greater say in how things are run in the church, but it's
really not. After all, how can we gift
God with something – our time, our money or our selves – that belongs to God in
the first place? That’s a principle the
widow knew all too well.
And there you have it: the story of
the Widow’s Lepta, the Widow’s mite. And
I would not presume to tell you all how much to give, that would be a kind of
judgment, and that of course is up to God.
But it’s important to give something, ‘cause we’re all adults here: we
all know that it costs money to run the church, and that those costs go up
every year. So prayerfully consider how
much God is leading you to give, and drop your pledge into the basket this
Consecration Sunday, or fill out the form online. Amen.
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