Poverty Matters: Mark 12:38-44 - Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Old Widow by PREM KUMAR MARNI.  Creative Commons image on flickr

³⁸ As [Jesus] taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, ³⁹ and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! ⁴⁰ They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
  ⁴¹ He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. ⁴² A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. ⁴³ Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. ⁴⁴ 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.” (NRSV)

I wasn’t in history class that I first learned about the Great Depression...  I learned about it from my grandparents who lived it.

My grandmother on my mother’s side grew up in a small coal mining town called Crucible.

Her father was a coal miner—and in those days, the mining company was your whole world.  They owned the house you lived in and the stores you shopped in...  The miner and his family, on the other hand, owned practically nothing.  And the wages were anything but fair.  A miner was paid based upon the amount of coal he dug out of the ground—and if he didn’t mine enough, he would be in debt to the mining company for the cost of the oil for his miner’s hat light.

He was never without work during the Depression—but one day, the family was down to its last dime...  With that, he purchased a can of baked beans from the company store.  That was their dinner—and they ate with no promise that there would be food on the table tomorrow...

I’ve never had an experience like this—so it’s hard for me to fully understand the plight of the widow at the temple…

Jesus is seated in the temple with his disciples, opposite the treasury.  Many rich people make extravagant contributions.  Then a poor widow comes along who gives two small copper coins.  In today’s money, it would amount to about a dollar or maybe two. 

Jesus makes a very simple analysis of the situation: the wealthy give of their abundance; the widow gives of her poverty—which amounts to everything she had.  Her whole life…

There’s so much tragedy in this short story…  In Jesus’ day, if you were a widow, you didn’t have your husband to provide for you.  Most widows were forced into a beggars’ existence.  But before she comes along, Jesus condemns the religious leaders at the temple, who wear extravagant clothes, demand peoples’ honor, and show off their religiousness for everyone to see.  As teachers and experts in the Law of Moses, they surely had read the numerous passages from Deuteronomy in which God commands that widows, orphans, and foreigners be looked after and provided with the necessities of life that they cannot obtain for themselves.  In reality, they were devouring widows’ houses, instead of building them up…

Sadly, poverty in today’s world bears a stark resemblance to the widow’s plight.  The statistics spouted off by politicians and charity organizations only begin to tell the story of human suffering that is everywhere present, yet mostly invisible.  Unless you’ve lived it, it’s unimaginable having to live each day with the very real possibility that you could be hungry and out in the street.  Unless you’ve lived it, it’s unimaginable having to choose which of life’s necessities you will do without, because you can’t pay for them.  What makes matters worse is the cruel and dehumanizing perceptions we impose on the poor: that they’re immoral, lazy parasites feeding off of honest, hard-working people… 

At the same time, we fail to recognize what’s true for all of us: that wealth, health, relationships, reputation, and everything else we build our lives upon can disappear in an instant.  There isn’t a single one of us who can claim a righteousness that surpasses everyone else.  We can’t rise above our mortality.  In the end, we’re all beggars before a holy God.

But here is what makes the story of the poor widow good news for everybody: Jesus notices!  Her poverty matters to Jesus—and so does her faith.  She has basically nothing to give, but gives it anyway.  She drops her two copper coins into God’s hands, and with them, her very life.  And God, who raised Jesus from the dead, can take that nothing and create new life.  Her simple gift will forever be a testimony to the faithfulness and mercy of God, especially in the face of overwhelming need.

Jesus challenges us by her faith in three ways:

Without question, the widow is living what is for the rest of us the sum of all our fears.  She is destitute; forced into a beggars’ existence.  We fear poverty perhaps even more than we fear death —and it is this fear that drives so much of our greed, such that we hoard and squander our abundance while others do without.  But we all have to make a choice: do we hold it all back and live in fear?  Or do live in faith, and say “it all belongs to God?” 

We are all one breath away from being destitute—but regardless of if it happens, or we’re already there, our lives matter to God.  Our needs matter to God.  It’s God’s will that your needs be met.  And no matter what, you can never fall out of God’s love and care. 

But as great a promise as this is, it’s just noise unless we put the widow’s generosity into practice.  We must put off all pretense about our strength, ability, and self-sufficiency and own our poverty before God and each other.   We’re all “have-nots” without Jesus.  Yet we have been gathered together into one body to belong to Jesus and to each other.  God’s gifts are present in the time, talents, and treasures in our individual possession.  We can see to it that there is no one in need among us and that no one is forgotten.  Let’s not forget that God’s gifts do include those persons, who on the surface, may have nothing to offer.  They may very well be as angels who build you up in faith and reveal to you the face of Jesus. 

There is no stronger evidence of the presence of Christ when a community like ours embraces with love those who are most helpless.