Two Poor
Mark 12:38-44
November 8, 2009
In lots of inner city neighbourhoods, it is the common practice during summer weather to sit out on the stoop, the front steps, and spend hours watching the people and traffic going by. As the wise sage Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.”
What kind of things do you observe? A lot of little things and we observers are often shrewd and not kind at what we think we see. Often our observations reveal far more about our prejudices and problems than they do about the people passing by.
It has always bothered me about the time Jesus and his disciples sat down opposite the Temple treasury and watched countless people place their money into the coffers. Wonderful entertainment, don’t you think? Lots of people put in big impressive noisy sums - there was no such thing as paper money then, and come to think of it, no such thing as paper. So everyone around could hear how rich you are. Putting money in the coffers was more a matter of ostentatious style than of generosity. Better to pour it in slowly than all at once; the longer the noise the longer people hear it.
Sitting on the stoop, what stops your gaze? Somebody completely out of place. After a while you’ve seen enough flamboyant rich guys or more modest people trying to appear dignified. A poor widow timidly approaching, not dressed well at all, somewhat apprehensive, dropping almost noiselessly two small copper coins into the box, worth almost nothing in any age or economy. You either have to notice her incongruity with the overcharged scene or completely miss seeing her, the invisible cloak of her destitution somehow hiding her presence. We prefer not to see the poor. Jesus did see her and drew in his company to observe what he had been watching. Want to be like Jesus? See people others do not.
She has given more than all these rich folk, Jesus declares, because she has given out of her poverty, not out of her abundance. She has contributed her whole living. By coincidence this Sunday is part of our financial stewardship campaign, as it is for many churches, and so we have swallowed up what Jesus has said into a wonderful piety of guilt and manipulation. Give until it hurts, give out of your poverty, not your abundance, so give until you are poor.
We’ve missed it. Remember those first verses of the Mark reading, in which Jesus railed against the scribes and clergy? How the clergy love to wear $1000 suits, have people greet them in the Scarth Street Mall, always are seated at the head of the table at the most elegant restaurants. And no translation necessary: they devour widows’ houses. They were in it for the money, prestige and power, and demanded more and more out of those less and less able to give. Widows then were the most vulnerable targets in a society that had no place for them. When the widow placed her two mites in the box, it was because she felt compelled, under pressure, to do so. Nothing wrong with the widow, let’s be clear about that, for the rich clergy were devouring her whole living.
That changes our approach to stewardship a little bit. We can join the scribes and Pharisees and place the guilt trip on us to give more money to the church’s coffers, and perhaps we sometimes do. We all know that works to some degree, and some churches work the strategy quite well. However, real faith does not work that way. You can’t buy a stairway to heaven, even two cents at a time.
We are not here worshipping under the burden of obligation, paying back our debts, but we worship because of the grace of opportunity with which we are blessed to share and celebrate. The widow may have been driven by somebody else’s greed and compulsion, but out of her poverty she gave because of God’s grace.
It’s not one or the other - all of us are living out of our abundance and out of our poverty. We have too much and we have too little, but God’s grace gives you and me the opportunity to serve in just the right amount. Everything we are and do is by the grace of God, let’s take advantage of it, not just look at it as an entitlement or wearisome chore. You know that old expression, “What would I give for the opportunity...?” The opportunities present in this church are beyond counting, and the opportunity that your particular imagination can envision will not be squelched.
A few years back one of our former members Colin Grewar played on the CBC radio show he hosted, The Afternoon Edition, one track from the new album by a Gospel blues group, “The Blind Boys of Alabama.” I was hooked. I play the album in my car many a day, singing along. I will not sing it now, but one of the better tunes is an adaptation of an old African-American spiritual, “So Glad I Got Good Religion!” It was on Monday that I got good religion, the first solo declared, then Tuesday, and on through Friday. Good religion was for them a faith that was liberating and joyful, not oppressive and dutiful. All Jesus saw around him was not good religion and he was shaking his head. What we have is good religion and the opportunity to get more good religion.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan