Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.
When my father died in 1977, and my mother became a widow after 37 years of marriage, it turned out that my father’s will was set up in such a way that there was very little interruption in the flow of finances. Everything, the house, the car, all the certificates of deposit, and all the money in bank accounts was easily accessed by my mom in those first few days. It was all left to her.
She was never destined to be wealthy, but she invested her money in such a way that she never had to worry about a roof over her head, or food on the table, for the rest of her life.
Now you should be saying to yourself, That’s good; that’s exactly the way it should be. And you would be absolutely right. You would also have set me up to make my next point:
Women who lived in the time and place of Jesus were most often completely robbed of their social status when their husbands died.
Being property of the husband to begin with, they were reduced, at his death, to the lowest rung on the community ladder. Widows did not stand to keep the house and the money; those things went to the eldest male heir.
The socio-religious regulations promoted by those all-male Temple scribes, whom Jesus describes as liking to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, caused widows to sometimes be left homeless, only left to beg for their existence.
Such was the life of the widow who becomes center stage in our Gospel this week. Because her religion would have proclaimed that long life and wealth were special blessings by God, many would have looked upon this woman as condemned because her household received neither.
Much has been made over the years, about the coins that she put into the Temple Treasury. But before I go there, I am amazed that she even shows up at the Temple. BUT SHE CAME!
Jesus wants us to see that the Temple elites are making a social statement with their money. Sometimes we all may have done that.
Money can make statements about power and status, and can be quite influential at times, right?
A church secretary took a phone call in the church office, and the voice on the other side asked to talk to the head hog at the trough.
The secretary, a little put back by the lack of respect, said, Sir, you will have to refer to our priest as the Rector or the Reverend, but not the ‘head hog at the trough’.
Well, the man said he understood, and went on to say that he wanted to give $25,000 to the church to help pay off the mortgage on the building.
Well, said the secretary, Wait a minute, I think the big pig just walked in.
Money does talk sometimes. People even use money or the withholding of money to make political statements.
Over the years, the church has received many offers of money with strings attached, and over the years the church has received many threats of electing not to financially support the church as a way of voting. . . of making a statement. . . of delivering a message.
In the past, congregations in my own diocese have approached the microphone at the annual convention to tell the bishop that they intended to withhold sending in their assessment because they disagreed with some decision the church had made.
Though I try to understand their frustration, I believe that the people who support such notions forget something very important about giving: God isn’t in retail. There can’t be any strings attached, or it isn’t a gift, it’s a purchase! They also forget that withholding money in the church always carries collateral damage.
It’s kind of like dropping a bomb in a large city, you almost always hit some targets you didn’t intend to destroy.
They didn’t mean to eliminate a volunteer mission to the poor in Honduras, who are waiting to feed their starving children. They didn’t mean to cut support to the local food closet. They didn’t mean to cut support for the Sunday School. No, they just wanted to send a message.
If anyone had the right to withhold her treasure, it would be the widow in today’s Gospel.
BUT SHE CAME!
She didn’t come to send a message, but there is one that comes through loudly and clearly:
MY GOD IS WORTH IT!
My guess is that Jesus is probably the only one paying attention to her, the elites couldn’t have cared less.
She could have put one coin in the Temple Treasury, and it would still have been amazing, but she put BOTH coins in. Jesus tells us it was all she had.
This woman who ranked with the orphans and the lepers in the social structure of the day, who shouldn’t have even showed up that day, put all she had in the collection basket.
What did she think when she let go and heard those two small coins drop to the bottom? She never knew how they would be used.
She wasn’t wielding power and influence. In spite of all that the institution had done to her, she was apparently only thinking one thing: MY GOD IS WORTH IT!
There was once a minister who, when he raised the collection at the time of the offering, prayed the following prayer:
Lord, regardless of what we say about you, this is really what we say about you, this is really what we feel about you. Amen.
I think every priest and minister dislikes talking about church budgets and the bills that go unpaid. It’s not so much that we don’t like to talk about these things because they are so mundane and unspiritual. It’s because most of us know that, ideally, we shouldn’t see our gifts as constituting a portion of our indebtedness, or a line item on a budget that almost nobody really reads.
Our gifts should come out of no other motivation than gratitude!
If we JUST pay the bills, we will probably fall short of God’s vision for us. So, let’s stand with the widow that Jesus loved so much in this week’s Gospel. . . hoping, that when we come forward with our pledge cards, there will be only one thought that crosses our hearts and our minds:
OUR GOD IS WORTH IT!
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