It’s like they knew, somehow, that you’ve just gotten your Calvary pledge mailing last week.
Because Mark and the lectionary committee have given us a front row seat today to the pledge drive at the Temple in Jerusalem.
So you and I sit with Jesus, watching an offertory procession - one where you can tell how much money each individual is donating. And plenty of rich folks show up and give impressive amounts. It’s a show of generosity and honor and faithfulness, and it’s holy, since these offerings are meant to care for the neediest and loneliest of God’s people as well as to support the religious work of the Temple and the priests.
And in the middle of that procession of big donors comes a widow.
She doesn’t fit - you can tell just by looking that she is poor - and her contribution is visibly meager.
Two cents.
We don’t know if she was embarrassed, or proud, well-known in the community or an anonymous stranger. But she makes her tiny contribution visibly,
and Jesus sees a little more.
He points out to his disciples - to you and me - that those two cents were her entire living. That “out of her poverty” she gave all she had to the Temple.
Now, if this inspires you to give dramatically to Calvary when we send you a pledge card, fantastic.
Thank you.
Seriously. Because I do want you to give to Calvary, out of your abundance or out of your poverty or out of your checkbook or your wallet or whatever.
I want you to give to Calvary because I give to Calvary and I find it a valuable practice.
I give because giving money helps me to invest my heart, and because I believe that we do good work in caring for others, creating accepting, inclusive space to pray and grow together, and I believe that that work makes this world a better place, closer to the kingdom of God.
But I don’t think our pledge drive was what Jesus had in mind when he drew our attention to the widow’s giving. Yes, it’s a model of sacrificial giving that foreshadows Jesus’ giving his entire living for us, one it’s very worth while to appreciate and emulate in our lives, but I don’t really think Jesus was saying that this is how you are supposed to plan your financial giving to the church.
He’s got bigger things in mind for our lives,
and he’s got bigger things in mind for the church.
Anyone who was listening just a bit earlier, when Jesus condemned the Temple scribes for “devouring widow’s houses,” would probably hear the news that the widow gave her very last coins as condemnation of a system so screwed up that it robs the people it’s supposed to support of all they have to live on.
This woman is giving her all to a flawed system, run by people who fool themselves into thinking it’s okay to disregard and exploit the vulnerable - because the widows ‘ought to be taking care of themselves,’or aren’t smart enough to handle their own money - or whatever it is that everyone around them casually believes.
That happens around us, too. Listening to Jesus, watching the widow, I was reminded that my friend Jim Naughton tweeted recently that
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| “Stewardship season [means] #Episcopal churches telling people whose real wages haven’t risen for decades to embrace ‘theology of abundance.’” |
He was challenging the rhetoric and habits that a lot of churches have around annual giving. And when I asked Jim about it, he said that preaching “abundance” seems wrong in churches and communities that aren’t working to make that abundance real in the economic world we live in, not just the spiritual world; aren’t working to change the wealth inequality that ties up the abundance of God’s gifts in the hands of a few, and creates sharp divides in generosity and trust.
I think he’s on to something that Jesus is pointing out when the widow gives her mite. You can’t focus on abundance inside the Temple without caring about abundance outside.
Jesus wants us to notice the context, to understand that the widow’s generosity challenges the greed of the scribes, and their honor in the marketplace, and wonder what that looks like in the world around us.
Jesus wants us to pay attention to whether the systems we set up to care for those in need really work, wants us to watch out for hypocrisy when we - or our leaders - are tempted to disregard or disrespect the vulnerable, or praise and protect those who are already wealthy and secure.
Jesus wants us to hold ourselves and our faith accountable,
and make that awareness a part of our own generosity.
Perhaps that’s what the widow was doing, with her noticeably tiny gift. Or perhaps she wasn’t thinking about any of that, but I am sure that the gift must have mattered greatly to her because - as Jesus points out - she gave 100 percent. All she had.
And I suspect that there is something that matters that much to you, too.
What inspires you to give 100 percent?
What demands your whole heart, your whole self?
Where do you willingly give your all; not holding anything in reserve,
risking everything?
For some, it may be in your family, with your children, in your marriage.
It might also be a sports field, an art form, or a part of your work that completely engages you and feels worth doing whether you’re paid or not.
I hope there is something in your life that does receive your everything, your 100 percent, your all. Because giving of your God-given self to an ideal or cause or art or person is a more essential practice of stewardship than planning your financial contributions.
Of course, Calvary needs you to do both.
We run a better church when we trust in each other’s financial commitments, but we are a better church, a better Body of Christ, when we take care with the stewardship of our hearts and souls, when we seek God in the ways that we give our whole selves to work or to play or to relationships in the here and now of daily life.
And the practice of generosity in the giving of ourselves will help us receive the widow’s gifts:
receive a drop in the bucket,
receive a challenge to our assumptions and expectations or indifference,
receive a whole life, given without reservation.
So while we watch the widow give her two cents, and give her all, while we write our financial commitments for the year to come, maybe we should also pledge to God and God’s church that we will give 100%, give your whole self, risking it all,
to your family,
to healing,
to feeding people - at a food bank or in the art of cooking -
to your art, to beauty in the world,
to keeping love fresh and vivid —
whatever or wherever your whole self is needed.
Pledge that to the church, along with your money, because that, even more, is what you give to the church’s ministry and to God’s mission on earth, and because that pledge will help us receive the widow’s gifts, when she challenges us to make abundance real outside our walls, to receive her gift, and pass it on.
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