How many of us have been in a situation where nothing you could do seemed to matter?
Maybe a good friend from college has cancer, or a difficult pregnancy, and you live halfway across the continent and can’t offer rides to chemo, or babysitting the other kids, or homemade soup – or whatever you do best to care for a friend in need.
All you’ve got is calling or texting or maybe DoorDash, and it’s just not enough.
Maybe you’re watching someone you love tank a relationship over a misunderstanding, or get scapegoated by a system you and they have no leverage to change.
Maybe your garden, or your time sense, are really distressed by 80 degree days in November – but is reducing your home power use and driving less really going to matter enough to change the climate for the better?
Maybe you’ve spent four days, or four years, or more, wondering how the government and people of your nation can be so misguided, or neglectful of real people’s needs, or incompetent or dangerous – and frustrated with how little there seems to be for you or me to do to change that.
I strongly suspect many of us have felt that way at least once in the past few years, however we feel this week.
And how many of us have asked ourselves, at least once, why we should bother to pray, or to give, or to work, or to try, or even to hope – when nothing I, or you, can do could possibly make the difference?
If that’s never been you, God bless you.
I want to know your secret, and I have some challenging tasks I’d like your help with!
But when I – and maybe you – feel like we have no power to matter, well, those are the times when it might be helpful to notice what Jesus is noticing in the story we just read today.
When Jesus sat with his friends in the Temple, watched as folks came and went, presenting their offerings for the glory of God and the ministry of the Temple, and noticed the one person among them all whose offering could not possibly have made a difference.
Noticed the widow – a term which flags for us that this person was one of the least powerful and most vulnerable people to come into the Temple – the woman who offered two basically worthless coins.
No power; no visibility and influence; no possibility of making an impact.
And she gave everything she had.
Maybe there was someone in the Temple treasury or administration who knew this widow – knew her faithful commitment and dedication, paid attention over the years. Maybe there was a group of other worshipers who loved her, prayed with her and shared jokes, valued her in the community, like so many of our faithful people here at Trinity.
Maybe there wasn’t.
Maybe no one else would have ever realized she existed, if Jesus hadn’t called our attention to her.
Or maybe Jesus calling attention to her sparked a change in the scribes and other Temple leaders he was calling out just before this scene. Maybe some of the scribes and leaders listening heard Jesus comparing this widow to the people who care for their own ego and prestige instead of caring for the vulnerable, and changed their own behavior from “devouring widow’s houses” to supporting and sustaining widows and all the vulnerable people God has always told us to care for, and attend to as God’s beloved – even if they thought they couldn’t change the whole system.
Maybe not.
We don’t know.
We do know that Jesus noticed.
That God notices.
That the little, useless-feeling things we can do; things that couldn’t possibly make a difference to the world, or the system, are noticed by God.
Matter to God.
Perhaps mean everything, with God.
There’s nothing wrong – there’s much that is good – about “giving out of our abundance”.
When we have the money, or the time, or the influence, or enthusiasm – when we have the power to make a difference what we do absolutely matters.
When we give out of our abundance, we also get to enjoy the rewards of unstrained generosity, the fun of making something better – and perhaps even the public recognition of, and respect for, our contributions and efforts.
But when we give our “not enough to matter”, our “nothing” that costs all we have, God notices.
Jesus pays attention.
And God can make our nothing into everything.
Can make your not-enough, and my nothing-left-to-matter, into the thing necessary in that moment for God’s love to change the world.
Our abundance and poverty – our power to matter, or our lack of it – is not distributed evenly.
Some of us have abundance of money, but poverty of time.
Some of us are rich in time, but desperately in need of emotional resilience and hope.
Some of us are rich in resilience, and poor in health or physical strength.
Others have strength, and need relationships. Others have love and connection overflowing and no cash at all. Some of us are rich in all those areas, some of us are strapped for everything.
And what many of us need to hear - what I need to hear from Jesus – is that where we have nothing to give, and we give it anyway, God sees it. Jesus notices.
And God can make it everything.
The powerless private joke (or meme) that’s all you’ve got might become the silver bullet a friend needs against despair.
The lunch invitation you don’t know how to find the time for, or the phone call you can scarcely muster the resilience for, might become the conversation that turns a tide.
The one meal you can make, or serve, to feed a hungry neighbor;
the single day of shelter or the brief window of protection you can scrape together; the one letter you can barely write;
the one meeting you can squeeze out the time to attend;
or the last scrap of guts or hope you can muster to speak up or speak out –
any of these might be the tiny right thing at the right time to save a life or move a metaphorical mountain.
The last two half-pennies in your hand might be an inspiration of systemic change, or a pebble that helps turn some inert weight of others’ abundance into an avalanche of good.
And your noticing - my noticing - when someone else is giving all they can, might just magnify “nothing” into enough to heal a heart or spark a fire of hope.
I don’t know for sure.
I do know that Jesus notices.
That God cares.
And that when there is nothing we can do that matters, what we do still matters, with God.
Might be everything, with God.
