Mark 12:38-44, from Proper 27(32).
Remember how Jesus commanded his disciples to emulate the poor widow whose contribution of two small copper coins – “mites,” in the King James Version – exceeded the handfuls of money thrown into the temple treasury by wealthier donors because, unlike them, she had given all she had?
Of course you do. Except you don’t. Because Jesus never said that, and I sincerely doubt he even meant that.
You’re welcome to disagree, of course. But be careful what you wish for. Jesus tells his disciples that the widow has put in “everything – all she has to live on.” In Greek, the word is bios meaning “life.” The widow has given her life, in its entirety. Jesus, who said this knowing he had come to Jerusalem to give his bios, his entire life, probably wasn’t exaggerating. To put it plainly, there’s a good chance that by the time Jesus was dead, so was the widow – starved and forgotten in some side street or hovel.
You might reasonably argue that, in a theological sense, Christianity requires no less of us. It requires us to die to ourselves so that Jesus can raise us to new life in him. But does Christianity also require us to surrender so much that it truly, literally kills us? Sometimes, yes, but it’s not a general directive. If it were, the faith either would have died out a long time ago or would be professed by millions and millions of hypocrites and slackers. If that’s what the faith involves, even the apostles lived much to long to be considered saints.
So what was running through Jesus’ head, then, as he watched the widow throw her life into the temple treasury and head off to die? The verses before and after perhaps offer a clue. In 38-40, he is denouncing the scribes, who, in addition to making a show of their status and piety, “devour widows’ houses” in their greed. And immediately after, in Mark 13:1-2, Jesus walks out of the temple and, when one of his disciples expresses awe at the building’s structure, snaps, “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
I don’t know about you, but I think Jesus sounds a little angry. And maybe what he’s angry about is a temple full of people so self absorbed and self righteous that they would fail not only to help but even to notice a poor widow quietly dying before their eyes, a woman earnestly but pathetically wasting the meager last two mites of her life on propping up a system that exploited her in order to benefit them. If God is, as the Psalmist sang, “the father or orphans and protector of widows,” shouldn’t his temple be their refuge instead of their trap, and his people their rescuers instead of their robbers? Maybe he felt no stone deserved to be left upon another.
Thus the poor widow turns out to be a simultaneously mighty one, a powerful indictment of the indifference God’s people – his people then, but also his people now, including you and me – show toward the poor, the ragged, the sick, the alone, the forgotten. And while caring for them doesn’t have to kill us, just about all of us could stand to become at least a bit less comfortable in order to help them.
“But she, out of her poverty, has put in everything – all she had to live on,” Jesus said. I think the unasked question is, “And why did you let her?”
Next week: Proper 28(33)
