Everything

Mark 12:38-44/Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

November 10, 2024

 

            Widowhood did not suit my mother. When my father died, shortly after I began here, my sweet mom did not have the emotional, mental, or physical energy to just pick herself up and keep going. It didn’t help that Covid hit just a few short months after dad died, which severely limited mom’s social interactions – interactions that might have helped keep her going a little more. No, widowhood didn’t sit well with her. She missed my dad. They were sweethearts for over 70 years, so it’s no wonder that she did. But when she fell and subsequently died, I wasn’t surprised that there was no fight left in her. She was ready to go. She was ready to be with my dad once more. As the old hymn says, “the lures of this old world had ceased to make her want to stay.”

            But even though my mom grew tired of fighting, she was still pretty canny, especially when it came to money. She was the one who paid the bills and kept track of their finances all the years my parents were married. In the last few years of her life, she would give money away – to family and to close friends – because she would rather the people she loved have money than the state. And I also think she realized that when it comes to money, you really can’t take it with you.

            I can’t help but think of my mom in her widowhood when I read the two passages we have before us today. While scripture repeatedly lifts up widows and orphans as some of the most vulnerable in society – and they were – it is not often that we have two stories on the same Sunday about three widows.

            Last week I preached almost exclusively about Naomi and Ruth, the two widows at the heart of our Old Testament passage. But today they are joined by another widow from Mark’s gospel, the widow in the story most widely known as the widow’s mite.

            In the book of Ruth, it looks as though we’ve reached the happy ending. Naomi’s kinsman, Boaz, has proven himself to be generous and kind. He made sure that Ruth was able to glean from the fields in safety. He shared his own food with her so that she would be nourished for her work. He told the young men who worked for him to leave her alone. He was an honorable man. How wonderful it is that these two have a happy ending. They marry. Ruth bears a child, and Naomi is the little one’s nurse. The sorrows and grief of the past have fallen away, and now joy reigns in the present and there is renewed hope for the future. And if we had read beyond our passage to the last verses of the book, we would have also learned that this child, Obed, born to Ruth and Boaz, became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David, you know the David who became King David. A happy ending indeed!

            Yet, let’s look a little more carefully at how this happy ending is achieved. When Ruth comes home and tells Naomi about Boaz’ kindness to her, Naomi, a canny woman, realizes that despite all the closed doors she’d been experiencing, this was the open window she’d been waiting for. So, she advises Ruth to wash and dress herself in her best clothes, put on some perfume, and go and wait for Boaz to lie down on the threshing floor. What we read as “uncovering his feet,” is a euphemism. Our reading then skips the verses where Boaz awakens and finds Ruth and is shocked to find her. We also skip the verse where Ruth essentially proposes to Boaz, asking him to spread his cloak over her, another way of Ruth asking Boaz to protect her through marriage. We skip that and go right to the end. But think about these verses from chapter 3 that we do read. Do you have idea how radical and how dangerous Naomi’s plan was? Ruth, already vulnerable, was going to make herself even more so. She could have been assaulted. She could have been labeled a prostitute and stoned to death. This encounter with Boaz could have gone a very different way. And surely Naomi, and Ruth, both knew this. Naomi put a great deal of faith in the kindness of Boaz, and her faith in him was rewarded. But that does not change the radical and subversive nature of her instructions and Ruth’s actions because the culture was against them. The system and policies were against them. They had no social standing. They had no protection. Timidity and working within the rules of a system that was already against them would get them nowhere. Naomi knew this, and perhaps she also knew that she and Ruth had nothing left to lose.

            And now we turn to the widow we encounter in Mark’s gospel. This is perhaps a story we think we know quite well. It is one that is used intentionally at this time in the church year when stewardship campaigns are in full swing. It seems to emphasize the importance of giving our financial all to our church – no matter how large or small a sum that equates to.

            This widow who gives all she has to the temple treasury is lifted as a shining example of “the cheerful giver.” As Jesus said,

“Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

            It would be so easy, and make for a much shorter sermon, if I just said, “See, we all just need to be like this poor widow, cheerful givers. We need to give our all, we need to give everything, and all shall be well.” Alas, I cannot do that. What I can do is paraphrase theologian David Lose and say that there are least two ways we can hear Jesus’ words. We can hear them as commendation or lament. Is Jesus commending the widow? Or is he lamenting her great sacrifice? There are indications from the larger context of this passage that it is the latter. Looking at the timeline of Jesus’ life shows that if Jesus was sitting opposite the treasury of the temple, that means that he was in Jerusalem. He has made his triumphal entry into the city. Jesus is most definitely headed for the cross. In Mark’s telling, Jesus had barely crossed the city limits when he cleansed the temple of the merchants and money changers who made his Father’s house a marketplace. Immediately following this story is Jesus’ prophecy of the temple’s destruction, so it would seem odd that he would praise a poor widow giving her all to the temple as a model of stewardship.

            In the first verses we read today, Jesus condemned scribes who put greater emphasis on appearances and status then they did on faithfulness. These scribes may have been greeted with groveling respect and received the best seats at the table, but “they devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

             If Jesus warned against being like those scribes and denounced them for exploitation of the weak and the vulnerable, also known as widows, then why would he laud the widow’s great sacrifice in the very next breath? Cause and effect suggest that what she did was the result of that exploitation. She should not have had to put everything into the treasury; all that she had, her whole life. This is not to say that the wealthier people who put in greater amounts were stingy. But I suspect that they felt their giving less. The widow in giving everything, felt the consequences of her generosity a great deal more. To use yet another cliché, she gave until it hurt. And other commentators speculate that by giving everything, all that she had, she could have been setting herself up for death. No money, no food, no life. That really is giving up everything, isn’t it?

            But there’s one more interpretation about this widow that I want to examine for just a moment. This comes from Diana Butler Bass, another theologian and scholar. Bass recognizes that this woman, this widow, is more than just a two-dimensional character used only as an illustration to make a greater point. This woman was flesh and blood. If her house was devoured by the scribes, meaning that a scribe would have been the one to handle her husband’s estate, placing him in the prime position to exploit her, then her action may have been more than a sign of trust in God. According to Bass, archaeologists believe that the treasury was located in the Court of Women, which was the furthest place in the temple that women were allowed to enter. In the Court of Women, women were allowed to publicly pray, to plead their cause before God and before others.

            What if, Bass muses, the widow’s actions were a protest against what had happened to her? What if putting her last two coins in was not about stewardship but instead a demand for justice? Perhaps this widow cannily thought, well, everything else has been taken from me, but these last two coins will not be taken from me as well. The Court of Women was the one place where she would be seen, and she wanted to be seen. She demanded to be seen. Maybe this was not about stewardship at all. Maybe it was about justice.

            Widows and orphans were the most vulnerable of that culture and in that context. These three widows would not be consigned to the shadows. They could not change the systems they lived within, but they could find a way to be seen and heard. They could put their trust in the God of justice and righteousness, rather than in a system that failed them. Who in our society, who in our culture and context, is unseen, unheard? How are we called to see, to hear, and to act? How are we called to live out the justice and righteousness that Jesus, God incarnate, embodied? How are we called to serve? What is the everything we are called to give?

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.