Did you notice the common themes running through today’s readings? I’m sure you did - if you were listening!
1st - they’re both about widows. 2nd - they’re both about giving generously:
- In the OT reading (1Kings 17:8-16), we met the generous widow who fed the prophet Elijah during a great drought and famine.
- In the NT reading (Mark 12:38-44), Jesus first warns his audience against scribes who ‘devour widow’s houses’, and then he points out another generous widow, who puts all the money she has into the Temple collection.
First, there are the scribes that Jesus warns us about.
‘Beware of the scribes’, he says, ‘who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.’
Now, I have to confess Jesus’s words make me feel a little uncomfortable. Here I am dressed up in long robes - a cassock with a flowing surplice. Of course it’s really no more than a uniform, based on the plain clothes of long ago, but perhaps I ought to wear a decent work suit, not long robes, to lead worship. I like to be treated with respect too, just like everyone else. And you probably think that the prayers I lead are too long. Perhaps you should beware of me! I don’t think I devour widows’ houses though.
The scribes were the leaders of society in Jesus’s day. Today we might identify them with the professional classes – the lawyers, the doctors, and the business leaders; the developers, the bankers, and the politicians - as well as the church hierarchy. The widows, on the other hand, were among the most vulnerable and marginalised of the poor then – in today’s terms they might be those trying to live on social welfare or the minimum wage.
Jesus is criticising the well-got for feathering their own nests at the expense of the poor and vulnerable – ‘they devour widows’ houses’, is the cutting way he puts it.
As we approach the budget in December, we are hearing a torrent of voices calling for cuts which would hit the poor and vulnerable hard, and we hear the same voices asserting that the well off cannot afford to pay more in taxes. I think we too should ‘beware of the scribes’. The truth is that the rich can afford to be generous in their support of the poor.
Then there’s Elijah, caught up in a great drought sent to punish Ahab, King of Israel, prophesied by Elijah himself.
In the passage just before today's reading, Elijah is first guided by the word of the Lord to find refuge by a stream in the Wadi Cherith in the Eastern wilderness, where the ravens bring him food and he has water to drink - but the stream dries up. Then, as we heard, the word of the Lord directs him to Zarephath where he meets the widow.
She is poor, she is vulnerable, with a son to feed. She’s at her wits end, ready to give up. Elijah asks her for food, and she answers, ‘I have … only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die’.
But Elijah assures the widow that God will provide. ‘Thus says the Lord the God of Israel’, he tells her, ‘the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth’.
And with amazing generosity – with reckless generosity - the widow does as Elijah asks. She shares her small stock of food with him. And it lasts all three of them until the famine is over.
This surely is a parable about sharing generously. When times are hard, if we share generously what we have, there will be enough for all – God will provide. Times are hard now. So many of us are worried and anxious about how we will get through the next few years of economic depression. It would be very easy to hoard every red cent we have because we might need it later. But if instead we are generous in sharing what God has given us, we will all come through it together.
Finally, there’s the poor widow Jesus spots at the Temple treasury.
It was the custom for people to give money at the treasury to support the Temple, in much the same way as we take up collections in Church. Jesus is a great observer of people, a people-watcher. He watches and sees many rich people giving large sums. Then he notices the poor widow contributing two small copper coins – I imagine them as like those annoying 1 cent coins which few of us bother to pick up from the ground anymore. And he uses this contrast to teach his disciples about generosity.
‘Truly I tell you’, he says, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on’. Her generosity is reckless, just like Elijah’s widow’s – she might have put in just one of her coins, but no, she puts them both in!
Real generosity isn’t about how much you give; it is about the sacrifice you make. You get no brownie points in heaven for giving more than someone else, but you do for giving until it hurts.
You should all have had Mission Sunday envelopes, and I want to remind you they are due back today. I hope you will fill them generously, because our diocesan mission partners rely on our support to be able to carry out the good work they do. But if 5 cent is a sacrifice for you it is quite enough, while if €50 is no sacrifice, perhaps you should consider giving more.
I think it is rather wonderful that the person Jesus marks out as a pattern of generosity had so little to give in money and possessions, because they really have nothing to do with it, nothing at all. The last verse of Christina Rossetti’s beautiful carol, In the bleak mid winter, which we will soon be singing, sums up what real generosity is about, I think:
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him, give my heart.
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