This Week: Proper 27B
Gospel: Mark 12:38-44
As we approach the conclusion to the day that Mark marks as Tuesday of the week we would come to know as Holy Week, we have witnessed Jesus best all of those challenging his authority and attempting to trick him. Now he warns the crowds of the audacity of the scribes and presents the people with their sin: exploitation. Jesus then walks away.
We can imagine the moment, it is quite cinematic, really. Jesus, having dropped the mic, walks away by himself and sits down, watching the comings and goings of the Temple.
Then he calls the disciples over and invites them to watch the scene that is about to take place—a woman, a widow, throws a couple small coins in the money box. Simple, normal, nothing special to the world, but incredible to him.
There are two parts to this story and how we approach them is everything.
I’ve heard many people ignore the first half, caring only about the second, often referred to as “the widow’s mite.” The preacher’s focus is inevitably about faithfulness, generosity. That this woman’s gift is commendable.
I’m not entirely sure that is what is happening here. At least, not entirely. Or exclusively.
Of course, I wouldn’t say there isn’t a commending here, exactly. Just… that I think it is the wrong word.
Why is it that so many preachers would be so fixated on this one line about the woman’s gift and with such refusal to acknowledge the context? That it isn’t merely that Jesus was spontaneously sitting there and singling out this woman here as a representation of faith—minutes after condemning the Temple’s leaders for exploiting the poor?
Jesus’s response to the woman’s generosity, of giving her last pennies, and why that is infinitely more generous than the wealthy’s loud gifts isn’t merely a suggestion about giving in the abstract, but in the very experience of the people there.
Loud Giving
One of the elements of the story—how Jesus knows what the woman has given—is described in The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. They remind us that there was a money box on the wall of the Temple that people would contribute to. And people would come by and put their contributions to the Temple in it.
Currency then, as still is now, could be identified by size and weight. Bigger, heavier coins (and it was all coins!) meant larger sums. Big givers would make loud “thunks” into the box. Smaller sums would no doubt “plink”. Giving was only nominally anonymous—people could see you giving and hear how much. There was nothing private about the process.
When Jesus hears the woman’s two plinks in the box, he’s naming how modest her offering is next to the tha-thunks around her’s. But what’s more, is that he names the situations of the givers. That the wealthy can afford to give of their largesse, because there is no question where tonight’s meal is coming from, let alone tomorrow’s.
When you give everything, that’s it. No assurance of anything except a far greater chance of death.
Cultural Critique
This story has a strong critique of the religious culture of the time precisely because he has just critiqued the scribes for “devour[ing] widows’ houses” and then watched an impoverished widow throw herself on the mercy of God to protect her through the week ahead.
How are we supposed to read this without that critique?
I know some people are desperate for an apolitical gospel or want this story to be about faithfulness only as a matter of internal mind-setting, but I just can’t. The critique is so loud!
We are left with a deeply uncomfortable reality, and I think Jesus stops short of directing the disciples to a “right answer” for a reason. Because he wants them to see it. To feel it. To internalize that moment.
Then… deal with it.
He tells them everything they need. The scribes are impoverishing widows and stealing from them. And they will die because of it. Do we really need what to do next? Because I can think of half a dozen responses off the top of my head.
Few stories translate as easy as this one does.
The easiest and perhaps laziest response is to compare this to the church—which sometimes does resemble this problem. Mostly of the Prosperity Gospel variety more than the local church trying to scrape by.
The better approach is to see the way our systems actually exploit, impoverish, and condemn our poorest people. Pay-day lenders, casinos, and bail bondsman are the most obvious examples. But doing a little more digging can find grotesque examples. For example, we might find out how much our publicly-funded prisons charge incarcerated people per minute to make a phone call or hygiene items we can easily pick up at Target for a dollar—prisoners are upcharged anywhere from three to thirty times what we pay. Or consider that credit card and bank fees are higher the less money one makes. The modern economy, which has built an everybody-is-on-their-own mentality makes poverty more expensive. It even costs thousands of dollars to die.
What is plain is that we don’t live in a just society. Not as it is presently arranged. And we actually know how to fix a lot of that—writing new laws to regulate these agencies and industries.
What may be harder for us to wrestle with is embodying this as an act of faithfulness. That the widow in the story is leaving it up to God to keep her from dying and God is leaving it up to people of faith to ensure she survives. That this is the true sign of faithfulness.
Having faith in others is important—ensuring that others’ faith is well-placed is too.