Our Gospel reading is a deceivingly
difficult text. At first glance, it
seems like a gift from heaven. Here we are in the middle of our fall
stewardship campaign and the Gospel reading is the widow’s mite. Everyone knows that story…the woman who has
little gives all she has to her faith community. It’s almost like we
purposefully picked this reading for this time of the year. But then you have that darn context
again. Right before this lovely story
about the widow is Jesus telling the crowd to beware of the scribes who like to
walk around in long robes….who devour widow’s houses for the sake of
appearances say long prayers. These
scribes that Jesus is warning about are the same scribes who might benefit from
the gift that this poor widow is making.
Furthermore Jesus is accusing them of taking
advantage of the plight of widows like her and here she is giving everything
she has to them. It seems odd that Jesus would support such a action.
We
hear a lot about widows in the New Testament as well as the Old Testament. The Bible tells us again and again how
important it is to care for widows.
There were several reasons this group of people received special
attention in the Bible. Now when we
think of widows, we consider the emotional ramifications, the loss one
experiences when he or she loses their spouse.
While that was certainly a factor at this time, the primary social
concern was related to caring for the physical needs of the widows.
At this time, women could not
inherit money or property. If her
husband died, she would be left with nothing.
If she had a son, the property would all go to the son and the
expectation would be that the son would care for his mother. However, if there was no son, then there was
no safety net. If the woman was still
young and able to have children, she might be able to marry again. If this was not possible, then her options
were limited to: depending on the kindness of male relatives, begging on the
streets, or becoming a prostitute.
Working was not an option for women and there was no social security or
Medicare. Widows epitomized what it was
to be completely vulnerable and dependent on others for their own
well-being. This is why the people of
God were commanded again and again to care for widows.
In the Gospel for today, we are
told that not only was this woman a widow, but she was a poor widow, which
tells us that she had no one caring for her.
She had nothing except for two coins.
She gave both of those coins to the treasury of the temple. The traditional understanding of this text
(and the one that is most convenient for stewardship sermons) is that she was a
model of sacrificial giving. She gave
everything she had to God. Jesus was
holding her up as an example for all of us to follow. The more critical
interpretation is that Jesus was using her to illustrate how unjust the system was,
another example of how the poor and vulnerable were abused. Right after he pointed her out, he predicted
the destruction of the temple. Why would
he encourage her or anyone else to give to a temple that was about to be
destroyed?
The more I wrestled with these
two interpretations, the more frustrated I became. I realized that I could not
with integrity preach the traditional interpretation of the text with the
emphasis on sacrificial giving but I also felt that she had more to teach us
than what was wrong with the world at that time.
We had a funeral recently and I
was reading the liturgy and I came to a part that I have never given much
consideration. “For if we have life, we
are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord. So, then, whether we live or die, we are the
Lord’s possession.” We are the Lord’s
possession. It seems strange to me that
we find comfort in this statement after someone has died because I am pretty
sure there is no other time when we refer to ourselves or others as the Lord’s
possession. People would probably balk
at that idea. Nobody wants to be someone else’s possession, even if that
someone else is God. It is only when we
lose someone to death that we can allow for the possibility that they are now God’s
possession.
That reminded me of the widow in
this story. All the commentators and
scholars, when they talked about her being a widow, it was only to explain her
plight, her financial circumstance. It
was never about the fact that this woman had lost not only her financial
stability, but her partner in life. I know that there are many people here who
have suffered that loss, or the loss of a child, a parent, a sibling, a close
friend. Most of us have lost someone who
is precious to us. I can only imagine
the pain that must come with losing a partner in life. In my limited experience with loss, what I
have learned is that even in our grief when we acknowledge the person as the
Lord’s possession, we still have to find the strength to let go, to truly accept
that they are the Lord’s possession. We
have to let go of something that was once ours to hold and give it to God. When you have experienced that kind of loss,
then letting go of a few coins, even if they are the only coins you possess,
isn’t that big a deal…not much of a sacrifice at all.
I wonder if this widow, in her
intimacy with loss and grief, knew something that the great scholars of her day
and ours cannot quite grasp. Whether we
live or die, we are the Lord’s possession.
If we can understand that while we are still living, then we become free
from everything. When we declare that we
are the possession of the Lord, then we no longer feel as possessive about what
we have or think we have. This woman is
held up as a model of sacrificial giving.
Perhaps that is true, but not because she sacrificed a few coins, but
because she learned to let go. She learned
the hard way, but she learned. I imagine
that is one of the hardest lessons in life, letting go of people, letting go of
control, letting go of things, letting go of independence, letting go of
prestige…. The way we find strength to let go is to trust that we are not
letting go into some abyss. We are
letting go so that God can take hold. In
letting go, we are giving…we are giving to God.
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