Mite-y Giving

Mark 12:38-44
As part of his teaching, he said, "Watch the scribes from a distance. They like to walk about in long flowing robes and to be greeted respectfully in the market. They like the best seat in the synagogues and the best spots in banquets. They eat up the homes of the bereaved and pray with great show. They will receive the greater judgment."

As he was sitting there in the sight of the collection box, he watched how the throng threw money into the box. Many rich people were throwing in great amounts. But a poor, bereaved woman came and threw in two small coins, which were worth about a cent. He called his disciples and said to them, "I tell you the truth: This poor, bereaved woman has given more than all those who are giving to the collection box. All of them gave out of their abundance, but she, from her poverty, gave all that she had, all she had to live on."

They were trying to put Jesus on the defensive. It was near the end and this itinerant Jewish teacher had finally shown up in Jerusalem, the place where all prophets go eventually to have their mettle tested. The tension was high. The crowds had gathered. Jesus had talked of a coming day of reckoning, though his disciples conveniently ignored his warnings about his imminent death. Everyone expected a showdown or a throwdown or some sort of satisfying resolution to this challenge Jesus presented.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how we make our decisions based on comparisons? For us it might be Allen vs. Webb, or Drake vs. Kellam – and the whole of their political programs hinge on how we view them as people. Can we trust what they say? Do we know who they are? There was more than a little of that going on in the Temple the day Jesus came to town. It was Jesus vs. the scribes, Jesus vs. the Sadducees, Jesus vs. the Pharisees. Who was the more believable representative of God’s message? Whom could the people trust?

Jesus’ opponents were more than happy to provide the opportunity to compare. The chief priests, scribes and elders were the first to hit him up with a challenge, questioning his credentials. “Who gave you the authority to do these things you do?” they asked. Jesus artfully avoided their question by asking them to weigh in on John the Baptist, another prophet much beloved by the people and much reviled by the leaders. When they didn’t answer, Jesus refused to do so, too.

The Pharisees and Herodians were next with a question about taxes. Should good Jews pay taxes to a pagan Roman emperor or not? Again Jesus stumps them with a good line. “Give to the emperor the things that are his, and to God the things that are God’s.” How were they going to say that anything wasn’t God’s? They were stuck and they knew it.

The Sadducees followed with a ridiculous question designed to catch Jesus in the controversy over whether there was a resurrection of the dead. A scribe tried to enlist him in a conversation about which commandment was the greatest. And at the end of it all the critics were silenced. Jesus had handled himself so well that no one dared ask him another question.

But Jesus wasn’t done with the comparisons. There in the crush of the Temple he turned to those listening and put in a dig at the scribes, the most learned men of the faith. “Keep watch on what the scribes do,” he said. “They like to wear the latest fashions, they like to be noticed whenever they go out in public, they eat up the fortunes of widows, they like the best seats in the synagogue and the primo places at feasts. They will receive the greater judgment.” They will receive the greater judgment. Greater than who? Than the Pharisees? Than the Sadducees? Than the ordinary people? Than anyone? Jesus just leaves that hanging.

He’s standing there in the Temple and he’s in full view of the collection box. People are coming and putting in lots of money. Seems like there was no problem with giving, particularly among the rich. Was this an everyday occurrence? Was Jesus seeing the normal pattern? Or did folks know that Jesus was there to watch? Was there a wink and a nod to the crowd? Did they come to be seen giving? We really don’t know.

But Jesus had no problem making another comparison because in the midst of the crush, there came a poor, bereaved woman. She went to the box and put in two small coins – mites they are called in some translations, not worth much more than a penny. Was she destitute because of the scribes who, Jesus said, “eat up the fortunes of the widows”? We don’t know. But Jesus sees a lesson here. He calls the disciples, a much smaller group for a much more intimate story. “You see that woman, that widow,” he says. “She has given more than anybody else. They all gave out of their abundance, but she has given out of her poverty. In fact, she’s given all that she has to live on.”

The disciples were good at holding their tongues here. They had learned. Jesus had a habit of saying these impossible things. When he told them once that it was easier for a camel to be saved than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, they had balked. “Well, who can be saved then?” they had asked. And Jesus had pointed them to God. “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible,” he had said. Now that Jesus was saying that the model for giving was this woman who had given everything she had to live on, they just let it go. Or perhaps they had learned, after traveling so long on the road with no visible means of support, that what had once seemed impossible wasn’t really.

I believe that Jesus was trying to get their attention. It would have been easy for them to forget, in the midst of the crowds and the controversy and the expectations of the scene, who they were and who Jesus was. Having arrived in the center of it all, it would have been easy to be captivated by the rich, the learned, the powerful, the movers and the shakers. But the comparison Jesus wants them to make is not between him and them, but between this destitute, bereaved woman and them. It is her deep poverty, her essence, her very life and livelihood that Jesus points to. That is what she had to offer.

The Iona Community, which I quote so often, has a prayer that goes, “Help us not to offer you offerings that cost us nothing.” That’s what all the others were putting into that box. Offerings that cost them nothing. Offerings that may even have been to their advantage if the right person saw them. Offerings that did not begin to touch the deep joy and deep need to give that was implanted in their souls, that is implanted in each of us and which we sense every time we are touched at our core –when a baby is born or a sunset draws us in with its glory. Only the widow was giving from that place that knows no half measure can suffice to give thanks for this life we have received from God.

It’s that kind of gratitude that lies behind the biblical model of tithing. It was the scribes Jesus talked about who demanded the first things – the first seat at the table, the first seat at the synagogue. But the first things are really those that belong to God. The first tenth of our income, the first priority on our time, the first claim on our lives. I have never yet met a person who regretted practicing the discipline of tithing or who found it a burden. People who give a tenth of their income to the work of God are generally those folks who seek out more ways to give. What they have discovered is that giving the first things, and not just from the excess, from their abundance, unlocks a generous spirit that is the spirit we are all meant to have.

We’ve got youth away on a middle school retreat in Lynchburg this weekend and I’m glad for that. Many of my formative Christian experiences happened at youth retreats and in camping experiences. One of the most important for me was an event called Youth Active in Christian Service, or YACS, which took place in the Shenandoah Valley in the summer of 1980. The spiritual leader for the week was a guy by the name of Tim Whitaker, whom some of you will remember. He was serving this church at the time he led the event.

The idea of the week was to bring together youth and send them out each day to work at mission projects around the Shenandoah Valley. We didn’t get to choose where we were going; we were just sent. I was sent to Waynesboro to work in a program with mentally challenged adults. It was way outside the realm of my experience and I was nervous about being there. But over the course of that week I discovered that what the people I worked with had to offer me was far more than I had to give. What they gave me was contact with a deep joy. It was a joy I didn’t know at school, where I was doing what all adolescents do – I was struggling to find an identity and trying on a lot of masks to hide my insecurity. What I found in the adult socialization program was a rare gift – the opportunity to be myself and to share God’s love and to feel God’s love without judgment.

When I came back home at the end of that week, I found a similar program in Orange and for the next two years I spent just about every Thursday night helping out. It didn’t hurt that the director of the program had a really beautiful daughter who was about my age, but you know that didn’t work out. What did work out was that I got to know Charles and Margaret and Helen and so many more people who blessed my life just by letting me spend time with them. Each week we would shop for food together, cook together, eat together and spend time developing skills that would help them live with some dignity and independence. And along the way I found a calling that took me outside of myself. I found a part of me that needed to give. I was so into it that I had a T-shirt made that said “Thursday Night Fever”. And when I trace the story that led me into the ordained ministry, that story goes right through a little cinderblock building on the outskirts of town where I learned what God is doing. And let me tell you, I’m discovering it all over again whenever I join our Archangels class.

My colleague in ministry, Deborah Lewis, wrote a really beautiful sermon on giving recently and she captured so well what God is doing. “We are given into this world,” she said, “and into each other’s lives for this purpose: to love with all that we have. To boldly bear the image of the God who created us and calls us to be the family who gathers at [the communion] table. To move through our lives with open hands, not clenching what we already have, but hoping to extend our hands in service and invitation to others.”[i]

To love with all that we have. That’s the comparison Jesus asks us to make. To ask ourselves continually if the generosity we are displaying in our lives and in our giving is adequate to the love we have received from God and from others. Of course, we will discover that it isn’t. And the people I admire the most are those who find a way to continue to open up as they mature through life. It is so easy to clutch what we have as we look at the very real threats we face. But there are those whose lives seem to grow ever larger as they discover the ability to give, even from the very substance of their lives.

We’re going to celebrate the life of one of those folks here tomorrow. Barbara Tankard is someone who had that largeness of spirit that never stops giving. That’s why her death has come so suddenly to so many of us. She was giving right to the end. But as we gathered on Thursday and in these past few days to prepare for tomorrow, what I heard over and over was the joy people felt at the opportunity to be with Barbara and to give to her. She had some great friends who learned to share with her in the joy of giving.

I need to end this sermon with a challenge, because it feels like a challenge to me, as it must have felt like a challenge to those disciples who heard Jesus’ words in the Temple that day. Where are you being called to give from the substance of your life? How does your financial giving reflect the life you have been given? How does your openness to the people around you reflect the welcome you have received from the God who redeems us all? What more are you being asked to give? Because the great tragedy of our age is not that people are overstretched and feeling that their resources are insufficient to the needs they face. The great tragedy of the age is that we do not see the resources that are right in front of us and we have not been giving from the right place. In the end giving is not a matter of the wallet or the pocketbook – it is a matter of the heart.

Thanks be to God.

[i] “Generous Living,” sermon delivered 12/5/06 at Wesley Memorial UMC, Charlottesville.