Not a Mite Would I Withhold

You’ll have to watch me today because this could easily dissolve into a sermon about money today. I admit the temptation is there. We had our Administrative Board meeting last week and there’s a significant budget shortfall for the year. I’m looking at all those things we have designated for second-mile giving this year and I’m praying in confidence that we will meet those needs as a congregation as we have done every year.

This is not a sermon about meeting the budget, though. It’s not a sermon about tithing, the biblical practice of giving a tenth of our income to God. It’s not a sermon about stewardship or sowing seeds of faith or any of the other terms that we use when we talk about our financial giving.

It’s not that a sermon about any of those things would be wrong. We don’t talk about it enough, actually. Jesus talked about money a whole lot more than he talked about sex or any of the other areas we spend so much time worrying over. And money is important because what we do with our money says a lot about who we are and what we value. Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, is fond of saying that a budget is a moral document. Our national budget says something about what we value as a society. Our personal budgets say something about we believe as individuals and where we give our allegiance.

But this is not a sermon about money or budgets – it’s a sermon about giving. Now that sounds like I’m still talking about money, I know, but I’m after something more. I don’t want to be like the old junk dealer who was talking to his donkey. One day a man came out of his house and he saw the local junk dealer out by the road with his cart full of junk hitched to the most pitiful-looking donkey he had ever seen. The donkey was lop-eared and shaky and didn’t look like he could pull a child’s wagon. But there was the junkman saying, “Come on Sally. Come on Old Paint. Come on Sturdylegs. Come on Pete. Let’s get this cart moving.”

The man went up to the junk dealer and said, “What are you doing? Who are you calling? There’s only one donkey here.”

The junk dealer leaned over and whispered, “I know, but if Sally thought she was the only one pulling this cart she’d never do it.”

So I’m not here to try to pull one over on you today. I really do want to talk about giving and I want to do it because the gospel story today is a story of giving and a story of living…really living and what it takes to do that.

The story is a very simple one that involves an act so simple that it might have gone entirely unnoticed it Jesus hadn’t pointed it out. It involves a poor, bereaved woman and two coins that she puts into a collection box. She probably didn’t even know it at the time, but she was showing something amazing about how God works and about how life works.

We are near the end of the story by the time we get to Mark chapter 12. Jesus has finally come to Jerusalem after telling the disciples over and over that this was where the end would come. This was where the whole journey would reach its climax. He was headed for the cross, he had told them. Headed for death. And then to be raised again.

The tension was mounting. The crowds had gathered. Everybody expected a showdown or a throwdown or some sort of satisfying resolution to this challenge Jesus presented.

Jesus engaged in a series of conflicts with the religious authorities and those who were vying for power. It was Jesus vs. the scribes, Jesus vs. the Sadducees, Jesus vs. the Pharisees. All with an audience trying to decide for themselves: Who was the more believable representative of God’s message? Whom could the people trust?

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 Mark says no one dared ask him another question.

But Jesus wasn’t done. He wanted to make sure his message got through. So right 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 best places at feasts. They will receive the greater judgment.”

Then we get some detail about where Jesus is. He’s standing there in the Temple and he’s in full view of the collection box. People are coming and putting in money. Then she shows up. A widow who approached the box and put in two small coins – mites they are called in some translations, not worth much more than a penny.

What do we know about this widow? 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.”

That’s how many translations put this, and when we translate it that way it makes the widow into a great model of sacrificial giving. She gave all that she had to live on. What a radical model for human beings to follow.

But it’s more than that. The literal Greek is that she gave her bion. Now you may not think you know that word, but you do. “Bio” is the found in words like biology and biography. It means life. It’s more than just what she had to live on…she gave her life.

This is not just Jesus giving the disciples a model for how they were supposed to give money – its Jesus one more time telling them what he is doing in Jerusalem. In the face of unjust scribes who devour the houses of widows, what does this widow do? She gives her life.

Who else does this? Who else will stare down the injustice and unjust powers in this world and give his life? It’s Jesus. This woman is, as New Testament scholar Katherine Grieb says, “a type of Jesus Christ who similarly chooses to give ‘his whole life’ in the face of those unjust structures that destroy it.”[i]

Good for Jesus, you say. He was God, though. What sort of model is that for us? And the widow – well, she was pretty extraordinary, wasn’t she? Does Jesus expect all of us to be a type of Jesus Christ?

I often hear this when I am having discussions with people about their giving. I ask it myself. How much does God expect from us? Most of us can see the good that comes from giving. We like to see the church responding to needs in the community. We like to see new programs taking off to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We like to welcome new staff to help our ministry grow. When Drury or Jeff tell us about where our church donations go we feel good, (I hope!), about where that money is going.

But I feel the same way when my seminary asks me for money. Or the United Way. Or the Boy Scouts. I am giving because I see that my gifts are going to make something good better. But I am not going to give to those things to such an extent that it affects my ability to live in the manner to which I have become accustomed…am I? Would Jesus want me to give until I don’t have enough to live on?

What the widow’s gift shows me is that, in fact, what Jesus wants is for us to give until we are ready to die. Until we are ready to die to the world that has a claim on us that is so tight that we can’t see the reality of what God is doing in the world. When I am giving to God but still am hung up on what I can get from the world, I am no better than the scribes giving from their abundance. When I am giving but still clinging to my car or my plasma TV or my clothes to give value to my life, I am giving from my abundance. When I give so much that I discover what it really means to trust in God, then I am giving in a way that lets me die to the world and to live with Christ.

The Iona Community 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 that no half measure can suffice to give thanks for this life we have received from God.

I’m going to close with a poem. Franz Wright is a poet who became a Christian when he was far down the road in life. After struggling in many ways, he placed a lot of hopes on his baptism. He saw it in the same way that Paul talks about it, as a dying with Christ so that we can live with Christ.

His poem “Baptism” begins with his statement that the insane person he had been is dead.

I drowned him and he’s not coming

back. Look

he has a new life

a new name

now

which no one knows except

the one who gave it...

his first breath as an infant

past the waters of birth

and his soul’s, past the death waters, married --

Your words are spirit

and life.

Only say one

and he will be healed.[ii]

I’m out of my league in unraveling all that that says, but what I hear here is that the poet Wright is longing to find life and health and hope by dying to the world he has known. He will give his whole life to find what comes beyond “the death waters” of baptism. Nothing else will do. Jesus wants his whole life.

Just as Jesus wants yours. It is what giving is all about – modeling our lives after the savior who gave up everything to love us to life. Thanks be to God.

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."

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[i] A Katherine Grieb, “Blogging Toward Sunday: Two Widows True to Type,” Nov. 2, 2009, Theolog, blog of the Christian Century, http://theolog.org/2009/11/blogging-toward-sunday-two-widows-true.html.

[ii] Franz Wright, “Baptism,” Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, [Alfred A. Knopf:New York, 2007], pp. 44-45.