This page is in honour of the 'pesky, perpetual, predictable and persistent return of the Sabbath'!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ruth 3: 1-5, 4: 13-17
Psalm 127
Hebrews 9: 24-28
Mark 12: 38-44

I watched a tv show the other day and in it a group of law enforcement officers was organizing a “sting” operation to trap an unscrupulous building contractor who was doing unnecessary work on houses and then when the owners, usually widows on fixed incomes, could not pay the exorbitant bill, assuming ownership of those same houses. Of course, the signed contracts full of confusing legalese gave him full authority to do this. Apparently most of his business was legitimate; he would only prey on those he thought he could get away with defrauding. In those cases, of course most of the work done was not necessary at all. In miracle of the television crime drama, of course, it was all solved within the hour - with the help of hidden microphones and cameras.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were that easy? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of those victims of fake prize scams would be relieved to find out that the perpetrators of the scams were caught.

I read a facebook posting the other day from a cousin of mine and it seems that she won a gift card from an internet business and almost dismissed it as a scam; it was a real gift card, worth $200.

I receive about five emails a day from the supposed widows or children of deposed foreign officials, now deceased. The family members have found religion and want me to help them take their dead relative’s five or ten million, or more, dollars out of the country. For my trouble I will receive a generous share. All I have to do is to send my banking information so they can transfer the money to me! It’s amazing that people actually fall for these scams, but that amount of money has a kind of lure to it.

However, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. If it sounds fishy, it probably is.

Today we are looking at a passage from Mark’s gospel dealing with two seemingly separate issues: conceited priests and the gifts of the rich and of a poor widow. While they seem unrelated, I don’t think they are.

Mark’s 11th and 12th chapters put Jesus on a roller coaster ride to the cross. He enters Jerusalem on a donkey, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, skips town and then returns and makes these two observations. Some would call them scathing comments. Some scholars have written that Jesus was crucified primarily because he called into question all of these ways in which the elites in society managed to earn a very good living off of the backs of the very poor. He rocked the boat too much. But he wasn’t there to just rock the boat, for the sake of rocking the boat; he called the people to faithful living and true worship of God. If that meant rocking to boat, so be it.

First off, in this passage, he criticizes the scribes for their long robes and their behaviour. Now I wear a robe in church; but I am glad I don’t have to wear out and about. It’s too long; it would get in the way if I had to do all that much. I don’t like climbing stairs (even the steps of the chancel here) while wearing it and if I had to weed my perennials it would be a real nuisance . Besides, I don’t think the red mud would wash out of it!

Think about it. The long robes meant that they could not work; for their living they depended on the taxes they received from the temple system. We are told they lived quite well and enjoyed many advantages such as social privilege and the best seats in the house. Apparently they were also in a position to impose themselves on grieving widows as their property managers (after all what would a woman know about agriculture and finance) and they had to be properly compensated for this kindness. They received a cut of all of the sacrificial animals purchased at the temple (at very inflated prices) and the list went on and on.

Jesus warns the disciples against this kind of behaviour and abuse of privilege; he continually tells them that discipleship is about service and not about gaining privilege.

Then he observed the rich coming in and putting large sums of money into the collection boxes. I have seen various artists conceptions of these boxes and as near as I can figure they were made of metal and had a top like a trumpet. Obviously the coins would make lots of noise as they went in. Not that long ago some charity or other had a kind of “wishing well” donation bin. You dripped in a loonie and watched it go around and around as it went down into the bin. It was kind of fun; so much that it made you want to put in another coin! Maybe even a twoonie or two. It was for a good cause after all.

Perhaps the rich liked the noise their gift made, perhaps they tried to make more noise than their friends. They had lots of money to spare, what’s a few more coins? The story seems to indicate they dropped in much more than our equivalent of a few twonies!

Then there comes one quiet widow and somehow Jesus knows that her gift is two small copper coins. Not much noise there at all. Apparently it would take at least four of them to equal a penny. Then Jesus surprised the disciples by saying that she had given more than the rest. Why? She had given all of her living while the rich had given out of their great abundance. That comment is the key here.

We need to be exercise care with this story and tell all of it. Some people think this is a passage in praise of even the smallest gifts. It’s not!

A colleague of mine was sitting at his desk one day when a very wealthy former member of the congregation stopped by. He had heard about their new building and had come to make a donation to the building fund. He handed the minister a $20 bill. The minister thanked him, but then the man said, beaming “I know it’s not much, but Jesus praised even the widow’s mite”.

v When we misuse this passage to brand our stingy gifts as exemplary and extraordinary, we misuse it. Now if a homeless, street person had come in with the same $20.00 it would have approached the realm of “fair comparison”, but not from a man of great wealth.

So the caution in this passage is not to abuse privilege and seek social status. The caution is not to look so much at the size of our gifts but at the size of our abundance. Are we really as generous as we think?

I am old enough to remember when most churches published the list of families and how much they gave to the church every year. A colleague of mine was being interviewed for a job at a new church and she told them that if she were to become their minister that this practice has to stop; unless their income was published in the next column! She got the job but they opted for not publishing the donations. As I have said before I have mixed feelings about public recognition of large donations to charities. Hospitals and universities to name a few, often have walls of honour or donor walls on which the donors of large donations are honoured. Part of my reasoning is that at least some of those small donations that normal families make cost them more than the hundreds of thousands made by the well-off.

But, I would also like to consider another way of interpreting this passage; a kind of “we could ALSO look at it this way”.

These two passages were put together by Mark for a reason. The scribes who abuse privilege and devour (such a powerful image) widow’s houses – - is put together with the gift of a poor widow.

The system seemed to tolerate the ways in which widows were made penniless by the unscrupulous tactics of those who were supposed to look out for them.

Yet here is this poor widow giving all she had to a temple system that should have been helping her so that she had only a fraction of what she needed to sustain life. She was not giving of her excess, but probably her children’s supper.

It seems to some that Jesus was passing a strong and no-nonsense social commentary on the kind of world where the wealthy flaunt their wealth and where the poor are bilked out of what little they do have.

The teachings of Jesus are not meant to apply only to “religion” per se, but to all of life and to all of our lives. Since we live so much of our lives in the public and political sphere, how we organize our society says as much about our faith as do the content of our prayers and the singing of hymns.

As a people of faith we are called to foster a society in which all people are cared for and the most vulnerable are not exploited as a means of obtaining wealth for the privileged. We are called, as is said elsewhere, to love God with all that we have and are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Who is our neighbour? But, like the man who came to see Jesus and asked him that question we need to go and be a neighbour; we need to go and give with our whole heart. End of story. Amen.

1995- 2009 The Rev. Beth W. Johnston.

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