November is often a month focused on giving and gratitude, and this Sunday offers what appears to be the perfect opening to talk about stewardship: The story in Mark 12:38-44 of a poor widow putting her last two cents into the temple offering. And yet, there’s more going on in this story than meets the eye.
Rather than a simple invitation for us to give more, Jesus calls us in this story to ask some tough questions about who we are as a church and even as a society. This sermon wrestles with our call as followers of Jesus to stand up for the poor, the marginalized, and those society overlooks—and our complicity as part of that same society.
Today’s Scripture readings are 1 Kings 17:8-16, Psalm 146, and Mark 12:38-44. A few bits and pieces of this sermon are borrowed from my 2018 sermon on this same lectionary week. Here’s the livestream from Living Hope and the sermon audio.
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Grace to you and peace from Jesus Christ, who is God with us. Amen
In the month of November, many churches have a tradition of talking about stewardship. I’m not sure if it’s because of Thanksgiving, or because this is when churches look at their budgets and realize we need to talk about stewardship, or something else. But November is often stewardship month.
And by the way, many churches also have a long tradition of defining stewardship as money, especially the giving of said money to the church.
Today’s Gospel seems like the perfect opportunity for a stewardship sermon. Jesus and his disciples are people-watching outside the temple, watching people drop off their offerings, and as they’re watching, a poor widow deposits two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.
Jesus points her out to his disciples, saying, “Look at that poor widow, who put in everything she had. She’s given more than all the rich people who just gave a piece of their wealth.”
What a great stewardship illustration, right? If only all of us could follow her example, and offer everything we have. All our budget issues would be solved, we could replace some furnaces, and we’d be set until next year’s stewardship season.
If the goal of talking about stewardship for a few weeks is to raise some money—we can go that direction with this story. It’s great that the widow gave everything she had, and we should do the same so the church has money. If that message is helpful for you today, than you can stop there.
But I don’t think stewardship is entirely about fundraising. And I don’t think that’s the point Jesus is making in this story.
Right before this, in the first few verses of our reading, Jesus had just been telling his disciples to beware of pretentious religious people. Watch out for scribes who like to walk around in long robes and be greeted with respect, taking the best seats and the places of honor. They devour widow’s houses, Jesus says, and say long prayers just to impress people listening.
Did you catch that? Beware of those who devour widow’s houses. Jesus is condemning greedy religious leaders and institutions that exploit widows.
In Scripture, widows and orphans are often a shorthand way of saying “people in need” because in that culture, those are the most vulnerable members of society. It’s a patriarchal society—I’m going to say it’s a sexist system—where the husband is pretty much always the breadwinner.
There’s no life insurance, no Social Security payments. If your husband dies and you don’t have a son old enough to take care of you, you’re in trouble. Orphans are in a similar situation.
So all over Scripture, God instructs people to care especially for widows and orphans. Exodus 22 says, “You shall not abuse any widow or orphan.” Zechariah 10: “Do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor.” Psalm 68 says God is the “Father of orphans and protector of widows. Malachi 3 says God will judge “those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien.”
It’s in the New Testament too. James 1:27 says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” One of the first conflicts recorded in the early church is over how the church is caring for widows.
Well, one of the ways we care for widows and orphans is to look at this story and ask, why is this widow poor?
Jesus tells his disciples to beware of those who devour widow’s houses, who exploit the vulnerable, and then he points out this widow.
Denise Anderson writes, “By lifting up the widow’s actions, Jesus is not simply heaping praise on her for her generosity; he’s indicting the system that keeps her poor. He’s asking us to face our greed. Everyone must ask themselves some tough questions. Is this right? Why is she down to only two coins of the lowest possible denomination? How did she get here, and did we let it happen?”
I recently saw a Facebook post with a newspaper clipping from 1904 about a woman named Catherine Ricking in Port Washington who gave all her money to St. Mary’s Catholic church to found a hospital, spending her last days in extreme poverty.
I’m not picking on the Catholic church or on her, because a hospital is a good cause and that’s a wonderful gift. But the church faces a constant temptation to exploit people, to insist people give more and more. You don’t have to look very far to find examples of televangelist airplanes, or prosperity gospel scams.
Do you know the term prosperity gospel? There’s a whole movement that claims if you give more, God will give you more. If you believe hard enough, you can be rich, because God loves you and wants you to be happy and your prosperity will be a sign of God’s blessing. If you do enough, if you give enough, if you plant enough seeds by giving donations, you’ll be blessed with health and wealth.
As tempting as that prosperity gospel can sound, it’s not Biblical. We don’t have power to manipulate God into multiplying our money for us. It’s not faithful to give in order to get; it’s a way of manipulating people. It’s a cult tactic, not the gospel.
The gospel is that Jesus loves you because Jesus loves you, not because of what you give or do. God’s grace is a free gift we cannot earn or merit. But promising prosperity can sure be an effective fundraising tactic.
Jesus condemns the religious leaders who devour widow’s houses, who manipulate and exploit people into giving. Don’t misunderstand; I think giving money to the church is important. Our bank statements reflect our values, and if we want our church to continue doing ministry and paying for a building and a pastor, we all have to give money for that to happen.
But that’s not the stewardship message Jesus is teaching in this story.
This story is about stewardship, but it’s much more about the brokenness in this world. It’s a warning for us not get so caught up in the institution of the church that we fall into manipulating and exploiting our members.
Martin Luther’s first problem with the church of his day was the promise of forgiveness in exchange for donations. That’s how the Reformation started.
And it goes beyond church. Veterans Day is tomorrow, which gives us an opportunity to recognize and thank those who served their country, and also to reflect on what in our country is worth serving and sacrificing for.
Our nation is founded on beautiful aspirations of liberty and justice for all, to be a society where we recognize that everyone is created equal. We’re blessed to live in a great nation, and I’m grateful to those who give of themselves to protect it.
And yet we so easily drift towards using our power to exploit others, building our wealth at the expense of other nations, cheaper labor in places we don’t like to think about. As followers of Jesus, we have to question why we have abundant food and shelter when so many of our neighbors are in need. Why is the widow in the story poor? And how are we benefiting from our neighbors’ poverty?
I’ve been wrestling with this story trying to find the good news in it in a week when it feels like half our nation is celebrating and half is hurting, the good news in this story in a week when our community has lost a member, and perhaps the best news I’ve come up with is that God is not ok with the brokenness of this world.
Jesus is not ok with the exploitative systems of this world that crush people down to their last two coins. Jesus is not ok with a system where groups of marginalized people become collateral damage, used and abused to score political points. This is not the way God intended the world to be.
This is a story about stewardship; how do we steward the resources we have, how do we use the power we have to love our neighbors?
Last Sunday, we talked about our central mission being to love God and love people. Well, loving our neighbors as ourselves looks like caring for them when they’re in need. It looks like making soup for the food pantry, and hats for kids in need.
In the last couple of months, I’ve twice had the privilege of helping out someone who’s reached out to our church for assistance, and I’ve gotten to go use the money you gave to pay for some essentials they needed.
Loving our neighbors looks like raising thousands of dollars for hurricane relief, and serving meals at the homeless shelter. And it also looks like questioning the system that enable poverty, challenging systems that leave people living in scarcity when there ought to be enough for all.
And this week especially, I want to remind you that our calling as God’s people, this mission we have as a church does not depend on who our president or senators might be. An election doesn’t change our mission. It might solve some problems and raise other problems, but as God’s people, we are still called to love our neighbors as ourselves, to stand up for the widows and the orphans and the vulnerable.
And God is at work. God is at work in this congregation. God is at work in you. God has not given up on us. Jesus came into this broken world, and yes, he points out the brokenness, but then he works to make it better.
As our Psalm says, The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.
And as the body of Christ, we get to be part of the work God is doing. We get to be part of restoring this world to be the way God intended. And in the face of division, and brokenness, and even death, we get to proclaim a message of hope, the promise of resurrection, the good news that the world does not have to be like this.
God has come to give us a better way to live, to bring us salvation, now and forever. Thanks be to God. Amen