When I welcomed visitors a few minutes ago, I was very much aware of the fact that I am talking about money in my sermon this morning. It would be hard to ask you to think about the verses from Mark's Gospel we just heard without asking you to think about God and money. At the same time, I am deeply aware of all those men and women, some of them my friends, who have been "burned" by preachers and churches who used guilt as a way of getting money out of people who later felt they had been manipulated.
If you are a vistor, or someone attending this church for the first time, I can tell you I don't preach about money very often, and I don't try to make people feel guilty about much of anything. The general thrust of my preaching is about God's unconditional, inclusive, affirming love, which is good news for anyone open to hearing it. In my experience, when people come to understand and experience God's love, they often want to live a life that is reflective of that love—a life that has spiritual depth to it and that is satisfying in a way a consumer-focused life is not.
Ideally Christian congregations are made up of such people—men and women, with their family members of all ages, who are intentionally living as followers of Jesus Christ, and trying to discern how to do that in a world increasingly indifferent to, or even hostile to, institutional religion. My words about God and money are directed to such people, including myself, of course. Anyone who has not come to a point of intentionality about becoming a member of a faith-centered community is absolutely welcome to this church, its worship, and all the rest of its life. I am glad you are here is you are in that category of undecided. I want you to know that I am not trying to get money out of you, and I certainly don't want to lay any kind of guilt trip on you today.
We in the Rutgers Presbyterian Church are in an unusual situation when it comes to money. Most congregations I know of rely, and rely heavily, on the contributions of their members, called tithes and offerings, for carrying out their mission, however they define it. That is not the case for this congregation. Because of the forethought of our predecessors here, going back a few generations, we receive income from rental property that is sufficient to sustain most of the multi-faceted ministries of this church. What members and friends give to the church makes possible additional aspects of our mission, but we cannot and do not make the case that your gifts are indispensable to the continued ministry of this vital congregation.
We do make the case, as you have heard, that giving is essential to spiritual growth. This morning's Gospel reading consists of two paragraphs. They belong together. The first paragraph can be seen as a rebuke to certain aspects of institutional religion as it was practiced in Jesus' time. "Beware of the scribes!" Jesus said. The scribes were religious professionals, men (and they were all men) who were experts in religious law. Remember, there was no separation between synagogue and state two thousand years ago—at least before Roman occupation. There is also not much separation of that kind in modern Israel or separation between mosque and state in many Muslim nations.
In Jesus' time the scribes were closely tied to the Pharisees, the well-intentioned people who saw Jesus as a threat to their status and influence. Apparently some of the scribes and Pharisees, although maybe not all of them, had got caught up in self-importance, wearing long robes, snaring seats in the sky-boxes at sporting events, and taking the best seats in the synagogue—which for Presbyterians would be the back five rows. They insisted on being addressed as reverend, and they insinuated themselves into the financial affairs of widows for their own gain and the widows' loss.
Having delivered his "beware" warning, a word he uses only one other time in Mark's Gospel, Jesus sits down opposite the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem. And what does he do? He watches people. For me it's always sad when warm weather ends and outside dining is no longer possible—or reasonable. This past Tuesday evening after a presbytery event further uptown, I had dinner with a colleague at a restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue. The temperature was in the high sixties, and there were outside tables available. So we took one and had a great time people-watching. It's one of the treasures of city-living.
Jesus sat down opposite the Temple entrance and watched the passing parade. At the Temple entrance there were thirteen large, trumpet-shaped, metal boxes for receiving offerings. Mark writes that "Many rich people put in large sums." Undoubtedly there was a recognizable sound as their large coins hit the metal of the offering boxes. And then Jesus watched as a widow living at the poverty level (which is what the Greek word for poor means) put into the offering two of the smallest coins in circulation, so small they may not have made any sound at all. But Jesus saw her—saw what she did.
He called his disciples closer and said to them, "This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in all she had, all she had to live on." Or in the sense of the Greek, "All she had for that day's food."
The details of Mark's narrative deserve more attention than I can give them in this sermon. This is a story that cries out for discussion, and I hope you will talk about it with a partner, spouse, friend, or trusted teacher. For now I want to say it's important to read the story in context, always the best way to approach a Biblical text. Remember, Jesus had just answered a question about priorities by citing the two "great commandments," as we call them: Love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.
My take on the story of the widow is that Jesus knew what you and I know. What we know is that there is a strong connection between our choices and our desires, and our desires can often be wide-ranging and turbulent. In our culture we are exposed to images and ideas designed to influence our desires. We are bombarded by sights and sounds that compete to shape our yearnings.
I have friends who argue that truly mature people are essentially rational; they aren't driven by competing feelings and emotions that can make life messy. My response to those friends is a single word that I can't say in the pulpit. But it's in the direction of rubbish. People who distance themselves from their feelings and desires are only half alive—if even that. I know. I tried it for a while.
But I also know that desires can be dangerous, and they can lead us to make destructive choices. That's why I believe it's absolutely necessary to have a consciously chosen loyalty or value to which we give our highest allegiance—for Christians, God whom we know through Jesus. When we commit to an ultimate loyalty, we have a way of dealing with our desires so that we can come to some consistency in making choices. As the song says, "You can't always get what you want." It's good to know what we want, what we desire. It's even better to know how to say yes to some of our desires and to say no to others. I believe that's what maturity is all about—being open to the fullness of our humanity and expressing that humanity in keeping with our chosen loyalties and values.
In the story about the Temple treasury, a widow living on the edge of poverty made a choice that reflected her highest value—which I take to be love for God. Her choice was costly, and that's the difference between her choice and the choices of those who gave out of their abundance. Giving out of abundance is not a bad thing. It's a move in the right direction. But it doesn't bring the satisfaction that comes from giving to a cause we believe in to the extent that our giving becomes costly, even sacrificial.
I believe Jesus saw in the widow an example of what God wants for all of us. Jesus described it as life in all its fullness. The interesting thing is that fullness of life is more about what we give away than about what we acquire. It's about knowing how loved we are and finding ways to let other people know how loved they are—by God and by us.
How much of your money and your time are you choosing to give away to support the cause of love in the name of God?