All in For Love - 25th Sunday after Pentecost
Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
November 10, 2024
There’s a name given for the kind of reading we have
today in the gospel- it’s a controversy story. Even this name may make us want
to cringe and tune out in our current climate but stick with me. Jesus and some
of the religious leaders are debating each other at the end of Jesus’ earthly
ministry. In fact, as this happens, chronologically it will be mere days before
Jesus is on a cross, so if the dynamic feels like life and death, it is because
it is.
The danger in how we hear this story and others like it,
is that we can fall into the trap of universalizing the people involved and it
goes something like this. Leaders in the temple are bad; Jesus and his
followers are good; and poor widows are uniquely able to make life and death
sacrifices which make them a model we cannot attain. No one group is really uniform
like that. We could just as easily be talking about today with who is good and
bad and who is the rare noble person who defies our judgments but might as well
be a unicorn because they seem not really human like we are.
So, what can we take from this story that is helpful to
us today? Well, first, Jesus does not think that every person who is a scribe
or Pharisee is automatically guilty of what he is accusing some folks of
embodying. We should not paint everyone with the same brush as though there is
nothing more to grasp or learn.
The next is that Jesus is not praising the widow for
being an exceptional “giver” no matter how many sermons on giving have been
preached including by yours truly. Finally, not all of Jesus’ followers “get
it” as will be seen just after the end of today’s lesson where they head
outside, and after everything Jesus has said about perspectives and people that
I want to take up in a moment, one of the disciples acts like a tourist in New
York city dazzled by the skyscraper as if the temple’s extravagance was the
most important thing. Jesus’ disciples were poor so it’s not surprising.
What is Jesus up to here? Jesus is about noticing others.
In a world of so many things to captivate us, or so many traditions or ways of
being we can get caught up in honoring, we can miss the people. In a world full
of controversy and disagreement about ideas, we can miss the people. Jesus
notices the widow. She is down to two coins, not enough to live for the day. Out
of her poverty, she gave her bios, which in the Greek is not just what
she had to live on. She is giving up her life. Widows in first century
Palestine lived on the margins of everything.
Jesus notices and centers the widow and tells his
followers to notice and center her too. Peel your eyes off the rich folk and
notice her.
Jesus takes in what she looks like, how she walks, how
thin she looks, how alone she is. Without the care of a husband, she is left to
the care of her community. She has no other safety net, no pension, no social
status. She is vulnerable in every way. The gift she is making, she makes to
worship the God who she believes will care for her just like the Torah says.
That care comes through the care of the community, not some divine gift falling
from heaven. But the community has failed. And its corruption is not just the
actions of some leaders.
As the late Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr once said,
“our lives begin to end the day we are silent about things that matter.” No one
in the community has really challenged the way “widows” were treated. “Jesus
sees her courage, that she swallows her panic and entirely human desire to
cling to life no matter what. He sees her facing her end.”[1] He sees her walk amidst those who consider her invisible, expendable, just one
more drain on society whose person and two coins are practically worthless.
Just one more statistic. He sees her humanity while others see grievances and
gold. And he knows she will die in a matter of days with nothing left and no
one to provide for her. No one to be with her. That’s what Jesus calls out.
Jesus truly sees her and says, “Watch out for those who
want you to see them, and who offer thoughts and prayers, but will exploit
you.”
Jesus sees those who have the skill, and knowledge and
ability to do stuff; those with respect and status and authority. And he sees
how those who can look after the widows and orphans, those who can call for
justice and mercy and do what they can to embody it, choose instead to dehumanize
them.
They pray long prayers, but then call the poor insulting
names, or murmur about their circumstance, or even feel threatened by efforts
to meaningfully care for them. They devour insults like they are food and take
the energy we need for thriving and waste it. And it could have been “widows”
or any other group on the margins that is reduced to a label or a number which
allows for them to no longer be seen as human beings before their eyes.
For us today, we have different folk who can consider
some folks insignificant, or expendable or too broken to fix.
Part of the good news to wring from this passage is that
no one, not one single person is insignificant, expendable or too broken to fix
in God’s eyes.
This gospel is proclaimed to restore our humanity as
individuals. The gospel is also proclaimed to restore the fabric of our
community. Our worship here is not to interact with a transactional God, it is
about expressing our love for God and receiving God’s love in community in
gratitude. To give up our whole life, and all its perspectives in trust and
faith that God wants so much more for all of us. We reach out to the God who
reaches out to us. Too often many want a faith that is about triumph or
judgment, and not reflection with Jesus. Notice the widow at the center of
Jesus’ story. Jesus loves her.
In persistence she offered her whole life and being in
worship of God, not the leaders, not the Temple. She silently but powerfully speaks
against the injustice and corruption that claims to be one thing but is clearly
another. She claims her humanity, and Jesus speaks it into the room in kinship.
She gave everything she had to serve a broken world. Just as Jesus would do,
days later to redeem, restore and renew that world, our world.
This side of the cross we know that we are called to
follow Jesus’ work of redeeming and restoring and renewing love. It starts with
truly noticing each other, every human. Dr King also said, “I can never be what
I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you
ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” That day in the temple Jesus longed
for those who followed to believe it was possible to believe we are better than
false rhetoric and empty gestures. That there is more that binds us than
divides us.
Our story as God people is not intended to be a
controversy story, but a love story. This love story is what we should pray for
and work for with our whole life so love can truly prevail. AMEN.
[1] Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus, 4 November, 2018
Copyright Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2024 All rights
reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
Sermon Text: Mark 12:38-44
38 As [Jesus] taught,
he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to
be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and
to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40 They
devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They
will receive the greater condemnation.”
41 He sat down opposite the
treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich
people put in large sums. 42 A
poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a
penny. 43 Then he called his disciples
and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all
those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For
all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty
has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.
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