On June 10 of 2000, a new pedestrian bridge opened in London. The Millennium Bridge is a high-tech structure consisting of an aluminum footbridge spanning the Thames river with steel beams projecting out from the sides.
The architects who designed it spent enormous amounts of time anticipating the effects of people walking across the bridge. But on the day the bridge opened, as thousands of people streamed over the bridge at the same time, something totally unexpected happened. As people walked, the bridge began to sway ever so slightly. In order to keep their balance, people changed the way they normally walked. They spread out their legs and adopted a movement that was more side to side than up and down. The resulting lateral force caused the bridge to sway even more. In response to that swaying people began to move, simultaneously, in ways that preserved their own ability to stay upright and keep their balance. These movements, rather than being random, which the engineers had expected, were synchronized. This caused the bridge to sway even more significantly and authorities eventually had to close it down. It was two more years before the bridge could be used safely. (1)
In today’s passage from the gospel of Mark, we have another example of how individuals looking out only for their own interests can bring down a major structure. “Beware of the scribes,” Jesus says, and then he goes on to point out that these scribes, these religious leaders are despicably self-centered and hypocritical, doing everything they can to preserve their status and their way of life. And by doing so, they put the institution they are supposed to serve at risk.
In contrast to the self-centered scribes, Jesus points out to his disciples the poor widow who places into the treasury -- the ancient equivalent of the offering plate -- her entire net worth, which is worth almost nothing.
Now most of us have probably heard this passage about the poor widow many times before. Often it is used to encourage us to give more than we think we are able, to be more generous than we have been in the past. The widow in this story has for centuries been the poster girl for sacrificial giving. After all, if she can give her last two coins worth barely a penny, then surely we can do better ourselves. And to be sure, Jesus does seem to hold her up as an example. But it is often the case that our basic assumptions about a biblical passage are challenged if we look at what comes before and after it, and that is certainly true here.
Before this story about the poor widow, as we have already noted, Jesus reveals the hypocrisy of the scribes, who insist on having people acknowledge their special status and seat them at the head tables at banquets. They pray, yes, but their prayers are empty, said only so that other people can hear them and admire them for their apparent piety. But even worse, Jesus says that the scribes “devour widows’ houses.” It’s not clear to biblical scholars what that phrase means exactly, but we can safely assume that it has something to do with the scribes not caring for the poor and vulnerable in their midst, a group exemplified by widows and orphans. According to the laws and prophets of the Hebrew Bible, caring for the poor, and particularly for widows and orphans is one of the most important responsibilities of faithful Jews and particularly for religious leaders. So whatever it meant that they were devouring widows’ houses, it wasn’t good. As one of the elders put it at session this week, surely it had something to do with sub-prime mortgages.
Immediately after the story of the poor widow, Jesus’ followers admire the majestic temple. “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” one of the disciples gushes. But Jesus is unimpressed. “Do you see these great buildings?” he snaps. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” In other words, the temple itself and the institution it represents will soon be nothing more than a pile of rocks. And when we pair those words with Jesus’ disgust for the temple leadership, we get the feeling that Jesus might just think that the destruction of the temple is the natural consequence of selfishness and greed -- not unlike the consequences of hundreds of people on a bridge all trying to keep their balance and thus causing the entire bridge to sway.
So it is between Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and his prediction that the temple, corrupt as it is, won’t long remain standing, that we hear this story about the poor widow who gives her last two coins to that corrupt institution, to those hypocritical leaders. And so we have to wonder: is Jesus really holding up this woman as an example of faithfulness? Or does he want us to take pity on her because she has somehow been manipulated into giving away what little she had -- manipulated by the very people who were supposed to be taking care of her? As one commentator suggests, maybe when Jesus said “that’s all she had to live on,” he said it not with amazement in his voice, but exasperation -- “She out of her poverty has given everything she had. That’s all she had to live on,” the implication being, “she should not have done that. She should not have been told to do that.” (2)
*****
After church today, you are each invited to pick up an envelope in the back of the sanctuary that has a card in it, a commitment card. I want you to take that card home and sit down with your spouse or your children or simply by yourself and prayerfully decide how much of your financial resources you will commit to the church in 2010. I want you to do this not because the church today is an institution cleansed from all the hypocrisy and corruption that so upset Jesus about the temple. Frankly, it’s not. We can all get frustrated from time to time with the church, both our individual church, our denomination, and the whole institution of the Christian church. There are certainly good reasons for this frustration. But there are also good reasons, important reasons, for each of us to sit down and prayerfully consider what portion of our financial resources we will commit to the church. The most important reason is that there is a direct correlation between how we spend our money and what we value. In fact, before you even pray about what to give the church, do this: look at a recent bank statement or credit card statement or checkbook and see where your money went in the past month. That will give you a clear indication of where your priorities lie.There is a story told about the Gauls, a warring people who in ancient times lived in what is now France and Belgium. As the Roman Empire spread, Christian missionaries entered Gallic territory and convinced many of the Gauls to be baptized. When a converted warrior was baptized in a river, he would hold one arm high up in the air as the missionary dunked him under the water. The missionaries discovered why he did this the next time a battle broke out. Then, the warring Gaul would grab his club or sword and destroy his enemy in a most un-Christian way, shouting “this arm is not baptized!”
You may think that when you were baptized, your entire life was given over to God, but the reality is many of us hold something back. Most of us aren’t warriors, but all of us are consumers. And all of us probably use our money, at least sometimes, in ways that are decidedly un-Christian. In our English translation of the story of the poor widow, Jesus says that the widow puts into the treasury “all she had to live on.” But the literal translation of that phrase is “her whole life.” She doesn’t just give her last two coins, she gives her whole life, her whole being to God. She goes all in. It may not have been a smart thing to do, giving all her money to a corrupt institution that was supposed to be caring for her, not taking from her, but still it was a remarkable act of faith.
That is true giving. That is the meaning of stewardship. We are called to go all in, to bring every part of our lives into our life of faith, including our financial resources.
But didn’t I just say that the church is still misguided at best and hypocritical at worst? Yes, I said that, you heard me right. It doesn’t change my message, though, except that when we see the church as a flawed human institution, we may find that it is even easier to give. Because the church needs us, it needs us to work and pray and seek justice and look out for the poor and vulnerable among us. The church needs us to challenge its outdated thinking and misguided doctrines. The church needs us to give, not just our money, but our lives, so that the church can give itself to the world. If we hold something back, if we refuse to go all in, if we delude ourselves into thinking that we can be faithful to God with everything but our wallets, then not only will we suffer the greater condemnation Jesus predicts for the hypocritical scribes, we will also magnify the suffering of those people the church is called to care for, the widows and orphans of our time who rely on the kindness of faithful strangers for their well-being. Because if we, the followers of Jesus, don’t care for them, then who will?
If a bunch of people walking in the same way can together cause an entire bridge to sway, imagine what we can accomplish when we work together toward a common cause. When we pool our resources, when we combine our energies, we are capable of remarkable achievements. When we consider what financial resources we will commit to this flawed institution we acknowledge that giving to the church is not just about money, it’s about caring for others. The poor widow is here to teach us that we may not all be called to give more, because certainly God does not want us to give so much that we have nothing left, as the widow did. But we are all certainly called to care more, to work for justice for all. For those of us with more than adequate financial resources -- and even in today’s economy, many of us here have more than enough -- caring more does mean giving more. This is not just so that the church will have adequate funds for necessities like utilities and payroll, but also so that collectively, as a church, we can reach out to the needy in our community and world and ensure that they are well cared for. This is not just a nice thing to do, it is a crucial aspect of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to be a baptized Christian. Even as we work to keep our doors open and our ministries thriving, we need to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves with all the resources we’ve been given. Jesus has no patience for religious institutions that devour widow’s houses, and neither should we.
Over the last month, first at our fall retreat and then last week with Dan Schomer, we have had some great conversations about the future of FPPC. It is obvious to me that you are proud of this church and you are committed to ensuring that this church is going to be here for a long time. Well, for that to happen, you are going to have to go all in together. You are stepping onto a newly constructed bridge in faith that the engineers have done their job. And if each of you only look out for your individual needs to find security and balance, then you risk making that bridge sway so dangerously that you’ll never make it to the other side. But if you commit together to looking out not so much for your well-being as for the well-being of those around you and the strangers who aren’t even with you on the bridge but who need your kindness and grace the most, I have no doubt that you will cross this bridge safely into a bright and blessed future. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Cassidy, John, “Rational Irrationality,” The New Yorker, October 5, 2009.
2. Scott Hoezee, This Week in Preaching, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=343
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