Mark 12:38-44
In the intervening weeks between All Saints and Christ the King, the lectionary presents texts detailing eschatological aspects of Jesus' sovereignty. These are difficult to preach on, but today’s text (“the widow’s mite”) seems to stave off the heaviness of the eschaton, at least for a week. Or, maybe not...? Can the story of the widow putting in her two copper coins be a gentle entrée into the eschatological texts to come?
While it seems that Jesus’ conviction of the Pharisees is about hypocrisy (it is, partly), it is also about the degree to which the vulnerable are taken advantage of. It is probable in this case that those who “…devour the households of widows” commit a double sin. First-century Jewish documents attest to instances where legal scholars (scribes) who had a good reputation were appointed as trustees over the estates of widows who had no male relatives. By charging exorbitant “management fees,” or by outright fraud, these once-trustworthy scribes steal from a widow with no male relatives. This is not just stealing, it is stealing from those who are alone. Similarly, the word translated as “households” is better understood to mean “estate.” The sin of these managers (the law) is that they are hypocrites who steal from the weak and then pray.
We do this, too. And before preachers nail the Pharisees for their behavior, the mirror needs to be turned around. Americans especially, benefit from cheap labor to produce all the things that we consume (ever more!) at “affordable” prices. But such “affordability” comes with a cost: that unnamed people we cannot see (perhaps widows?) work around the world to feed the beast of consumption. We never see them, nor do we give them hardly a thought. And, the very clothing that they make is the clothing (long robes, anyone?) that we wear into God’s presence on a Sunday morning, conveniently forgetting that “affordability” is a luxury for the rich. This is just one example of economic exploitation that follows the same model, and preachers will not have to look far to find examples that are particularly close to home for their own community.
"The Good News must be the Good News for everyone in this story, not just the woman who acts virtuously. It must, also, be Good news for the hypocritical scribes (us)."
Lutheran preachers must not preach this sermon as “Do not be like the Pharisees!” It is too late. We already are. It similarly must not be preached as “Be like the woman who gives the two coins!” Both are the law. We are the Pharisees who are hypocrites, and we – unlike the woman – never give “all that we have to live on” to God. We fail on both accounts, and we need redemption from both of these examples of failure.
Instead, preachers may wish to explore the degree to which the woman is a foil for Jesus himself. Yes, Jesus watches the woman give, but skilled homilists may invite us to imagine how the woman – who gives everything – is at least a harbinger of what Jesus will do on the cross. Indeed, he “gives everything, all he had to live on” (i.e., himself) for the life of the world. Her sacrificial gift must be viewed in light of what Jesus does. And, Jesus – alone – gives himself over to death to defeat it.
The Good News must be the Good News for everyone in this story, not just the woman who acts virtuously. It must also be Good news for the hypocritical scribes (us). Remember: Jesus defeats death for them too, and the power of the Good News is magnified even more when it comes not only to the good but also to the wicked, perhaps most especially to them. We know that the woman in this story is living in God’s grace (especially if she is a foil for Jesus himself), but how is that grace transforming the scribes? How might it transform them so that their prayers (and ours) match our actions (the stealing that we unwittingly do)? What Jesus is looking for is a cohesion of action and prayer, of justice and liturgy, of honesty and conversation with the divine. One without the other is hypocrisy, hypocrisies that we all commit.
But back to the eschatological implications of the text: is this the first of our November eschaton? Is the sacrificial love of Jesus – “who gives all he has” – a bookend for how you as the preacher might think about the end of the liturgical year, i.e., Christ the King? Does this new kind of King who orders all things from the cross, in fact, echo the two copper coins being thrown into the treasury? Who is paying for what here? That dear preacher, is up to you to explain.
THE REV. DR. PATRICK H. SHEBECK is the Senior Pastor at St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. He graduated from St. Olaf College with degrees in Liturgics and History, and received his MDiv. at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC), doing additional work at Trinity Seminary, Columbus Ohio, and Cambridge University in England. Pastor Shebeck holds the Doctor of Ministry in Liturgical Theology from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago where he studied under Ed Foley. Pr. Shebeck is a Fellow of the Collegeville Institute at St. John's University, and also a fellow of the John Templeton Foundation's project on Science and Homiletics; he also serves on the Board of Directors of the ELCA Deaconess Community and the Board of Trustees of the Seminar on Lutheran Liturgy.
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