Date: November 11, 2012 Title: Penny Wise Text: Mark 12:38-44 Hymns: 464 Joyful, Joyful 414 As Those of Old 428 We Give Thee But Thine Own

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Norman Little
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1 Date: November 11, 2012 Title: Penny Wise Text: Mark 12:38-44 Hymns: 464 Joyful, Joyful 414 As Those of Old 428 We Give Thee But Thine Own How would you like to be given a gift only to discover its value was more than twice what you thought it was worth? That would be great now wouldn t it? Suppose it was your birthday or Christmas and someone sent you a gift card, take your pick as to where, Target, Barnes and Noble, Red Lobster, whatever you like But you receive this gift card, for say $25, and when you went to cash it in they told you it was really worth $55 rather than $25. That would be fantastic. You would be just delighted. Well, I gave some of you such a gift this morning. Now, I admit I was very subtle about it. I did not just walk up and put something in your hand. But if you were observant, some of you should have found something this morning that is worth more than twice its face value. Can anyone guess what I might be talking about? I left a number of pennies on the floor, scattered around the sanctuary. Did any of you notice before I mentioned it? Did any of you bother to pick up one of those pennies before I mentioned it just now? If you have one of those pennies I scattered around, what you are holding is worth 2.2 cents, more than twice its face value. Just why that is the case is an interesting combination of politics and metallurgy. If you picked up one of those pennies I left on the floor, take a look at the date. I purposely used pennies that were minted before the year That is important because if you have a penny that is older than that, it is made from solid copper. In 1982 the cost of copper reached a point that the amount required to make a penny was worth more than a cent. So the US Mint shifted and started making pennies that were mostly zinc rather than copper. Today the amount of copper in a pre-1982 penny is about 2.2 cents. Here is where it really gets interesting. Because old pennies were worth more, there were companies collecting and melting them down for the copper. The US Government always wants to have a certain amount of any given coin in circulation, so as these old copper pennies disappeared they had to mint more of the new zinc ones. As a result the cost of zinc, as well as the cost of manufacturing pennies went up. In order to slow down these costs in 2007 it became illegal to melt down pennies. Therefore, you may be holding a piece of copper that is worth 2.2 cents, but is rather complicated to collect that amount.

2 Even so the production costs have continued to rise. Here in 2012, it costs the government 2.4 cents to make one penny, so they are losing money on them. This has led to the consideration of some legislation to eliminate pennies altogether. Other countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have already done this. And this has all led to a rather strange cottage industry, that of penny hoarding. You see if the US Government decides to take pennies out of circulation, it probably then would become legal to melt down the pre-1982 Abe Lincolns. If that were to happen today, $100 of those old pennies would be worth $220. With the economy the way it is, that is a very good return on your investment. Some entrepreneurs are hoping to take advantage of such a potential profit margin. Adam Youngs is one such speculator. He operates an online business called Portland Mint. He buys pennies by the ton, and uses forklifts and high-tech scales to separate out the zinc from the copper coins. He will sell you $100 of copper pennies for $167. That s right. Ten thousand pre-1982 pennies will cost you $167. You might think that is ridiculous, but if it becomes legal to melt them down, with today s prices you would make $53, or a 32% return on your investment. Where else are you going to find results like that? That is why Adam Youngs is having no trouble selling legal US currency for 2/3rds more that its face value. It may not pay to be penny wise and pound foolish, but sometimes it might pay just to be penny wise. Our scripture lesson for this morning is about value and what things are worth. The setting for our story is the temple in Jerusalem. This took place after Jesus had created a big stir with his arrival on Palm Sunday. We have a series of confrontations between Jesus and the religious rulers, where they try to trip him up asking him questions like whether or not it is lawful to pay taxes. When they finally give up, Jesus starts teaching the common people there in the temple courtyard. He begins by issuing a warning against the scribes, and you may be wondering just who were these scribes after all? They were not the same as the priests who presided over the sacrifices and worship in the temple. They were scholars actually. They were called scribes because they copied and recopied long sections of the Hebrew Scriptures, but they were more than secretaries. They were more like seminary professors. They had studied and debated all the nuances of the Law of Moses. Jesus accuses these scribes of sinful pride. He says that they enjoyed wearing their scholastic robes out in public. Much of the thrill has worn off now, but I confess that I was rather proud of myself, even sinfully so, when I finally earned my Doctor of Ministry degree and was entitled to wear three stripes on

3 the sleeve of my pulpit robe. I had put in a lot of effort to get that degree and it was a symbol of my accomplishment. But even so I did not wear that robe all the time. You did not see me walking around Barnes and Noble or in Hy-Vee wearing my robe. Yet Jesus said these scribes enjoyed being seen out in the marketplace in their robes so that the common people would notice them and greet them by calling them Doctor. Then Jesus says that they devour widows houses. What did he mean by that? Well, it was an extremely male dominated, patriarchal society in those days, so much so that women could not own property. Last week our text was about Naomi and Ruth. I said that they were desperately poor. This is because they had no male family member to look out for them. When a man died his sons were supposed to inherit whatever he had and from that inheritance provide for their widowed mother. But if a man had no sons or the sons were young the situation became complex. The nearest living male relative was supposed to receive the property and provide for the widow, but at times this could be complicated. Under such circumstances there could be a lot of negotiations. Scribes would have been required to keep official records, file legal claims, and carry on the correspondence. It is possible that some scribes required such high fees for their services that any inheritance would have been reduced to a level that would make a widow a liability for her family. Of course, there would have been opportunities to skim off the top without anyone being the wiser. Yet, all the while, these scribes were considered temple employees, supposedly pious and devout, even though they were making considerable profits off of someone s misfortune. Many assume that Jesus is accusing these scribes of being greedy and fraudulent, which may indeed be the case. But this line about devouring widow s houses comes in the middle of all these other accusations of wearing long robes, wanting the best seats in the synagogues, places of honor at banquet and praying long prayers. It almost seems out of place. The overall thrust of these charges that Jesus is making is pride and self-centeredness, but in the middle is this line about being predators of the weak. What is Jesus really saying here? It was a matter of misunderstanding what really had value. Most of us don t care much about pennies. They clutter up our purses and weigh down our pockets. If you saw a penny on the floor you may not consider it worth your while to bend over and pick it up, even if it was minted before So we don t bother and don t care. In the same way these scribes were so caught up in their academic and scholarly pursuits, they could not be bothered or care about those who were so desperate. Even if they had been scrupulously honest in the ways in which they handled all the legal matters in dealing with

4 widows and others lest fortunate, they still were exploitive because they had no concern about the welfare of these poor people. Their only concerns were for themselves. In contrast to the self-centeredness of the scribes, we find a little drama taking place in the verses that follow. Jesus and his disciples are sitting in the temple, near the treasury box where donations were made. Mark tells us that many rich people were putting in large sums of money. In the middle of all this hubbub came a small, slow-moving figure dressed in rags. Everyone s attention was fixed on the wealthy contributors, so that as this person moved silently, she was almost invisible. Her small hand clutched something. She approached the box took out of her hand first one tiny coin and then a second. In the Greek, the word for this type of coin meant scale for they were thought to be as thin as a fish scale. These were small round copper disks that were paper thin. Even with the cost of copper today they were not worth very much. As Jesus and his disciples watched, this widow one at a time dropped those slim coins into the coffers. Now you have probably heard this story before. I have preached on it a number of times. I am not sure if it is merely coincidental that when it comes up in the lectionary readings it is usually in the fall, usually around pledge time. Most of the time, this story is used to preach about giving. The widow gave so much. We should follow her example; that sort of thing. And that is a good way to look at this story. However as I was thinking about it I saw it from a different perspective, because on one morning this week, this little story was re-enacted right outside my office door. I was sitting at my desk, working on the order of worship, when I heard voices out in the hall. I could not hear all that was being said and I wasn t sure exactly what was going on. So I finished up the sentence I was working on and got up to go and see. Before I got there, I heard someone leave through the outside door. I stepped out in the hall and there was Karen Trimble with a rather surprised look on her face. So I asked her what was up. A man had walked into the church carrying two bags of groceries. He had said he wanted to make a donation to the food pantry, so Karen showed him where to put the food. He then apologized that it wasn t more, but that was all he could carry. Karen asked him what he meant. He said he had walked from the Marion Village trailer park out by Hy-Vee and he could only manage the two bags. You walked? Karen asked.

5 Yes, he replied. I don t have a car. You see, the food pantry here was a big help to me when I was going through a rough time. I don t know what I would have done without it. So now that I am doing little better I wanted to give something back. It s not much, but I will be back with some more when I get the chance. By this time, he was long gone, and I never saw him. I never had the chance to thank him. But then I realized it really didn t matter, because whoever this man was, he wasn t doing it to be noticed. It was a sincere act of generosity out of a full and grateful heart for what was done when he was in need. The actual dollar amount of the food he donated was not all that much, but the value of his act of kindness was incredible. And that mile and a half that he walked from Marion Village added immensely to that value. I began by telling you about people who are penny wise, hoarding pennies hoping they will cash in and receive a great return on their investments. Maybe they will, but at this moment, a penny is still a penny. And all those people who have sent Andrew Youngs $167 for $100 of pre-1982 pennies, right now what they have is worth $100. This man bringing those groceries made me think of a different kind of investment. Someone, and maybe it was one of you sitting here this morning, but someone a year or two ago, donated some cans of soup, some boxes of cereal to the Food Pantry. In turn, they were given to this man. It made a difference in his life. It was a great help to him. And now, he wants to help someone else, and is more than willing to walk miles to make that happen. Something of great value came out of the investment of a few cans of food. I could not help but thinking back to the attack Jesus made on the scribes. Jesus accused them of being heartless and selfish, yes, but also about being overly concerned about outward appearances. They put a great deal of effort to be regarded as highly intellectual, very devout and pious. They wore their robes and made a great show of their status. The reality was that they were so caught up in their self-centeredness that their efforts, all the time and money they had invested, were now worthless in the eyes of God. In contrast the poor woman in the story was an impoverished outcast. She was not at all concerned about appearances. That did not matter. Yet she gave what she had willingly and gladly. She gave out of her love for God and in gratitude for his blessings. And perhaps she gave with the thought that God

6 could do more with those two little coins than she could. Maybe she was being penny wise. Maybe she was willing to invest those coins in the Kingdom of God rather than buying anything with them. And that investment paid off. Two thousand years later we still think about her and talk about her. We realize that her gift was of far more value than of anyone else. Today is Consecration Sunday. I hope you brought your pledge card with you. If you didn t, you can get one in the back of the sanctuary. In just a moment, we are going to sing about giving back to God in gratitude for the blessings we have received. As we do we are going to ask you to come down and place in these baskets your pledge card with your financial commitment for next year. Last week I asked you to increase your pledge for next year, and I hope many of you did. But it is important to pause and note why we are doing this. It is not to balance the budget or pay bills or salaries. It is not to impress anyone. It is not about outward appearances. It is about being genuine. It is about making a worthwhile investment in the Kingdom of God. It is about offering ourselves to God for whatever God wants us to do and be. It is about having value in God s eyes, because we understand that nothing else matters. May God bless us with generous hearts as we respond to his love. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Life for Show or Service

Life for Show or Service Mark 12:38-44 READ 38 In His teaching He was saying: "Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes, and like respectful greetings in the market places, 39 and chief