Was Jesus happy when the widow gave to the temple treasury? A few interpreters think maybe not. They point out that Jesus criticized the temple system and even predicted the temple s destruction a few verses beyond what we read today. Why would he praise the virtue in a poor woman s gift to a corrupt and dying cause? His remarks might have been a lament. Suppose he grieved the loss of all the widow had to live on. If these interpreters are correct, given the chance, Jesus might give her money back to her. We need these interpreters. They remind us that God isn t in favor of religious systems that suck the life out of the poor to keep the wheels turning and the leaders wealthy. We have a problem if our churches ever become like the alien machines in War of the Worlds that derive their energy from draining human blood. But the tenor of the story seems more positive than these interpreters admit. By contrasting the gift of the widow with the gifts of the rich, Jesus set her up for praise. He wanted his disciples to see the true character of her offering, which was an uncoerced act of self-giving. Like the widow, even more so, as the story progresses, Jesus will give away everything he has, too. His offering plate will be a cross; his gift a broken body to set the world free from sin and death. I think Jesus wanted us to lift up
the widow with him, to celebrate that her gift was to God, and to learn how to be more like him by being more like her. At least we can say this. When Jesus is watching over the treasury, all gifts matter. Small gifts made in love count as much as the large gifts, maybe even more so, depending on the assets of the giver. Every gift, especially the overlooked one, counts big. I know this from my own experience. Several times when I have visited homebound persons or those who haven t been to church in a while because of illness, they have asked me, usually just before I leave, to take their offering back to the church for them. Often these folks have been on fixed incomes, living alone in small spaces with plenty of things to worry about without worrying about their pledge. But they have on their mind giving the gift. We were advised in seminary not to serve as couriers for church members offerings. We might forget we have the check in our shirt pocket and send it through our laundry. Plus, it creates a weak link in anonymity. What s to keep us from peaking at the amount? But I ve never had the heart to tell someone no. Besides, there is no way to forget the gift once I have it. The check might fit inside a shirt pocket, but it weighs a ton. It lands on the bookkeeping desk with a thud. I don t know what these elderly folks give. I don t have to know. From these folks, the gift is huge.
I worry about the church s post officer. She s a prime candidate for back trouble. Almost every week she hauls in gifts to the church from Knoxville or North Carolina. They come in envelopes, but they have the density of a black hole. The elderly people who send these gifts committed long ago to give to God, and since they are members here, they still send their offering through the mail. I used to feel bad about this. Shouldn t they just worry about taking care of themselves? I got over it when I heard Jesus say, See how they give when it would be so easy not to. After he lifted them up to me, my worry turned into admiration and aspiration. Someday, I hope I m as faithful. All gifts matter, especially the small ones, which are actually big sometimes when you consider the giver. I wish I could send one of the former presidents of Memphis Theological Seminary to the Accounting School of Jesus. Several years ago when my father was still alive, he decided to set up an endowment, the income of which would support the seminary. My father did not attend seminary, but my mother did, and the endowment was a way for them to give thanks for the work the school does. So my dad scheduled an appointment with the president. Whatever the base line limit for endowments was at the time, that s what my father had to give, $1500, I believe. When my father told the president what he wanted to do, he didn t receive the warm
gratitude he was expecting. The president might have chuckled condescendingly, or rolled his eyes. Anyway, my father got the message, that his gift was pretty small, and certainly not worth bothering the president over. Now granted, $1500 isn t much, generating about $100 a year for a budget in the millions. But my parents, living on Social Security, a small pension and VA benefits thought they were giving a bunch. Well, according to Jesus, they were. Too bad the former president didn t know it. So as we sit with Jesus, watching people drop their gifts into the temple treasury, the first thing we do is learn to marvel at the widow s offering. She gave not merely two copper coins, but all she had. Uber generosity! And the second thing we do is learn to laugh at ourselves, especially when we think we can t give another penny. We re already giving so much! Compared to what? Or whom? I think of all the times I take a little too much pride in the fact that I tithe. In case we don t know, a tithe is 10% of what we receive. I learned the practice from my parents, and have been a faithful soldier most of my life. Are you admiring me, yet? Well, according to the story, don t. I still have 90% to go! I went to a stewardship conference in Kansas City this past spring, along with several other pastors from our denomination. The conference was held at the Church of the Resurrection, the
largest United Methodist Church in the country. Some of you have studied the books of their senior minister, Adam Hamilton. He made a big point at the conference of holding up the much quoted giving axiom of John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism: make all you can, save all you can, so you can give all you can. So Hamilton makes all he can by writing books, giving lectures and so on, then he saves it up so he can give all he can. Without any braggadocio whatsoever, Hamilton told us that he and his wife try to grow their generosity every year. They now give away 37% of their income. Wow, I thought. But after counting up the offering with Jesus in the temple, I think, Keep it up, Adam! Only 63% left to go! When we lived in Marshall, Texas, one of the big steeple churches downtown used to list on a bulletin board during the stewardship campaign what every household had pledged for the coming year. Breathe deep, relax, no such plans are in the works here. They posted this list in the name of holding one another accountable. But I m afraid it worked mostly to reveal who had the most money, to foster in the congregation an even greater sense of dependence on the large givers, and perhaps to increase the shame of those who couldn t give as much. What sort of stewardship poster would Jesus come up with in his School of Kingdom Accounting? Maybe three columns: one
for what we made, two for what we pledged, three for the percentage. That would get at the truth a little more. Or maybe just one column, percentage only. And at the top of the list always would be our widow because she gave 100%. Jesus told us to take a hard look at her because she gave all she had. We re never going to catch her by the way. That s not really the point. The point is to see and celebrate the largeness of her offering even as we become realistic about the size of our own. Fear makes us worry we can t give another penny. Pride makes us think our gifts are really something. By the time we leave the temple scene this morning, I hope we have been cured of both. Laughter instead of worry as we learn our fears about not having enough are overblown; humility to replace our pride as we see where we stand in relation to the widow. They say in the kingdom that the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. We can let the widow be first, can t we? We can even celebrate her first-ness while we giggle at our last-ness, because even if we re last, we re still in line for the kingdom, and still have so much room to grow in our giving. Carol Howard Merritt has planted a new Presbyterian church for young people in the Chattanooga area. She writes a blog entitled, Tribal Church. I ve benefitted greatly from reading
her article on stewardship campaigns. Her basic premise is to make stewardship fun. I m all for that, if it s humanly possible. One way to make stewardship fun, she has decided, is to celebrate all gifts, especially the small ones. For those of us responsible for crunching the numbers for the church, don t worry. This isn t a call for everyone to reduce his or her pledge so that we might celebrate a bunch of small gifts. Instead, I m suggesting we must acknowledge that we never know the circumstances of those making the gifts. More importantly, as Merritt points out, a bunch of so called small gifts can go a long way! Just ask the Obama campaign of 2008, funded by a bunch of itty-bitty gifts via the internet, a practice every political party is sure to follow in years to come. Merritt loves to cobble together gifts from here and there and over yonder to make things happen. Little gifts can go a long way. They matter. But even if they don t add up to a lot on the bottom line, they still matter to God because God understands the true value of them. May they matter to us, too. When a child turns in her green pledge card and promises to give one dollar of her ten dollar weekly allowance to the church, let s say hooray along with the treasurer and all the angels in heaven. When the college student drops in with two tens in his billfold, and against all his natural impulses, leaves one of them in the offering plate, hooray for the 50% gift! Larger than
most us did this week. When the couple is gone, but has left us all they had, which wasn t as much as they had hoped, three cheers! And let s not squirrel their gift away for a rainy day, but set it up and manage it so it can do some good in this world, as no doubt our old friends would have wanted us to do. Since little gifts matter to God, please oh please, let them matter to us. Jesus was in the temple, watching people put their gifts in the treasury. Remember, he had no horse in this race. He wasn t a paid member of the temple staff. After he saw the widow s gift, he pulled his disciples together in something like a huddle, minus the helmets and shoulder pads, and here s what he told us. Don t despise the small gifts. The way Jesus measures them, they are big, because they are given in love from meager resources. As we put the widow on our shoulders for a victory lap, may we laugh at our worry and fear, and acknowledge that in our giving, we still have so much room to grow.