In the Smallness

“In the Smallness”—September 5, 2018

"[Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury.  Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 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. 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.” [Mark 12:41-44]

“More that all those who are contributing to the treasury,” really?  Of course not…. Right?

By straightforward human accounting, Jesus is just plain wrong, laughably wrong, about the widow’s offering.  We have to get that much clear from the outset so we do not confuse the wonder of the kingdom with cheap, schmaltzy sentimentality.  It doesn’t turn out that her “two copper coins” were rare wheat pennies with a valuable misprint engraving on them, or that they are really solid gold underneath a coating of rust-red dirt.  It doesn’t turn out that the widow is really some rich empress from foreign lands, come dressed up in secondhand tatters to hide her true identity. 

This is not a Christian version of a fairy-tale where the plain-looking widow turns out to have been a beautiful wise sorceress, or the pixie queen in disguise.  The frog does not turn into a prince.  The beast doesn’t turn out to have been a rich and handsome suitor for Belle, but who was just made to look ugly by some witch's curse.  No, she is as she appears:  a poor widow scraping by--a nobody, by the world's accounting, who has nothing to offer.  And her offering is just that:  two practically worthless coins.  For whatever Jesus means about her gift being “more” than the others, it doesn’t mean that they were a hidden treasure in disguise, actually worth more in dollars and cents (or denarii and shekels) than the big checks of the upper-crust donors.

Now, that would be fairy-tale logic: that you should accept the meager offering of the frog because it might turn out he will really be a prince who has a fortune to give.  But that is not the way our story goes.  No, the frog only has lily-pads to offer, and they stay lily-pads, they do not turn into gold or lead to a buried treasure.  The widow’s gift stays as it is—two coins you would probably leave in the tray at the gas station check out if you saw them.  And the widow remains a widow.  

This is the real wonder of Jesus in this scene: he honors the woman’s gift in its smallness, not because it is really something different underneath.  And what is honorable about her gift is that she gives all of her smallness.  It is not the bottom-line monetary value of the coins.  It is not the straightforward accounting of her donation or the value of the tax deduction she could claim from having made it.  It is that, in one act of giving, she not only put her money to God’s service, but her life in God’s hands.  By giving all she had, her gift was also an act of faith, an act of trust that the same God to whom she gave would be the God who provided her daily bread.  And she was able to give all she had because she was convinced that God was (and is) worth it.

And now we are getting to the question that really matters in this story.  It’s not, “How much was the woman’s gift worth after all?”  The real question to be asking is, “How much is God worthy of?”  And there is only one way you can truthfully answer the question: all.  God is worthy of all that I have, all that I am, all that I will be, even when that “all” is small.  What makes the widow stand out is that she has the clarity of mind to ask the only truly relevant question:  how much is God worth, rather than how much can I afford?  Because, after all, if the God to whom you are giving really is worthy of our lives, such a God is capable and willing to provide, too.  But all of those questions can be answered without ever even knowing what the monetary-value is of anybody’s offering compared to another.  

In his book The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson puts it well: “As we bring our offering we are saying, ‘This is the best we have, this is the best we can do; but it isn’t good enough, it doesn’t satisfy my need to be whole and saved, it hasn’t worked.  Here it is, God, it’s your turn.  See what you can make of it.’” That is what makes the widow’s gift so blessed:  it is given as the one answer to the parallel questions, “What is God worth of my possessions?” and “To whom can I entrust all that I am?”  Her offering of her last two coins is, simultaneously, both her statement of faith that God is worth all she could ever offer of all she could ever be and her statement of trust that God able and willing to care for her life.   In one action, complete surrender and complete reliance meet… even in the smallness of her gift.

Now, the flip-side is also true here in this scene.  Not only does the this unnamed widow think that God is worthy of all that she has, but the God to whom she is offering her coins is the sort of God who, the Scriptures keep telling us, is particularly concerned for the people who have nothing. The God of the Bible has, it would seem, what theologians call "a preferential option for the poor"--that is, God has a way of particularly looking to lift up the lowly, fill the hungry with good things, deflate the puffed up and arrogant, and pull pompous tyrants and demagogues down from their thrones (you know, all the stuff Mary sings about in her Magnificat).  So really, it's no wonder that this widow trusts her life to the hands of such a God. After all, the God of the Scriptures has a reputation for providing enough to sustain the unnamed widows who give all they have (think of the widow who bakes Elijah a bit of bread with what she thought was the last of her flour and oil, whom God sustains for years through the drought by preventing the jars of meal and oil from running out). This woman trusts that ours is a God who keeps an eye open on the nobodies and anybodies who don't have two coins to rub together, because that is God's way.

The powerful people, the influential crowd, and the prestigious so-and-sos of the world see her as nothing.  She has no wealth. She doesn't have "brand recognition." She doesn't have leverage.  And she has no power.  They look at a gift like hers and say she is insignificant, because she does not have anything they think they can use--no bargaining chips, nothing to make a deal with.  But the God who loves in the smallness sees her as utterly beloved precisely because of her empty hands.  She doesn't need anything else to be beloved but herself, and the living God knows that her offering of her two coins is an act of trust in God's reputation as One who provides for the nobodies who have nothing.

That is how the God we meet in Christ values people--not by their net worth or ability to grant favors or make connections, but deeming them precious in their smallness, in their empty-handed trust.

For us today, then, there are two questions to ask when it comes to how we use what we have in this life.  And they are not the usual questions preachers are expected to ask in order to goose the bottom line of offerings and tithes.  The right questions are not, “How much can I afford to give?” or “How much do my gifts of time and talent and treasure stack up against the next person?” but rather, “What is God worthy of?” and “To whom can I entrust my whole self?”  Let us ask ourselves those two questions today, and then just see if we can dare to answer them honestly.

Lord God, what we have to offer is not enough—not enough to make us whole, and not enough to exhaust all that you are worthy of.  But we trust that you are the God of loaves and fishes, so take them, and us, as we are, and do with us what you will.