Everything She Had - Luke 12:38-41 (All Saints Sunday / 24B)

 

So - here we are in November! I’m getting excited about the football season, the temperature dropping, and Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. We are also finishing up the liturgical year, because we start the year at Advent, which this year is kind of early - the Sunday after Thanksgiving, November 28th. 

Anyway - I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll get there. Today, however, we are looking at the Gospel reading from Luke, found in Chapter 12, verses 38 to 41. This is typically referred to as the parable of the Widow’s Mite. 

Now, let’s go through what’s happening here. We need context, because we were not part of the original story. This is a pretty common text here for stewardship, and on its surface, the story is perfect for it. But when we dig deeper, Jesus packs a lot into his parables for it to be brought out. 

We are still in the passion week, during the after arriving in Jerusalem, and this story happens right after the text last week. After the scribes who had questions about all sorts of odd questions for him, Jesus set them straight about what really matters. If you remember, it was loving God, and loving your neighbor with everything you are - mind, heart, soul, and strength. Let’s put that in the back of our mind for a moment. We’ll come back to it. 

Today, the passage that was read seems to have two parts. Now, these parts are very important and need to be held together. They don’t seem to be connected, but they are - stay with me. There is a bit of tension happening in our text, doesn’t there? Jesus starts by engaging the same scribes he was in arguments with, he finds himself deeper in it this week. Jesus gives a warning to the leaders, that they may be corrupt! They have the best clothes, get the best tables in restaurants and at church, their egos are fed! In the next breath, Jesus says, but these same guys are robbing the widows of their homes, and are only praying for attention, not for true worship or actual devotion to God. 

Then the text takes a turn, our location changes - maybe - but either way, it’s pointed out that he is seated “opposite to the treasury”. I feel like this could mean two things. He is sitting facing it, so he can see what’s happening. But couldn’t it mean that he is, morally speaking, against what the treasury is doing? Keep in mind, at this time in history, there were no banks. The centers of commerce were at the temple, where all kinds of economic activity was happening. Earlier in this same book, Jesus was flipping the tables of the moneychangers, because of their lack of faithfulness in their business operations. 

So - again - Jesus is just sitting on a bench, watching the action. He sees the wealthy putting in large sums in value, but here comes this old poor woman who has no resources come and put two tiny coins in the collection plate. And yet - here’s the person Jesus is making an example of. 

Widows, as I’ve alluded to several times, were considered one of the classes of most vulnerable people in the ancient world. They not only had few ways of income, but their assets from their husband could be passed to another male heir - a brother or a son. Who was dividing assets? The scholars Jesus is speaking to. So, the group Jesus is talking to may even be managing the estates of widows themselves, since at the time, they may have been considered unable to tend to their own affairs.  So who knows what kind of fees these widows were paying to the very ones who were potentially skimming their assets anyway. Also at the same time, what potential recourse would they have? They had very few legal rights anyway.

There is a complaint, in general about the Church, that the clergy are just ones who prey on widows and the less fortunate, because we offer them something that they will never get in return. Don’t get me wrong, there have been many churches who have been in the news as well for financial mismanagement, and laundering schemes. I will acknowledge that there are bad actors. Does that make the whole system irredeemable? No, but it doesn’t help the good that most churches are doing to positively affect their neighbor’s lives. 

Some churches are known for bemoaning the lack of standing in a cultural context, but yet what missions are they doing? Are they doing missions which keep cycles of poverty intact, or are there programs designed to break them, or potentially transform people’s lives because of the cycles that get broken? This is a hard text to really get out of the tension between having the widow give all she had to the church, but then knowing that those in charge may be corruptly abusing the gift they are given, and that the system that was created is sucking the life out of the people who are sacrificing the most for it. 

So - you may be wondering - what is the takeaway from this text, because it certainly isn’t uplifting the widow. But it is. Jesus says that she has given all she has. Just last week, we were talking about how God needs your whole mind, your whole spirit, and your whole strength. This week, it may seem that I’m saying that God wants your whole bank account as well. I wouldn’t go that far, but may be it’s worth asking, how do we measure success? Is it the number of people sitting here listening to me any given Sunday? Is it the number of young families among us? Or could it be the number of widows, orphans and others we are caring for? We need to be able to budget for the programs which will make people want to come to Bethany Church, or maybe not even about the building. It could be argued that the church building really is holding back the transformation of the community around it.

So how does this tie in with All Saints’ Day? 

I’d like to add in a second scripture to today’s lesson - from the Gospel of John 11:32-44, with the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Hear these words: 

“When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them.They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance. “Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them. But Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested, “Lord, he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.” Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” So they rolled the stone aside. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me. You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me.”Then Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him go.”

Continuing on - I know I read a lot there. And don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to unpack. I’m sure it’ll make a great topic for another day but I need to highlight a couple of things.  The beginning of this chapter introduces our characters Lazarus, who is Mary & Martha’s brother - all of a town called Bethany. 

Quickly summarizing this: Lazarus died, and Jesus came to Bethany. Once he learned about Lazarus, Jesus wanted to be taken to him. Arriving there, with his own share of doubters among the townspeople, Jesus invites everyone to witness God’s power to resurrect what had been dead for four days. Mary even says something about the smell, so we are getting a thorough account. Jesus responds to her saying, don’t you have faith? Can I not show you the miracles of God? So, they opened the tomb. Then he prayed, asking his Father to bring this dead man to life. 

We have a few names who have passed on to glory who we will celebrate in a few moments, but with this passage we can see that God can do all things with faith and communication. Jesus has changed the story of Lazarus. It was about death for the last four days, sadness where even Jesus wept. But then, they opened the tomb and Jesus resurrected and renewed Lazarus to his community. 

How this all weaves together is this - I assume Bethany Church got its name from this story of Lazarus. Miracles happened there, and they can happen here. Jesus invites those around him, witnessing the spectacle of divine love and transformation of this man who was literally dead and brought to life. We, also are called to be witnesses to the power of resurrection that experienced through Jesus in each of our own lives. 

The second and last point is this - if we wish to see a transformation and resurrection here at Bethany, we need to get praying, and have faith. Let God show us the way out of the tomb. We need to think less about what everyone else is giving, even if it’s sufficient, but what we are giving - to feel the tension to rely on what God is providing, whether it’s the next meal like the widow, or the first steps out of the tomb for Lazarus. Each of them relied on God for their next needs, putting full faith in the Lord. This is the example Jesus wanted to make out of each of them. Transformation happens when we give everything we have. We are transformed to find God in the midst. Amen.