By The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
November 4, 2012
Text: Mark 12:38-44
A couple of weeks ago, I had a very, very challenging experience - and not a little bit humbling! I went to buy a jacket at the store where I normally do, checked the rack where my size is usually found, I looked very carefully at the wonderful array of tweed jackets that I could purchase. I found one I thought it was particularly fine cloth and asked the sales clerk if I could try it on. It was the right size - I looked at it - and he immediately put it over my shoulders and my arms, and it was so small that neither side of the jacket even remotely met in the middle, and the cuffs were about four inches up my arm. Clearly, something was wrong! I looked again at the size: it was my size. He said, “Jackets usually don't change in size, sir; clients change in size.” I was humiliated!
He then said to me, “It might just be the new cut these days for somewhat slimmer people with shorter jackets and narrower lapels. Maybe that is the problem.”
I was extremely upset! I walked around thinking, “Maybe if I look in another section or maybe some sizes above, I might find something that would be suitable. Or maybe they could order me something if I found the right fabric.” So, I went over to another rack, two sizes smaller than I normally wear, and there I found an even better cloth that I thought would be a lovely jacket - maybe they could order one of those? But, as I looked at it, I thought it looked larger than the one I had tried on. I thought, “Oh well, Stirling, humiliated once, humiliated twice won't make any difference!”
So, I tried on a jacket two sizes smaller. It fit me perfectly! I looked at the sales clerk - and you have never seen such a smirk on a face in your life! I put it on, and I said, “This is perfect!” I looked at the size inside: two sizes smaller than the other one, and the same company.
I said, “Something is very, very wrong here.”
He said, “Oh my goodness, yes! Something is very wrong!”
He went to his computer and lo and behold the manufacturer had put the wrong sizes on the jackets and many of them were incorrectly sized. I found that I was wearing the size that I had always worn and what was joy and smugness turned to a rather bland, “Well, I guess I haven't changed nor have the jackets!”
Someone had changed the tags at the factory!
I sometimes feel that is the way that Jesus treats conventions and ideas: he also seems to change the tags or the sizes. Let me explain. A lot of Jesus' ministry turns on its head social conventions and the proper way of doing things. He has an uncanny way throughout the Gospels of making what the world sees as being important seem relatively unimportant, and vice versa. What the world glorifies and accepts as the norm, Jesus often decries as being not of his kingdom. He does that over and over and over again, with the touching of lepers through to reaching out to Samaritans.
Nowhere does Jesus change the tags like he does in the story conveyed in our reading today. In this encounter, Jesus is talking to his disciples and he is contrasting: on the one hand are the scribes and all their glory; and on the other, a poor widow in all her poverty. He looks at these two and he completely redefines what we consider greatness. He criticizes the greatness of those who are self-important and he does so by pointing to the scribes. He says to the disciples, “Beware of the scribes, for they walk around the synagogue in their robes and glory in their own wealth and prestige.”
The scribes have a long history in Israel. They were there even before Israel was created. Scribes arose from the Babylonian culture. The Babylonians would have what were known as “roadside writers.” These roadside writers would write a letter for you on a scroll for a fee.
The Babylonians had this tradition well before the creation of Israel, but it was Israel that formalized the scribes. It was Israel, particularly with the first scribe, Ezra, who wrote down in fact The Torah, the law. The scribes became the writers of the law. They were the ones who were responsible for copying the contents of the law. They were the ones who had everything ready to be read in the synagogue and in the Temple and places of worships. They were advisers to the rabbis and the Pharisees. They were powerful people: the keepers of the gate of the written word.
In Jesus' time, they had even formed a guild. The guild was centred in Jerusalem and made up mainly of lay people. These lay people would sit in high places. They would have status and stature in society. And they gloried in it, celebrating their own greatness. Jesus looked at these scribes, who had given themselves honour and a position in what they did and said to his disciples, “Beware of them!”
Why? Well, clearly his problem was not with them theologically. It wasn't as if the scribes had an erroneous view of the law. It wasn't that they were unfaithful in writing down The Torah. They did all that very, very well! The problem was that they were puffed up with pride. They thought more highly of themselves than they ought. They elevated themselves above ordinary common folk, and Jesus couldn't stand it.
This text is not, as some have used it, a pretext for anti- Semitism. There are some who have taken this text and Jesus' criticism of the scribes and have said, “Look, Jesus was anti-Semitic, Jesus was against the Jews.” What a foolish interpretation of the text that is! To suggest in any way that Jesus, a Jew, talking to disciples who were also Jews, outside the Temple in Jerusalem was in any way being anti-Semitic is nonsense. “Nonsense,” I say! The criticism that he had of the scribes was of their behaviour, for what they were doing was not in keeping with the will of God, nor in the nature of the law itself.
This past week, I had a most entertaining afternoon. I had a leader of a synagogue come to the church here and spend two hours with me, drinking very strong coffee. The two of us had a wonderful time. The synagogue he serves comprises mainly people who have left Eastern Europe and who fled during the Second World War and afterwards. This synagogue, situated in our city, is one of a number around here with whom, as a church, we have corresponded.
He wanted to laugh, to talk about guitar playing, to talk about sport, and to talk about God. He asked me, as people do in our business, “What are you going to be preaching on this Sunday?”
I said, “Jesus, the widow mite, and the criticism of the scribes.”
He went: “Oh Lord, no! Can you imagine what this one is going to be like?”
I say, “Yes, I can. Would you like to hear the sermon now?”
He said, “No thank you! That is very kind, but no, I will hear it another time.”
There is a sense in which sometimes these texts are being used erroneously. Jesus was not, in any way, shape or form condemning religious leaders. He was condemning the scribes, who were, “devouring widows.” They were taking away their money. Whatever it was they were doing, they were using their position to exploit. Though Jesus doesn't say anything more as to why or precisely what had happened, that is exactly what had transpired. “Beware of them!”
Beware of them because they put their money in the Temple. The Temple had outside of it 13 great big copper drums shaped almost like a flute. They would place their money in these great big repositories. The more coins you had, the more noise you made, the richer you seemed, the more important you were. The scribes and the wealthy and the powerful put on a big show of making a big clang and letting their money be heard going into these vats of coins. Jesus looks at this and condemns it.
He condemns it because of the show that it was: trying to show the greatness of the wealthy and the powerful. You see, for the scribes greatness was success, greatness was influence in the synagogue, greatness was power. The scribes would sit in the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the people of Israel and they would use their letter writing powers to influence. They were there at the crucifixion of Jesus, making sure that the law was abided in every single minute detail. Jesus knew that these scribes would be bad news for his disciples.
So what does he do? He points to a widow and he shows the virtues of true greatness. , “I want you to look at this widow.” Here she is placing one lepta, one Kondrate, a penny, into the great copper baskets. Just a clink; not a clang: One solitary coin, followed by another solitary coin, quietly falling into the great vat of money. He looks at the woman and says, “This woman has given everything that she has.” Jesus was not interested in how much money was put in those vats, but what was left for those who put it in afterwards. He says, “These are the people who have given from their abundance but she has given everything. This woman, this widow, is like what the kingdom is like.”
Herein lies the great and the glorious sense of greatness in the eyes of the kingdom. It is a greatness that is borne out of sacrifice and service. In biblical times, widows were the most dependent people on earth. They had nothing except what their spouse might have left them, often not much. They were dependent on children, if they had them, and if not children, then the graciousness and the charity of the synagogue. Widows had no support basis, no Old Age Security, no pension plans - nothing!
They were completely and utterly dependent. So, when this widow, and clearly Jesus must have known about her and that she had nothing and no one, when she places her Kondrates in that copper pot, he knew she was giving everything. She was coming to the Temple of the Lord and laying it all out but not making a show like the scribes and the rich and the powerful.
I love what Martin Luther King said in a sermon that he gave in Atlanta in February 1968. I love reading his sermons, especially those of 1968. In a wonderful sermon, The Drum-Major's Instinct, he wrote the following:
There is your new definition of greatness. It means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to have your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be a servant too.
There it is: the widow and her mite, giving what she had from all that she had.
Even more than that, her greatness is borne out of courage. Can you imagine the courage it takes to give up everything that you have for the sake of being faithful to the God who loves you? Can you imagine the courage of having to rely the very next day or even the night for your next meal and your next form of income? Can you imagine the courage of being on your own in this world and relying completely and thoroughly and totally on God?
That is why I have loved Emily Bronte's magnificent poem, No Coward's Soul is Mine, and I think of the widow, when she went and put that money in there, would resonate with Emily Bronte, when Bronte wrote these words:
No coward's soul is mine,
no trembler in the world storm troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glory shine
and faith shines equal arming me from fear
Oh God within my breast,
Almighty ever-present Deity,
life that in me has rest
As I, undying life, have power in thee.
For the widow, when she presented her gift, she had no coward's soul! She was also a person of great faith to go, as she did, into the Temple of the Lord, to give when others had given so dramatically and then present her little gift, her one thing that she had left. What faith does it take for a person to do that? What commitment of the heart?
Jesus looks at the disciples and he says, “Disciples, if you want to follow me, never mind the scribes and all their glory and their robes and their power and their authority. This is the greatness of faith. This is self-sacrificing love. This is what I want you to be. And this is what I am going to be on a cross between two thieves.” Greatness is in service. Greatness is in courage. Greatness is in faith. And God will always honour true greatness. Amen.