Everything she had - 6 November 2015

He 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]

Please let’s not sentimentalise this story.  Standing there watching what worshippers give in their offerings is slightly eyebrow-raising, I would have thought.  Moreover, it seems perfectly proper that the rich people should be giving larger sums.  The picture is sullied for me by an early memory of a preacher vividly picturing these rich ones ostentatiously throwing their money into the temple treasury with a clatter, hoping to be noticed.  That misuses the pulpit -- there is not a word to suggest that happened, either here in Mark’s account or in the corresponding narrative in Luke.  They may have made their offerings quietly and decently, as any of us would.  The contrast with the widow, who had only two coins totalling one penny, which she gave -- that is something which might happen in any church on a Sunday morning, unnoticed.  The point is what Jesus said about it: She out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. 

So, whatever is in this woman’s heart, it has led her recklessly to give all she had.  We would say, I hope, that what is wrong here is her poverty.  No one should be living without the means to buy food and shelter and have personal dignity.  We might even go on to say that the rich Jerusalem temple might have provided her with some help.  Perhaps Jesus and his disciples might have got her some food and shelter – we don’t know what, if anything, anyone did.  I am inclined to take a bleak view of it.  It is not enough to say this wonderful woman’s desperate offering was in fact richer than all the others, which is what I was taught in Sunday school.  The incident depicts a wide social income injustice which remains today.

I think there are two things to be said.  The first is that we don’t know why the woman did this, imprudently to give away all the money she had.  It may be that she thought she had nothing to lose – perhaps she had a superstitious hope that if she did that her luck might change.  Or it may be, as I think Jesus meant, that she was a true worshipper, able to find love and gratitude even in her dire circumstances, and she expressed that in her offering. 

The second thing is what all contemplatives know, or are in process of finding out – we don’t love in instalments.  Spiritual growth means that life is becoming less and less compartmentalised.  There are not gradations of love.  We love or we don’t.  Everything in our journey, one way or another, increasingly aligns us to our love for God and for God’s world.  We give thanks for the possessions we have, as also for life itself, and breath, for friends and lovers, for Kawau Bay and for native wood pigeons (kereru), asparagus and Cadburys Dairy Milk chocolate.  We do not go around saying, “I’ve worked hard for all I have, and it’s mine…”  We have found that all of it, without exception, even when we have very little, we have received.  It is a freedom from ego and ownership, possession and control.  Whatever her actual motives, the woman at the temple treasury is reminding us whom we have to thank.