COME ALIVE

A Sermon the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost

By Pastor Laura Gentry

Mark 12:38-44

In this morning’s Gospel story, Jesus is in the temple with his disciples when he notices a widow who does something interesting.  Though she remains unnamed, she becomes an object lesson of faith. And yet if we take time to notice her as Jesus did, we can learn something extraordinary from her.

In biblical times, you must remember, women could not own property or work for a living. Even if woman had a wealthy husband, she could not inherit his property upon his death.  An unmarried woman, widowed or otherwise, had to rely upon the charity of others. This is why Jesus often spoke about taking care of widows and orphans—these were the two most vulnerable groups of people in their society and so it would be unethical to ignore them. 

Mark doesn’t give us many details about this scene. All we know is that Jesus has been teaching in the temple courts. At this point, he and the disciples are on their way out. But then he stops by the treasury to watch as people make their offerings.  They didn’t pass the plate for offerings like we do today. Instead, people would line up in the outer courtyard of the temple. This was known as the Court of Women because, unlike the rest of the temple, women were allowed to be here. There were 13 trumpet-shaped receptacles along the wall of this courtyard, attended by a priest.  Each person was expected to say aloud the amount and purpose of their gift in order to be heard by the priest.

Can you imagine what an impressive sight this would have been? Most of the people lined up were wealthy. They would have been wearing fancy clothes and tossing in huge sums of money. How would you even notice a poor little widow in such a scene? Why would you care about a woman tossing the two smallest coins in the realm into the offering? Yet, in a move that is so like him, Jesus notices it and calls attention to her act of faith.

I remember reenacting this story in Sunday school class when I was a child. The teacher would let us take turns playing the part of the widow. She’s give us two pennies and we’d get to toss them into the church-shaped Sunday school bank.  It was all very exciting. It made an impression on me that the widows gift was so small: just 2 cents! And that was in the day when you could buy a candy bar for 25 cents. Still, 2 cents seems like nothing to me. Later, in seminary, I learned that the widow’s gift was even less than 2 cents. They were worth one four-hundredth of a shekel—about an eighth of a penny each. They were so small and worthless, they didn’t even bear an imprint like other coins. They were considered the grubbiest of coins in the empire of Rome.

Yet, as she tosses these coins into the treasury, Jesus calls his disciples together and says, “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.”

Jesus has the knowledge that these are not just any two coins, they are the woman’s last two coins. The text says, “All she had to live on,” but the Greek is starker. It says she put in her “bios.” It’s the word from which we get “biology,” the study of life. Jesus, then, is saying that the widow put her “life” into the temple treasury that day.

This sermon is not a sermon about tithing. The woman did not give 10 percent of her income, she gave 100 percent. If this were a gamble, she would be placing all her bets on God. But it is not a gamble, it is something far more dangerous than that—it is called faith. Though she has no money to live on, she can confidently throw her life into God’s hands because she has faith.

In Mark’s typical style of simple storytelling, he doesn’t give us the details we’d like to hear. Does Jesus pus his arm around the woman has he is saying this to his disciples? Or does he teach from a distance so that the widow never even knows that Jesus noticed her?  Does Jesus give her money so she will be able to eat this evening? Does she become a follower of Jesus’? Is she one of the women who journey with Jesus from Galilee to the cross and beyond? And what was her name? We’ll never know.

What we do know is that in facing a bleak future, this widow holds nothing back: she offers her very life to God.

Now that we’ve noticed the widow’s faith, what does it have to teach us? The theologian Soren Kierkegaard, explained that God’s grace in Jesus Christ is entirely free, but it costs us everything because we must take the leap of faith.  We must trust God with our whole lives.  Being a disciple of Jesus is a serious endeavor—it is not for hobbyists. 

And I invite us to consider what this means for our congregation. This text is often used by preachers for a stewardship sermon. They urge parishioners to be more like the widow by putting more money into the plate. And while this is a good, scripturally supported point, I think Jesus is painting with even broader strokes in this teaching moment. He wants not just our loose change—he wants our very lives to change. He wants us living in God’s grace fully.

I recently read a quote by Howard Thurman, the influential American pastor, author and civil rights leader, and it really inspired me. He said: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world need is people who have come alive.”

What makes you come alive? It is all too easy to sleep walk through this life and find ourselves surprised when it is over. God has given us this life. All that we have is from our Creator. We are called to live it—I mean really live it. We must be alive. I think that’s what stewardship is all about. 

What makes this church come alive? God has blessed this congregation with 142 years of ministry. We have a particular responsibility to keep it going. In the midst of a national trend where churches are shrinking and closing their doors, we are still growing. How can we keep it up? How can we provide relevant, exciting ministry that makes you want to stay involved and makes you want to invite your neighbors to get involved too? Our church must be alive.

And when we ask ourselves how we can come alive and how our church can come alive, I think we need to look back at that widow for clues. She did not panic about what she didn’t have. Instead, she focused on what she did have: a God who could be trusted even when all evidence seemed to point to the contrary. She was able to summon the courage to give her “bios”—all that she had to live one, her whole life. What if you and I could do the same? What if we absolutely turned over the driving wheel of our lives to God? How would that change the way we live? How would that make us come alive and in doing so, inspire others to do the same?

Jesus invites us to come alive today. May we open our hearts to trust God so entirely that we may. Amen.

© 2009 Laura Gentry