As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
Mark 12:38-44
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.”
My sermon from the 25th Sunday after Pentecost (November 10, 2024) on Mark 12:38-44.
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So I’m going to start this sermon sounding like an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn even though the worst offenders of what I’m describing are old enough to have kids – and grandkids – of their own. There was a time, not that long ago, when only one or maybe two screens were on at any time in the house. If our parents, kids, or roommates ended up grabbing the tv remote first, we had to watch whatever they wanted to watch no matter how often we whined or complained. Sometimes we might choose to look at a book, read a newspaper, or walk out of the room if the story on the screen wasn’t our cup of tea. But it wasn’t long before we were peering over the top of the page or standing in the doorway to see what was going on. This is how we discovered our favorite teams for sports we didn’t even know existed and how some of our favorite movies were created decades before we were born. When other people showed us the stories that interested them, there was a good chance that we’d suddenly become a fan. Even though the story on the screen wasn’t what we picked, it was healthy to have our likes challenged and expanded by something new. But today, even when there is only one big screen in the house, most of us are sitting in front of it with a smaller screen in our hand. We might be aware of what’s going on out there but we choose to give our attention to whatever story is brewing through the text message, websites, podcasts, social media, and video taking over our phones. These stories, supported, curated, and shaped by an algorithm that cares more about clicks than truth, can wrap us up in a bubble of our own creation. Rather than having to be inconvenienced by other people’s stories, we choose to sit with the one that fits whatever we imagine life to be. And while the amount of information and stuff at our fingertips feels endless, the story we choose to focus on is actually pretty small. This smallness impacts how we engage with God and with one another. And as we see in our reading today from the gospel according to Mark, sometimes the most holy thing we can do is remember how God’s story is always bigger than our own.
Jesus was in the city of Jerusalem, filling his time with a lot of conversations between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Since the festival of Passover was near, the Temple was full of rabbis, itinerant preachers, priests, and other religious leaders preaching to the pilgrims visiting the holy city. Jesus was doing what people expected him to do and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t the only one complaining about the scribes. Yet we have to be careful to not reduce Jesus’ words as meant for only the so-called “elites.” Even when we don’t see ourselves in the people he is talking to, his words are also meant for us. And so when I patiently sat and listened to what those scribes did, I was struck by how small their world actually is. They were, according to Jesus, people with a lot. They had money, fancy clothing, and knew exactly what to pray. They were the ones with the resources, fame, and sense of security that we want when things are hard. But even though they had everything, what they chased after was pretty small. They acted as if life was a zero-sum game where there’s only so much mercy, comfort, and grace to go around. They wanted to always be on top and so they sought out other people’s attention, respect, and power. They wanted people to notice them and so they fought for the best seats in the synagogue and in the marketplace. And since there was only so much attention or money or food or resources in the world, they would consume whatever they could get their hands on. They had everything and yet they lived as if the world was so small they had to fight, struggle, and devour everything around them. The story they chose to tell was one where there’s never enough. And yet God, through a widow, promised that there always is.
We don’t know much about the widow Jesus saw. We have no idea how old she was or where she even came from. There wasn’t even an assumption that she, before she made her offering, had ever heard Jesus speak. But when she stood in line to give her gift to God, her two small copper coins – worth about a penny – showed how big she trusted her story actually was. Compared to some in the line, her gift had no practical value. And if she had asked any of us what she should give, we’d tell her to take care of her bills and other responsibilities first. The widow, though, lived first hand in a world that treated her as very small. She was defined by the loss of a relationship and the rest of the world rarely gave her the support, opportunities, and care she needed to thrive. In a zero-sum kind of life, she came out on the bottom. But instead of choosing to live in the smallness of the story others created for her, she believed she was already part of the story God chose to tell. Her generosity was rooted by living in a story that wasn’t defined by scarcity, fear, and worry. And while she knew what it was like to be consumed, she chose to live in a different story rooted in God’s holy hope.
Now there’s a risk when it comes to focusing on only one story. We have a habit of letting these one set of words, traditions, images, videos, and commentary define which stories have value and which ones we ignore. The more we focus on one story, we end up being consumed by the news, media, podcasts, social media, group texts, group chats, and websites that only consist of one specific point of view. When we choose that kind of story, we make our world incredibly small. And since it’s a world that is too small for all of us, we treat everyone and everything as part of a zero-sum game that not everyone will survive. But when we live that small, we miss noticing what our God has already been up to in the world. We forget how God’s story chose to take on the smallness of our story through an incarnation that experienced all the joy, hardships, and pain life can bring. God, in Jesus, chose to focus on our story as a way to bear witness to how big God’s story of peace, love, and mercy truly is. Jesus, over and over again, pushed people to see life as more than a game since God, through the generous gift of creation itself, made enough for us all. We are the ones who choose to keep people’s stories small and we assume that God act’s like us too. But if God’s story was that small, there wouldn’t be a place within God’s story for any of us at all. Yet God, through the gift of baptism, has already promised that you are part of what God is doing in the world. And so if God’s story is big enough to include even someone like you, then we have the responsibility to make sure that our story is just as big too.
Amen.