Sermon: Actions Speak Louder

Mark 12:38-44

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our minds and hearts here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

            Bryn has been leading a Bible study about the gospel of Mark once again this fall and has spoken about how fast-paced this account of Jesus’ life and teachings is.  In the 44 verses of chapter 12 alone we find Jesus teaching no less than 7 major lessons to a variety of different groups of people.  So  as we enter the feverishly paced gospel of Mark once again this morning we find Jesus surrounded by a crowd inside the Temple walls teaching away.  He has entered Jerusalem in his palm processional at this point, and it seems as though he has barely taken a breath in the entire gospel, but especially in these last few chapters.  There is a definite sense that time is of the essence during this last week of his life on earth, and he is looking to pass along as much as he possibly can.  So as he sits with this group of folks who have gathered around him he speaks about the scribes, many of whom may well have been within earshot of this conversation at the time.  He takes the moment in the Temple to teach the people the difference between vanity and humility and the value in the latter. 

             “Beware the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!”  Later in these few verses of wisdom about the scribes Jesus also talks against saying long prayers for the sake of appearance. 

             Now I need to take a quick time out here, because I think this is as much a check on the clergy as it is on faithful people who go about in their communities flaunting their faith – and using it as a mask for some of the other things that we do that perhaps do not follow the will and way of the Lord.  After all, I wear a long robe on a regular basis.  People tend to stop whatever gossiping or foul-mouthed talk when I enter a location – generally with the proclamation, “Oh, we better straighten up, Jen is here.”  And, although some of you may well beg to differ on this last point, the best seats in the house, at least in Jesus’ time, were the front seats in the synagogue – the ones where you could be seen.  So Jesus’ teaching becomes a warning to all of the educated faithful not to flaunt what we have in our belief and our connection to our community, but to use our faith and the good relationship and standing that we hope come with it to do God’s will and way. 

             Jesus continues on in his rant against the scribes, “They devour widows’ houses…They will receive the greater condemnation.”  And here we have it, friends, the connection to the next part of Jesus’ teaching – that which comes to us in the form of the story about what has come to be known as “The Widow’s Mite.”  You see, the scribes in Jesus’ day were not just knowledgeable in the early Jewish law and in the interpretation of scripture.  Many were also considered to be the equivalent of lawyers in their time.  As such, educated folks were sometimes sought after to watch over whatever estate a widow may have had after her husband died.  Some who were chosen, of course, were upstanding and followed the law about taking care of those who had little, like the widow and the orphan.  Others, like those to whom Jesus refers in this passage, did their best to look upstanding on the outside, but did a good job of making their living off of the widows who entrusted their estates to them – charging them pieces of their estate as payment.  In the hands of scribes such as these, the estate of such a widow as the one who enters and makes her offering at the Temple on Jesus’ watch, would surely have little more than the two coins she brings to the treasury to rub together.

             The connection between these two passages is also a major contrast between two different types of people of faith – the haughty and the humble.  After all, it seems that Jesus rarely has just ONE obvious point to make in his teachings.  So as he finally takes a moment to sit down, instead of closing his eyes for a quick rest, Jesus spends time observing the people who come to the treasury. 

             Now the treasury itself was a very interesting place, set up with over a dozen places at which people could make their offerings – each marked with the particular purpose for which the money would be used – much different than our 5 felt lined offering plates here.  Each of the offering places was metal shaped like a trumpet, so if you were even remotely observant you would hear whether or not someone’s offering was a large sum or merely a few coins.  As I envisioned Jesus sitting in the courtyard that day all I could think of were the pompous and showy scribes walking up to the offering places and emptying a coin purse full of many coins – making the offering place they chose sound like a slot machine when someone has hit a jackpot.  There would have been no reason for Jesus to notice the widow except for the difference in the sound made by her offering as she put in her two small coins – a parking meter instead of a jackpot perhaps. 

            The widow was not someone who was well known in the Temple or the surrounding area.  Instead she was just a woman who, in faith, was offering up gifts to God.  In fact, in many of the art pieces that portray the story of the Widow’s Mite she is a faceless woman in the midst of a large crowd of people in the Temple that day.  Her story, indeed, is easy to gloss over, if we allow ourselves to prioritize all of the other things Jesus teaches in the 13 chapters between the day he returns from the wilderness to start preaching the Good News halfway through chapter one, until he is betrayed and captured halfway through chapter 14.  There is so much to take in, to focus on, and in such a short span, that we sometimes allow the anecdotes like that of the widow to fall out of our consciousness – either because they don’t seem to mean as much or because we are almost frightened by what they call us to do and be as people of faith.

            That is what intrigued me so at the Junior Youth Fellowship Lock in a month ago.  It was an interesting night, full of lots of young folks with lots of energy and lots of loud noises.  It seems that the only time Amy and I were able to get the JYF kids to calm down and listen was when we said the phrase, “We need a few volunteers to help with…”  So after we had taken part in some icebreakers, planned out the Halloween activities for the younger kids, eaten ice cream sundaes, and played a “warm wind blows” we arrived back down in the youth room – on our way down to Fellowship Hall for the grand GA GA tournament part of the evening, when I looked at the gaggle of kids in front of me and said, “I need a few volunteers to help me with…”  And before I could finish my sentence about 18 hands went up.  “Planning worship for midnight tonight,” I finished.  6 hands remained up in the air. 

            As we sent the rest of the JYF-ers downstairs to work on setting up the GA GA pit, my crew stayed upstairs and planned out a worship service, the theme of which they chose to be “Life Lessons.”  That is when Olivia Morin, who is in 6^th grade this year, looked at me and said, “Pastor Jen, can we share the story about the widow and the two coins?  That is my favorite story in the whole Bible.”  “That is so interesting,” I thought.  I am used to kids really liking the story of Noah’s Ark or the birth story of Jesus – generally anything that involves animals in some way or another.  And here was little Olivia asking to share “The Widow’s Mite.”  “Sure, Olivia, I don’t see why we couldn’t share that story.  So what life lesson do you believe it teaches?”  “Be Generous,” was her reply.  And as I pressed her a bit more as to why this story was her favorite in all the Bible, as I asked she and her mom if it would be okay for me to share this story today, Olivia said, “It is a good lesson for people, and it makes sense.  When the poor widow came she gave 2 cents, which was all she had.  She gave all she had because she wanted to not because she had to.”  From the mouths of babes, if you will.  The widow wasn’t giving the money to God’s work because she wanted others to notice her or because she wanted credit or prestige.  

            You see when I look at the contrast of the scribes and the widow all I can think is, “actions speak louder.”  They speak so loudly that a 6^th grader living in Brookfield, CT in 2009 knows who the widow was in the story in the gospel of Mark and what that widow taught will live on with Olivia for her lifetime.  The scribes were talkers – they talked in the Temple, they boasted about themselves and their faith, and prayed long prayers in order to show off their knowledge of what they thought the Lord was looking for.  On the other hand, our nameless and sometimes faceless widow did not have to say a word in order to share a very important stewardship message with Jesus, the disciples, and all who have ears and eyes and hearts to hear it. 

            You see when we talk about Stewardship in the church, my friends, we are not talking about bleeding your wallets dry so we can pay the bills and keep our church afloat – although paying the bills is as important here as it is in our own homes if we want to keep this community as is.  But we are talking about managing the gifts that God has given us – our gifts of time, talent, and treasure, not for our own good, but for God’s glory and purpose.  We are talking about HOPE.  The widow gave all she had, not so she could be seen as a big giver or to get some kind of credit with God, but because she chose to share in faith and hope the gifts that God had given her.  She chose to HOPE that somewhere there would be a person or a community of people who would follow the laws and help to take care of her, and she chose to HOPE that the small gift she was able to give would go on to help someone else – either through what we might call these days outreach, pastoral care, an intention on a prayer chain or an opportunity for lifelong learning about our faith and the ways it helps to heal us and how we should put it into action. 

            Jesus noticed both the scribes and the widow – but he only chose to share GOOD NEWS about the generous widow during that last pressing week of his life.  He was not completely certain of what would happen to him, but he chose to be generous with his teachings and his life as well.  He chose to HOPE, like the widow, that God had a greater purpose.  Even in these continuing difficult times may we do the same.  Amen.