Leviticus 19:9-10; 25:8-12
Mark 12:38-44
“Our Money Story: Release”
Preached Sunday, October 30, 2022
I want to share some headlines with you today.
“High school student saves for over 2 years to buy his friend a new wheelchair”
“Texas teen Alondra Carmona is giving up her entire college savings to help pay for her mom’s rent and prevent her being evicted.”
“89-Year-Old Pizza Deliveryman Gets Surprise $12k Tip”
“South Carolina principal takes night job at Walmart to support struggling students”
These are just 4 headlines out of thousands in this genre of headlines. I believe these headline writers and many who read them, think these are feel-good news stories. And many read them and share them on their social media in just that light - their hearts warmed by the good deeds we do for each other.
However, I would argue, along with others, that these are anything BUT feel good news pieces. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to see people helping people. We want to see more of that in our world. We want to see more of people’s hearts moved to kindness and love. And, underneath these stories, the headlines expose a dystopian society where things are not as they should be, where people, collectively, are not being cared for - that our society would put people in these situations in the first place. I think we create these feel good headlines because we’re afraid to look at the dystopian and unjust aspects of our world. An article on a friend buying a friend a wheelchair will get more clicks than an expose about how insurance is failing to care for the basic needs of mobility, how families are going into debt to afford wheelchairs, and not to mention how often airlines break them with no recourse for compensation and etc, etc.
So let’s look at those same headlines again but at the situations lying just beneath the surface.
“High school student saves for over 2 years to buy his friend a new wheelchair” becomes “Kids having to care for kids as insurance, poverty, and generally an ableist society fails to care for basic mobility issues for those in need”
“Texas teen Alondra Carmona is giving up her entire college savings to help pay for her mom’s rent and prevent her being evicted.” becomes “Texas teen puts her own future at risk - not to mention the criminal costs of a higher education - because of lack of safety nets and the pit of generational poverty” - with a smiling picture of her
“89-Year-Old Pizza Deliveryman Gets Surprise $12k Tip” becomes “What kind of society do we live in where 89 year olds have to work to get by while others can tip exorbitant amounts”
“South Carolina principal takes night job at Walmart to support struggling students” becomes “Man works around the clock at a rate that will be detrimental to his health because our society fails to care for kids in poverty”
Again, I am not diminishing the high school friend, the teen who helped her mom, the person who tipped the driver, the South Carolina principal - I am not diminishing their acts of kindness and their generosity - I am wanting to highlight how these feel good stories are actually revealing the nightmares of our society - of injustice and inequity and lack of support, especially for those in poverty and those living with disabilities.
And I am not the only one, by any means, who has noticed this trend in the headlines. Many have chosen to satirize this genre of headline that brings the absurdity of using these as feel good stories to light. I’ll just share two cause we could do this all day.
“Heartwarming: Local 9-year-old starts driving for Uber to pay for his mom’s cancer treatment”
Or this keen observation:
“Every heartwarming human interest story in america like ‘he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine’ and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you’d need to pay to prevent it from being used”
Alright - now that we’ve established that this is a thing in our society, let’s make a headline out of today’s Gospel lesson.
Here’s the feel-good/don’t look too deeply at it version: “Widow gives away her last penny to her church in extraordinary act of generosity”
And now here is the headline that looks at the dystopian reality underneath the feel-good fluff piece:
“Widow’s house is devoured by her church. She is left penniless and will die if no one cares for her.”
The most common or popular or long-withstanding interpretation of the story of the widow’s mite is more in line with that first headline: Look how generous this widow is! Go and do likewise. But that’s not what the text, or what Jesus, says.
This isn’t a text on percentage giving. This isn’t a text about the spirit in which a giver gives. This isn’t a text about trusting in God. These are all worth talking and preaching about…but it’s not what is behind this passage in Jesus pointing out the widow’s giving.
To know what this passage is about, we have to ask ourselves: Given the Jesus we know from Scripture, who prioritizes human needs - heals the sick, feeds the hungry. Who puts human needs over sabbath, who says human needs trump religious law. The Jesus who criticized the established religion for their lack of care for the least of these…Would that Jesus be happy to see a widow become destitute? No! Of course not.
We just need to look at the verses right before the widow’s giving, they are not often read together but they are essential to understand why Jesus points out the widow’s giving. The context is important: “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.’”
In a groundbreaking scholarly work on this text, Addison G. Wright says this about our understanding of the story of the widow’s mite:
“It would seem that the only way out of these acute difficulties is quite simply to see Jesus' attitude to the widow's gift as a downright disapproval and not as an approbation….Jesus’ saying is not a penetrating insight on the measuring of gifts; it is a lament, ‘Amen, I tell you, she gave more than all the others.’ Or, as we would say: ‘One could easily fail to notice it, but there is the tragedy of the day—she put in her whole living.’”
If the large sums given to the temple treasury were doing what they were supposed to be doing, then that widow should have been the recipient of those gifts, pulling her out of destitution, not her giving her last, causing her house to be devoured. Let’s be real, in giving all she had, with no safety net, she would die.
What does this new understanding of the widow’s mite mean for us?
For churches and religious organizations who function on the gifts of others, it cautions us to use the gifts we are given wisely and responsibly for the welfare and benefit of all of God’s children. For my preaching, especially during Stewardship season, well, it certainly cautions my asks for the money and to make sure how I frame it to you. When we talk about Stewardship, it’s not giving for giving’s sake. It’s giving so that the widow and the least of these can be taken care of. The Biblical or Christ-like drive behind talking about stewardship and giving is to take what we are given and use it for the least of these - for the widow, for children, for the sick…for the marginalized. To use our gifts, the gifts we are given - as individuals and as a larger church - to build God’s Kingdom, here and now.
Speaking of the margins - you know what I mean by saying “the marginalized” right? So those people that society pushes to the edge. We don’t want them in the center view and so we push, push, push, until they are on the edges of society, where they can easily fall off. The disabled, the poor, the different…anyone not exactly what society tells us we should be, they get pushed out. And this isn’t new - there have always been people on the margins. And so in Leviticus, God gives a command to the Israelietes to leave the margins of their fields unpicked so that those who are in need can come and glean what what is there, to harvest and to eat. Perhaps part of giving is first not over-consuming, only taking what we need so that there is something for all.
Now, most of us here today don’t have farm fields. And if we did, it’s no longer a practice to not harvest it all, and not many are walking through fields looking to glean. And so we’re challenged to take these Biblical understandings of giving and caring for the least of these and apply them to our money stories today and how we live them out.
Perhaps it is still literal gleaning ministries - there are ministries who take the misshapen or ugly produce that they do not sell in grocery stories - nothing wrong with it, just not up to shelf-standard, and repackage it and give it to the needy and hungry.
Perhaps it’s just starting with measuring our own consumption and what is needed and what is extra. Perhaps it’s giving what we do not need for survival to those who do need it for survival - ala John Wesley saying to give all he can and he hoped he would not die with two extra coins in his pocket to rub together, he’d rather have given all he could.
Perhaps it’s things like giving without knowing the recipient - like giving new items like these today that will go to Genesis House for women and children escaping domestic violence.
Now most of these things mentioned are individual things - and there are definite systemic things at play too.
I think the context of Jubilee - where every 7th, 7th year, debts are forgiven, land is returned to its original owners, slaves are freed, and the land and animals rest - the context for Jubilee gives us a jumping point for our dreams of what systemic change could look like. We might think a modern day Jubilee is impossible - but maybe that’s because we’re not dreaming big enough, and we’re not advocating and acting towards that day. A day where there is forgiveness of debts: of student loans, of medical debts, of outlawing predatory loans and interest rates. Of land recognition and returning land to Native tribes. Or becoming more aware of the slave labor that makes many of our goods and working toward more ethical consumption. Of re-imaging prison labor laws that fuels much of modern day slavery… All these things are happening, on some scale, small or large, in our country today. The work of Jubilee - of reimagining our whole economic systems and how we fail to care for the least of these and those on the margins - it’s hard work. It’s much easier to try and sweep our realities under the rug, to distract from them with a quote on quote, heartwarming headline. And we ARE called toward kindness to one another - kindness on an individual level. And kindness on a systemic level which means working together for change - working together with our hands and feet and hearts and minds and words and dreams and yes, our giving too, for those who can give to create a more just world, a world more like God’s Kingdom.
So where do we begin? The driving theme behind this sermon series, “Our Money Story” is that stories matter. By re-thinking and re-imagining our interpretation of the Widow’s Mite, moving it from a story of praise to a story of lament for the widow and condemnation for those who misuse her gifts…it opens our eyes and our hearts to our own reality and the issues in our society today. It breaks our hearts for what breaks God’s heart. And perhaps it also opens our eyes for the ways our money stories need to be re-imagined to be revolutionary in creating God’s Kingdom.
So let’s dream together using Leviticus as an example of reimagining what could be - and figuring out where our money stories and faith stories fit in. And sharing those stories that spur us and others on to more faithful living, giving, and using the gifts they are given. Our stories are big enough to lament at the times we, others, even the church, have failed to take care of the least of these and those we love. We can confess our failings, individually and systemically, regarding using our money for the Kingdom of God and the care of all. And we can praise and celebrate the ways we see God’s love and justice in action in our world, where people are being cared for, fed, healed, where Jubilee is being proclaimed and carried out. Our stories are big enough to contain our dreams and prayers and actions for the day when all gifts that are given are used for God’s Kingdom: to care for all, for love of God and love of neighbor as self.
The last two weeks I’ve concluded my sermons by asking “What’s your money story? Your faith story? And how are the two intertwined? This week I want to take it a step further and not just ask what your story is but ask: How can we reimagine not just our individual money stories but our church’s money story, our society’s money story, our collective money stories, so that all of God’s children are cared for?
May it be so.
Amen.
