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Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 12
41Jesus went over to the collection box in the Temple and sat and watched as the crowds dropped in their money. Many rich people put in large amounts. 42Then a poor widow came and dropped in two pennies. 43He called his disciples to him and said, "I assure you, this poor widow has given more than all the others have given. 44For they gave a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has."


In his introduction to the book Mr. Lincoln's Army, Bruce Catton recalls his boyhood impressions of the veterans of a conflict fifty years past:

A generation grew up in the shadow of war which, because of its distance, somehow had lost all resemblance to everyday reality. To a generation which knew the war only by hearsay, it seemed that these aged veterans had been privileged to know the greatest experience a man could have. (p.xii)

Through the lens of fifty years of peace, the conflict developed an aura that seemed almost legendary, and for a young man, romantic. As a scholar, he draws a different conclusion: "War, obviously, is the least romantic of all man's activities, and it contains elements which veterans do not describe to children." Perhaps legends develop best in silence, and as the voice of experience grows ever more silent, we need to pause to heed and remember.

With only three Canadian veterans of the Great War remaining, (Victor Clemett, Gladys Powers and Percy Wilson) we begin to feel the scope of loss that comes when first hand experience passes on. Soon no one will be able to describe Passchendaele or Vimy Ridge, and for this we will be greatly diminished. Stories of valour and sacrifice need to be recounted, lest we forget. From Catton: "Those men are all gone now and they have left forever unsaid the things they might have told us, and no one can now speak for them." (p. xiii)

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41Jesus went over to the collection box in the Temple and sat and watched as the crowds dropped in their money. Many rich people put in large amounts. 42Then a poor widow came and dropped in two pennies. 43He called his disciples to him and said, "I assure you, this poor widow has given more than all the others have given. 44For they gave a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has."

Temple sacrifice was a highly regimented system of personal piety. The proscribed rates, broken down by class, were set to ensure observance caused no hardship. Recall the baby Jesus was presented in the temple with the appropriate offering for poor Nazarenes: "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." (Luke 2.24) The widow then, in her two small coins, gives beyond all expecting, even beyond understanding.

A practical observer would ask "why, with two coins remaining, would she give both? Surely giving half of all she had would be sacrifice enough to please God." And the answer is most certainly yes. God does not demand we embrace destitution in order to be faithful, only that we look beyond ourselves to see the needs of others. The irony of God is that the demands on us are both great and small. Becoming a disciple of Jesus must require some sacrifice in order to be meaningful. And so we give: we set aside time or money or our own agenda to fellow in his way. Yet many fail, and give little or nothing, and God continues to reach out to them, holding them in their unwillingness or fear.

Paul, of course, picks up the same theme of generosity and applies it to Jesus:

For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8.9)

Jesus had life, and the Light of the World chose to surrender that life so that we might have life. Perhaps the second mite was the difference between living with Jesus and dying with Jesus. Perhaps the second mite was cruciform in shape, given willingly to an ungrateful world. Perhaps the second mite represents the life Jesus could have saved (his own) but decided instead to spend on you and me.

From Fr. Joseph Donders:

When he took his bread
That last evening of his life,
When he took his cup and said:
"This is my body,
this is my blood,"
he must have been thinking
of that [widow in the temple].

Jesus' decision to give everything, to sacrifice the earthy life that he treasured with every fiber of his being, unfolds throughout the Gospels. The clues are there, and the words are clear, when the lens of Calvary is applied to the stories and sayings shared. Here is one from John 1:

"He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word knew that the world wouldn't accept a word of what was said. They couldn't then and we struggle to today. "'Count the cost,' Jesus said, giving fair warning to any who dared follow him." (Yancey, p. 96)

To give and give, and give again,
What God hath given thee;
To spend thyself nor count the cost;
To serve right gloriously
The God who gave all worlds that are,
And all that are to be. (Geoffrey A. Studdert-Kennedy)

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To the many who did count the cost, and dared to live and die for others, we dedicate our worship today. To many who continue to count the cost daily, in Afghanistan and on peacekeeping missions around the world, we dedicate our worship today. We live under a great debt, one that will never be repaid, one that allows us to pursue justice for all peoples, living in freedom and peace. Next week I will mark a ballot for the second time this year (and there may be a third), and if I feel inconvenienced or annoyed, and if I can't find a parking space, or I end up in the wrong line, I will look for a poppy, and I will remember that freedom comes with a terrible cost.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 3:12 AM