The Widow's Mite

I went to the Mall the other day…a place I usually avoid, if possible. It’s part of a father’s job description to hate the Mall. There is one activity there that I find enjoyable…people watching. I like to watch kids strapped into that trapeze contraption, bouncing twenty feet in the air, turning somersaults and having a ball. I like to watch kids hanging out, walking with their friends, texting their friend standing three feet away from them. I also watched a kid feed quarters into a donation bucket that had a funnel shaped like the bell of a tuba. I’m sure the money supported some good cause…perhaps buying clothes for those under-clad models at Abercrombie & Fitch. You drop your coin in the slot and instead of falling immediately into the can, the coin rolls around and around…as the bell gets smaller, it goes faster and faster until your eyes cross, and finally the coin drops with a clink into the bottom of the receptacle.
Today we find Jesus and his disciples watching money drop into the offering can. Jesus sat with his disciples in the temple courtyard, watching the action in the Court of women, where there were 13 offering boxes known as “the trumpets”—folks put coins into large metal trumpet-shaped funnels and listened to the racket as the coins went down. Each box was designated for a different ministry: Food for the priests, oil for the lamps, pew cushions or weed whackers for use around the temple. The disciples watched rich people lug in their money bags and with great fanfare present their offerings. Their heavy coins rang out against the metal funnels. Then Jesus said, “Did you see that?”
“What? Where?”
“There—“ a poor, simply dressed widow dropped in two small copper coins, a few pennies. They hardly made a tinkle as they dropped in, and no one else paid any attention. But Jesus saw it all. “She has put in more than all those bigwigs combined. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything she had.”
This story is always used by preachers to talk about finances and giving and generosity, and today will be no exception. But first, I have an admission to make. I think giving is a bad idea, at least in the way we often think about giving. That’s right, I’m coming out against giving. Why? Think about it. We can only give what is ours to give, we only give things that belong to us. We have to own something, in order to give it. I’m not sure Christians really own anything. Have you ever seen a person leave this world with bills stuffed in his or her coffin…is anyone laid to rest with a checkbook in the coat pocket? We’re not really owners of anything. The day after I pass from this life, people are going to figure out how to divvy up all those things that I called “mine,” all those things that once had my name on them.
Instead of calling us “owners,” the Bible calls us “stewards.” What we do with our money, our resources, is called “stewardship.” A steward is another name for a manager. And managers are not owners. Managers are people who oversee, administer, invest resources on behalf of the owner. Managers always have the interests of the owner in mind. Money, wealth, resources exist outside of us, and flow right along when we’re gone from the scene. They are like waters that flow across our land…we don’t own that water…we might manage it, but it comes from somewhere else and passes through us to others downstream. We are stewards, but God is the Owner of all.
So we come to the act of offering and our number crunching little minds work overtime, calculating… “How much of my money should I give?” Using the language of giving creates the impression in our minds that we are owners who can choose how much to toss in the plate and how much to hold back. We’re tempted to think if we give God a percentage, a cut, then the rest is ours to do with what we will. But if we are stewards of God’s resources, not owners, we have to recalibrate how we are to manage the resources that pass through our lives. If you opened an account with a financial planner, wouldn’t you be surprised if you discovered that your financial manager only planned to return to you 2% or even 10%, and kept the other 90-98% ? I think they call that embezzlement, don’t they? American Christians tend to give about 2% of their earnings to the Lord’s work. Can you hear Jesus saying, “Love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, and with 2% of your after-tax income?
Instead, we hear God cry in Malachi 3: Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings!.... Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.
It is common for preachers to look at this widow’s gift as a celebration of smallness. Look at what God can do with only a widow’s mite! Imagine how God can multiply your tiny mustard seed! That’s not how I read this text at all. The Gospel is not about little things; it’s about big things. This widow gave all she had…100%. That’s the claim the Lord has on us…we’re responsible to manage 100% of what he’s given us to care for…all of our assets belong to God—financial assets, intellectual assets, relational assets, time assets. Sometimes that means recalibrating how you spend the portion of God’s resources that you don’t give away.
Ray G. told me the story of a physician from Louisville, KY, who came to Ethiopia at his wife’s urging. After a week of treating patients in the bush he was utterly transformed. On his way home from the airport, he told his wife, “The Porsche has to go. Things are going to be different in our lives.” A fire for mission was lit in this doctor’s life and he went on to launch the largest medical mission conference in the world.
We rarely see extravagant giving like the widow displayed, do we? We’re much more cautious, much less reckless than she was. We’re more likely to play it safe: build a life that is secure and manageable, hedging our lives with insurances, disability, social security, nest egg, pension fund, savings plans. And it’s not just in our financial world that we play it safe and take the middle ground. We don’t like to get too crazy, too out-of-control about anything: We’re not encouraged to go over the edge for our church community or within a worship setting, certainly not when we share our faith. Moderation in all things. A little church never hurt anyone. A little giving is good. A few random acts of kindness are ok. Just don’t get crazy.
But Jesus was schooled in the way of Yahweh, and that always means total commitment. “What is the kingdom of God like? It’s like a man who finds a treasure hidden in a field. The man hides it again, and joyfully sells all he has to buy the field. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls…and when he has found that one pearl of great value…he goes and sells everything he has to buy it.”
What is the real kingdom of God like? It is a lifestyle characterized by words like, “excessive, extravagant, wild….” It was wild, extravagant examples of love that set the neighbors of the early Christians back on their heels? —“All the believers were together and had everything in common,. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together…they broke bread and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”
Too often we, like the wealthy folks of Jesus’ day, give gifts out of our abundance. We contribute offerings that don’t pinch us. We give God of our time and talent when it’s convenient for us and doesn’t cut into our work time, play time or family time. We hang around people we like but rarely spend time with people we don’t know in an effort to bring them to Christ. Many of us wouldn’t think of investing time in folks at a prison or a nursing home; in a food kitchen or talking to neighbors about your faith?
What kind of gifts please the Lord? If the story of the widow’s mite is any indication, real giving is sacrificial. The Lord looks at the cost to the giver, not the size of the gift. This is true about our monetary gifts. Is our giving ever a sacrifice? If your monthly budget won’t stretch to cover everything, what gets cut? Will it more likely be your tithe or offering to the church, or will it be eating out, cable, magazines, new car payment? Who is willing to do without to give more to the work of the Lord? Have you ever given a sacrificial gift to the Lord?…One that hurt you, pinched you to give?
Some friends of ours were convinced that God had directed their congregation to build a new church building. They knew they had some folks who had been blessed with wealth within the congregation, but they also knew that God was calling each of them to give. The theme they adopted for their efforts to raise money for the building was, “Unequal gifts, but equal sacrifice.” I know people who took out personal bank loans in order to give sacrificially to that project. Others forsook vacations, others sold property and possessions. The preacher sold his sporty vehicle and drove an old Chevette, dedicating the money saved to the Lord. “I hated that car,” he said, “but every time I drove it I remembered that our giving must be sacrificial.” These days, people are breaking the doors of that church down to get in—and I think part of it is a blessing they are receiving because they have given faithfully.
And giving money is not the only way you can be a sacrificial giver. Jill Bumpus gives sacrificially of her time to help guide our teenage girls in the path of Christ. Linda and Harmon Gouge give sacrificially to make a difference in Leonard and Thelma’s life, and in the life of so many others. Deborah Howerton is always giving of her time and energy keeping kids, ministering to families, praying and praying for others. Is there an area of your life—financial, time, talent….where God asks you to give, even though it hurts?
The widow’s gift had a certain recklessness to it. Our giving should also have an offbeat element of weirdness that just doesn’t make sense to the world. We always want to hold back, always fear crossing that line of moderation. But that’s not the way God’s people give. Paul wrote to the Galatians, commending them for taking him in when he was sick…if it were possible, he said, you would have taken out your own eyes and given them to me. When Robert Shields needed a kidney, more than one person in our congregation was perfectly willing to donate, to say nothing of Bruce and Karen, who gave the gift of life. Steph Hart gave the gift of bone marrow to a cancer patient needing a transplant. Giving can be much broader than simply monetary, but greenbacks help too. When I was struggling to get through Emmanuel Marcia and I returned to our campus apartment and find an envelope with $500 in it. That was a lot of money back then. Still is. Anonymous gift. I still think it came from Miss Turby, but she’d never admit to anything. What business does an elderly widow have giving gifts like that? Reckless! Extravagant!
A final lesson we can learn from the story of the widow’s offering is that giving extravagantly is usually more important for the giver than for the recipient. I don’t suppose at the end of the day that the widow’s two thin copper coins were much noticed by the moneycounters in the temple. Yet Jesus held up this woman and her gift of tiny coins as our pattern for generosity…God doesn’t need your money, or your time or your talents or your energies. If you don’t give God relies on others who will. If you don’t open up your home, God finds someone who will. If you don’t give of your time, God finds someone who can. But each one of us is given the opportunity to be changed by offering ourselves to the Lord’s service. Giving of yourself will not help God make it through the month. But it will change you. It will free you from selfishness, it will tie you in to what God is doing, it will allow you to focus on the real issues of life and not simply be enslaved to your own issues. Giving to God---sacrificially, recklessly, extravagantly will put you in a place where God can get at you and use you.
We are called to extravagant giving, but it’s really not so hard. For we have also been given a model. Not just the poor widow of our story. No, the widow’s gift was just a precursor of the gift that would soon be given by the Saviour who gave himself down to the last cent for us on the cross. He didn’t hold anything back. He gave sacrificially. He gave himself recklessly. He gave himself totally. “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.”
Hymn. For those of you who are disciples of Christ, the question I leave you with today is an old one, and yet is new every day. What would Jesus do with your time, with your talents, with your relationships, with your finances?
For those of you who don’t belong to the family of faith, the question is this: what will you do in response to his extravagant giving on your behalf? What will you give today to respond to Jesus’ gift? Give him your life.