Mark 12:41-44
There is the story of the millionaire who was sitting in church. He got up to give his testimony and he said, “I owe everything I am today to a certain experience I had in church long ago. I was down to my last dollar. The offering was being taken up. As the plate was nearing my row, I had a decision to make. Was I going to give up that last dollar for the Lord, or hold on to it along with the last shred of security it symbolized? The offering plate came to me and I joyfully put in the last dollar I had to my name. The Lord honored that, and has blessed me greatly since that day—all because I was willing to give all I had.”
At that point a voice came from the congregation saying, “I dare you to do it again.”
The desire or call to be sacrificial in one’s giving is a difficult choice. It doesn’t matter if you are a person of great wealth or if you are a person down to your last two pennies. For most people, the level of what it means to be down to your last two cents is different in each circumstance. I remember a tearful news conference where Tammy Fae Bakker, of the PTL Club, was pouring out her heart because she and her husband Jimmy were down to their last $100,000. She tearfully told the TV audience she didn’t know how she and Jimmy were going to survive. I doubt if Tammy Fae ever considered giving away what she considered to be her last two coins.
Should it have been considered? That is, regardless if a person is a millionaire, or if they are Jimmy and Tammy Fae down to their last $100,000, or if they are a legitimate widow who holds in their hand their last two mites—not even worth a penny, is the expectation of Jesus that it should all go into the offering plate? That real giving is only total giving? Is that what Jesus is calling attention to here?
Let’s examine those questions with as much openness as is possible, since talking about your money and what you do with it is probably as sensitive a topic as you will face.
Jesus positioned himself “opposite the treasury.” He had just had an engaging discussion with the Sadducees and the Scribes in the inner court of the Temple. Perhaps he had come out to the outer court where anyone could congregate in order to get a breather from all that heavy discussion.
There were seven horn shaped receptacles across from him that were for the gathering of people’s offering. The court was probably crowded with people coming and going from those offering receptacles, depositing their coins. You get the impression that this was a common pastime of watching people put in their offering. Jesus was just fitting himself in with the crowd of people watchers.
What was he watching, exactly? I don’t know if Mark intended it, but in telling this story he stated that Jesus was watching how the people put their money into the offering containers. Some may have walked up and dropped their money in. Kids, you could imagine, may have made a game out of it by playing some early version of basketball with their money, trying to flip coins in from some distance. And others must have brought their offering in with fanfare and ceremony.
Those who got the most attention and created the most “ooo’s” and “aah’s” must have been those who brought in the most money. If they didn’t draw attention with some grand entrance, then the clinking of so many coins being dropped in would have.
When I lived in San Jose, California there were a couple of times I got to stay in a church member’s “cabin” at Lake Tahoe. I don’t know why they called it a cabin. It was a five bedroom, four bathroom house. One of the things I like about Lake Tahoe was the different kinds of wildlife, including what I’d find in the casinos on the south shore. It was fun sitting and watching people play the slot machines and what would happen when someone hit a jackpot.
Around the dollar machines the reaction was more dramatic. This was back in the good-old-days when actual coins shot out of the machine and hit the metal pot at the bottom with a tremendous clatter. That continual clanging of coins, while all the time a bell was ringing and a red light was flashing on top of the machine, was an impressive racket. Then they would gather their coins, filling the paper buckets the casino would hand out, fingers getting all gray from the oxidation on the coins.
Heads turned and watched and listened until the clamor stopped. When I would win a jackpot at my nickel machine I’d feel a little embarrassment and some paranoia with all those eyes and ears aimed in my direction. Then those who watched would go back to their machines, hard at it, hoping they would be the next big winner. No one was impressed when a jackpot only yielded two or three coins. It’s the big ones that make the difference.
So it must have been at the temple treasury—what was really impressive was the size of the offering brought in and dumped in the brass horns. What really got people’s attention was the big clanging noise. Those who got the big pat on the back were those who put in large amounts. They were the ones who got the recognition from not only those gathered around, but also from the priests. The people with lots of coins were the ones held up as an example of mighty and faithful giving.
What we must realize is that even though some of the offerings were large, when seen in proportion, they were only what the Jewish law prescribed. There were strict guidelines to make sure that everyone was pulling their weight in terms of giving the mandated 10% of one’s income. Thus, percentage wise, those people giving large amounts of money were giving no more and no less than those who put fewer coins in the pot. Some just had more wealth, so their 10% added up to be more coins than others.
The sad mistake being made by some of the givers and some of the onlookers may have been that because some people gave more coins they were deemed more important. Or that they were doing something more noteworthy than others. Especially compared to the woman who quietly and quickly entered this scene, put in two coins not even adding up the value of a penny, then just as quietly and unnoticed, disappeared back into the crowd.
Permit me to ask more questions about this scene. Is Jesus making a value judgement about the rich and poor here? Are the rich being slammed, or is Jesus simply reporting a fact about the poor widow and letting his disciples grapple with the implications? Jesus said nothing about the motive of those who put their money in the pot. Jesus said nothing about people’s motive for giving as if they were only doing so for show and ostentation. Mark simply told us that the rich were putting in a lot of coins, with no additional comment from Jesus.
Likewise, we must ask if Jesus was making a blanket statement in praise of the poor? Or was Jesus highlighting the somewhat foolish things that some people do with their money? There was a poll taken trying to find out how much of people’s income goes toward different kinds of spending. One person, who was visibly poor, said, “I spend 50% of my income on housing, 10% on clothing, 40% on food, and 20% on incidentals”
“But sir,” the interviewer said, “that adds up to 120%.”
“Don’t you think I know it!” the man retorted.
But Jesus appeared to make no value judgement about the woman or her motivation. She could have been giving for just as wrong a reason as the rich were. She could have been giving out of a feeling of guilt. Or she could have been giving as if she were putting money in a slot machine, hoping for some big Godly payoff. Or she could have been trying to leverage God, forcing goodness out of God. Again, these are questions, the answers to which we don’t know, and would be futile speculating about.
Instead, we must focus attention on what Jesus did for his disciples. The disciples would have been missed it entirely if Jesus hadn’t pointed it out. The fact that he had to call the disciples over to point out the woman, who was quickly making her way out of the temple, tells us they wouldn’t have noticed her on their own.
And that’s a lot of it, isn’t it? Some things aren’t always what they appear. There is something of deeper value for the disciples—and us—to learn once we discover what Jesus knows about the woman: “…she put in all she had…”
How did Jesus know that that was all she had? Did he notice how she stroked the coins with her thumb an fingers a while—hold them in the deepest part of her palm until they were as warm as her heart? Was he watching her as she stopped to ponder, turn away, returned again, stopped, took a deep breath, and then dropped them in? Just how could he tell? The story is not intended to answer that question either. It is simply a given that Jesus could tell, somehow.
The question then becomes: What is it about us, something that is visible, that can be detected about the kinds of givers we are? Karl Menninger, founder of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, pointed out that to be able to give money away is indicative of mental health. He said, “Generous people are rarely mentally ill people.”
On the other hand, stinginess is usually a sign of neurosis. It is a mental disorder that bears little relation to the amount of money one may have. The person with millions may live in just as desperate fear that he won’t have enough, as the person who will be thrown out on the street if the welfare check doesn’t come in time to pay the rent and utilities.
In talking with one patient, Menninger asked, “What on earth are you going to do with all that money?”
The patient replied, “Just worry about it, I suppose.”
Dr. Menninger then asked, “Do you get that much pleasure out of worrying about it?”
“No,” the man replied, “but I get such terror when I think of giving some of it away.”
Here’s a bit of geographical trivia you may already know. The Dead Sea in Israel is dead because there are no outlets. Water comes in from the Jordan River, but no where along the shore of the sea is there somewhere for outflow. So the water just sits there, filling up with minerals and stagnating.
I wonder if that is descriptive of what Jesus, and others, can see that’s visible in ungiving, ungenerous people: a certain mis-adjusted attitude that only gathers but never distributes; that takes in, but never flows out; pooled up to do nothing but stagnate the heart and spirit of a person.
The great Scottish preacher and author of the early 1900’s, George MacDonald (who I mentioned last week as being so influential on C.S. Lewis) once said, “…all that God makes must be free to come and go through the heart of His children; they can enjoy it only as it passes, can enjoy its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, but not (hold on to it for) itself.” Maybe that’s what Jesus saw in the woman, the flow that was never allowed to stop and stagnate in her heart, but instead continued its cascade of life through her.
Imagine how empowering that perspective could be to the poor widow—to anyone? In comparison to the amount of coins put in by the rich, she might as well’ve kept her mites. But it wasn’t about what she gave. It was about how she gave. In a world where she was powerless in almost every sphere of life, her kind of giving resulted in a feeling of empowerment pointed out by Christ.
In all the bluster and fanfare and clanging of coins, the insignificant giving of one who has so little became a symbol with tremendous impact. The widow made a difference not because of what she gave, but because of how she gave: free flowing, wholeheartedly, powerfully, and entirely unnoticed save by the eyes of Him who sees beyond that which appears to us to be insignificant, but is not.
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