Money That Comes in the Mail

Scripture — Mark 12:38-44 (NRSV)

As Jesus 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.”

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Devotion

How did you grow up thinking about money? Did you have a lot of it or a little? What were you taught about giving money away? What were you taught about where money was going to come from? What were you taught about who money was supposed to go to?

When I was a kid, my parents gave me an allowance. I don’t remember when they started giving it to me, but I remember that it was a dollar a week, and I know this because they asked me to take a physical dime every week and put it in a physical offering envelope and put it in the physical offering plate. (We didn’t have online giving when I was a kid—we didn’t have online when I was a kid.) I wrote about this experience once for a forum on tithing. At the time, as a kid versed in Bible stories, I thought for sure this passage applied to me.

When I was a college and later seminary student, I hung out for a while with a group of Christians who were very committed to the idea that God would always provide for believers, provided those believers gave generously to others. They sometimes explicitly based their teaching on this passage. It was okay to give it all away like the widow; you would always find that somebody had sent you the exact amount of money you needed in the mail. (For more on this approach—especially as regards Christian fundraising—you may want to read about the life of George Müller.)

I had both of these experiences in the back of my mind when I stumbled upon this absolutely wonderful article by Ted Olsen, who was at the time of writing it executive editor of Christianity Today (he now works for InterVarsity Press). There he revealed there was more to the story than the lessons I had already learned from it:

And so far as they go, the lessons we’ve taken from the story of the widow’s mite are true: God cares not about the size of the gift but about the size of the sacrifice. What matters is not the amount that one gives but the amount that one keeps for oneself.

But this isn’t the story where Jesus commands, Sell all you have and give. This is the story where Jesus commands, Watch out! Perhaps this story isn’t so much about how we should be more like the widow. Perhaps it’s more about what she’s doing in the temple in the first place and why she only has two copper coins.

You see, when we talk about this story—to kids and college students, in stewardship sermons and blog posts—we often start the story at verse 41. But that’s not where it starts. At a minimum, it starts in verse 38, where Jesus comes into the temple and makes a speech about the scribes and how they, among other things, “devour widows’ houses” (12:40).  And maybe, as Olsen suggests in his reading, we should really start it all the way back in Mark 11:12-25 with the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple:

As the context of this event makes plain, Jesus isn’t taking his disciples on a field trip to the temple so he can show them how generous the poor widow is. He’s there to judge and to warn. He has cursed the fig tree for its lack of fruit. He has overturned the tables of the moneychangers. . . The widow is an example, yes. And an example of sacrificial giving, sure. There are clear connections between Jesus and the poor widow both giving their whole life. But we too often miss that she is most directly an example of the oppressed widows that Jesus has just called attention to!

There is often an emphasis in Christian circles—especially more privileged Christian circles—on the fact that giving blesses the giver. And it does; I learned a great deal as a child when giving my dimes, and in giving things away as an adult and then praying that I’d get random money in the mail.

But I think we need to keep in mind that giving is not just about getting a warm feeling of blessing, but about setting up an economy of exchange in which we all depend on each other and can count on each other. Giving blesses the receiver. Who needs to receive it. That’s the main thing it’s there for.

Take it away, Mr. Olsen:

We don’t know exactly what the scribes and teachers of the law were doing that ate widows out of house and home, but we do know what they were supposed to be doing. Deuteronomy 26 spells it out directly: A tenth of everything God’s people produced wasn’t just to be given to the Levite religious leaders. It was also supposed to go to “the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied” (v. 12). The teachers of the law knew that this was God’s plan for how people would take care of the vulnerable among them. The widow wasn’t supposed to be giving to the temple treasury. The temple treasury was there, in part, to give to the widow.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: The Widow’s Mite.