The Coins of a Widow
Sermon by Jamie Howison on Mark 12:38-44
Tonight’s story of the poor widow coming to the temple to donate her two copper coins is one that I remember all the way back to my Sunday School days. Jesus and his disciples are at the temple, seated across from the treasury where people would come and drop in their donations. They watched as all these rich folk arrived and put in large sums, and then see the poor widow coming with her meagre coins. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says to his followers, “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.” The point of the story seemed to be that it isn’t the total amount of a donation that matters, but rather how relatively easy it was for those rich folks to put in large donations, compared to the self-sacrificial gesture of that poor women. Full stop.
Or is it a full stop? I mean, yes, there is something moving about what that poor woman has done, which was to give up much more than those rich folks. They can drop in hundreds of shekels, and hardly notice them at all, but not her. She has only the equivalent of a few dollars, and that’s what she gives. But pause for a brief moment. A few dollars? Doesn’t the text say that the two copper coins were worth about a penny? That’s actually a translation decision, which varies considerably from version to version. In the Greek it says that she put in two lepta, which were worth a kodrantes. The lepta was the lowest value Jewish coin, two of which equaled the Roman kodrantes. At the time that kodrantes was equal to 1/64 of a denarius, which was a fair day’s wage. If we work with $15 per hour as an average wage for unskilled labour, you roll up to $120 for an eight-hour day. Convert that back to the kodrantes rate, and you wind up with that smaller coin being worth $1.88, or just under two dollars.
Now that’s not all that important to the story, but it does provide one of those points at which we can mull over the challenge of translation issues. What might be more interesting is a point made by Gerald West, a biblical scholar from South Africa, who I heard speak at the Trinity Institute conference in New York City back in 2011. West made the point that it is important to read these individual passages in context, and to understand that a gospel writer like Mark did have a “big picture” very much in view. That might not sound all that earth-shattering, but in a sense it really is a significant thing to keep in view.
When I was going through my studies at Trinity College in the 1980s, most of the biblical scholars from the seven theological colleges on the University of Toronto campus held a view that had been common through much of the twentieth century, namely that a writer like Mark was simply drawing on material he had inherited from both the oral and written traditions that had held on to Jesus’ teachings. Mark is writing in the early 60s, some thirty years after Jesus had died, so was said to be collecting together everything he had heard and read about Jesus. When it came to a story like this one, he would (it was said) tie it together with some word or idea as his organizing principle. If he has just written of how the scribes “devour widows’ houses”, then he’d logically move to this other story about a widow. And in fairness, you do see some of that happening in the gospels, in which one word or theme will bridge to another similar one.
This, though, is where Gerald West suggested a very different way of looking at the text, and one which takes the historical Jesus much more seriously. West insisted that Mark wasn’t just stringing together a bunch of material he’s inherited as the “Jesus stories,” but was in fact very intentionally giving the reader the very closest thing he could to his understanding of the authentic Jesus. You must look at the material immediately preceding any teaching, as well as at the material that immediately follows.
In this case, we have those scribes, “who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets!” At the time the scribes were not allowed to charge for their services, and so relied entirely on donations to support their work. “Both then and now,” Larry Hurtado comments, “there are examples of Jewish and Christian religious leaders who unscrupulously solicit support from simple, vulnerable people who are led to believe that they are supporting the very work of God but can ill afford to give as heavily as they are solicited to do.” Think of the horror stories connected to the television preachers and evangelists, living grand lifestyles that are all too often supported by people who can barely put food on the table. Right? You get the picture.
And Jesus is singularly unimpressed with that sort of devouring—that’s the word— devouring of people like these poor widows. Then right away he is sitting with his disciples and watching as the donations get deposited in the temple treasury. Yes, he does hold up this poor woman as an example of self-sacrificial giving, for “she out of her poverty has put in everything she had,” but this doesn’t come in a vacuum for the disciples, because they’ve just heard the teaching about how the scribes are devouring widows.
And what immediately follows this incident? Well, at that point we launch in the thirteenth chapter of Mark, which opens as follows:
As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’
Ah, that’s interesting. It was here, Gerald West suggested, that we have an important commentary on that widow’s donation to the temple treasury, and on the temple as a whole. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” Now that’s not to negate the sacrifice the widow has made; by no means! But taken as a whole, what Jesus has just done is expose the bankruptcy of the temple system and said that it simply will not last. Yes, in these interim days people like this widow will give and give and give until they have no more, and God will surely see that. But this system will not and cannot last, because scribes are getting rich, wearing fancy clothes, and dining at banquets, while others like that poor women are starving.
Again, I don’t think for a minute that Jesus is critical of that woman’s sacrificial giving, but he is critical of a religious system that encourages her to bankrupt herself. When we look in to the beginning of the book of Acts which details what the Jesus people looked like on the other side of the resurrection, we discover a very different picture: “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” (Acts 2:46-47) And how did this happen, that they all had this food? Because all who believed shared, so that no one would have to be without! They are already, in a sense, an alternative temple, as a people together.
Not that it always worked out all that well, because the church—then and now—is full of real people, not of plaster saints! Dig into Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, and you can hear him just shaking his head at what is going on.
When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! (1 Cor. 11:20-22)
The long story of the church is littered with similar problems, with some becoming wildly wealthy and others being left hungry and in need. Yet it is often at the times when things are the most absurd that someone emerges with a very different and thoroughly Gospel-based view of things, which then shifts the imagination of the church back to something closer to who we are intended to be. If you have any doubt of that, just read the story of St Francis of Assisi, who arose at a time when the poor old church was probably furthest from its Gospel roots, and simply by living in a Gospel way managed to birth a whole new way of being God’s people.
We need those alternate figures in our midst; people whose imaginations are marked by the presence of Jesus, and who help the church find its way closer to where we are intended to be. And the last thing—the very last thing—we are intended to be is an institution that leaves out the poor widow, the struggling student, the bereft artist, or the person with an achingly empty stomach. Frankly speaking, that’s just not Gospel.
