Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. A poor widow came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributions to the treasury. For they have contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” (Mark 12.41-44)
It’s been a number of years now, but not that long ago, an older woman in Somerville, New Jersey won the state lottery, receiving a payout of a lump sum of 11.8 million dollars. Never married, the 72-year-old woman had retired from a local company where her job was to buy office supplies. Small-framed, oversized glasses taking up much of her face, she normally could be found in church by 7 o’clock, where she prayed and waited for the 8 o’clock mass to start.
Driving a 30-year-old Chevrolet Malibu to church–when it would start–she typically slipped into church unnoticed, prayed quietly, and claimed that the church was her home. Then she won the lottery. Unperturbed and unhesitantly, the woman turned around and gave it all away–all 11.8 million dollars. She donated half of it to her church, where the pastor said he would use it to provide a bigger home for unwed mothers and use some to help the parish school.
Having lived all her life in the same town, the woman gave the other half of the windfall to the local fire department and rescue squad and other groups in the town that served the people. When the newspaper heard of it and asked the woman about giving all her winnings away, she simply said, “No new car, no vacation. My life is no different. I’ve given it up to God. I live in his presence and do his will and I did that from the start.”
That unassuming, unmarried woman in Somerville, New Jersey might remind us of another little old lady, this one coming to our attention in the last public appearance of Rabbi Jesus in the gospel of Mark before the Rabbi is brought before the court and sentenced to die. That fact may be intentional on the part of the evangelist.
As we have followed the path of the Galilean Rabbi for these past months, beginning in Galilee and gradually moving on the way to Jerusalem, we have seen the slowness of his first followers to understand both the Rabbi and his message, failing time and again to grasp his way of life. Peter, the leader, chastises the Teacher when told that his way is one that will end in suffering and crucifixion.
Others, such as the brothers James and John, solicit seats of honor, one on his left and one on his right, when he enters his kingdom, a complete failure to understand that his kingdom is not one of power and riches, but one of powerlessness and poverty. Nor can we easily forget the young man who wants to gain eternal life, but when told to divest himself of all he has, walks away from the Rabbi, saddened because he has many possessions, none of which he can let go of. No one, it seems, gets the message.
Now, here at the end, we find ourselves in the temple area, where Rabbi Jesus has been scrutinized and questioned by the scribes out to entrap and embarrass him in some way, another group that fails to understand who he is and what he is about. Resting a moment on a bench outside the Court of Women, the Rabbi watches the flow of the crowds in and around the Temple, his eyes coming to rest on a widow woman as she makes her way into the court.
Once inside, she approaches the thirteen collection boxes that carried the name “The Trumpets” because they were shaped the same as trumpets, each one for a special purpose, either to help with the cost of wine or corn or oil for the Temple priests. Quietly, invisibly, she goes to one of the trumpets and puts in two small coins. The evangelist tells us that they were worth “a few cents.”
Having watched rich people put in large sums, the Rabbi pays close attention to this widow woman who puts in the smallest of all coins, two of them, and summons his followers to take notice of her. “Amen, I say to you,” he tells them as he points to the woman some distance away, “this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.”
Surely confused, as they typically were by the Rabbi, the disciples say nothing, waiting to hear his explanation, which comes soon enough. “They have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” And with those few words, Rabbi Jesus names her a true disciple of his, defined by her willingness to sacrifice everything, holding nothing back for herself, so opposite to the many others whom we have met along the way.
In a short while, a matter of days and hours, we will see the Rabbi make the same total sacrifice, not in coins, but in his life blood, nailed to a cross, where he dies, offering his last breath as a sacrificial gift to a world that neither knew him or understood him as the one sent by the Most High God to correct the course of the world, a world lost in the shadows of selfishness and stinginess.
It is right, then, that this widow woman should be the last person we meet in the public ministry of the Rabbi, selected by him as one like him, someone whose life is an outpouring of generosity, a self-emptying of everything she has, a giving away to others, keeping nothing for herself, all signs of the true disciple.
Unlike those who knew him and followed him, but understood little or nothing of him, she neither knew him or had followed him, but understood everything about him, gaining the rank of disciple before any of the others, the rest slow to understand and slow to let go of what they have. Mark has this widow woman stand before us, as she did before Rabbi Jesus, telling us one last time, as the Rabbi does, what discipleship means.
Someone in our own time who understood well the meaning of being a disciple of Rabbi Jesus was Mother Teresa, another small, stooped, simple woman who was willing to model in her life and life’s work the Rabbi’s same outpouring of self, spending her days in service to the poorest of the poor, providing them with food to eat and water to drink.
Asked more than once, the same as Rabbi Jesus was, just how much a person should be willing to sacrifice for others, her answer was short and insightful. “Give,” she said, “until it hurts,” her answer underscoring again that following Rabbi Jesus is not meant to be a comfortable ride, calling for nothing from us, but is a rugged road that leads to Jerusalem, the place of total self-giving, of complete sacrifice.
Perhaps her attitude in life was much like a woman in Illinois, another poor woman with very little to her name, who visited the Red Cross Bloodmobile one day to donate a pint of blood. After the procedure was done, the woman rose from the cot and headed to the door. A volunteer near the door stopped her, saying, “Don’t forget your pin,” reaching to clip onto the woman’s tattered coat the “I gave” badge.
Stopping the volunteer before she could secure the pin, this woman, obviously with little to her name, said, “No thank you. I came to give, not to get.” And with those few words, she left quietly, disappearing into the cold Illinois morning, her threadbare coat barely a barrier against the blunt and brisk winter winds.
Left to consider these examples–all of whom shared that same attitude of “I came to give, not to get,” we now ask ourselves if we also make our walk through life with the same mindset, intent on giving whenever and wherever and however we can, less concerned with how much we have left, more concerned with how much we can give, believing we have not given enough until it hurts, always the true measure of selfless giving.
For most of us, the answer is clear, our reluctance and restraint indicative of our tight-fistedness, our giving calculated on our surplus, not on our scarcity. The Galilean’s words remind us of which is the greater sacrifice, telling his disciples, “For they all have contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
When the 82-year-old rabbi who had served in the synagogue when writer Mitch Albom was growing up asked Albom if he would deliver the eulogy at his funeral, Albom agreed, but wanted to be sure he knew the man well enough to tell of his life. Meeting with the aged rabbi, he came to know him and, more importantly, know the One whom he had served all his life long.
In his book, Have a Little Faith, Albom tells of his coming to know the rabbi. In one conversation, the old man said to Mitch, “When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched, right? Like this?” The rabbi made a fist. “Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say, ‘The whole world is mine.’”
The rabbi continued, “But, when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson.” “What lesson?” Albom asked. The rabbi stretched open his empty fingers and answered, “We can take nothing with us.”
As we consider this closing episode of Rabbi Jesus’ public ministry–his final lesson to his disciples–we are given the opportunity to learn what they were so slow to learn, that our days upon the earth are not meant to be a lifetime of grabbing and clutching, holding fast and not letting go. Rather, our days are supposed to be spent in opening our hands to others, sharing what we hold in them, giving away what we have received from the Most High God. In this way, we become that true disciple of the Galilean, as the woman in the temple courtyard was, someone who understood that we are meant to be conduits of God’s blessings, channeling what we have received to others, not reservoirs, storing up riches only for ourselves.
–Jeremy Myers
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