Matthew 12:38-44

In today’s passage Jesus provides us with a scale of sorts, a scale of how to be religious and to be giving as a religious person.  On the one end of the scale are the scribes in their flowing robes who act as oppressors of the poor with the widows being poorest, on the other is the poor widow who gives her last penny.   Now we could interpret this passage narrowly and say that this is about money, but I think it has much greater significance: giving not just in a financial sense, but also in an emotional and spiritual sense. A mother wanted to teach her daughter a moral lesson. She gave the little girl a quarter and a dollar for church “Put whichever one you want in the collection plate and keep the other for yourself,” she told the girl. When they were coming out of church, the mother asked her daughter which amount she had given. “Well,” said the little girl, “I was going to give the dollar, but just before the collection the man in the pulpit said that we should all be cheerful givers. I knew I’d be a lot more cheerful if I gave the quarter, so I did.” H.A. Ironside pointed out the folly of judging others. He related an incident in the life of a man called Bishop Potter. “He was sailing for Europe on one of the great transatlantic ocean liners. When he went on board, he found that another passenger was to share the cabin with him. After going to see the accommodations, he came up to the purser’s desk and inquired if he could leave his gold watch and other valuables in the ship’s safe. He explained that ordinarily he never availed himself of that privilege, but he had been to his cabin and had met the man who was to occupy the other berth. Judging from his appearance, he was afraid that he might not be a very trustworthy person. The purser accepted the responsibility for the valuables and remarked, ‘It’s all right, bishop, I’ll be very glad to take care of them for you. The other man has been up here and left his for the same reason!'” I guess Bishop Potter comes very close on the scale to the scribes.

George Gallup writes: there’s little difference in ethical behavior between the churched and the unchurched. There’s as much pilferage and dishonesty among the churched as the unchurched. And I’m afraid that applies pretty much across the board: Religion, per se, is not really life changing. People cite it as important, for instance, in overcoming depression–but it doesn’t have primacy in determining behavior.”  Interesting, isn’t it, friends?  You would think that Church goers would do better. Patrick Morley writes that the church’s integrity problem is in the misconception “that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin. It is a change in belief without a change in behavior.” Quoted in John The Baptizer, Bible Study Guide by C. Swindoll, p. 16 In other words, adding Christ to our lives does not necessarily change how giving we are, it doesn’t necessarily move us on the scale from the scribes to the widow. We have to look at our behavior.  Our faith means very little if we don’t take it into our lives.

After Abraham Lincoln became president, before the days of civil service, office seekers besieged him everywhere trying to get appointments to various jobs throughout the country. Once, confined to bed with typhoid fever, exasperated, Lincoln declared to his secretary, “Bring on the office seekers; I now have something I can give to everybody.” What did Lincoln mean?  Well, people would always come to him for jobs and of course he couldn’t accommodate everyone.  In bed with typhoid fever he could give his virus or bacteria to the people around him.  Of course that isn’t the giving we are talking about.  It does get us closer to the deepest meaning of this text and that is that sometimes it is possible to give when there is nothing left to give.  Mother Teresa said:”If you give what you do not need, it isn’t giving.” Now that is profound.  Mother Teresa understood what the incident with the widow was all about.  The widow gave out of nothing, she gave out of empty. Walter Brueggeman writes:  “we must admit that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity- a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly.”  What does he mean? He means that yes we understand the story of God’s abundant love for us, but not completely, because we go through life not willing to give because we are afraid we are going to run out of something: money, time, space, opportunity etc.  To us giving means taking something from our column, in other words: reducing our column and moving it someone else.  This is not how the widow saw it, friends. She had nothing left to give and gave.  This is hard to understand, but it happens in developing countries everyday: people who have nothing left to give are giving.  You see that when a hurricane like Sandy hits: people who have lost everything are still giving of themselves to others. It is miraculous.  And, friends, isn’t that what the story of the resurrection is all about: Jesus the Christ who gives of Himself when He is stripped of everything. Thanks be to God.