Mark 12:38-44 - The Widow's Mite
Homily by Fr. R Christopher Heying
Few texts for preaching during
the fall stewardship campaign could be more advantageous than this reading
today from Mark’s gospel about the widow.
And in thanksgiving not only for the content of the story but its timeliness, perhaps we might call this fall’s campaign: “Give All You Got.”
The “Give All You Got” campaign makes things simple.
Anguishing over whether I should give ten percent before or after taxes? Gone.
Determining what to do if I don’t happen to like Item 2601c or Item 4834b in the proposed budget? Irrelevant.
There is an added benefit to the “Give All You Got” campaign.
It takes the pressure off of those of us who may just happen to like walking around in long robes, being greeted with respect on Main Street, having the best seat at ChathaMooCa, and being invited to preach the community service on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and—even better—to bless the Yuletide log at Chatham’s Christmas celebration the first weekend in December.
There’s only one problem with the “Give All You Got” campaign this year. It’s that it may force us next year to go with the “What the Heck Happened Last Year?” campaign.
There’s danger in picking one scripture that we like and ignoring (in this case an adjacent) scripture that may make us uncomfortable, to say the least.
Such may even be found in the very structure of our Episcopal Church, where through many different economies and cultures (and I suggest rightly) we have been open to reconsidering the meaning of some scriptures while (perhaps less rightly) doggedly holding on to those scriptures that support our canonical assertion that the biblical tithe is the minimum.
For those of us who may be somewhat mathematically challenged, that means that if we make $100, we give $10 and if we make $1 million, we give $100,000. It is a minimum, which gives you the implicit permission to give more!
And there are those who do give more.
Many of you may know Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California, its main campus at Lake Forest but with seven other campuses elsewhere. Following the publication of his best-selling book, The Purpose-Driven Life, Pastor Warren paid back the church every penny that they had paid him and became, going forward, a “Reverse Tither.”
What is a Reverse Tither, you ask? That is where you live on 10 percent and give away 90 percent. I think most of us who are pastors call those people “Archangels”!
But what can a tithe do?
The Church of the Covenant in Lynchburg began in 1954 and was led by the saintly Bev Cosby for almost fifty years. Its formal “membership” has always been less than a hundred people. That’s maybe because the requirements of membership include a commitment to a tithe, a full and verifiable commitment to giving ten percent of one’s treasure.
Even with a small congregation, that large commitment has had incalculable value not just for the members but for the surrounding community.
Camp Kum-Ba-Yah, the Lodge of the Fisherman, City Gate, The Wood Ministry, Interfaith Outreach Association, New Land Industries, New Land Samaritan Inns, Mariam’s House, the Hospice of the Hills, the L’Arch Community for those with cognitive disabilities . . . just some of the ministries that the Church of the Covenant have initiated, sustained, and often set free to be run by others, each and every day making a real difference in the lives of hundreds, even thousands, of people.
So we may question The Episcopal Church’s motivation in upholding the biblical tithe as the minimum standard of Christian giving, but we might do even better to wonder what amazing things might happen if we embraced it now or at least worked with seriousness toward it.
Just what amazing things could God do here and elsewhere with that commitment of faith?
Today’s contrast in the gospel reading between the hypocrisy of some and the authenticity of one couldn’t be sharper or clearer. There are those of us who, when we are honest, give out of our abundance only and do so often in order to fulfill some very selfish agenda. And there are those who simply give all they can, let go of the gift given, and let God sort out what will become of or be done with their gift.
But what does it mean for us?
- as individuals?
- as a community of faith gathered by God to do the work God gives us to do?
What does it mean for us?
- Is it really about our pledge card?
- Or is it about our “life card”?
- About how we choose to live the life that has been given to us?
Will we live our life centered on our “needs,” often expansively defined to include much that are not really needs at all: prestige . . . privilege . . . power . . . as individuals or as a congregation?
Or will we live our life centered on a growing trust in God? In God, who provides. Grace sufficient always. But more often than not, grace that fills our cup and overflows. . . .
Will we live our lives in fear, if we give at all, doing so only out of our abundance?
Or will we live our lives in faith, trusting that there will be enough, in fact daring to believe that there will be more than enough, so that we give not only out of our abundance but we go deeper and give of our substance, whereby we allow giving to change our own lives in real and material ways.
This summer, you decided to take a bold step forward in faith.
This summer, you set aside the provisional, the tentative, the hesitant, and the often fearful goals that so many of us are want to make when we don’t really believe that anything major can happen here.
This summer you took a daring step.
You committed to what some theorists have called a BHAG, an acronym for Bold, Hairy, Audacious Goal.
Rather than saying, well, based on the analysis of previous records, let’s go ahead and try to increase our size by 8.35% this year.
This summer, through calling a full-time priest, and committing the resources of the congregation to the effort, you in essence declared that you want something far more than what you have previously imagined.
You want real growth!
This summer you said to God, give us not 8.35% but double our congregation, even triple it!
We demand that these doors be open to all so that this can truly be a House of Prayer for All People, every class, every culture, every color, even every creed, that all can come here and encounter the Living God and that—truly fed by Word and Sacrament—we can stream out these open doors to do the work You give us to do, to practice in our lives what we have professed with our lips, and to let the world see and know that things which are cast down are being raised up, things which have grown old are being made new, things which have died are being made alive, the good news that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. BHAG.
How much should we give?
That vision and that hope will answer the question for us or, better, change the question into a clear statement of faith—not in the priest or the vestry or even myself but in God.
- Of my time,
- Of my talent,
- Of my treasure,
- Of my very substance,
I will give.
Amen.