Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 10 – Remembrance Sunday
Scripture: Mark 12:38-44
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling as though the world is spinning out of
control these days. I’m feeling like
there are so many things to be worried about, that my brain can’t keep track of
them all. There was the heartbreaking
election result in the US this week when it seemed as though misogyny and
racism won, with all of the implications for people whose lives are going to be
affected in very real ways. There is
climate change and all of the associated anxieties, with the threat of rising
water levels and increased drought and fire risk, and our global food supply
systems under threat. There are wars
being fought in every corner of the world with no end in sight. There is increasing divisiveness in our
politics, with an us-against-them attitude at every level.
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty powerless these days. I’m feeling like I’m caught in systems that are so much bigger than one person, like anything I say or do won’t make a difference, like there are forces beyond one person or one community that are controlling and shaping how we live our lives.
I don’t know about you, but some days I really feel like I’m struggling with how to be in the world.
But when I step back and look at the bigger picture, I rather suspect that this has been the case through most of history. This time of year, when we remember wars that have been fought, especially in the last century and this one, we think about soldiers who fought and died in wars that they didn’t start, who fought and died in wars that were controlled by people far away from the front lines. Joe Blow or Jane Doe soldier follows orders and does what they have been trained to do, but ultimately they are trapped in a system of war that is decided not by them or by anyone they will ever meet.
We can go back even further to the time of Jesus, when the ordinary people living their lives had very little control over the forces that impacted how they lived their lives. There were systems imposed on them by the religious structures of their time and place – rules about what you could and couldn’t do. And then there were all of the laws and rules imposed on them by the Roman Empire… and don’t you dare put a toe out of line, or you might end up on a cross too as an example to others.
I’m sorry – I probably sound pretty gloomy this morning – but the world has been feeling like a heavy place these days.
The primary role of the preacher is to find some good news in the text, some good news in the stories of our faith, and make it somehow relevant to our everyday lives. So if we look at the story that we heard today, is there any good news that we can find?
I need to apologize to our treasurer and Stewards – they would probably like it very much if I stood up here and said that we should all be like the widow in today’s story, and put all of our money, everything that we have to live on, in the offering plate on the way out of here. But to me, this isn’t a faithful reading of this story.
Because did you notice that nowhere does Jesus praise the widow for her actions? Nowhere does Jesus say to her, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Nowhere does Jesus say to his followers, “Go and do likewise.”
In fact, if you look at the passage that came right before his encounter with the widow, Jesus is condemning the religious hypocrisy of his time and place. Given his harsh words, it doesn’t really make sense for him to turn around and praise someone for giving more than she could afford to give in order to prop up these broken systems.
In fact, Jesus seems to be using the widow’s plight to emphasize the brokenness of these systems. If every household was expected to contribute x number of Shekels to the temple treasury, that is unfair to someone who is already marginalized like the widow, as that required contribution takes up 100% of her disposable income, leaving her nothing to pay her rent, to buy food for her family, to clothe her children. Jesus is pointing out that it is a flawed system.
Which leaves us with a text that doesn’t seem to have too much good news in it for us.
But I wonder if the good news might come from being like Jesus. Jesus noticed the woman, and he noticed that she was trapped by forces and systems beyond her control. He noticed her, and he named those systems, and in doing so, restored some of her humanity to her. She was no longer struggling along, unnoticed and un-regarded by the world around her. Jesus sees her, and she becomes someone important, at least in that moment.
We humans are imperfect in our human-ness, and unfortunately I think that any human system, whether political or economic or social, is going to be a flawed system because it is created by flawed people. God is the only one who is able to create a perfect world, and we have to trust that this perfect world is going to become a reality some day, even if it takes longer than our lifetimes to get here. God longs for the liberation of all people from these systems that entrap us, systems that I dare to name as sin – systems that exploit, systems that harm, systems that oppress – God longs for the liberation of all people and all of creation, and some day, God’s reality is going to be so much more real than what we currently see as reality.
But for now, as we are stuck struggling through our imperfect human systems, I think that there is value in being like Jesus, naming these systems and pointing out their imperfections and pointing out who is hurt the most by those systems – political, social, economic, environmental systems. Because in doing so, we can restore the humanity of those who are being harmed.
I think that this is maybe at the heart of that old saying – we are in the world but not of the world. We are in the world, navigating all of these imperfect and flawed systems; yet because we trust in God’s vision for the world, we trust that there is a good and perfect way of being that God will eventually unfold. And maybe, just maybe, by noticing and pointing out the places where our world doesn’t match with God’s world, we can be part of the unfolding of that world, we can be participants in making God’s vision for the world a reality.
And may it be so.
And may it be so soon.
Amen.
“The Widow’s Mite” by JESUS MAFA