November 12, 2006
Mark 12 38-44
“I Could Eat A Whole House”

*You take your son to the doctor’s office because he has been feeling terrible. After waiting for a while, the doctor sees you. She takes your son’s temperature and proclaims, “He’s got a fever!” Immediately she begins writing out a prescription. You ask, gently but firmly, “Could there be a reason for the fever, doctor?” She smiles, somewhat smugly, and says, “Oh, I only treat symptoms. I don’t ‘do diseases’” and ushers you out.

*You’re visiting a friend’s home for dinner party. The evening is fun and festive, and the food smells delicious. He invites you in to taste the main dish before everyone else. You have a small spoonful, and something doesn’t seem right. Your host quickly grabs for the salt and pepper shakers and dashes more in. Hmmm. No, something is really wrong here. You happen to glance down at the counter and the meat wrapper is still there. The expiration date is four days before today. When you point this out, he laughs and pours in some oregano and announces to the guests, “Dinner is served!”

*Your uncle asks you over to his house to help him do some repair work. You arrive and he’s in the living room just getting ready to spackle a long crack in the outer wall. As you get ready to help him, he angrily mentions that this is the second time he’s had to repair this very same wall. You ask if you can go into the basement for a second. Down there, you see the foundation underneath that very same wall is giving way, the bricks crumbling from water damage. When you mention this to your uncle, he shrugs and says, “I don’t have the time nor the money to fix that problem. Let’s get back to work!”

*You are hanging out at the church one afternoon helping Claude. While on a coffee brake in the office an older woman you don’t recognize comes in and, after a short visit, hands Carole an envelope and leaves. Pastor Allen tells you quietly that the woman, whose husband died years ago, shared with him that at the end of each month, she gives the last two or three dollars she has to the church. You inquire as to why she is so poor. Pastor Allen tells you that her husband didn’t think women should be educated or work outside of the home, so she was never allowed to learn a profession. When he died, the little savings he had he had promised to their children. The same with the only car they owned. Pastor Allen also went on to say that the woman had many health problems, but couldn’t afford health care, so was beholden to the McHaferty public clinic and Medicare. You quietly ask, “Is there anything the church could do?” Pastor Allen laughs and says, “Of course! We send her a personal thank you note for her gifts at the end of each year!”

**Brazilian Catholic Archbishop Dom Helder Camera once said, “When you give food to the hungry, they call you a saint. But when you ask why the hungry have no food, they call you a communist.” (1)

Today’s scripture text is one of the most beloved texts, especially around this time of the year when churches are in the midst of their stewardship campaigns. It is such a beautiful story, it is immortalized in one of our stained glass windows. Unfortunately, the second half of the story is almost always read without the first half. However, the description of the widow putting, literally, her last two cents into the Temple treasury is only part of the story. Jesus, and we should do no less, links her generosity with the greed and pompousness of the scribes. The words should ring in our ears, “They devour widows’ houses.” You can almost hear one of ‘em say, as he’s rubbing his belly, “I’m so hungry, I could eat a house!” Leaving the widow’s story to a simple act of giving, without understanding the larger situation, would be like treating the fever and not the disease, putting spices on spoiled food, or fixing a crack in a wall above a crumbling foundation.

I fear we live in a culture that spends way too much time fixing the symptoms of our problems and far too little time addressing the root diseases. One of the greatest gifts of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, however, is its constant reminder that “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart”. (2) If we are true to our biblical roots, we will confront “those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart.” (3) I believe that the Church is called, not to assist our culture with its superficial evaluation of the world, which all-too-often benefits those who have resources and power first and foremost, but to be an observer, an analyst, and a problem-solver to a deeper, fuller extent. We should be asking why the poor have no bread, why the walls keep cracking, why the widow has only two cents to her name.
But this is risky, because another way of asking the deeper, more penetrating questions is to ask “Where does my heart lie?” “Upon whom do I trust?” “Am I part of the problem or part of the solution?”

The Latin American theological movement of which Archbishop Camera was part and parcel has at its core the belief that scripture shows us a God who has “a preferential option for the poor.” That is not to say God glamorizes poverty, or even promotes people to be poor. Jesus’ commentary that “the poor you will always have with you” (4) was descriptive and no prescriptive. God’s preferential option for poor people has more to do with the honest assessment that when you are poor, you are less likely to trust in things and more likely to trust in something greater than you: God. The widow in Jesus’ story seemed to know in whom she should trust. Rev. Marian Anderson, a Lutheran Pastor in Illinois, said it well,

The widow wasn’t dependent on her money or her status in life; she had none of these. She was dependent on God and her neighbor for everything. She didn’t have two feet to stand on, she didn’t have bootstraps to pull up. She was totally dependent -- and that’s what Jesus pulls out of her story like a pearl of great price. This is what we are to be like before God -- dependent on nothing but the grace of God. We are to be people without any resources except the riches of God’s mercy. (5)

She goes on to challenge us that, as Americans especially, we’ve been taught to celebrate our independence. But as Christians, we should be celebrating our dependence on God alone. And I would add our interdependence upon one another.

This is the message, the stewardship message if you will, of today’s scripture. It isn’t some simplistic exaltation of a widow giving her last few cents to the church, it’s a call for the church to, yes, celebrate the honest, heartfelt act of giving whenever and wherever it may occur, but to dig deeper and discover and uncover the injustices that allow for and perpetuate such great chasms of inequality between the scribes, with their fancy flowing robes and places of honor, and the widows and orphans who must eke out an existence.

My stewardship message to this church is that we have a precious gift to give our members, our neighbors, and the city as a whole. We sit, figuratively and literally, as a bridge between those who have much and those who have little. To the east and north of us are some of the largest concentrations of people on the edge of financial existence on the West Side. To the west and south of us are some of the hottest residential properties in the city.

Recently I was given a map of the current and upcoming development projects in our neighborhood. I drew a circle around them and was surprised to see, almost exactly in the middle, was Franklin Circle Christian Church. We are in the middle of it all, and I believe God has put us there for a reason.
To be good stewards of this gift God has given us, we must be willing to be a safe and accessible place where people of all walks of life can worship alongside one another, learn and serve side-by-side, and, most importantly of all, come together to ask the tough questions: “How can we treat the disease of poverty and not simply the symptoms?” “In what condition is our community’s foundation?” “Why does the wave of violence and crime smell of racism and classism and what would nourish us all better?”

Don’t get me wrong, the offerings you give are important. I never question the sincerity of a gift given, and believe this congregation has some of the most faithful and generous saints imaginable. You and I need to give, not because this church needs us to give, but because it is an essential act of a faithful person to want to give God thanks and praise with heart, and soul, and voice, and finances. Healthy Christians give regardless of the need.
Having said that, I also know that in order for this congregation to do anything God is calling us to do, it has to be financially stable. We have begun imagining how some of our invested resources might be used to further the mission of this congregation, most certainly in the area of youth ministry, but perhaps also in supporting this facility as a community center where such critical interactions of rich and poor and middle class might happen more often, and in a more thoughtful and structured way.

If we are going to take the risks of asking why injustices abound in our society, and have any credibility in seeking to address them, we have to put our money where our mouths and our hearts are. It takes stability to confront the scribes with their greed. And if we are going to work with the widow so that she might become stable enough to actually give what she wants to give, and not simply what she has left to give, we need a church that is strong, healthy, and ready to do the work Christ is calling us to do.

*“Oh Doctor, you can keep your prescription because I want a second opinion!”

*“Friends, a slight delay: let’s order in pizza!”

*“Uncle, I’ve got a neighbor who is great at foundation work and I’d be willing to help him for free.”

*“Pastor Allen, this neighborhood has unexplored resources, especially for the elderly and widows. Would you give me that woman’s name and phone number, and I think we can make a difference in her life.”

**“Archbishop Camera, you’re no communist. You are simply a Christian with a conscience.”

Amen.


(1) Dom Helder Camera, Source: Jim Forest, Love Is The Measure: Biography of Dorothy Day, Paulist Press, 1986 pg. 204
(2) 1 Samuel 16:7b
(3) 2 Corinthians 5:12b
(4) Mark 14:7
(5) Widow's Walk (Mark 12:38-44) by Mary W. Anderson. Mary W. Anderson is pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Evanston, IL. This article appeared in The Christian Century, November 1, 2003, p. 18. Copyright by The Christian Century Foundation. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.



Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2006 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096