The Widow's Mite
Lectionary - Pentecost 23B - Mark 12:38-44
The story of the widow and her mite are part of Mark's observations about the temple and the religious leadership of God's people, told in the setting of Jesus' final journey to Jerusalem.
The temple is a den of robbers instead of a house of prayer (11:15-17).
According to Josephus, an immense golden vine representing Israel decorated the interior of the temple. It's not surprising, then, that Jesus told a parable about the tenants of a vineyard being subject to the vineyard owner's wrath (12:1-9). During his disputations with representatives of those 'tenants,' Jesus charges that some scribes "devour widows' houses" (12:38-40). (See my essay Amos and the Poor).
As Jesus sits near the temple treasury, he observes the high cost that the temple imposes on one of these poor widows as she puts her only two lepta into the collection box. The widow is described as ptochos, a desperate beggar (the root is "crouch" or "cower" and describes the physical stance of a beggar). The temple has taken all that she has to live on (12:41-44).
Although we normally take this passage as a moral example of sacrificial generosity, in context, it's hard not to see it also as a comment on the temple function itself. Something has gone terribly wrong.
The words that Mark uses to describe the act of contributing are not ones that one would normally use to describe the praiseworthiness of the act. Both the widow and the others are said simply to have thrown or tossed (ballo, like the word "ballistic") their money into the treasury. The Mishna describes a number trumpet-shaped collection boxes that lined the temple's "court of the women." Some were designated for special offerings, while others were designated for the basic tithe. It's probably a poor analogy, but I picture wooden versions of the basic turnpike toll booth. When the rich tossed in their copious offering, the box resounded like a Las Vegas slot machine paying off big. The widow's two tiny lepta would have made very little sound. (I understand that these devices are actually called "trumpets" in the Talmud, but I've not found the primary source. Is this the source of Jesus' admonition to "sound no trumpet" in Matthew 6:2?)
While these contributions - both large and small - have made the temple stones and buildings a wonderful sight to behold, Jesus announces that temple is doomed. "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here on another that will not be thrown down" (13:1-2). The widow has given her entire living to an institution that will cease to exist because it has failed (repeatedly) to function as God intended.
In Mark's theology, it is Jesus, and not the temple, that is now the focus of the life of faith. The curtain of the temple will be torn in two (15:38) at Jesus' death. Humanity's relationship to God will now based upon a new covenant, purchased with the price of Jesus' blood (14:24).
Today, some poor, elderly Christian somewhere is receiving an emotional phone call or a mailed appeal to give the widow's mite to benefit some ministry run by a scalawag with gold-plated toilet seats. While the faith of the poor is just as admirable today as it was 2000 years ago, the callousness of some religious leaders is just as despicable. The weak and needy among us are to be protected, not exploited.
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Partially based on comments on Jesus entry into the temple in Mark 11:1-11, Into the Temple.
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