In biblical times, becoming a widow was the fate most feared by a woman. They couldn't own property. They usually didn't have any respectable way to earn money. They were people on welfare living on handouts from the community or family. When a woman's husband died, she could go back to her own family if they would pay for her. If not, or if she had no family, she would have to stay with her husband's family, who were obligated to take her in; but she was usually given very low and humiliating jobs in the household to earn her keep. She was, after all, an extra burden on them.

Mark describes the widow Jesus observes in this morning’s account as poor – literally, a beggar, someone who sits by the curb seeking handouts from passersby. This widow's whole life is dependent upon the mercy of strangers.

In this morning’s story, Jesus is in the Temple courtyard, watching people put their offerings into the “treasury,” or donation chests. There were 13 of them located around the court of the Jerusalem Temple, each one with a label telling the purpose for which the money placed in that particular chest would be used. These chests were shaped like an inverted trumpet – a small opening at the top, with a larger opening at the bottom, to ensure protection from theft – no one could reach in and filch the money.

At one of the congregations I’ve served, there was one member who, instead of placing his offering in the offering plate during Sunday worship regularly throughout the year, came in to the church office once a year, about the middle of December, and with a certain amount of flair, would pull out his checkbook, lean over the secretary’s desk, and write out a check for $1000. “Here,” this person would say as he ripped the check out and gave it to the secretary, “THIS ought to help fill the coffers!” After he left, the secretary would predictably run in to the pastors’ offices, waving the check, exclaiming, “Mr. (so & so) was just in again this year. He is so generous! Look at this check!” And she was absolutely right. Not everyone can rip off a check for $1000. The senior pastor would, every year, write a personal thank you to this fellow for his great generosity.

One day it occurred to me as I did a little math that, while there were many members of the congregation who gave far less than he did, there were many, many members of the congregation who, by faithfully placing an offering of $25 or $30 – and many gave more – in the offering plate during worship, week after week, every Sunday, all year long, actually gave significantly more. They did it quietly, without flair, never receiving – and never expecting – a personal thank you letter from the pastor.

In this morning’s gospel, Jesus watches the rich folks (“rich” meaning, having more than you needed to simply survive day-to-day) contribute large sums – using copper or brass coins. These offerings, of course, would make a lot of racket as they clattered down the stem of the upside down “trumpet” into the donation chest. These big givers, surrounded by hundreds of more modest givers, attracted everyone’s attention as the sound of their many coins rang throughout the temple courtyard.

Then Jesus watches the widow approach a donation chest, and drop into it two lepta (not lefsa! – lepta!) – two tiny coins, the equivalent of a few cents. The lack of a racket betrays her. No matter how discrete she might try to be, anyone standing within 10’-15’ would know, by the lack of sound, how meager her offering was.
 
The lepta was the smallest coin available. The money she put in was trivial – unimportant, insignificant – at least to the Temple officials. What could two lepta buy? People of means bought fine doves for their sacrifices. The poor bought common pigeons. It took about eight lepta just to buy one tiny sparrow, the lowliest possible ritual sacrifice. This widow couldn’t even afford that.
 
It’s obvious that the widow isn’t going to receive some special service or privilege from the Temple or the priests in exchange for her offering. This is not going to get a thank you letter. She is clearly not going to have more influence in Temple affairs. Her contribution had nothing to do with getting a tax break; nor with her feelings and attitudes toward the Temple OR its leaders, who Jesus accuses of “devouring the homes of widows.” She doesn’t give her loose pocket change.

She was clearly in desperate financial circumstances. Verse 44 says she gave "all she had to live on." Literally, "her whole life." Now I ask you: Did God really need her few cents? Two lepta. For goodness’ sake, even if she gave only one of them, and kept one for her own well-being, she would have given 50% of her wealth to God. Wouldn’t one lepta have been more than enough?

God didn’t need her money. Certainly the Temple could have gotten by just fine without her two little lepta. So if she couldn’t be one of those “big givers” who gets all kinds of respect and even preferential treatment in some churches, but was totally ignored and discounted even though she gave all she had; and those two lepta really weren't going to amount to much of anything anyway in the long view, what was the point?

A contemporary Christian, in reflecting on this story, wrote

"What's the point of my small acts of faithfulness? Why bother? Even if I liquidate all my assets and give them to the poor, I might provide enough for one small soup kitchen to feed one hundred homeless people for a week.”

He continues: “I sit in the food court in the mall and watch as bag after bag of trash (containing aluminum cans and plastic bottles) are loaded up and then taken to landfills; and I know that this scene is repeated daily in thousands of venues around the world. Why do I bother recycling my two six-packs of diet cola per week? What is the meaning of my measly individual action?"

He concludes: “The story of the widow's offering suggests that faithful giving (and faithful living) is not for the sake of what it’s given TO, but rather for the sake of the giver.”

Have you ever known someone who felt they had nothing to give? Perhaps you’ve even felt that way yourself. I may have told you about a wonderful woman I knew many years ago who was not only homebound, but bed-bound. She lived in a nursing home. She couldn’t see any more, so she couldn’t read. She could hardly hear any more, so she could neither watch TV nor listen to a radio. She was so crippled with arthritis that she couldn’t stand or walk any more, and even sitting was extremely painful, so she’d only be up in a chair for about half an hour, twice a day. Many pitied her because all of her disabilities made it impossible to do much of anything except be taken care of. Having outlived her entire family, and her savings, there was no one even to do that, except public assistance which paid people in a county nursing home to care for her. She was one of those “welfare cases” who never would be able to contribute anything to society in exchange for the welfare she received in order to live in that nursing home. In the view of many, the disabilities of aging had reduced her to being “good for nothing.”

But. She could still do one thing; one thing that didn’t require seeing eyes, hearing ears, standing, walking, or even sitting. She could lay on her back in bed and do this one thing: If our congregation kept her supplied with yarn and a crochet hook, the woman could crochet. And she crocheted for all she was worth! Nursing home staff, the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, and nephews of the nursing home staff, children baptized at church, people she didn’t know and would never meet – all received beautifully hand-crocheted scarves, afghans, hats, booties – you name it. She gave not out of her abundance, not out of her spare time, not from what she didn’t need anyway. She gave all she had to give. Not only that, when I would visit her and bring her Communion, she would absolutely beam as I left with the latest creation borne of her still-creative mind, a few skeins of yarn, a crochet hook, all woven together by her misshapen, arthritic hands.

What she and the widow in the Temple courtyard don’t give us is a mathematical formula for calculating how much of what we have, how much of our life we should return to God for the work of God, and in thanksgiving to God. What she and the widow in the Temple courtyard really do is point us to Jesus, who gave everything he had to buy back your life from the Evil One, to ransom your future from eternal death.

But more important than our own generosity, more important than “it’s better to give than to receive,” is this: “Stewardship” is not a church word, an impressive concept which theologians came up with as a way of talking about financing church budgets. Stewardship is a Jesus word. Jesus, in numerous parables and other teachings, tells us that we are “stewards.”  Steward is one of those rare words that has not changed meaning in over 2000 years. Both in biblical days and in the 21st century, a steward is the guardian, the manager, of someone else’s property who is, in the end, accountable to the owner.  Each of us is required to do with all that God has given us exactly what the Church Council is required to do with all that is given to God through this church – manage it well for the glory of God. Just as Council and staff are accountable to the congregation for how such gifts are used, so too each of you, each of us, is accountable to God for how God’s gifts to you are used.

God didn’t need the widow’s money. God doesn’t need ours. But the life and healing of our members, our community, our nation, our world DO. That loose change in my wallet; the money in my checking account; those investments in my pension accounts aren’t really “mine” at all.  My very life isn’t truly mine! Not even the 90% I keep after tithing is mine. It all belongs to God. All of it. 100%. We are merely stewards, called in our baptism to be instruments of God’s love and grace in a hurting world.

Teresa of Avila, whose life overlapped that of Martin Luther, wrote: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours . . . Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out on a hurting world; yours are the feet with which he goes about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless now.”

Consecration Sunday is two weeks from today. Keep this story of the widow close to your heart these next two weeks – not in terms of percentages, not in terms of church budgets – that’s all secondary – but in terms of obedience as a faithful steward of God’s gifts to you. Amen.