The Widow's Two Coins

A good friend wrote a comment on my earlier piece: "Diminishing Kindness in America," and here's my reply:

G'morning Judy - read your comment on the blog, and I appreciate your thoughtfulness. The Jeremiah quote, btw, is in Mark 11.17 - Jesus cites Jeremiah's complaint that folks have turned the temple into a den of robbers - a place where robbers go after their crimes to find safety, only to prepare again for further crimes.

With regard to the widow, one of the problems with preaching is isolating a passage from its context, and then adding "value" to it to suit our own interests. Mark places the widow's story immediately after Jesus warns the disciples about the scribes, or legal experts, who devour widows' homes. When Jesus describes the widow, I hear compassion for her plight ("all she has to live on) - because she's giving to a system that plays upon her piety, her faithfulness, her love of God. But to lift this passage from its context and isolate it, and then turn it into a "Hallmark Card" moment misses the point - while she may be a woman of great virtue (that we really don't know), she's a victim of a system that has made religion a business and business a religion.

You mention kindness and government - and that's the very link Jeremiah makes - Jeremiah 5.27-31 and Jeremiah 7.5-7. He's very clear, and so is Jesus, how the system is weighted in favor of the wealthy, and their increasing wealth (see Isaiah 5.8-13).

It's a matter of social kindness, not just personal. Offering a temporary job to someone is very different than a system that provides steady jobs, with good salaries and the appropriate safety nets that folks need for their children and their health, including public transportation, job-security (a boss just can't fire them at will) and the hope for a secure retirement.

Judy, in my world and travels and ministry, I have never met a lazy poor person - I've met folks working two and three jobs, getting up at 3 in the morning to ride buses to a job that starts at 7, and then when the bus schedule fails, they lose their job. I've met poor people who are sick and still work endless hours for small wages, who put up with insult and injury, who weep about their children, and can't sleep at night. I've met poor people who never had good families to rear them, who had no friends or relatives to bail them out when they failed (and who hasn't been bailed out a time or two by their family, or their friends?).

Judy, there is so much wrong with our system right now, and it's getting worse, and we are failing the very people whom Jeremiah notes: the alien, the widow and the orphan.

As for Christians, we have to read Jesus a whole lot more, and we have to read the prophets upon whom Jesus relied. On the Mt. of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah were there, not David. Moses and Elijah are both prophets (to simply call Moses a representative of the law - Reformation theology - misses the point). Elijah's presence is best understood when Ahab calls him a "troubler of Israel," and Elijah fires back, "Not me buddy; it's you!" And Moses is the one who confronted Pharaoh and set the people free, leading them through the wilderness, with God providing for them (hardly a do-it-yourself proposition, because God is kind).

Anyway, I stand by what I wrote about the widow, because of Mark's context and how Jesus referes to Jeremiah. Luke has the same setting: Luke 20.45-47, and then 21.1-4 ... when Jesus says, "all she has to live on," it's a sad comment on a cruel system that will never honor her, or provide for her, but only take her home when she can't climb out of her debt (which was how most homes were taken, and if she's a widow, then she likely has debt).

Judy, I appreciate the length and quality of your reply, and I appreciate the struggles of your soul on these matters. That you and I should be FB friends is a gift - when I was in South Africa recently, I was talking with some Dutchmen there, and we all had a good laugh when I said, "If you're not Dutch, you're not much!"

Carry on the good fight!

To God be the glory!

Tom