Mark
12:38-44
New Clothes
James
Sledge November
11, 2012
I
have been to three high school reunions.
It makes me feel terribly old to say so, but I attended my 35th
a couple of years ago. This one was a
little different from a tenth or twentieth.
After 35 years, my classmates and I were a lot closer to the ends of
careers than beginnings. Quite a few
have died, and some had or were just about to retire. At a tenth reunion, so much lay ahead. Only
provisional judgments could be made about how your life had gone. But at a 35th.
When
you gather for a 35th reunion it is difficult to look at people and not
make judgments. Some are fairly
superficial. If you’ve been to such reunions you know what I’m talking
about. Some folks have aged better than
others. Some look little changed from
their senior class picture. Some you can’t
figure out who they are.
Other
judgments require a little more information, some catching up. Graduate degrees, places they’d worked, where
they now live, where their children go to college, and other such things let
you begin to rate folks on some sort of success scale. One is an Air Force general, others are
doctors, some own businesses, some are fire fighters, some are teachers, and so
on. Of course not everyone uses the same
success scale for their measuring. Some are impressed with Air Force general,
and some are not. Some are impressed
with teacher; some are not. Some are impressed with pastor (not many); some are
not.
Whether
or not you’ve ever attended a high school reunion, you probably use some sort
of success scale, some type of measures for making judgments or life
choices. Parents want their children to
do well, so they worry about the school district they live in, and children
learn at very young age that they will be measured.
Think
about all those scales we use: grades, SAT or ACT scores, state school vs. Ivy
League vs. community college. And it
keeps going after school: salary, car you drive, where you live, where you
vacation, who you know, how important you are, and so on.
Numbers
figure prominently in many of these success scales, and such scales show up at
church as well. Successful pastor means one at a church with lots of members,
and successful churches are ones with large membership and budgets. We’ve just
completed a stewardship campaign that talked about giving as a spiritual
discipline and the tithe as a way of gauging spiritual health, but we’ll still
measure the success of the campaign in total dollars.
There
is a certain practical necessity to this I suppose, but it sure seems out of
sync with what Jesus says to us today.
When he sees a widow drop a couple of pennies in the Temple treasury, he
says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who
are contributing to the treasury.”
He calls it “more.”
Surely
Jesus knows that these two coins won’t pay a laborer enough to sweep out the Temple
entrance. Her gift is insignificant. It
won’t make any more difference than if someone puts in two pennies in our
offering plates today. But Jesus calls
it “more.” He obviously uses a different math, a different way of measuring.
Our
gospel reading today has two distinct sections. In the first Jesus denounces
the scribes, the religious experts of that day, for their hypocrisy, for focusing
on how they look on those success scales. In the second we see the widow’s
small gift that is “more.” But widows
are mentioned in the first section as well. Jesus says the scribes “devour
widow’s houses.” Who knows, maybe the
widow Jesus sees at the Temple is destitute because she has given too much to
the religious establishment where the scribes work.
Today’s
gospel is a favorite stewardship text for obvious reasons. But sermons focusing
on its supposed lesson of sacrificial giving usually ignore the context of
widows who’ve lost their homes, lost them with help from their church.
Perhaps
we might hear today’s gospel differently if we let go of some of our success
scales and use a different math. Our
success scales, our math, say that no matter how much we have, it isn’t enough,
even though Jesus says the widow’s small amount is “more.” Our endless appetite for more requires the US
to consume a lion’s share of the world’s resources and control much of the
world’s wealth. But Jesus says a
destitute widow has more. Strange that
unlike the widow, we struggle to be truly generous, while at the same time our
insatiable appetite for more creates sweatshops that oppress children and
widows.
Does
it ever seem to you that we are captive to our measures of success, to our kind
of math, and that it might be a wonderful breath of freedom to be released from
them? To cast off the weight and demands
of such measures and be free to love and accept others without figuring out if
they count or if they’re worth our time? To stop worrying about whether we have
enough or if we measure up? To become like very young children who’ve not yet
learned our measures and our math, who easily accept and embrace both themselves
and others?
___________________________________________________________________________
In
the first centuries of Christian faith large numbers of adult converts became followers
of Jesus, and so there were large numbers of adult baptisms, typically by
immersion. Very often, those being
baptized stripped off their old clothes and threw them away prior to entering
the water. They emerged from the water
naked, reborn, and they were given a new, white robe to wear. These robes not
only represented the purity and righteousness of Christ, but they were
reminiscent of the togas given to those who became Roman citizens. These robes marked the newly baptized as
citizens of something new and different, God’s coming dominion, a new and
different day with different math and different measures.
In
our baptisms, we’ve been made citizens of God’s coming dominion, that new day. But unlike those early Jesus followers who
threw away their old clothes, we’ve saved ours.
All too often we continue to live by the measures and math of this
world. And so we not only fail to
witness to the wonderful, new life possible in Christ, but we cling to the very
ways that trap us in endless busyness and striving, that leave many of us over
stressed and over extended, not to mention our children.
What
sort of math and measures govern your life?
Do those measures leave you fulfilled and secure and at peace? Or do they leave you anxious and harried and
worried? Do they set you free or make you a slave? Are you wearing the old clothes of a world
that is passing away, or the bright new clothes of someone made new in the
waters?
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