Mark 12:38-44
Gratitude, Trust,
and Generosity
James Sledge November
7, 2021
I googled the term “gratitude journal” the
other day, and the number of entries was astounding. There was a seemingly
endless collection of articles about how to start a gratitude journal, reviews
of the best gratitude journals to purchase, reviews of the best gratitude apps,
along with articles on some of the research around these journals. And of
course, there were ads for hundreds of different gratitude journals.
The Widow's Mite
JESUS MAFA, 1973
If you’ve somehow totally missed this phenomenon, the premise is fairly simple. At its most basic, it involves the regular writing down of things you are grateful for. The various journals and apps provide some structure intended to help and guide you.
You might think this simply one more wellness fad, but there is a growing body of evidence that such journaling is good for your health. Studies have found that giving thanks and counting blessings can help people sleep better, lower stress, and improve interpersonal relationships. Another study found that keeping a gratitude journal decreased materialism and bolstered generosity among adolescents. In yet another study, high school students who kept gratitude journals reported healthier eating, and there’s some evidence suggesting it could lower your risk of heart disease and reduce the symptoms of depression in some.[1]
The studies also suggest that it doesn’t work for everyone and that it’s no panacea, but still, the benefits are impressive. Yet gratitude is hardly a new concept. I’ve mentioned before that John Calvin saw gratitude as the basic motivation for the Christian life. So why does this seem like a new discovery to so many?
It may sound odd, but I started thinking about gratitude when I read our scripture where Jesus denounces the scribes and praises a poor widow. The scribes and the widow represent polar opposites in first century Jerusalem. The scribes were learned, professional men of high esteem, “doctors of the law.” There isn’t really anything quite like them in our world, but Jesus’ description of them reminds me of some businesspeople or politicians in our day. They like to wear fine clothes and be greeted with respect in the public square. They make sure to have the best seats at all the fancy shindigs, and they devour widows’ houses.
Widows in Jesus’ day often found themselves in extremely precarious positions, and so the word became a kind of biblical shorthand for the most vulnerable people in society. Modern day businesspeople are often more than willing to exploit the vulnerable, the working poor in this country or cheap labor in Asia. And the widow we meet in today’s scripture is in a particularly bad state, down to her last two coins.
But what does any of that have to do with gratitude? Well, in my observation, and in that of many others, those who are poor and vulnerable are often much better at gratitude than scribes and wealthy businesspeople.
Back in the 1970s, Stevie Wonder had a hit song entitled “I Wish,” where he sang of a bygone day when, “my only worry was for Christmas, what would be my toy? Even though we sometimes would not get a thing, we were happy with the joy the day would bring. I wish those days could come back once more. Why did those days ever have to go?”
I can say with some certainty that as a child I would not have been happy with the joy the day would bring if I hadn’t gotten anything for Christmas. But then again I’ve never been poor. I’ve always had plenty and, generally speaking, I’ve always wanted more. How can you be grateful about what you have when you’re occupied with getting more? And strange as it may seem, the more people have, the more they seem to want.
We live in a culture that works very hard to convince us that we don’t have enough. We don’t have enough money; we don’t have enough things; we don’t have enough power or influence; we don’t have enough security; we don’t have enough clothes; we don’t have enough exciting experiences, and on and on. It is a climate that is toxic to deep gratitude as well as to the deep generosity that often accompanies it.
The poor widow in our scripture is certainly generous. She has two coins and offers them both at the Temple. It catches Jesus’ eye not because of the amount, which is miniscule, but because it is all she has. Says Jesus, “… she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Or, as a more literal translation would say, everything she had, her whole life. Somehow she is able to trust that God will provide, trust so much that she needn’t hold back even one of her coins.
… out of her poverty. Jesus is impressed with this poor widow’s generosity, but she may not be that much of an anomaly. Numerous studies have revealed that the poor are more generous than those with wealth. According to one article “… not only do the poor donate more per capita than individuals in higher income brackets, but that their generosity tends to remain higher during economic downturns.”[2]
Conversely the well-off not only tend to be less generous, but they are less empathetic, more worried about appearances, more likely to imagine themselves completely responsible for their financial status, more self-centered, and simply meaner. It seems that Jesus words about the scribes fit rich people in general.[3]
This poses some real challenges for those of us who are fairly well off and also seek to follow Jesus. The very thing that many of us strive so hard to obtain turns out to be corrosive to a life of Christian discipleship. So what are we to do?
I suggest that we need to cultivate three interconnected practices, those of gratitude, trust, and generosity. Being more grateful, more thankful for the many blessings we enjoy can make us less anxious and more able to trust in the goodness of God instead of imagining that we alone can secure our future. In turn, such trust and gratitude can free us to be more generous with our money, our time, our compassion and love.
Of course I don’t know that it matters which of these practices you start with. You could simply begin to be more generous. After all, followers of Jesus are called to be generous, and as Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said, “Only the obedient believe. If we are to believe, we must obey a concrete command. Without this preliminary step of obedience, our faith will only be pious humbug.”[4]
All of us, every single one, have been given the gift of life without having done anything at all to merit it or acquire it. Perhaps there is the occasional exception, but I’m still going to say that all of us, every single one, have experienced love and care showered upon us by parents, guardians, companions, or spouses that we in no way earned or deserved. And all of us, every single one, have been embraced by the love of God from before we were born with no thought as to our accomplishments or failings. All of us, every single one, are the recipients of grace upon grace, blessing upon blessing, whether we acknowledge it or not.
And until we learn to be grateful for those blessings, until we learn to trust that the blessings of God abound, until we learn to be truly generous with God and neighbor, we will live constricted lives that fall far short of the full life God intends for each of us. But Jesus comes to show us the way to that full life. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
[1] Maanvi Singh, “If You Feel Thankful, Write It Down. It's Good For Your Health,” NPR’s Morning Edition, December 24, 2018
[2] “Poor Americans Are Country's Most Charitable Demographic” in philanthropynewsdigest.org, May 31, 2009
[3] Uma Shashikant, “Why poor people tend to be more generous than the rich,” The Economic Times, July 23, 2018
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Touchstone. Kindle Edition, location 769
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