Psalm 146, mark 12:38-44

We come to worship each week, in part, to listen for what God might be saying to us, as individuals, and as a community of faith. No, we don't expect to hear God speaking "right out loud." But we are open to sensing God's always gracious, sometimes commanding, "voice" in the words of scripture, or song, the ideas of a sermon, the hug or smile of someone seated around us, and in the still, small voice of God's Spirit within each of us. We come to listen.

Today we listen especially carefully for this "God who is still speaking" first in the words of a song from ancient Israel, Psalm 146. Please turn to page 766, and in a moment Carol will lead us in reading this psalm responsively.

The last five psalms in the book of Psalms all begin and end with a single word: Hallelujah! - translated as Praise the Lord! The first stanza of this one wants us to remember that there is a big, big difference between us and God. While that may seem obvious, it is something that we seem to need to be reminded of, from time to time.

Toward that end of that first stanza, and into the second stanza, the hymnwriter tells us of God's priorities. What is the work of God? To free the oppressed, feed the hungry, heal the sick, watch out for the vulnerable in society. Jesus began his ministry using words very much like these. This was his mission - it is God's mission.

Read Psalm 146.

Now let us listen for a word of God to us in a familiar story from the gospels, the story of what happened one day when Jesus was in the Temple, watching people bring in their offerings. Mark sets up this story by remembering a particular teaching of Jesus, one of many of his that condemn in no uncertain terms the hypocrisy both of wealth and of religion.

You need to know here that a "scribe" in Jesus' time was a religious leader - a scholar - who was an expert in the over 600 separate laws that had grown up around the law of Moses over the centuries. These scribes were the sticklers of that day, the literalists, who could quote chapter and verse in order to judge others - but were able to conveniently argue their way around rules that didn't suit them personally. Their expertise won for themselves wealth - that's how they got those nice, long robes Jesus talks about - and respect: they enjoyed the best seats at the synagogue.

But they earned for themselves - from Jesus - "greater condemnation."

With that as background, Mark then tells us about the day Jesus sat watching people bring their offerings to God. "The treasury" mentioned here is an area of the Temple that had a number of receptacles for different kinds of offerings. We think that they were shaped like sound trumpets - almost like the kind that people used to hold up to their ear when they were hard of hearing. They would have been larger than that, and made of metal - so that when you threw your coins in they would rattle their way down the tube; the bigger the coin, that louder the noise, and the more coins, the more raucous the rattling.

The result was that when a rich man came by, putting in a large offering, the noise would announce to all just how much money he was giving. And of course the opposite would be true: the smaller the amount, the more faint noise.

It is a system that, while we have considered it for here, we decided in the end that it probably wouldn't do - given that Jesus said our giving should be so secret that our left hand wouldn't even know what the right hand is giving. (Matthew 6:2-4)

So as you listen to this story try to hear the loud, self-righteous clanking of the rich people's coins. And then try to hear to faint ring of two tiny coins - worth perhaps a penny - that the widow offers to God. Jesus heard it: can you?

Read Mark passage.

Any mission trip I have ever been on, or heard reported about - be it to Mazahua mission, or to Appalachia, or wherever people have gone to serve people "less fortunate" than us - that is, with less of this world's goods and money - every time that sort of cross-cultural contact has been made between rich and poor, unfailingly we have had the experience of being amazed at the gracious hospitality, the selfless giving of the people we have gone to serve. They who seemingly have little to give - because of how their lives have unfolded, because of where they were born - they who have so little to give are the ones who give so much.

I think of the work team who was at a family's house doing some roof repairs, and that family, wanting to show their thanks and hospitality freely shared with them the food that they had canned for their coming winter. They gave as if they had plenty to spare, as if they lived in abundance.

And when such things happened we were always stunned by these acts of generosity. Not because we had never been given anything. Quite the contrary. We have received gift upon gift - expert receivers, we are! No, what stunned us was not the gift but the fact that the giver gave not out of their excess, but out of their poverty. We had assumed - wrongly - that the less a person has the less inclined they would be to give. But we learned - as Jesus did that day - that sometimes, oftentimes, those who give the most have the least to give.

I am grateful for all the good that Bill and Linda Gates are doing in the world. I pray that they are setting an example to others with such vast sums of cash as they have to do good in the world with their wealth. But still I am struck by what Jesus is teaching us: that giving is measured best not by the amount that is given, but by the amount that is left.

In the widow's case, there was nothing left. Nothing. Zero. Nada. She gave, says Jesus, - approvingly - everything she had.

Cynically I wonder if the reason she had only two pennies was because she kept giving what she had away. And again, cynically, wanting to defend my own habits of giving, I want to say that if everyone gave it all away there would be no one with anything left to give next time.

But still, Jesus was impressed with this woman, which means that we ought to be too.

And I think what Jesus was marveling at was not so much the gift, as the faith that was behind that gift. The faith - the courage, really, that she displayed to trust God, to believe in the abundance of God. To believe that there was enough for her, and for all.

Some of us approach life as if there is only so much, and it's not enough for everyone, and so we'd better get what we can, save what we can, and share it only sparingly. Be it our time or our love or our resources . . . seeing a world of scarcity means living hesitantly, carefully, perhaps even fearfully.

But there are those others, the "more fortunate" than us, who see a world of abundance. They see life as a gift - a gift to be shared, freely and joyfully. They, like the widow that caught Jesus' eye that day, have learned that they are channels of God's blessings - not reservoirs, mere holding tanks of grace. Through them flow the richness of God's love. In them we see the joy of living freely, with abandon, because they believe in abundance.

I wish I could be more like that widow. I wish I could have the courageous faith that she had. Don't you?