The Widow's Might

The story of the Widow's Mite (Mk 12:41-55 and Lk 21:1-4) has received little attention in general. Scholarly articles on the passage tend to focus on the coins in the story or extra-biblical parallels, or how Jesus was able to know her financial situation from afar. The main point of the text gets relatively attention in the journals, perhaps because it's thought to be obvious.

When you turn to commentaries, you find a vast range of restatements of two main theories: (a) What counts isn't how much you give, but how much you have left (e.g. Marshall); or (b) What counts is the attitude of the heart--a non-trite version of "it's the thought that counts" (e.g. Calvin).

Both of these are surely true statements, though it's hard to support the second from the text since we can't read the widow's mind. Certainly, though, Jesus applauds her willingness to give all.

The more you think about her sacrifice, though, the less well it sits. Women in first-century Palestine got the short end of the stick in almost every way: They were restricted in their roles because they were seen to be inferior physically and mentally, and even to be responsible for most sin. One daily prayer regimen had men thanking God each day for not being born women. In addition, this woman is poor, and widowed. A woman's legal status depended on her relatives, so being without a husband left her in an unprotected state, to say the least.

So if she's giving money to the collection, who is it for? Can there be anyone who needs those two coins more than she?

Jesus takes great pains elsewhere to point out, as Lord of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath was made for people, not the other way around. Similarly, in Mark 7:10-13 he condemns a practice called "Corban," wherein you could abandon obligations to your parents so long as the money went instead to the temple coffers. The widow's gift is a very close parallel to that--her very living is being given away when she can ill spare it.

The key to this paradox comes from the context (Wright, 1982). This story appears in both Mark and Luke, and in both cases it comes after a condemnation of the Scribes--who love ostentation and take advantage of the poor--and before a prediction of the destruction of the temple and the religious authorities it represents.

The widow's sacrifice is said to be superior to all others in magnitude--"this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others"--but Jesus isn't lauding the sacrifice itself. In fact, it is an object lesson. Having just condemned the Scribes for "devouring widow's houses" (Mk 12:40), he points to where this is happening in front of their very eyes. As Addison Wright points out,

Jesus' saying is not a penetrating insight on the measuring of gifts; it is a lament, "Amen, I tell you, she gave more than all the others." Or, as we would say: "One could easily fail to notice it, but there is the tragedy of the day-she put in her whole living." She had been taught and encouraged by religious leaders to donate as she does, and Jesus condemns the value system that motivates her action, and he condemns the people who conditioned her to do it.

We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We learn both from what the widow is doing and what is being done to her. Any religious system which can consume its weakest and most vulnerable for fuel deserves to meet with the same fate as the temple did in AD 70.

It is tempting to bring up Father Arturo Uribe, who in seminary fathered a child, and later as a priest successfully argued in court that he shouldn't have to pay child support because of his vow of poverty. Or to learn from the mixed feelings of a father whose two daughters decided to give their careers to take holy orders.

We need to look a little closer to home. This passage warns us that not all judgment waits for the end of time. In AD 70 the temple met its fate, and later in Rev 2:5 Jesus warned the Ephesian church, "If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."

If Jesus hadn't pointed her out, the disciples would never have noticed the widow. How are the marginalized in our church, the people we barely see, faring?

[Refs: The image is The Widow's Mite (Le denier de la veuve) by James Tissout, from the Brooklyn Museum; On women in the first century: Green, Joel B., McKnight, Scot; Marshall, I. Howard: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (IVP, 1992) p. 880; Addison Wright, "The Widow's Mites: Praise or Lament?-A Matter of Context," Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 44, 256 (1982); Calvin: Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke - Volume 3.]

Fun Fact:

The widow's "mite" of Mk 12:42 is, in the Greek, the lepton, the smallest of the Roman coins. The term "lepton" is also used for a class of elementary particles containing some of the smallest particles, including the nearly massless neutrino. Neutrinos, while numerous, are so nearly "invisible"-interacting weakly with the universe around them-that it's been estimated more than 50 trillion neutrinos generated by our sun pass quietly through the human body every second.

There is a time, though, when neutrinos take center stage: during the collapse of a star in a supernova, a cataclysmic event where a single star can outshine an entire galaxy. A flood of neutrinos out of the dying star bears away most of the energy of this collapse, an effect which provides an early warning system; the neutrinos from Supernova 1987A, for instance, were detected three hours before the photons.

A litmus test of grace

Like most Christians, the story of the rich young ruler (RYR) has always made me squirm. He wants to know how to inherit eternal life and is told to give everything away and follow Jesus. The disciples are then scared, since for them the RYR's riches are a sure demonstration of his righteousness and God's favor. If he can't have eternal life, they surely are out of luck.

Jesus comfort for his disciples is that God can do what's impossible for us. Which is a comfort only if you know God is planning to show you that mercy!

In history there's been enough squirming about this passage that by the 4th century Cyril of Alexandria insists that instead of kamelon (camel) the correct Greek word is the similar-sounding kamilon (rope, or cable), which he says is “not entirely pointless (as a camel would be)” but is just next to impossible. An even more heroic effort to blunt this saying came with the myth of a small gate into Jerusalem called the "Eye of the Needle"--which would make entrance into the kingdom hard, but possible. There was no such gate, though! In fact, in Jewish rabbinical literature from Babylonia, where the largest land animal was the elephant, not the camel, an elephant passing through the eye of a needle is a figure of speech for sheer impossibility.

Well, maybe if we can just avoid reading this passage more than once a year, we can cut down on our squirming. No such luck: Jesus' words about counting the cost of discipleship and surrendering all to him appear in various places, notably The Parable of the Rich Fool (who builds storehouses for his crops rather than treasures in heaven), and the conclusion to the Lilies of the Field: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Well--then it is about priorities, right, and not specifically money? Barbara Brown Taylor says it well:

It seems to me that Christians mangle this story in at least two ways. First, by acting as if it were not about money, and second, by acting as if it were only about money.

R. H. Gundry adds, pointedly,

That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would give that command.

Well, if it's about money, let's be practical. If I give up all I own, then I am just placing the burden of my support on others--and I am abandoning and dependents I might have. Nor does Jesus ask all his disciples to give up all they own. True. And in fact, Luke tells us of well-to-do women in the early church who "were helping to support them out of their own means" (Lk 8:3). Still, for most of us there's a pretty large gulf between what we currently give, and giving all. Even knowing that Jesus' message is about priorities and idolatry, his warning is dire. How sure am I that I can be the one who makes it through the eye of the needle, even though I share the RYR's reluctance to part with all my possessions?

This wall is just what Jesus wanted the RYR to run into. John Calvin, with an eye toward the book of Romans, sees the rich young ruler as pursuing the righteousness of the law (Rom 10:5), rather than the saving righteousness of faith (Rom 10:6) and believes Jesus answers to suit the question:

Hence we infer, that this reply of Christ is legal, because it was proper that the young man who inquired about the righteousness of works should first be taught that no man is accounted righteous before God unless he has fulfilled the law (which is impossible) that, convinced of his weakness, he might betake himself to the assistance of faith.

In other words, Jesus, hearing the RYR ask what he could do to inherit eternal life, wanted to drive home that there's nothing you can do. And for those who missed it, he drives home the message of grace: we are totally dependent on God's mercy because what is impossible for us is possible only for God.

There can be, though, a key difference between the RYR and us. If you are a baptized member of the Body of Christ, and your love for God and neighbor (however humble) bears witness to Christ's living within you, you have eternal life. The author of 1 John, having emphasized love for neighbor, comforts his flock, says just this: "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." As Paul says in Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." No final condemnation from God; and even none from this passage.

Seen rightly, this passage is a litmus test for our understanding of grace. To set our knees knocking when reading this passage is to believe that Christ's sacrifice isn't quite sufficient, and that we have to make up the deficiency with our own monetary sacrifice.

What, then, do we make of this passage? Writing in the fourth century, John Chrysostom says,

And so after Jesus had made eye contact with them, he said, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." So with a pleasant and gentle look, he soothed those whose hearts were terrorized and relieved their anguish… Then he uplifted them with his words as he focused on the power of God, and thus gave them faith.

If you also want to learn the way and how the impossible becomes possible, listen. He did not make this statement that what is impossible for man is possible for God merely so you could relax and do nothing and leave it all to God. No, he said this so you could understand the importance of calling upon God to give you help in this rigorous contest and that you might more readily approach his grace.

Jesus teaching isn't meant to make us afraid or guilty, except as way to warn us of the difficulties of leaning on him when we have first-world resources at our command; and it's meant to reassure is that God will take care of us with or without those resources. In fact, ultimately, Jesus calls us in compassion to stop thinking about our needs, and focus on the needs of others. We read this passage and focus on just on the RYR, and ignore the poor standing behind him, whose need he ignores when he turns from Jesus. To read this passage with God's grace in mind, we set aside the fear, the guilt, and focus instead on those in need--what better way to show our love for Jesus? Then we will find joy and peace.

[References: Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (sermon "The Opposite of Rich"); Chrysostom: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Matthew Vol 2, and Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew; Gundry: Walter Kaiser, Hard Sayings of the Bible; Calvin: Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke, Vol. 2. Image: Stained Glass Window in First Reformed United Church of Christ, Burlington, NC.]

Spiritual Forces and Sanctification

Here is a great quote from a paper from Bruce Longenecker, which (for me) casts a new light on Romans 8 and Paul's discussion of sanctification:

“Widespread in the Greco-Roman culture of Paul’s day was the belief that the world is populated by a multitude of suprahuman powers in constant conflict with each other. Human beings could become pawns and players in the rivalry and struggles that marked out the otherworldly realm. The spirit world could envelop the concrete world, as demonic spirits, and spiritual forces were thought to be alive and well, influencing human circumstances and destiny.

The Letter to the Galatians demonstrates that Paul could envisage the world in similar ways. So, for instance, he speaks of the Galatians having been ‘enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods’ prior to their Christian commitment (4:8). Moreover, Paul, having been transformed by God, claims to that ‘Christ lives in me’ (2:20), and hopes that his efforts among the Christians in Galatia will result in Christ being ‘formed in you’ (4:19). Paul expects the formation of Christ to be evident within the social relations of Galatian Christians, and this, for Paul, is first and foremost a matter of moral character; that is, Christian transformation is to be enacted in the giving of oneself for the benefit of others (5:13; 6:2) after the manner of Christ’s own selfless giving (1:4; 2:20). As Paul envisages the situation in Galatia, however, he perceives other spiritual realities to be at work, suprahuman forces that foster forms of moral character contrary to that of Christ and his people.”

Let's imagine sort of a straw-man "modern view." (Take these numbers with a grain of salt--the exact numbers aren't the point.) In a modern view, 90% of people are "free agents"--they are spiritually autonomous. 9% (maybe) are Christians, who are under the influence of the Holy Spirit, if all is going well, and the Spirit's role is to very very gradually make them a little more like Jesus. (And the remaining 1% are, say, shamans who are under a darker spiritual influence?)

In Paul's world, the 98% were under the influence of whatever deities or spiritual forces had jurisdiction where they were. Those 98% were constantly trying to appease the evil spirits/gods while pleasing the more benign entities. And 2% (or whatever) were Christians who'd put themselves under the aegis of the Holy Spirit.

It puts a different spin on Romans and Galatians to realize this: The effect of the Spirit seems much more immediate and powerful in this world view. Paul didn't have to explain that the Spirit would work to change your character--it was assumed if the Spirit of the creator of the universe were indwelling you, you'd notice. And just as importantly, you'd be free from other spiritual influences.

The $1,000 question, then, is how well Paul's understanding of his spiritual context translates to our modern context. The traditional conservative reading says that we should follow Paul's view of the spiritual world, which appears consistent with Jesus'. And this is based on the thought that even if Jesus, having emptied himself of his divine "omnis", didn't know everything (Mt 24:36; Philip 2:5-8), surely the Spirit ensured he was not captive to lies which would poison his teachings. I.e., he might not have known germ theory of diseases, but that didn't affect his presentation of the Gospel.

Is it possible that Paul's view of the spiritual world was correct for 1st-century Rome but not the 21st-century West? Hard to imagine.

But if we enter Paul's world, we have to acknowledge that a saving grace of the Gospel is to free us from influences most of us never see or credit.

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor 4:4)

Praise God that he has opened our eyes!

[Refs: Bruce W. Longenecker, “Until Christ is Formed in You: Suprahuman Forces and Moral Character in Galatians,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61, 92 (1999); The Rival Sacrifices of Elijah and the Priests of Baal, 1545, by Lucas The Younger Cranach (b. 1515, Wittenberg, d. 1586, Weimar)]

I have been reading Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, first published almost 35 years ago. With about a half-million copies in print, I'm sure many or most of you have already read it. I have found it to be insightfully written, chock full of thoroughly-referenced information, and very convicting. I'm only about halfway through.

Sider's chapter 3, God and the Poor, is a pretty thorough-going and balanced assessment of God's historical defense of those who are poor, weak, and defenseless. One area in which his treatment seems balanced is in its consideration of Christians' responsibility to the poor in general as well as to poor and downtrodden brothers and sisters in Christ. In view of our discussion some time ago of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25), I thought his comments were interesting:

"We have seen how God declared that the people of Israel were really Sodom and Gomorrah rather than the people of God (Is 1:10). God could not tolerate their exploitation of the poor and disadvantaged any longer. Hosea solemnly announced that, because of their sins, Israel was no longer God's pepeple and he was no longer their God (1:8-9). In fact, God destroyed them.

Jesus expressed it even more pointedly. To those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoners, he will speak a terrifying word at the final judgment: 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels' (Mt 25:41). The meaning is clear. Jesus intends that his disciples imitate his own concern for the poor and needy. Those who disobey will experience eternal damnation.

But perhaps we have misinterpreted Matthew 25. Some people think that 'the least of these' (v. 45) and 'the least of these who are members of my family' (v. 40) refer only to Christians. This exegesis is not certain. But even if the primary reference of these words is to poor believers, other aspects of Jesus’ teaching not only permit but require us to extend the meaning of Matthew 25 to both believers and unbelievers who are poor and oppressed. The story of the good Samaritan teaches that anybody in need is our neighbor (Luke 10:29-37). Matthew 5:43-45 is even more explicit: 'You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love you neighbor and hate your enemy'. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sum rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.'

The ideal in the Qumran community was indeed to "'ove all the sons of light' and 'hate all the sons of darkness' (1 QS 1:9-10, the Essenes' Community Rule). Even in the Old Testament, Israelites were commanded to love the neighbor who was the child of their own people and ordered not to seek the prosperity of Ammonites and Moabites (Lev 19:17-18; Deut 23:36). But Jesus forbids his followers to limit their concern to the neighbors who are members of their own ethnic or religious group. On the other hand, he commands his followers to imitate God, who does good for all people everywhere.

In light of the parable of the Good Samaritan and the clear teaching of Mt 4:43-48, one is compelled to say that part of the full meaning of Matthew 25 is that those who fail to aid the poor and oppressed (whether they are believers or not) are simply not the people of God."

Sider does not do away with the special responsibility of Chritians to one another. In fact, elsewhere in the book, he claims that we fail to take advantage of one of the most effective evangelistic tools available to us: caring for the worldwide church. Sider argues that, if we only cared for our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world as we ought, God would use our love for one another to call many to faith.

Some of the chapter is contained in this newsletter article, published around the time of the first edition of the book:

http://morrie.typepad.com/exploring_the_connections/files/the_bible_and_wealth.pdf.

From Isaiah to Mephistopheles

Fun fact: Isa 34:15 has an ancient equivalent of the threat “He’ll knock you back into the dark ages”: “wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose and find a place to rest” (NRSV). This verse refers to two varieties of demons thought to inhabit abandoned ruins (NRSV Harper-Collins Study Bible).

The second, Lilith, was the Mesopotamian female night demon (IVP Bible Background Commentary). The NIV translates the name as “night creatures”, the NASB as “night monster” and the KJV as “screech owl.” In Rabbinic tradition, Lilith was Adam’s first wife. In Assyrian lore Lilith demons not only preyed on women and children, but were also believed to seduce men in their sleep (wikipedia alert!).

In Babylonian texts, Lilith was the prostitute of the goddess Ishtar. Lilith has appeared in literature and art, including Michelangelo’s The Temptation of Adam and Eve and Goethe’s Faust, in which Mephistopheles describes her as follows:

Adam’s wife, his first. Beware of her. Her beauty’s one boast is her dangerous hair. When Lilith winds it tight around young men she doesn’t soon let go of them again.

Isaiah was describing creatures which hang around ruins, not succubi who seduce Adam and work their way into misogynist mythology. Definitely a tribute to the amount of time and energy which can go into complaining about the opposite sex if one doesn't have anything better to do.

[The study can be found here. The image, lifted from Wikipedia, is by Michelangelo.]