Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44
An interesting coincidence in today’s readings is that the Old Testament and the Gospel both mention widows. I say “coincidence” because it really is that: In the cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary that we’re now using, the Old Testament readings are selected to follow their own sequence, and not to match themes in the Gospel readings for the same Sunday.
Both last Sunday and today, the Old Testament readings have been taken from the Book of Ruth, one of the most delightful stories of the Bible. During a famine in the time of the Judges, an Israelite family from Bethlehem – consisting of Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion – emigrate to the country of Moab, in what is present-day Jordan. There, Elimelech dies. The sons marry two Moabite women: Mahlon marries Ruth; and Chilion marries Orpah.
Then the two sons of Naomi themselves die. So Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem. She tells her daughters-in-law to return to their own families and remarry. Orpah reluctantly departs, but Ruth pleads with her: "Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried."
So Naomi brings Ruth with her back to Bethlehem. And today’s reading tells how Ruth goes to the barley field of Naomi’s kinsman Boaz, and there becomes his wife. What the reading does not tell us is that by levirate law Boaz is obliged to marry Ruth in order to carry on Mahlon’s family line. So the pair get married and have a son, Obed, who in turn becomes the father of Jesse, the Father of David, and hence an ancestor of Jesus.
Now the Book of Ruth was probably written after the Jews’ return from the Babylonian Exile as a protest against the prohibition against taking foreign wives by the leaders Ezra and Nehemiah. But in the context of our readings for today, the point of significance is the vulnerable position in which Naomi finds herself as a widow bereft of a husband and sons to take care of her. Presumably too old to remarry herself, she is dependent on her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth to take a husband so that she herself will have a home as the mother-in-law. Otherwise, she would be left without any means of support. The position of widows in biblical times was precarious, to say the least.
Our Gospel reading likewise centers on a widow. Jesus is sitting in the Temple precincts opposite the treasury. Here, thirteen large receptacles shaped like horns or trumpets are set up to receive the people’s offerings for the upkeep of the Temple. As people walk by they toss in their coins. A sound of clanging reverberates as the pieces hit the insides of the receptacles and roll down to the bottom. The bigger, heavier, and more numerous the coins you throw in, the more noise they make; so the louder the clanging, the greater the charity announced by the noise.
But then Jesus notices a poor widow shuffle up to one of the horns and carefully drop in two lepta—the smallest coins in circulation, each worth only 1/64th of a denarius, the day’s wage of an unskilled laborer. These small, light coins make hardly any noise at all. Yet, perhaps supernaturally, Jesus intuits the depth of the widow’s sacrifice.
He calls his disciples and points out the contrast: she has given more than all who are giving to the treasury. For they gave out of their surplus; but she has given everything she has. The point is not to criticize or belittle the larger offerings of the better off, but simply to observe that she has given more in her complete generosity and trust in God to provide for all her needs.
Notice that in the Old Testament reading, Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi requires the same sort of trust in God to provide. Naomi’s advice to her two daughters-in-law to return to their families is the more realistic counsel. But when Ruth replies, “Your God shall be my God,” she implicitly puts her trust in the God of Israel to provide for both of them as they return to Bethlehem.
To return to the Gospel, however, perhaps the reason why Jesus notices the poor widow’s offering is that he’s all too well aware of the complete and total self-offering that he himself must soon make. For this episode is talking place during the final week of his life. In just a few days, he shall be betrayed, arrested, tried, and sent to die on a cross.
And this is where the epistle reading from Hebrews ties in. This passage contrasts the Levitical priesthood of the Jerusalem Temple with the eternal priesthood of Christ. Where the Temple priests offer to God the blood of sacrifices not their own, Christ has offered to God the sacrifice of his own blood. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross costs him everything: complete and total self-surrender to God.
From time to time, the Christian life involves sacrifices. In many parts of the world today, just doing what we’re doing here, coming to church and participating in the Mass, are activities by which people risk their lives. In this part of the world, following Christ is unlikely to entail having to sacrifice our lives, or even to give up everything we have like the poor widow in today’s Gospel.
But fulfilling our Christian duties and obligations sometimes requires us to do things that we’d rather not do, or to incur costs that we think we can’t afford. It’s a sacrifice to get up and come to Mass on Sunday morning when we’ve been out late Saturday evening and would rather stay in bed. It’s a sacrifice to pledge an amount to the church that requires us to give up something else that we’d rather spend the money on instead. It’s a sacrifice to take a public stand on some issue on behalf of the faith that brings scorn, ridicule, and hostility down upon our heads.
When we find ourselves called upon to make such sacrifices, we need to remember, first, the complete generosity and self-offering of the widow in today’s Gospel; second, the complete trust in God that alone makes such generosity possible; and, third, the supreme self-sacrifice of Christ for our salvation. On the cross, he offers up everything for us. How then can we withhold anything that he may ask of us in return?
No comments:
Post a Comment