The power of the poor (Mark 12.38-44)
Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is to point out the obvious. We often think of Jesus as showing us things that are the exact opposite of obvious—hidden things, perhaps spiritual things that we wouldn’t otherwise notice. But such is the human condition, that we have an amazing ability to hide from our eyes what is in plain sight, to sweep under the carpet what is right in front of us. Just insisting on what our eyes are telling us is sometimes the bravest and most important thing we can do.
We sometimes call this, “naming the elephant in the room.” We all know the elephant is there, so there’s no special vision or awareness that is required to name it. But elephants make us uncomfortable, don’t they? Perhaps they expose divisions among us that we would rather not acknowledge, or they call attention to our complacency or our hypocrisy. And, so, we can go a long time acting as if the elephant is not there at all, when, in reality, there is hardly any room for us in the room, because the elephant takes up so much space.
Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to name any actual elephants—at least not yet.
For now, let’s talk about Jesus naming the elephant in the room where he was. Jesus’ words in our passage are the cause of a moment of social awkwardness, a bit of discomfort. But all he does is to point out the obvious. It was obvious, for example, that there were two kinds of people in the villages of Galilee: people who gave, and people who took. I hate to put it that way because the difference between “givers” and “takers” is so often politicized today. But it’s important that we see the difference. There were classes of people, takers, who profited from ordinary people by collecting rents or fees or tributes. And, there were people, on the other hand, who worked very hard, often in the fields or in homes, whether they were peasants or slaves. It was they who created wealth, who made possible the accumulation of vital resources. They were, if you will, the givers. And all that was obvious. It was the way the social order was. And people more or less accepted it as inevitable.
Our passage mentions the scribes, who were experts in the law, scholars, and who were of a privileged class and who drew their income from tolls and taxes. And they had a lot of power over the people in their villages and elsewhere. Jesus points out that they have no qualms about taking widows’ houses away from them to enrich themselves. We don’t know exactly how they did it. But everyone knew that widows were vulnerable to having their things taken since they could not legally own property. Widows were among the most vulnerable people in society, and it wouldn’t have been too difficult for experts in the law to take whatever might be of value from them. Jesus points out what everyone must have known, or at least suspected.
And, so, it is ironic that it is the scribes who parade themselves around in the temple area as if they were the benefactors rather than the beneficiaries. It is ironic that they are the ones making the most ostentatious displays when it came time for the offering as if they weren’t common thieves. It is clear that the scribes were trying to be seen as givers, graciously benefiting the poor, when, in reality, it was the very reverse.
The widow and her two coins, on the other hand, would have been objects of shame. It is interesting to me how poverty is so often shamed, even today. In any case, a poor old woman following the scribes in their long, flowing robes with their great gifts would have been an uncomfortable sight, uncomfortable, perhaps, because the contradiction between the respectable scribes and the poor woman brought vividly to light a deep social division. The people of God were divided.
Jesus points it out. As I say, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to point out the obvious. He refuses to sweep it under the carpet or gracefully to ignore it. And, sure enough, he makes people uncomfortable.
But he does something besides naming the obvious. Or, maybe, naming the obvious unleashes a new truth, one that is perhaps not so obvious. And that is the power of the poor. What the poor widow’s gift of virtually everything she has expresses is her unalloyed desire for righteousness. What it shows is an uncompromising love for community and for the promise of Israel, even when she has nothing to spare.
Jesus points to this widow with her two coins. He recognizes in them something important. This unalloyed desire and uncompromising love of hers is not weakness but power—a power that is not understood, and perhaps not even seen, by those who think the world turns because of people in long, flowing robes and their magnificent gifts.
Do we see the poor this way today? Mostly, we see them as a problem to be solved. If we are kind and generous, perhaps we give them what they need, some bus tokens or some laundry money, and then send them on their way. And that’s a good thing. But the question is, do we really see them? Do we see them as something more than a problem? Do we see their desire, their love, their interests, their openness to God?
Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez was one of the great Christian thinkers of the late twentieth century. One of his themes was the “power of the poor in history,” as he put it. The poor, he wrote, are not simply passive objects of concern. They are not simply those people who receive our beneficent gifts. In fact, we distort reality if we think of them as takers. But, as I say, we have a remarkable ability not to see what is right in front of our eyes. What is right in front of everyone’s eyes, though sometimes difficult to see, are the contributions to people like the widow and her two coins to society. She had been a spouse, after all, and likely a mother. And, like spouses and mothers of every age, spouses and mothers of her time worked, and produced value, and sacrificed. The community depended on the labor of people like her, even if it didn’t reward her with honor and wealth.
This widow had not only given her years to a family that would not be able to support her but here she was—giving what little she had for the sake of those who would not support her, who would take advantage of her if they could. And here’s the power—her desire and her love and her hope would not be daunted by the fact that the social order was against her. Her desire and her love and her hope were not constrained by that social order. They went beyond it. They called it into question. They pointed to a better way, and a better world. That’s the elephant in the room.
And what’s the elephant in our room? Look at us here, good, faithful Christian folks gathered in this building, but not from this neighborhood, most of us. Here we are a group of mostly middle class, mostly white people, in a neighborhood that is diverse and economically stressed. The elephant in the room is that, in many ways, most of us are not like most of our neighbors here, and it may be uncomfortable to talk about it, but it seems to me that important truths can begin to emerge when we acknowledge it. It raises a question for us about how we are going to respond, about who we are going to be? About who we think our neighbors are, about what God may be making possible by the very fact that these two very different kinds of people find themselves in the same place, laying claim in different ways to the same streets.
Gutierrez also wrote about the church being “evangelized by the poor,” that the church hears its good news not only from the pages of Scripture or from scribes like me, with their flowing robes, but also from the people with real human needs in their communities. Now, he didn’t mean that people who are poor are secretly more happy than we are, nor that we should envy them. And it certainly didn’t mean that we should romanticize being poor. Being on the streets, or being in a home with no heat or with inadequate furnishings, having to deal with food insecurity and poor transportation—these are hardscrabble realities, and such a life can be brutal. No, what being evangelized by the poor means is that the lived experience of people in our society who struggle for lives of dignity can teach us something about life, and about God. It isn’t a one-way street. It isn’t a matter of enlightened, educated middle-class people bringing light to benighted souls, but, in some ways, seeing the light that is already there, and letting it shine.
Our ministry among people who struggle, at its best, is a partnership. We aren’t here to be the benefactors. We aren’t here just to write checks or to provide services. After all, we could be benefactors from somewhere else. We are here in this place to be partners, to learn from our neighbors and to work with them to realize their dreams for a better community. We are here because our faith calls us to believe in a God whose work includes their dreams.
This is the time of year in the church when we tend to worry about problems of scarcity. Do we have enough? Enough money? Enough people? Will we have enough next year? But those questions tend to fade a little in significance when we consider the wealth that is around us in our neighbors. Not their money—that may amount to little more than a few coins—but their desire for a better life, their longing for a better community, their openness to God. This is the power that can fuel our mission. This is, I trust, the power of the Holy Spirit that awaits us when dare to work alongside our neighbors and to love these streets like they do. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!