The Last Mite (Mark 12:38 - 44)
Written by Pastor Fausel   
Grace, Mercy and Peace to you …

In the days of Old Israel, God spoke to His people in many and various ways.  And in Elijah’s time God felt it necessary to try to reach His stubborn and obstinate people through an object lesson; something like a Children’s message.

And so God had an obvious allegory played out.  Why?  Because Israel herself was under the worst King of all time, King Ahab… and with him, Israel as a nation had gone off in pursuit of other gods … most notably the gods of their neighbors… Baal and Ashtoreth.

So, when the God of Israel spoke to Ahab and His people through His spokesmen, the prophets, calling them to repentance and faithfulness, He was ignored and His prophets treated even worse.

And so the account we have in our reading for 1 Kings for today shows God speaking to an non-Israelite … a foreigner… a widow … someone not from the line of Isaac and Jacob … a real nobody.  Saying to that person … “Give me all you have.”

What did she have?  Enough flour and oil to cook one last meal for herself and her son.  And what does God tell her to do with it? … make it into a cake for Elijah, instead.  The problem is … once she makes that small cake… there will be essentially nothing left.


She had every reason in the world to refuse.   Who is she to Elijah?   What is he to her?   They come from different cultures … different allegiances, politically.  And besides, she’s on home turf and Elijah is nothing but an Alien, an outsider.  

But Elijah’s demand … which was God’s command to her… is really no different than His command to Israel.  Give me your full devotion.  But this was the command that Israel had broken and now was seemingly ignoring.

But note this well:   when God gives a command, it always comes with a promise.  So it was with Elijah and the Widow.   For the command was to give all she had … and the promise was … what she had would not run out.

The Israelites had missed that part, that promise that came with God’s command.   They wanted what their neighbors had… a fertility god and goddess.  And in their exchange they were willing to ignore their God who not only called for their allegiance … but also was making the promise of His own.

And so … the nobody, the foreign woman, the widow, the single mom, obeyed the command and experienced the promise of God being kept.  She was rescued, saved from certain death … from seeing herself and her son die of starvation.

And if God could do this for her … what could God do for the Children of Israel … if only they would trust Him as this widow did??  That was the lesson.

Now, fast forward to Jesus’ day.  In Mark’s Gospel we see another widow.  And we see children of Israel as well.   Now the scene is in the temple.  And all the people in the scene are children of Israel … but the distinction from 1 Kings is the same.   

The distinction is between faithfulness and unfaithfulness.
 
Mark first paints the picture of the Scribes, the Teachers of the Law of that day calling attention to themselves… making pietistic scenes in the market place … and taking the highest places of honor at state gatherings.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes … Jesus tells us that they were padding their pockets by devouring widow’s houses.   Taking the only worldly assets of the poor and the defenseless.

Their hypocrisy will be severely punished by the God they purport to serve, Jesus warns.

But then the scene changes… slightly … a we see another reference to a widow … We see rich people, perhaps some of those noted for their hypocrisy, literally throwing some of their wealth into the temple treasury.   We don’t know … but we might well wonder what their motivation may have been …  

And then, we see the widow, perhaps not much different than the widow of Elijah’s time … trusting the promise of God … and putting all she had to live on into the temple treasury.

Did she announce that?  Did she look up to heaven in front of this crowd of people and say, “Okay, God this is it… this is all I’ve got to live on… now, keep up your end of the bargain!”

No, if she’d said that, then this would have been like Jesus’ temptation from the Devil to jump off the highest pinnacle of the Temple in full view of all to show that God would somehow intervene miraculously to save his life.  

What did Jesus say to the Devil on that occasion?    “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”

Well, pastor.  Isn’t that what this widow is doing?  No! You see, no one but she and God knew that she’d just put her last 2 mites in the treasury … Only Jesus knew… and for the sake of instruction, he shared her secret with His disciples.

Think a minute … do you think this woman went by her neighbor’s house on the way home and said, “Hey, Rebecca, I just put my last two mites in the temple treasury … I’ll let you know how it all works out!”

Or even a year later … would she say, “You know, a year ago, I tested God’s faithfulness …I put all I had to live on in the temple treasury … and God did this …”?

I don’t think she did either of those things.   This wasn’t about trying to manipulate God.   But I’ll bet she could say to someone who was struggling in their life: “Trust in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”



Think about this: … this wasn’t the widow giving God a test.  This was the Widow responding to something that God had already done.  She wasn’t trying to put God’s faithfulness to the test … she was responding to the faithfulness that He had already shown her!

God’s grace had been manifested to her in such a way that it wasn’t all about money.   It was all about His Love.

And so, she didn’t have much money … but giving all she had was her way of responding to the love she knew in her heart.   A love that had come to a point of understanding that there was no question in her mind about how she’d live… God had and would take care of her.  

And so Jesus’ object lesson to His disciples was this: the amount of her gift wasn’t important at all… what was …was the state of the heart that gave it.

In the vernacular we used a couple of weeks ago … this widow was a fan of God …  to her, God was the most important thing… the thing she identified the most with in her life.

Now.   From time to time we’ve talked about how we give back to God those things like … our volunteer time… the use of our talents … and the contribution of our mites.     And about how we use them says a lot about where our hearts are … and who we are a fan of.

You see, Jesus’ sermon here to His disciples here doesn’t even touch on the concept of tithing… of giving 10 percent.   He doesn’t touch on how much to give … because the amount is not important.   
The state of the heart that gives it is.    Because that’s where true stewardship comes from.

And so … we are talking like Jesus when we point to the grace that’s yours in Him … when we point to what God has done for you … on the Cross…  the empty tomb… as well as in your life just this last week …

We are talking like Jesus when we talk about heart things … things that give us a heart like that widow … who totally ignored that 10% “guideline” and gave it all.     

But, isn’t just giving a tithe,10%, ALL I have to give?… all that God expects me to give?  

No, He expects you to give everything.  He expects you to give Him yourself.   Everything.  All of your time, talents and treasures … and why not?  He gave them all to you in the first place … and He threw in Heaven and the eternal-life-long gift of his Holy Spirit …for free!

Now giving all those things back to Him doesn’t mean He’s asking you to throw them ALL back into the temple treasury.  He does expect some to go there because that’s how much of His work gets done in extending His kingdom…  


But, being a good steward of all that God has given you is about the choices you make every day.   God’s given you the challenge to manage ALL that He has given you in a way that brings glory to Him.

For instance … He may have given you a vocation that pays well… a vocation, a calling in this world, which well uses the talents and gifts He has given you…  

And through that vocation, God is using you to touch the lives of others by Your witness to who He is in your life … by how you live, by how you work, by what ethics you follow, by what things are important to you.

The widow in our Gospel didn’t have the opportunity in her day to do what God has called you to do in yours.  She didn’t have your gifts.  She didn’t have your opportunities.  She just gave what she had from her heart.

And her heart is what God is giving you… if you want it.  And it’s real simple … if that’s the kind of heart you want … all you need do is ask Him for it.   Such a heart is one of God’s gifts.  We can’t make that kind of heart in and of ourselves … only God can.

And pastors can’t preach people into that kind of stewardship.  They can only point.  They can only lead.  That’s what Jesus did with His own disciples … pointing to a nobody … a widow … with small change and a big heart.

I think the disciples realized that her offering was coming from a heart that knew God.

That was their stewardship training.  Jesus was showing the Disciples what a real fan of God looked like… by how she loved … especially when God was her only audience.

I pray for each of us … that that kind of heart would lead us into a relationship with God that would know that widow’s peace… and her trust.  

In Him.  

Amen.
 

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