I make no secret of my love of bacon. Also, my favorite breakfast is bacon, 1 egg over hard, hashbrowns with onions, and a bagel. So, here’s the question, how is my breakfast like the Christian life?
Mark 12:38-44; Hebrews 9:24-28; Psalm 146; 1 Kings 17:8-16
This gospel text makes me feel more than a little awkward. The second half is all well and good, in fact I like the second half quite a bit, but you can’t have the second half of our gospel without the first. The offering of the poor widow is only relevant in its proper context, otherwise it’s just a cute story that makes poor people feel better.
Why does this gospel text make me feel awkward? Well, I’m standing here, teaching you, in a flowing robe. I have what could be considered the most important seat in the church, as it’s the one in front. All in all, this text makes me nervous. Thankfully I haven’t devoured any widow’s houses lately and I rather prefer to be avoided when I go to the supermarket not greeted. But still, you can see why it makes me nervous, especially as Jesus says, “Such men will be punished most severely.”
So, here’s to hoping I get a pass on the flowing robe and important seat in church so long as I don’t devour widows’ houses or start to overly enjoy being greeted in the supermarket. Not that it works like that, but it makes me feel ever so slightly less nervous. Moving on, what’s this gospel all about anyways?
Jesus doing two things here: First he is pointing out the distinction between people who do things to be noticed, and people who do things because it’s the right thing to do. That’s the main difference he is pointing out here. The rich people, the teachers of the law, were doing things to be noticed by other people — they wanted recognition, honor, whatever. But the widow didn’t care about who saw her offering, she simply wanted to go and worship, and therefore gave what little she could to the temple.
The other side of the message is one of proportion. The rich people had a ton of money, so their giving, even though a big amount, was insignificant compared to their income. The widow had very little, so her gift of two small coins took away from her livelihood — in fact a better way to translate that line is “she gave her very life.”
Let’s get away from talking about money (you’ll be getting a certain letter within the month talking about money, I want to not talk about it now). I want to broaden this out a bit, with 2 related questions: in your life, does Jesus get the excess or the whole thing? Do you follow Jesus to look like a better person, or do you actually follow Jesus?
These are really the questions the gospel text is posing to us. Often, though, I think, less often than it used to be, people do religious things to increase their standing within the community. They want to be seen as a Christian more than they actually want to be a Christian. But that’s the side question to what I want to actually focus on today: Are you giving Jesus everything, or just a bit.
There’s a half-joke that’s often told in Christian circles. There are two friends, a chicken and a pig, who want to go into business together. The chicken suggests opening a breakfast cafe, specializing in bacon and eggs. The pig, seeing a problem with this particular business venture, tells the chicken that she only needs to lay eggs once in a while, but the pig has to give its life to make bacon. As the joke goes, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.
In a lot of ways that joke says it all — are we involved in following Jesus, or are we committed? Is our faith a distraction that makes us feel better about ourselves or is it the core of our existence? Jesus didn’t just give us a bit of himself, he gave everything he had. That’s our call as well, not to give God what we have left, but to give him everything first.