Mark 12.38-44. 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, year B
Most of you have heard today’s Gospel a number of times over the years. And so, you are probably thinking to yourselves that it is a nice lead-in for the Deacon doing a homily about giving. OK. Thats not too challenging. Perhaps a homily that contrasts the generosity of the poor as compared to the relative stinginess of the wealthy. So the homily message will be about recognizing the value of sacrificial giving. Got it. I can live with that. Let the Deacon add a few contemporary examples, suggest that there is always an opportunity to give a little more of our time, or our treasures, or our energy, to those on the margins … Got it. In fact, as a Deacon, I already suspect his focus will be on those who have been marginalized in our world. And he has been here over a decade now … so we have heard that message from him more than once!
Am I right, or am I right?
I don’t want to disappoint you, but ….. let me shake things up a bit for you.
There is another way to see today’s gospel passage. One that is more deeply challenging, more personally challenging, to you and I.
First, let me give a bit of background –
The Scribes that Jesus was talking about were men especially trained in writing, producing legal documents, recording deeds and things like that, and thus they were influential as interpreters and teachers of the Law, and agents of the rulers. We often hear about the Scribes and the Pharisees together. Pharisees were Jews who formed an exclusive sect of men who wanted to do more than was required of the ordinary Jew of the day. They felt that their fellow Jews were not fulfilling the Law to the extent that they should be, so they took on doing more, especially in the area of donations or tithing, following the fasting laws, praying many times a day, and helping others by giving alms. That doesn’t sound so bad, now does it?
Many of the scribes were Pharisees – but they tended to be even stricter than the Pharisees in their interpretation of the law, believing that the law was “an exact expression of God’s will for the people”. Many also came from the power elite in society.
Enough of the background.
What is being criticized by Jesus in the Gospels is not the fact that the Scribes and Pharisees tried to do more, but rather the motive behind their acts. Because someone does more in their understanding of how to worship God, they can start to believe that they are somehow better than others. Their religious practice places them, in their mind, different from others, above others. But there is a more insidious depth to that attitude. One that sees that the performance of certain rituals of prayer in a certain way and a certain number of times makes that scribe more pleasing to God than others. Their ways of expressing their rituals of faith start to become detached from the ways they live their lives. And so, those same scribes, taking advantage of their position in society, and their influence on others, start to take advantage of people.
I sometimes wonder if this is precisely the point that Mark is making when he has Jesus follow his comment about the scribes devouring the houses of widows with the example of a poor widow, – who felt that in order to receive God’s grace – she had to give everything she had to live on, to the temple. In my mind, the temple should have been reaching out to her to provide support, consistent with the teachings of the Torah. But instead, it became the exact opposite. Taking her last pennies. Devouring her house.
I wonder if Mark included the teaching on the widow’s mite – not as an example of sacrificial giving, but as an example of what can happen when we replace God with a set of Rules. When we box God in to our own limited perception of “correct” ways to worship, and fail to both encounter God in our lives, and let God’s ever present spirit guide us in our actions. When we stop living our faith, stop putting our faith into tangible actions.
It is not a new phenomenon. Thousands of years old. Seen it a lot in my own life …. No —- not in the temple in the time of Jesus. I am not that old ! But Tele-evangelists come to mind, as I am old enough to have seen how many have ‘devoured widow’s houses”.
But it is even more personal than that. Because it is easier to spot the hypocrisy in others than it is to see the hypocrisy in ourselves, isn’t it. You and I can easily fall into a way of thinking that because we come to Mass every Sunday, or say our favorite prayers, that somehow it means that God has a closer relationship to us than with the person we pass by on the street who is struggling with life. And at a still deeper level, we exist in a world where oppressive structures abound. Payday loan companies that harness people to unreasonable levels of interest. Financial institutions that care more for return on investment for those wealthy enough to own shares than they do for the people crippled by high credit card interest rates. And indeed, some of the jobs we have feed into and support these structures
And so, perhaps the more challenging message from today’s scriptures is that you and I need to be aware of the times when the decisions we make in our lives perpetuate social structures that oppress. Structures that don’t protect the poor, but instead crush them.
And perhaps the call to action from todays Gospel for you and I is to ask ourselves if we are living the faith we profess. Asking ourselves if we put our faith into actions, tangible actions, that do not take from those with little, the little that they have. To be aware of the times in our lives when our decisions and actions have a disproportionate impact on those with little; when our decisions and actions “devour the houses” of those already oppressed in our society
It’s an uncomfortable message isn’t it. But perhaps that was exactly the point Jesus was making. That we are all called to evidence our faith in the actions we take, living our lives to relieve the burdens of others, not add to those burdens.
……
And by the way, the deacon did indeed mention our obligation to serve the marginalized in our society. He didn’t want to disappoint you.