SERMON Money Matters
Pentecost 23 B (Lectionary 32) (Proper 27) (2009): 1 Kings 17:8-16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44
Several years ago, I ran across a book entitled The Widow's Financial Survival Guide: Handling Money Matters on Your Own. And I was struck by the title because money matters can be very different for different widows.
I went to an all woman's college in the 1960s. A well-endowed college. Some of my classmates and I went back to the college in the late '80s to learn how to raise money for our 25th reunion class gift. It was a fine workshop on fund raising. And we ended up putting all that we had learned to good use. But before we did, one of the development officers who was training us warned us that, no matter how hard we worked, we would not raise the millions of dollars that comparable men's colleges raise at their 25th reunions. "But just wait until your 50th reunion," she told us. "That's when we get the multi-million dollar gifts. Our graduates live longer than their husbands. It's after they become widows that we get our really big gifts."
Makes sense, doesn't it? And I have been reminded of what that development officer told us as I followed the successful criminal prosecution of Brooke Astor's son Anthony Marshall, charged with looting his mother's estate. Brooke Astor was widowed in 1959. She was 105 when she died two years ago. As reported in The New York Times:
[Vincent Astor] lived only six years after his marriage to the former Brooke Russell Kuser Marshall. His death in 1959 left her in total control of the Vincent Astor Foundation; he had never had children. Astor left $60 million at her personal disposal and a like amount for the foundation. Under her supervision it distributed $200 million. She closed it out in 2002.
Brooke Astor was a widow who knew very well how to handle money matters.
But then there are widows for whom money matters in an entirely different way. My father's mother was such a widow. My grandfather was killed in explosion when he was 32 and she was 21. She was left with two small sons, one two and other six months. Being widowed was not something she had the luxury of preparing for, and money was a constant concern as she struggled alone to clothe, feed, and educate my father and uncle on a school teacher's income.
Being widowed is not something that all women have the luxury of preparing for. And, for such widows, financial survival and physical survival are two sides of the same coin.
As they are for the widow to whom Elijah is sent. As we just heard, God sends Elijah into alien territory and tells him that he will be fed by a widow. Now the woman to whom Elijah is sent is obviously, like my grandmother, a young widow -- a young widow with a son. And she is struggling, unable to feed either her son or herself. She is preparing for them to eat the last of her meal and oil. She is expecting to die. Fortunately, her story has a happy ending when, miraculously, through God's word and Elijah's intervention, her jar of meal does not empty and her jug of oil does not fail.
Most widows with limited resources are not so lucky.
This morning we hear Jesus -- in words that most scholars agree, Jesus spoke -- we hear Jesus condemn scribes "who devour widows' houses." One hypothesis is that these scribes are scholars who were considered legal experts. As such, they apparently used their expertise and professional status to defraud widows of their meager savings with the result that widows lost their houses.
And what the scribes did then to widows has its counterparts today. Hundreds, if not thousands, of investors lost millions in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. A great number of those investors were widows. The letter of one of them was read at Madoff's sentencing hearing in June: “Many Madoff victims are elderly individuals or retirees who were saving for the future and they had the misfortune to believe in a powerful Wall Street insider who was repeatedly investigated and given a clean bill of health.” The author of the letter was Emma De Vito, 81, a widow from Chalfont, Pennsylvania., who lost her entire life savings to Mr. Madoff. And, on a less grand but equally devastating scale are the con artists who prey specifically on the elderly, especially widows.
Bernie Madoffs (and he is not alone as the victims of Allen Stanford's ponzi scheme can attest) and contemporary con artists devour widows' houses and savings as effectively and efficiently as the first century scribes that Jesus condemns.
But even though there are parallels between the first century scribes and Bernie Madoffs and Allen Standfords, there are differences in the widows and their remedies. The word for "widow" in Hebrew carries the meaning of one who is silent, unable to speak. There's a reason for that. The testimony of women was not accepted by Jewish courts in the first century. Men functioned in the public sphere; women remained, in one commentator's words, "deep in the home with the children." Without a husband or an adult son, a woman had no way of seeking a legal remedy for a wrong.
The widows we hear about this morning are particularly vulnerable -- a vulnerably recognized in the psalm that we just sang:
the LORD loves the righteous; the LORD cares for the stranger;
[the LORD] sustains the orphan and the widow,
but frustrates the way of the wicked.
By contrast, today's widow does have a voice and is not banned from the public sphere. Brooke Astor was a perfect example of a very public person her first four decades as a widow. So, too, was the very public Nien Cheng who died last Monday. She was 94, and was widowed in 1957. As the widow of a Chinese diplomat and businessman, she became an adviser to her husband's foreign oil company on his death. Because of who she was and what she did, Mrs. Cheng was arrested by the Red Guards in 1966, charged with espionage, and sentenced to solitary confinement. She was defiant as a prisoner and upon her release 6 ½ years later and a move to Canada, wrote Life and Death in Shanghai, described as "a harrowing account of the Cultural Revolution in China and her years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Red Guards." Her memoir was highly acclaimed and a best seller. Today’s widow not only has a voice and a place in the public sphere, but in most countries, she has legal rights and remedies as well.
Even so, now, as then, money matters and survival are linked. Now, as then, widows are defrauded. Savings and houses are lost. Before an out-of-court settlement before she died (a settlement that led to Anthony Marshall's indictment), it had even happened to Brooke Astor.
Which makes what follows Jesus' condemnation of the scribes so jarring.
No sooner does Jesus condemned the scribes who defraud widows, devouring their houses, than he takes a seat across from the treasury -- a treasury that consisted of a number of trumpet-shaped vessels that were placed around the Court of Women in the Jerusalem temple, into which men and women placed their offerings to support the temple.
Jesus sees many rich people putting in large sums. Then he sees a poor widow -- a widow for whom money matters in the way it mattered for Elijah's widow and my grandmother. And Jesus sees her put in two small coins worth about 1/16 of a day's wage. Jesus calls his disciple and says:
"Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."
Now, I don't know about you, but I was taught that, in saying this, Jesus was praising the widow for giving everything she had. On more than one occasion I have heard pastors say how commendable the widow, a truly poor person, is in giving everything. How blessed she is! A perfect stewardship sermon -- not only one that I have heard many times but no doubt one that is being preached today in countless churches, both Roman Catholic and protestant.
But is it right? We know what Jesus is saying (and, again, this is something that Jesus quite likely did say). But are we right about what he is doing? Is he praising the woman for what she is doing?
Not a chance!
Remember, Jesus has just condemned the scribes for devouring widows' houses. He certainly is not now endorsing a practice that leaves widows totally destitute. Not only does that kind of giving make no sense, but for Jesus in Mark giving to the Jerusalem temple makes no sense either. Next week we will hear the disciples come out of the temple and marvel on its large stones and buildings.
And we will hear Jesus curtly tell them in so many words that the temple is about to be destroyed. Earlier in Mark's gospel, Jesus condemns the practice of donating to the temple instead of supporting one's parents. Jesus is not a big temple fan. He does not sanction mandatory contributions to the temple coffers. And he particularly cannot and does not sanction any duty that requires a poor widow to give all that she has to the temple treasury.
Far from praising what this poor widow is doing, Jesus is lamenting that she somehow feels compelled to give to the temple all that she has to live on.
This is not about the widow's generosity but about the greed of those that lead her to believe that she is required to give all that she has to the treasury.
Which brings us back to the scribes. While the exact identity of these scholars is unclear, from what Jesus tells us, they played a role in synagogues where they would have sat facing the congregation. In Jesus' eyes, they were pretentious. Preening. Hypocritical. And as interpreters of the Mosaic law, they may have played a role in establishing the religious rule that allowed donations to the temple to substitute for supporting one’s parents. Or rules that required fixed sums to be paid into the temple treasury -- funds that might well have been used to buy long robes and sponsor banquets rather than to feed the poor. So in their religious roles as well as their legal ones, the scribes may well have devoured widows' houses by requiring fixed donations to the temple.
However it happened, the devouring of widows' houses is condemned by Jesus. And it must be condemned by us.
And that means that money matters. It matters how we ask for money and how we use it. But it is more than money. It is about time and talent as well. We are stewards of all three. And as this congregation knows so well, our giving of all three is always in response to God’s grace in faith and for a mission that encompasses, in the words of today’s psalm, justice for those who are oppressed, food for the hungry, caring for the stranger, and sustaining the orphan and widow. It is both a sobering and exciting mission and prospect. Are we prepared? I think we are. I really think we are. Amen
November 8, 2009
Ruth VanDemark, pastor
Wicker Park Lutheran Church
Chicago