The Widow's Mite - Mark 12:41-44

There’s a story told of a minister in a city church which was always struggling for money. They were having real problems with their roof and unless something happened quickly, the church was going to have to close down.

But then one day the minister was visited by one of the local gangsters, whose brother had just been killed in a fight. And he said “Minister, I’ll give you the money for your new roof, but only if you agree to tell everyone at the funeral service that my brother was an angel”

Now of course, that put the minister in a real dilemma because he knew that both these brothers were bad news, and he was being asked to stand up and tell the congregation a pack of lies.

But he thought about it overnight and he rang the hoodlum the next morning to say that it was a deal provided he put the cheque in the post that day. Which he duly did.

And so, the day of the funeral came round, and the minister climbed up to the pulpit to begin the service.

“Dear Friends, he said, we’re here today to bury Knuckles McGraw. And as all of you well know, McGraw was a crook and a thug and a womaniser, not to mention a drunk and a layabout. But you see compared to his brother, he was an angel!”

Today I want us to think about a subject I don’t often preach on, and it’s the business of how we support the church financially.

Last year’s General Assembly instructed all congregations to run a stewardship campaign, and in Belhelvie we’ve decided to make stewardship something we reflect on every year. One year we’ll think about money, the next year time and then talents. And then we’ll begin the cycle all over again. That way, every year we’re reminded of the promises that we make in membership, and how we should be stewarding the things we’ve been blessed with in life.

And this year – at the Assembly’s behest – we start with finance, and I’ve chosen two readings for today, both of which get to the heart of the one question every thinking Christian asks him or herself when it comes to this issue. How much is enough?

The Story of the Widow’s Offering is one that you’ll probably know quite well, and it’s often referred to in discussions about giving. There’s something about the imagery that grabs us; the picture of the wee old lady, bent over, dropping her two coins into the collection almost unseen, while the rich process in with pomp and ceremony, making sure that everyone knows exactly how much they’re giving.

And the commentators fill in a lot of the background for us. They tell us that there were 13 collecting vessels in the Temple, shaped like upended trumpets, and each of them had a sign telling you what that particular vessel was financing – wood for the sacrifices, maintenance on the building and so on.

And workers in the temple would actually stand beside the vessels and announce to all and sundry who you were and how much you were offering. And that was part of the pay-off for the wealthy.

How do you fancy that system at Belhelvie Church!

But here’s the question. As Jesus watches the widow put in her two coins, and draws his disciples’ attention to what she’s done, what’s going through his mind?

You see it’s often argued that he’s commending her for giving away everything she had to live on. But I’m not sure that he is.

Read the passage again in your own time if you don’t believe me, but it’s quite possible that Jesus is watching this not with approval, but with anger. Anger at a system that would make an old woman think that she had to give away all she had to live on. As though that were what God required or expected.

“Beware the teachers of the Law” he says, in the verses just before this: “they take advantage of widows and rob them of their homes.”

Jesus is often found defending the cause of the powerless and the poor and you don’t get much more powerless and poor than an elderly widow with just a couple of coppers to live on.

Perhaps she wanted to make the sacrifice – that was her choice. And Jesus is unambiguous that her offering, small though it was in real terms, was actually far far more than the offerings of the wealthy. She gave 100% compared to their 1 or 2%.

But none of that means that God required it of her, or indeed of us.

As Christians we need to hold our wealth lightly, realising that everything we have, we have on trust from God. But we understand too that God is not unreasonable or unjust. If all of us gave away all that we have to live on, we wouldn’t be able to live for very long!

Nowhere in Scripture do we find giving away ‘all that we have’ being held up as a model for regular Christian giving.

So to summarise, we need to get this story straight. In this incident, Jesus is showing us that what really matters is not how much we give - £1 or £10 or £1000.  What matters is the proportion of our income that we choose to give. She gave more than all the rest, he says. Why? because proportionately she gave far far more. Maybe too much.

So there’s one end of the spectrum. A woman who offered all she had to live on. And it’s my sense of the text that Jesus, though touched, wasn’t commending that kind of heroism to everyone.

In our old Testament reading, we go to the opposite end of the spectrum.  

King David wants to build an altar to God at the threshing place of a man called Araunah. And being a good and loyal subject, Araunah says – ‘My King, please take what you need! Take the place, and the animals to sacrifice, the wheat as an offering and the threshing boards to burn”.

And David says ‘”No. I will pay you the full price. I will not offer to the Lord a sacrifice that costs me nothing”.

An offering that costs us nothing, or next to nothing so that we hardly even miss it, isn’t really an offering at all. It’s unworthy of God.

Let’s say you’re hosting a dinner party, and as one of the guests arrives he smiles and reaches you a half-empty bottle of flat Irn Bru as he’s taking off his coat. Do you feel valued by this gesture? Do you get a sense that this individual has gone to some trouble to bring this along to the evening’s festivities?! No. You think he couldn’t care less, and you’re probably quite right. Especially if you happen to know that he’s got a nice stash of wine tucked away under the stairs for his own personal consumption.

I will not offer to the Lord a sacrifice that costs me nothing.

If we don’t notice what we put on the plate or in the envelope, quite simply it’s not costing us enough.

So there are the two extremes – an offering that doesn’t cost us enough, and an offering that costs us too much.

And in terms of our giving to the church, we need to be somewhere inbetween those two poles.

But where?

Well, luckily, or perhaps you’ll think ‘unluckily’ the Scriptures do give us some guidance about this.

Ten percent. That’s what God thinks is a reasonable amount of your income to channel back into his work in the world. Ten percent. Not nothing. Not 100%. Ten percent.

That principle goes right back into the Old Testament when Israel were an agrarian society. This from Leviticus 27 is typical ³⁰“ ‘A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord ³²The entire tithe of the herd and flock—every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd’s rod—will be holy to the Lord..

A tenth was what was expected by way of offering from God’s people. And though the term tithe isn’t used in the New Testament, it’s clear that giving in the early church was both generous and sacrificial.

I wonder how 10% sounds to you this morning. I have a fair idea, especially in the middle of a recession.

But here’s the thing. If I asked, this morning, if you could live on 90% of your present income, I’d guess that most of us could just about manage. We’d have to cut corners; a few things would have to go or be done differently, but most of us could get by. It wouldn’t be easy, but we could probably do it. It’s not as impossible as it sounds.

So if 10% sounds preposterous maybe that’s a sign that we’re sailing too close to the wind in terms of our finances. Maybe we’re overcommitting ourselves.

Or maybe it only sounds ridiculous because we get everything else in place first – mortgage, car, holidays, luxuries, and then we see what we can give God out of what’s left, and by that stage there’s precious little left. The only way to sort out that problem is to factor in our giving at the beginning and then cut our cloth according to what’s left over.

If you want some guidance on giving, 10% is what the Scriptures say. How you respond to that challenge is between you and God, but that’s the teaching. And the simple truth is – we get the church that we’re prepared to pay for. I’m reminded of that every time I pass that new church building down in Balmedie. Buildings like that don’t build themselves.

My colleague Matt Canlis is in the States just now at a conference for Presbyterian pastors and just out of interest I got him to do some research for me. I asked him to find out how much a congregation the same size as ours would be pulling in, financially. He mailed back to say that a congregation of 400 would expect to be bringing in around £300,000 per year, employing three full time pastors for preaching, pastoral work and youth, and also two part-time ministries in music and administration. And it's not because the congregations are necessarily wealthier than ours. It's because they have a culture of tithing - the norm is for people to support the church sacrificially.

Perhaps I’m preaching to the converted here today. By dint of being here, I’m assuming you’re among the folk who take their financial commitment to this church seriously.  But I do know that these words from the Scriptures have something to day to all of us, regardless of our circumstances.

There is a giving that’s too much, and God does not ask that of us. There’s a giving that’s too little, and God’s unimpressed with it. And there’s a giving that’s right – a giving that costs us without crippling us. And it’s for that we need to be aiming.

CS Lewis was once asked what proportion of our income we should be giving to God's work, and rather than put a figure on it, his reply was that we can only be sure that we're giving enough when it starts to hurt a little. 

"I will not offer to God a sacrifice that costs me nothing."

The question for all of us to take away and think about this morning is “What does it cost me to put that money on the plate each Sunday? Does it hurt a little? Because if it doesn’t that’s a sure sign that we could be giving more”.

I’ll leave the last word to the Apostle Paul as he writes to the church in Corinth about this very issue.

"Remember this”  he says. “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each person should give what they have decided in their heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver”

As we begin to think about financial stewardship this year, may God help us all to offer what we can to his work in the world; and to give with generosity and with joy. Amen