“A Surprising Role Model”                                  November 8, 2009
Mark 12:  38–44                                               Dr. Deryl Fleming

Recently I heard a young woman say at her mother’s funeral, “My mother was my hero.” In yesterday’s news Kimberly Munley, a young mother and a civilian police woman was hailed as a hero for halting the massacre at Ft. Hood. Do you have a hero? When I was young I had several heroes. Ernest Hemmingway observed, “As you get older it’s harder to have heroes.” Is that because we know more about the clay feet of public figures than once we did? I wondered when I read Hemmingway’s line if he ran out of heroes before he chose to take his life.

In the past 20 years or so I have heard more about role models than heroes. Charles Barclay became both famous and infamous as a National Basketball Association player. After one of his infamous episodes he was interviewed by a sports writer who connected the bad behavior and Barclay’s being a role model. Barclay said, “I am a professional athlete, not a role model.” On the contrary, when you become so public a figure you are a role model, if only a negative one. Roger Godell, Commissioner of the National Football League, has defended his stand against players’ bad behavior by saying, “We are role models. People look up to us.”

In my previous workplace I heard numerous stories about lousy parents. I often responded by saying, “Everybody needs a good bad example and you had a really good one.” After all, we may learn as much from bad examples—how not to do life and faith—as we learn from good ones how to do it.

The good bad examples in today’s gospel are not secular skeptics, but religious leaders. The negative role models are the scribes who walk around in long robes, maybe like Beth and I are wearing. John Calvin may be turning over in his grave given all this color. The scribes feast on the flattery of unearned respect, sit in the chief seats and say long prayers thinking they will be heard for their many words (The KJV has it, “their much speaking”).

Nineteenth century evangelist D.L. Moody was preaching in a revival service in which another minister was offering a prayer. The prayer went on and on until Moody walked to the podium and said, “While our brother finishes his prayer, we’re going to sing our next hymn #125.”

Religious leaders can be wordy. We make our living with the craft of words. Maybe you have to be a bit narcissistic to think that people want to hear you talk for 20 minutes Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. On leaving the service a parishioner said to the pastor, “That was a good sermon.” Feeling proud but wanting to sound humble, the pastor said, “It was all God’s doing.” “It wasn’t that good,” she replied.

In the first church I served after seminary a member who was prominent in the community and in the church from time to time gave significant designated gifts, such as office equipment, for which he always received recognition and thanks, unlike those who gave to and through the general budget. It turned out that he didn’t give that much to the general budget. Lay people, too, can be showy with their piety. Beware of those who make a show, Jesus warned, “they will receive the greater condemnation.”

One commentator believes that the story of the poor widow paired with the religious elite who weren’t salaried and leaned on poor and sympathetic folk renders the story not as a tribute to the woman but as a lament on the corrupt religious institution sucking the life out of the poor. It calls to mind stories we have heard of older people of limited means being duped by TV evangelists into sending regular contributions to support those who live far better then they.

While the lament is in the reading, I think it a leitmotif. The major motif is the widow’s commendation. Jesus sat down by the treasury and watched the crowd putting money in the trumpet shaped containers. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow dropped in two small coins worth a penny. Jesus said to the disciples, “She has put in more than all the others. They gave out of their abundance. But she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Jesus noted that of all the crowd she was the role model, the big giver, a minor character but a major donor. Did you see in this week’s news the graffiti on the Berlin Wall which came down 20 years ago? “Many small people who in many small places doing many small things can alter the world.” This widow was one of those people.

A woman who had so little gave it all to the church. What a great stewardship story. However, if you read the story literally or concretely, it may seem easier to give it all if you have only two cents. After all, what could you buy for a penny in our world or hers?

Two chapters earlier Mark has the story of the man known as the rich young ruler who asked Jesus about eternal life, “Go sell what you own, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Mark says the man “was shocked and went away grieving for he had many possessions.”

Today’s story is not only about giving. It’s also about humility, perhaps a parallel parable to the Pharisee and the publican who went to the Temple to make an offering of prayer. One told God he was grateful not to be as other people, a parade of piety. The other looked in the mirror and said, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” Only Jesus noticed the widow. Chances are she was rarely noticed anywhere. She was an invisible woman, here on a stage with highly visible rich and religious people.

Unlike Jesus who watched the people putting their offerings in the treasury, in my Baptist tradition pastors were not supposed to know how much their members gave. We had a couple in our congregation who attended Sunday School and worship two or three times a month, never held an office or served on a committee. When they retired and moved away I was told by an elder that they had for years been our largest givers. Never would I have guessed it.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that if Jesus had taken a snapshot of the Temple crowd and asked the disciples, “Where is Christ in this picture, they wouldn’t have guessed it. She’s the one; she’s the surprising role model.

When Fred Craddock who is famous in mainline Protestant clergy circles for his stories, his sermons and his books on preaching was asked to name the most influential person in his life he had two weeks to think about it. He decided it was Miss Eva Sloan, who was his Sunday School teacher for a number of years during his boyhood. Her influence was due to her contagious love of the Bible. She had her class memorize verse after verse that became a part of Craddock’s being. The most influential, who would have guessed it?

Today’s story is also a story about God. Mark’s placement of the story is at the end of Jesus’ ministry. All that remains is a chapter of teachings, then going to the house of Simon the leper to be anointed “for my burial,” Jesus said. He hails the generous and poor widow who gave everything she had, then goes to give his life for her and for us. “You know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ that through he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor that we by his poverty might become rich.” At coffee house last night we sang “Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One, give thanks because he’s given Jesus Christ his Son And now let the weak say, “I am strong”; let the poor say “I am rich because of what the Lord has done for us.”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.