November 8, 2009
Relative to What? - Mark 12:38-44
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadWhen I was in college, the Oldest Building on campus, Old Main, was in bad shape. We all loved Old Main, and it seemed to us as students that it was getting left behind. The college had just built a new athletics complex and football stadium, a new dormitory, and had plans to build a new science building. And yet, the very heart of the campus, Old Main, was slowly falling down. We as students wanted to show the Board of Trustees that we were serious about Old Main. So we started collecting pennies from students, and we collected $100. We obviously knew that $100 would be a drop of water in the ocean of renovating Old Main, but the point was, you see, that if broke college students could raise a few pennies for Old Main, then the fat cats on the board could raise a few million.
Looking back on it, the whole thing was laughable. First of all, we college students might have been broke, but we were not that broke. We did have more than pennies, at least we did for certain social affairs / parties on Friday and Saturday nights. Secondly and most importantly, $100 was just such a pitiful thing to give. Did we honestly expect the Board of Trustees to open up a bank account to renovate Old Main with just $100?
All of which is to say that money is a very relative thing. You may think that you are a fat cat and that you’ve really hit it big. I assure you that it won’t take long to find someone else who is fatter. Maybe you think you are poor. I assure you that it won’t take long to find someone poorer. Maybe you think that you’re virtuous, or funny, or good-looking, or smart, or successful. It won’t take long at all to burst your bubble. In all of those cases, you see, you have to qualify or even quantify it. You have to ask, “relative to what,” or even better, “relative to whom?”
We all know this story out of Mark. Jesus tells us not to be like the scribes and Pharisees, who love to wear long robes and sit at the places of honor in worship (which sounds eerily familiar to me), who like to sit at the head of the table and, you know, be up there with the fat cats. Do not be like those people, Jesus says. They will not fare very well on judgment day. Instead, Jesus said, be like this old woman who throws a couple of pennies in the offering plate. Don’t be like the fat cats who throw in all this money in front of all these people, wearing the nicest suits and driving the nicest cars and living in the nicest houses and going on the nicest vacations. Forget that, Jesus says. Be like that poor widow woman who, even though she only gave two measly cents, gave everything.
And then Jesus says this: “This poor widow put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.” I am not a mathematician, but that doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what those other guys put in the offering plate, but it was a whole lot more than two pennies. I also know from having been in leadership in churches that the Temple, like the Church, needs money. Like the Church, the Temple has pay roll, and light bills, and family life center debts. The Temple wants to hire a Director of Christian Education, and they work for a whole lot more than two measly pennies. For Jesus to say that the widow gave more, then, is questionable. At the very least, Jesus needed to quantify it. Relative to what she had she may have given more. Relative to others like her she may have given more. She could have put in one penny you know. Relatively speaking, relative to what she had, relative to what the scribes gave relative to what they had, she gave more. That’s fine. But to make a blanket statement, as Jesus did, that she gave more, without quantifying it, is just not true.
We all want success, don’t we? Does anybody in here not want success? Does anybody in here want failure? We want a successful business. We want a successful career. We want a successful retirement. We want to raise successful children. We want a successful church. We all may define success differently, which is what makes it and everything related to it so relative, but we all want success. We give the scribes and Pharisees a hard time, when in fact we all want to be what they were. They were the most knowledgeable, most virtuous, wisest, most faithful people in that day. That’s not a bad, is it?
Jesus told us about the parable of the mustard seed in Mark 4. We all know that parable as well as we know this one. Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed, which is one of the smallest seeds in the world and yet produces one of the biggest trees. We all get that, right? God can take what we offer, and, even though it may not be much, God can do incredible things through it. I was talking to a friend of mine about that parable recently and he reminded me that there’s a scandal in that parable. The scandal, he said, is that we have to be a little, insignificant mustard seed. Actually, we may have to to remain a little, insignificant mustard seed. We may never even live to see that little mustard seed grow into a weed, much less a gigantic tree. We may have to learn to be happy just being a mustard seed. Or, to put it into context, we may have to be happy being a poor, little, insignificant widow, like the one in Mark 12. This widow had nothing. Widows were completely powerless in that day, and had to rely solely on the generosity of strangers to live.
I had a seminary professor tell me one time that ordained ministry is an inherently risky profession. We face a number of lethal threats. Most people think that the two biggest threats we face are sexual and financial. Those are, without question, big threats. Some pastors get caught having a fling, or maybe a lot of flings, and everything, not the least of which is their families, comes crashing down. Or, pastors sometimes skim a little money off the top and get caught and go to jail. I do not intend to minimize those threats. But I think that pastors face another threat that is in some ways as destructive as the first two. It goes something like this.
When you leave here today, I really want you to say to yourself, “Man, he’s good! That Luke Maybry is good. That boy can preach. He has got it going on.” And then, I want you to tell your friends about, well, me. I want you to bring them to Church next Sunday. Then they can tell their friends and bring them to Church and so on and so on. Next thing you know, we’ll have to pull out the “2.” The “2” is the number on our attendance board over there that we only get to pull out on Easter. Then, we may have to pull out a “3.” Then we’d have to go to another service, and then another service. Then we would have to build another sanctuary. Then you wouldn’t have to come to church anymore because I would be on TV. And then I would not able to make it to Church every Sunday because I would be speaking at conferences on how to preach or how to grow churches. All the while, the church would grow and grow, and my prominence would grow and grow, and more and more people would say to themselves on their way home, “Man, he’s good.” And then, one day, I would either retire or die. The whole world would have to stop for a while. The flags would be at half mast. The whole city, which of course would be members of my church at that point, would be in mourning. And after a long, long time, if you were so lucky to get over it, at the very least, you would have to name some buildings after me.
Now that may be a slight exaggeration, but any pastor who tells you that he or she has not fallen to that temptation is not being totally honest. Thanks be to God, then, that we have to preach from the Bible, and that we have to preach on Mark 12 where Jesus tells us to become like this widow who, by giving two, red, useless cents in the offering plate, gave more than all the prestige in the world. Jesus’ math, the Kingdom’s math, is different than our math. Thanks be to God that, every now and then, it’s not about us after all. Thanks be to God that it really is and must become more and more about Jesus and less and less about ourselves. That means, then, that we have to become more and more like the poor widow, or even the little mustard seed. This is Jesus’ last teaching in Mark’s Gospel. The next time we see Jesus, Jesus himself, God himself, is hanging naked, double-eyed in pain, dying on a cross. Relative to what? I guess if we claim to follow Jesus, we’d have to say “relative to Jesus.” And if we’re going to say “relative to Jesus” then we have to check our ambitions success and vanity and egos at the door and become a mustard seed, and stay that way for a while. We may have to become that poor, powerless, helpless, little widow who, even though she gave only two red useless cents (which is all she had), gave everything. Evidently she gave a very valuable thing to the Kingdom. May the same be said for all of us.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
