Growing Our Home:  Beyond Our Thinking

Mark 12: 38-44

Looking at the world in a new way, does not happen with more effort or more time.  Reorienting our eyes and our hearts requires a spirit of adventure, which enables new perceptions beyond our thinking.

It sounds so counterintuitive and perhaps too serendipitous for most of us.  We have something like an insatiable craving for more information so we can know once and for all, the right way to look at things, the correct approach to a problem, the proper course of action as Christians in any given situation.  For those of us who pride ourselves on critical thinking, the notion that more information is not the answer, can feel like something of an insult.  But looking at the world in a new way does not happen with more effort or more time.  Reorienting our eyes and our hearts requires a spirit of adventure, which enables new perceptions beyond our thinking.

History has shown this to be true.  A great example is found when we look at Europe in the 15th Century.  You might remember from your history class, that it was something of a depressed time.  There seemed to be little vision and no hope.  Despite its glorious cathedrals, flourishing new artists, and a vast network of universities, there was disaster left by plagues, there had not been a major scientific discovery for a thousand years and the Moorish presence put a kink in the plans of European powers to access the riches of the Far East.  And then, according to scholar, Edwin Friedman and others, “as if suddenly the depression lifts like a morning mist, novelty begins to shine everywhere, and the seeds of the Renaissance that had been germinating here and there for two hundred years sprout vigorously.  The imaginative gridlock that had largely beclouded Europe’s inventiveness for more than a millennium dissolves forever.”   It was not more information and new research that moved them forward; it was a dramatic reorientation of how they saw the world.  It was looking at the information they already had in a new way.  They needed to see that the earth was not the center of the universe and second, the land mass that sat above the equator and extended from Western Europe to the west was separated by a vast body of water.  Of course there was a lot that went into these realizations, but they had the maps, the stories and witnesses for a long time before they could look at the information and see something else.

Despite what we might think, it is not new data that changes a human heart or moves a society into a new innovation.  It is not more research, more information, more empirical evidence that moves us or invites into a paradigmatic shift or a novel approach.  Human beings are moved, are invited to grow, and are invited to look at the world in a new way, for reasons that are often far beyond our thinking.

And Jesus seemed to know this.  He was always trying to get his followers out of their heads and out of their own way because frequently what he asked, made no sense at all.  He wanted to look at what they already knew about the world in a different way.  He asked the gathered crowds to love people that smelled funny and talked differently.  He asked them to forgive people instead of retaliating.  He told his friends to spend their life on people instead of things.  He preached that the people who got in line the latest should be able to move up to the front.  Jesus knew that looking at the world the way he did, would not come with more evidence or more effort, it would come with a spirit of adventure, which enables new perceptions beyond our thinking, which is why he would stop those around him, in the middle of a scene unfolding and say, “Check this out, look over there, this is something to see.”  And he pointed, to the far corner, dimly lit, to a woman, the world calls The Widow.

You would not be able to pick her out of a crowd.  In fact few people even knew that she was there.  She was the wallflower watching what unfolds with a sense of ease.  She was the one who looks a bit like she doesn’t belong, amid the velvet robes with lavish length.  She has no name, so history has given her the title of widow, not just any widow, the widow who gave all that she had. 

We meet her near the Temple, the site of so many of our treasured biblical stories and the scene that the Gospel of Mark lays out for us has the feel of a fancy ball or an elegant worship service that edges on performance.  We picture the high walls with crowds outside the dramatic entrance.  We see wealthy men talking amongst themselves and scribes working the room.  Both groups appear to walk above, some because of wealth, others because of status.  They are the ones to whom our eyes are drawn, the ones with influence, the ones whose names we know and want to know.

Yet, while the rest of us, are transfixed by the site of the “some bodies,” Jesus grabs us and says, “Look over there.  Look at her.”  Jesus was not paying much attention at all to the action in the middle of the room.  He was not looking at the ones who turned heads.  He was looking somewhere else entirely.  He was looking at her.  He was looking at her because his eyes were taken when he saw her walk to the temple treasury to place two copper coins in the bowl.  And when she turned to walk away, back to her corner of the world that was dimly lit, Jesus grabbed his friends and said, “Look over there.  Look at her.”  "The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they'll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn't afford—she gave her all." 

But it doesn’t make sense.  Our accountants and financial advisors would surely warn us against offering the only money we have.  And most of us hear this story and say to ourselves, “Good for her!”  And perhaps we are grateful that she gave all that she had, so we don’t have to.

But I wonder if Jesus pointed to her for exactly the reason that most of us cannot relate.  We cannot imagine giving all that we have, not even to our church.  But, perhaps Jesus pointed to her in part because he wanted us to begin to look at the world the way he did- to begin to see what it feels like, what it looks like, what comes up in our hearts when, even for just a moment, we behave like disciples.  In the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, this story “is the last of <Jesus’> dizzy lessons in the upside-down kingdom of God, where the last shall be first, and the great shall be servants of all, and the most unlikely people will turn out to have been Christ himself in disguise.  The poor widow is his last case in point.”   When Jesus leaves the Temple it will be for the last time.  It is just four days before he will be dead and all that will remain is the message he preached and the love he shared and his hope for his followers to look at the world the way he did.

It is easy to say that he pointed to her because she gave to the Temple all that she had and most commentaries celebrate this as the message of the story.  But I wonder if he pointed to her because of her faith.  It seems to me that the widow had little to lose and giving her two coins wouldn’t have made her any less off than before.  But maybe Jesus was looking at her, not just because of her wild generosity, but because of the kind of faith required for her to give what she did.  In order to give her two coins, she must have been willing to ignore those voices in her head telling her that there wouldn’t be enough. She must have had a spirit of adventure, a spirit of openness, and a spirit beyond her thinking in order to trust in God enough to let go.

Because friends, the truth is, that if we want to look at the world the way Jesus asks us to, if we want to live our way into the kind of people God calls us to be, it is not more information that will move us, the risk averse among us are rarely emboldened by more data.  Radical generosity grounded in faith will never make sense.  The world will always tell us that we need more money to feel safe and secure.  The world will always tell us to hunker down and hold on tight.  The world will always tell us that we just need a little more, to feel like we have enough.  But Jesus grabs us by the hand and points to the widow and says, “Look over there.  Look at her.”  And I wonder what we see.  Is it possible to see ourselves in her, even for just a moment?  Is it possible for us to be like her, to give like her, not because we empty our bank accounts, but because we give enough that we have to trust God to take care of us?  Giving like the widow does not just require faith; the giving itself is an act of faith.

Looking at the world in a new way, looking at the world like Jesus or through the eyes of the widow does not happen with more effort or more time.  If you are waiting to grow in faith, waiting to really seek God, waiting to really let go and trust, waiting to really become the person God calls you to be, when you have more information to feel safe enough to try, you will be waiting forever.  Giving like this, is simply beyond our thinking, it will never make sense in the eyes of the world.  Giving like this, giving like the widow, giving to Growing Our Home, is so far beyond our thinking because it has to be, it is the life of faith.  Amen.

Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve:  Leadership in the Age of a Quick Fix (New York:  Seabury Books, 2007) This idea is taken from this book, which focuses on how to lead change.

Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve:  Leadership in the Age of a Quick Fix (New York:  Seabury Books, 2007) 30.

Barbara Brown Taylor.  The Preaching Life (Cambridge:  Cowley Publications, 1993.) 128.