Mark 12:38-44

More than a dozen years ago, I participated in a Ministry of Money workshop where this statement was the mantra: “Money is at the root of our spiritual journey.”  As a legal aid lawyer who represented poor people every day, I did not have to be convinced. Regular exposure to people who were destitute by American standards had taught me that every decision pertaining to money and the things it can buy is a spiritual one. Where I live, what I drive, what I eat, where I shop, what I wear, how I entertain myself…they all go to the core of what is important to me. I can be like the self-important scribes in today’s lectionary passage, who give the appearance of devotion to the faith while lining their pockets on the backs of the poor.  Or I can be the widow, who humbly gives all that she has. Either way, the decisions I make reflect the heart of who I am. They telegraph my values to the world.

In his analysis of the weaknesses of both conservative and liberal theology today, Joerg Rieger shares the view of Jacques Lacan that we live in “the era of the ego.”¹  Rieger and Lacan assert that we live in a period of history when the “self” has become the central focus of society, especially in the United States. Thus, whether we like it or not, we live in a narcissistic culture. For most Americans, if “me and my experience” is not the sole focus of life, it is in fact the starting point. In this environment, it becomes very difficult to see beyond the end of one’s physical, emotional, and spiritual nose to witness the needs of the world around us. The cure, they suggest, is to construct a theology and a life that recognize our basic connectedness to the “other.” Quoting Frederick Herzog, Rieger implores us to understand the commandment to “love one another” as an invitation to discover the other as co-constitutive—as an inseparable part—of one’s self.²

If I could get beyond myself, what values would I embody? I think the widow who offers her mite in the temple gives us a hint. In the first place, I would find my way to the temple as she did. Recognizing in the ego’s era that there is Something, Someone greater than my “self,” I would search diligently for that One.

Rather than going there to be seen, to share, or even to relate, I would go there in deep humility to offer all that I have to the Creator of the universe, the artist who paints the trees a thousand shades of green and heals human bodies through the activity of an incredibly complex immune system.

If the widow were the model for my values as I combat the American “legacy of individualism”³ that haunts my every move, I would not only give generously—I would live generously, even when ordering my life in that manner puts me at risk. Mark tells us that the widow gave all that she had to live on. Incredible. Many of us grew up singing the hymn I Surrender All, but as someone has quipped, most of us are hesitant to surrender some. And in the ego’s era, there is ample encouragement not to surrender anything at all.

If we lived generously, we would proclaim to the world through our actions that we trust God enough to share what God has given to us with others. We would not tolerate the kind of poverty that natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes force onto our television screens. We would not abide the sale of politicians and political decisions to the highest corporate bidder. We would refuse to participate in the pollution of the planet in all the ways possible. We would make peace—within our families, with our neighbors and co-workers, among races and classes and nations—our highest goal.

This kind of life is not without risk. The story of the scribes and the widow ends before we know what happens to them in the end.  Mark doesn’t give us the rest of the story. In fact, the scribes probably went home to a sumptuous feast. The widow probably ate whatever scrap of food was left at home, or perhaps she subsisted through the kindness of neighbors. But I wonder if on that day in the temple, someone besides Jesus and the disciples saw her give her mite to the treasury. I like to think that some person looking beyond his or her own wants and needs caught a glimpse of her risky generosity. But it really doesn’t matter because Jesus saw it. He pointed it out to the disciples and we know about it two thousand years later. Through her gift we know that real moral values are not about appearance or power or ego. Rather, real moral values reflect a generous way of living that stretches beyond the ego to meet the needs of a suffering world.

By Rev. Cathy Tamsberg, Minister of Outreach and Adult Education, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, Raleigh

1.  Joerg Rieger, Remember the Poor: The Challenge to Theology in the Twenty-first Century (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), 22.

2.  Ibid, 28.

3.  Laurent A. Parks Daloz, Charyl H. Keen, James P. Keen, Sharon Daloz Parks, Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 10.