Two Widows (Amazing Faith)

I. The Edge Cases 00:02

Lord Jesus, I pray that this morning, as we dive into your word, we would be transformed, Lord, that we would be called forth out of darkness and into light. Lord, I just pray that you would open up our eyes to see and our ears to hear the words you’d speak this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.

So today we’re going to talk about two widows, which is just fascinating. I love the Bible. You only get the edge cases with the Bible. What I mean by this is that God himself likes to make a point: to pull the most broken person into the greatest healing, or the most prideful person into the greatest humility. And it’s what God does in our life. He looks at those places where we are broken, where we are needing, and he says, “I can work with that.” And he looks at those places where we think, “Oh, this is my greatest strength, I’m just so great at this,” and he says, “I’m going to need to work on that.” I don’t know about you, but the working-on-it part is harder than the bringing-out-of-brokenness part. But I’m trying. I’m trying.

And you’ve got to think about these scriptures. I love how the lectionary is put together, and then the worship music goes right along with it all. There’s this real sense in this moment that we’re heading somewhere. If you’ve been paying attention to our Mark passages, we’ve gone double time recently. We were kind of tracking through one story at a time, and then all of a sudden, in the past three weeks, we’ve gone from before Palm Sunday to the middle of Holy Week.

And so what’s going on right now is that Jesus is meting out judgment on Jerusalem. He’s teaching everyone that the kingdom of God is not what you see here, and he’s very intentional about that. He’s turning over tables. He’s criticizing the scribes, the Pharisees, the legal ones, and he’s calling out for true religion, and he’s teaching them what he means by that, his ultimate demonstration of course coming in the form of the cross. So keep that in your mind. This is not just an incidental story where Jesus was walking around and happened to see this thing. Everything he’s doing is extremely intentional.

II. Jesus Is Watching 02:09

And so with that in mind, I’m going to start in the middle of our story today, in Mark 12, beginning in verse 41. So in the midst of all this drama (I mean, he is the most famous person in Jerusalem right now; people know who this guy is. He just rode in on a donkey, and people were putting palm branches down. He just flipped over the tables in the temple. People are trying to kill him, and people are wanting to crown him. He is polarizing. I know you guys are sick of that term; I promise I won’t bring it up again), think about this: he’s sitting in the temple, in a wide-open public space, and he’s paying attention.

41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Mark 12.41

Now here’s the question that arises: does Jesus care about your money? Absolutely. Absolutely he cares. He pays attention to what they’re giving. There’s actually something going on there, and we’re going to tease that out over the course of this scripture. What does it mean that Jesus was paying attention to what they were giving? We like to think of our giving as something that’s off to the side, something we do secretly. We don’t want anybody to know. And Jesus is sitting down with his disciples, watching them. It’s very countercultural to what we think of. But he has a point. He wants to teach them about giving in this moment. What is he looking for when he sees these people putting money in the boxes?

And you know, the disciples are standing next to him. These are not wealthy men. Every one of them has left his livelihood to follow Jesus. They’re actually a little scared about it. They even asked him earlier, “Hey, we gave up a lot of stuff. Do we get anything in return?” And he goes, “Oh yeah, no, don’t worry: thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.” And they’re like, “I don’t know what that means.” And so they’re on edge, and they’re watching him, and they’re watching these people put money in the box, and they want to know what Jesus is going to say in this scenario. They’re on the edge of their seats.

Now for us, I want to mention something. Jesus is watching you, not just give your money; he’s watching what you bring. In fact, in 2 Chronicles 16:9 we have this famous verse:

9 For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is whole toward Him. 2 Chron 16.9

That’s a hint as to what he might be looking for. The dollars and cents might not be what Jesus is counting, but he’s looking for their whole heart. So keep that in mind. We’ll get there; there’s more about that later.

III. Many Rich People 04:11

“Many rich people put in large sums” (Mark 12.41). He puts that in there. Now, interestingly enough, that doesn’t get any comment: the rich people putting in large sums. Now, you might run away with this and say, “Okay, rich people putting in large sums, Jesus doesn’t comment on; he doesn’t want people to put in large sums.” It’s like, no, okay, that’s not the point, as we all know. He has a different point.

There was a lot of attention given a few years back to a study that came out that said there was a disproportionate number of dyslexic people leading very successful companies. CEOs, like 25 to 35 percent of these very successful, very exclusive individuals: they found that they had a much higher rate of dyslexia. And there have been a lot of explanations as to why this might be true. The one that seems to be the most borne out through the literature, through the psychological studies and the things written about it, is that when these people were young and they went to school, school was really hard. Because, as you can imagine, everything you do in school as you go through has to do with reading. So if you have dyslexia, it makes it pretty darn difficult. I’ve actually heard some of these people tell stories about how unbelievably hard the simplest tasks were for them, because they couldn’t figure out how to read. And yet they became these super successful people. The solution is the cost they paid to get their education and the things they learned along the way. It was actually the difficult that allowed them to excel. There was something in there.

I mean, we just sang this whole song: “I will not bring what cost me nothing.” And Jesus points it out at the end: the rich gave out of their abundance. They could spare it. In fact, I would argue that these rich people who were giving these large sums weren’t even giving for the sake of the temple. I think it’s pretty clear that their hearts (and we know this because this is how Jesus introduced the story) were to impress all the people around them. But they weren’t doing anything costly. They weren’t doing anything hard.

It reminds me of the passage a couple of chapters earlier, where Jesus said how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mark 10.23). Why is it difficult? Because they’ve been doing the easy. In fact, if you look at these studies, the people for whom school is the easiest, more often than you would think, don’t succeed as highly as the people for whom school is hard but who learned how to succeed in school. I don’t want to go down the whole rabbit trail here, but the idea in this is that difficulty actually matters in your life.

Okay, I’m running around these psychological things and making a lot of claims. How about this, James 1:2:

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1.2–4

When you encounter hard, when you encounter difficulty, count it all joy. The difficult things in your life, the things you’d rather avoid, the things you were looking for a shortcut around, some way to get around, are actually the things God uses to produce steadfastness in your faith. And eventually, what does it do? It makes you perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So all that psychological stuff I was talking about is just a footnote to the truth, which is Scripture. It’s supporting evidence. It plays out the principle in Scripture.

IV. This Is What Hard Feels Like 08:51

I’m going to tell you one more story about the heart, and this matters for the rest of this whole tale. Because the only reason you don’t congratulate the rich on giving is that they weren’t giving costly. They weren’t giving the hard. They weren’t doing the thing that mattered. They weren’t laying down their life. They were just writing a check so that everybody knew how important they were.

Okay, let’s talk about this one more story. There’s this podcaster I like to listen to, and he tells a story of when he was the head of a fraternity. Every year they’d have the pledges come in, and they’d make it pretty difficult on the pledges. You’d be accepted as a pledge, but then you had to earn every single fraternity brother’s signature to say, “We want you to be a part of our group.” And so you can imagine these frat bros found ways to make the pledges’ lives pretty difficult: “If you want my signature, then you’re going to clean my bathroom with a toothbrush. You’re going to do my laundry. You’re going to do all these things.” And they were basically servants for like three months.

And as this whole thing is happening, this guy said, “I saw it happen every year.” There was a point around the middle, about six weeks in, where all the pledges would organize and say, “Hey, we want to meet with the president of the fraternity.” They’d gather in, and they would say, “This is really bad. You guys can’t do this. It’s not fair.” And they would have all these complaints. And he would say, “Okay, hold on, hold on. Who here wanted to be a part of this fraternity?” And they’d all say, “Okay, we did.” “Who here thought it would be easy?” Nobody raises their hand. “Who here thought it would be hard?” Everybody raises their hand. “This is what hard feels like.” And that mindset shift (“Oh, this is what we signed up for”) completely transformed them and took all the sting out of their complaints. If what you’re raising your hand to say is that this is hard, then of course it’s hard.

Now, I say that because I think we treat Christianity this way sometimes. We say, “Yes, Jesus, I want everything. I’m going to take up my cross and follow you.” And then our car breaks down, and we’re like, “Not that cross. That’s too big. That’s too hard for me to handle. I don’t have the money to fix this. I don’t have the time to do this.” And we shun the cross we are called to bear.

Now, I’m not here to tell you that your life is all about the hard. I’m not even here, like some podcasters will, to tell you to go find the hard, go find the difficult thing and do that, as if hard is good in and of itself. I’m not even saying that. But I am saying that if you’re going to take up your cross and follow God, count it all joy, my brothers, my sisters, when you face various trials and tribulations, and trust that God is doing something in you through that. Let it be costly.

V. A Poor Widow 11:47

So, keeping that in mind, let’s move on, verse 42:

42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. Mark 12.42

So here’s the problem: a poor widow who only has two pennies to her name should have been a contradiction in terms in Israel. All these rich people are giving to the temple, and this widow has two pennies to her name. I don’t know if you know this, but in Israel, in the law, once you become a widow, it’s the synagogue or the temple and your family who are supposed to take care of you. She’s in the temple court with two pennies to her name, rich people are walking by her, and nobody is helping her. And what are the scribes and the Pharisees doing? They’re pestering Jesus to see if they can trick him so they can kill him, completely blind to the person in their midst whom they have been commanded to help. It’s in the law, and they were obsessed with the law.

But instead, what you find in this is the judgment Jesus is pronouncing on this broken, dead religious system they had established, using the law of God but abusing the spirit of the law. In Mark 12:38, this is how this whole story is introduced. In Jesus’ teaching he said:

38 And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces 39 and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, 40 who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” Mark 12.38–40

“Who like to walk around in long robes.” Hold on, we’ve got to take all our robes off. No, I’m just kidding. He’s saying that they were competing to see who could have the longest robe. That’s the context. Yes, robes are actually prescribed in the law. That’s what you’re supposed to wear; they’re your robes of worship. They started adding things: “Look, I’ve got like sixteen stripes on my robe. I’m so cool.” So either way, they’re competing to wear long robes. Beware of them.

Jesus introduced this whole drama with that. I mean, it’s just so perfect. He tells them, “You’re doing something wrong. You’re abusing the widows. You’re not caring for the orphan. You’re doing all these things wrong, and you’re so concerned with the wrong things.” And then he has a demonstration here: “Let me go sit down in the temple and see what happens.” And this widow comes along, a poor widow who only has two coppers that make a penny. It’s just such a tragedy, what had happened. They had become, like Jesus said, whitewashed tombs.

And before we all stand up and go, “Those terrible, awful individuals, we would never do that”: who are the religious leaders in this day and age? Us. We’re all a part of a privileged class of people who own Bibles. Do you know who owned Bibles back then? Only these people, who could read the scriptures, who knew the heart of God. And yet we walk past people all the time whom God may be highlighting.

And let me be very clear: we make a very special effort at our rector’s council to care for widows and orphans. That has been brought up several times. We want to look for ways to care for those who are in need in our life. So I’m not criticizing Saint Michael’s Church as a whole. But I’m saying every one of us should look internally and see: where am I performing to get acclaim? Where am I not looking for Christ in those I can serve, but looking for everyone to think of me as Christ? It’s a bit of a tangle they got themselves into.

VI. She Put In Everything 15:06

Okay, let’s keep moving, verse 43. And I love this part:

43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.” Mark 12.43

I’m going to pause there for a second. This is the point I wanted to make earlier, but I wanted to wait till this point. I think Jesus right now, in heaven, is looking around the earth, and every time he sees someone make a costly sacrifice with their whole heart, serve God, worship him, he says, “Hey guys, come look. Look at how awesome this is. Look at this person.” I think he really cares about what you do, and they celebrate in heaven when you lay down your life for your neighbor, when you take up your cross. You have a fan base that spans millennia. We’re not alone here, and we’re not just with the people in this room. We’ve got heaven rooting for us.

And I love this too: God didn’t say, “Come over here, look at all those dumb rich folk.” No, he pointed out the beauty of the widow who was giving everything. Okay, now he explains why her contribution is so much better than theirs:

44 “For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Mark 12.44

This poor widow: she’s on her last meal. She’s giving her money, and she’s going to go die. This is it. She gave everything.

VII. The Widow of Zarephath 17:18

So that reminds me of a story we heard this morning. Let’s go back to our Old Testament and talk about the second widow, with the same heart. “Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah.” Okay, a little bit of context: Elijah’s been hanging out under a tree next to a stream, and ravens have been feeding him food. Everyone else is starving, because there’s a famine in the land. God’s judgment has happened in Israel.

And let me just say one thing about that. It’s not like God’s like, “Oh, I don’t like what you guys are doing, so I’m going to smite you.” It’s like, if you don’t follow God’s way, if you turn away from the source of all life, you will end up in the desert, in a famine, because you’ll run from the source of life. Where do you think you’re going to go? You’re going to find yourself in death. So, just a spiritual principle here. There’s a famine in the land.

8 Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10 So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” 1 Kings 17.8–10

So fascinating here. He’s in the middle of a famine, a drought; they don’t have these things. And he just strolls in, doesn’t announce himself, nothing. He sees this woman gathering sticks, and he’s just like, “Hey, give me some water.” First of all, what a nice lady, not to turn and say, “Who the heck are you?” She literally is preparing to cook a meal for her and her son, and they’re going to die. And she stops and says, “You know what? I’m going to bring this guy water.” She was so shaped by her faith that she would care for a stranger and offer water, even when she was at her lowest, hopeless, despairing moment. That’s pretty impressive, just to start.

How many times has somebody come to us for a glass of water, and we’ve been too busy, and we didn’t know that this was actually God doing something in our life? And we just go on our merry way. Now, I’m not here to claim that there are an infinite number of times when you could have had God act in your life. No, no. The mercy of God, the goodness of God, is better than that. But keep your eyes open, because you don’t know. When somebody comes to you, feed them. When somebody comes to you, clothe them. Those are the things Jesus tells us to do. And in fact, when you do that to the least of these, you’re clothing Jesus himself. You’re feeding Jesus himself (Matt 25.40).

So with that heart she offers him a glass of water. But then he takes it a little too far. As she’s going to get the glass of water, she’s probably thinking in her head, “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but it’s the right thing to do. I’m going to do it.” And then he says:

11 And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” 1 Kings 17.11

And this pushes her a little beyond her limit. She’s like, “Okay, God, I’m going to give him water. That’s fine. But this is for me.” And so she responds to him:

12 And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” 1 Kings 17.12

“As the Lord your God lives” is kind of a great phrase to start with. Basically what she’s saying is, “I’m telling you the God-honest truth.” There’s an emphasis going on here. It’s not just “truly.” There’s emphasis: “As the Lord your God lives.”

There’s this YouTube thing going around where people eat their last meal. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s a new interview thing, where you pick your favorite food and you lay it all out. That is not what’s going on here. She has water, flour and a little oil. Not even Ritz-cracker level. This is nothing, and that’s all she has. She just wants a few more minutes with her son before they die. It’s incredible that she’s at this level of desperation.

And in that moment God sends a prophet to ask her to feed him. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50.10). God was literally feeding this guy with the ravens. You think God needs the widow’s offering in order for his prophet to get fed? Absolutely not. What is he thinking? You know what he’s thinking? He’s thinking that the widow needs some food, that he doesn’t want her and her son to die.

So often we’re at the moment where we’re calling out to God, “God, I need this thing.” And God sends the help, and we’re like, “I have to do what? I just told you I needed this thing, and you’re asking me to help this person? This doesn’t make any sense.” It’s the kingdom economy, as people say. It’s not Hollywood, baby; it’s the kingdom, baby. There’s a whole different zone going on. She has entered into a heavenly realm in this moment. She is called and invited into the economy of God, where when you give, it is given unto you (Luke 6.38). We’ve been there. We’ve seen this.

VIII. Do Not Fear 22:42

And I love the phrasing and the order of how he says this. I like to think he took his time:

13 And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son.” 1 Kings 17.13

He just sits and kind of watches her for a second, because that’s insane. “Go die with your son, totally fine. But first, I have an order. I would like you to bring me a cake.” It’s absolutely insane. “And afterward you can make your son your last meal, and you can die.” I think he sat there on that period. I think that period does a lot of work here. And then he says, right before she’s about to snap back (I mean, if she’s like us… I can’t imagine that I would have responded graciously):

14 “For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” 1 Kings 17.14

Now the choice is different. The choice isn’t, “Do I feed this man and die now, or feed myself and die in a few hours?” Now the choice is, “Do I believe this man?” Because he just walked in off the [street]. He’s not famous to her. He’s not her local pastor. He’s not somebody she’s had time to discern and understand and know and grow with. No, she has been given a choice: do you believe? Do you trust? This is the moment of crisis, and she’s invited upward on the mountain of trust.

IX. The Mountain of Trust 23:45

You see, in these stories there are two images I want you to keep in mind. There are the rich people, who are giving so that people know they’ve given. They’re wearing long robes so everybody knows how important and holy they are. They’re doing all these things, and their self-absorption is like a whirlpool circling the drain, downward.

And then there’s the opposite: there are the widows, and both of them are solidly walking up the mountain of trust. And at every turn they see an easier way. The guy asked for water: “I could give him water, or I could ignore him.” Ignoring him is the easier way. “Instead, no, I trust that it’s important to water the stranger. I have this value for others; I’m going to bring him water.” And then, “Give me food.” The easier way: “Look, all I want is to eat and die. I just want a few more hours with my son.” Then he says, “No, God’s going to give you what you need, but feed me first.” That mountain gets real steep right around there. Are you going to take another step in trust, or are you going to turn and die?

Now, the paradox of the mountain of trust is that as you’re climbing it, as you reach these forks in the road, you don’t realize that the choice not to trust is actually the choice to eat your last meal and die. We think the choice not to trust is defending ourselves, making ourselves strong against the enemy. No, the choice not to trust God is just the choice to enter the famine, to enter the desert, to enter into a place where you’re just going to eat what you have and die. Because you know what? Your provision that you have stored, that you have guarded, that you have hoarded for yourself: it’s empty. Only God’s life-giving bread, his life-giving blood, the water of life: it’s all from him. Everything you need is in him, and anywhere else you look is going to decay and turn to dust.

One more parable Jesus tells. He talks about this rich guy who built big towers so he could hold all his stuff, and at the end of that, he’s so proud of the things he’s building, and it says, “You fool, for tonight your life will be required of you” (Luke 12.20). All that stuff is just nothing compared to God, compared to trust. But if you trust and you walk up that mountain, you take up your cross and you follow him on the hill of Calvary, at the top you find life and life everlasting. It’s on the other side of death.

There’s going to be some death in your life. You’re going to have to lay things down. The widow really did give her last coins. This widow really did make the last cake. And as her son’s sitting there saying, “I’m hungry,” she says, “No, I have to give this to this guy.” She has to do the thing. She has to die to her motherhood, to her care for her son, to everything she’s done, and trust that God is going to provide.

X. God Wants All of It 26:51

So as we get to the end of these stories (and I’m going to skip right to our conclusion), this is the question: how much of your money does God want? Because that’s the question with the widow’s mites. These people gave a lot; she only gave two pennies. How much are we supposed to bring? God wants all of it. That’s it. There is no other answer. He wants every penny you own.

Now, I don’t think he necessarily wants you to put every penny you own in the church. But he does want you to give everything to him, and then you just steward your stuff. It’s not mine; it’s God’s. The money in my bank account is not mine. It’s not my family’s. It’s not my wife’s. It’s not my hungry kids’. It’s God’s. The food in my pantry is not ours. It’s God’s.

We have a rule at my house, because we’ve had a couple of people who have rented a room in our house, and family members, Amber and Mackenzie. Every time they move in (and I learned this from my dad), I tell them, “Anything in our house that you need, help yourself. We don’t split a grocery bill. The food I have in my pantry is God’s, so help yourself.” And it’s hard sometimes, because she took that Chobani yogurt I was saving, or she took that, you know, whatever. I mean, it’s just such a funny contrast, and you kind of have to point it out. These people are making a cake and dying, and I’m like, “Oh, she took my Chobani yogurt that I was hoping to have.” We are so blessed. Gratitude first. But the point of it all is: you have to give him everything. You don’t get to hold anything back.

We’ll end with this quote from Abraham Kuyper. It’s really fun saying names like that, because you feel like… really, ChatGPT just told me where to find the quote. I didn’t read this book. But it’s a great quote from Abraham Kuyper. He says:

“Oh, there is not one part of our world of thought that can be hermetically separated from the other parts; and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human life of which Christ, Who is Sovereign of all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

There’s not an inch you get to keep from him. But man, if you give him everything, you get everything. It’s the kingdom, baby. Take up your cross, follow him. He wants it all. Trust him, and then partner with him as he brings heaven into your life. Amen.