THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

We live by faith, a faith that shows itself in works of charity and self-giving. That’s the lesson of the two widows in today’s liturgy. The widow in the First Reading isn’t even a Jew, yet she trusts in the word of Elijah and the promise of his Lord. Facing sure starvation, she gives all that she has, her last bit of food—feeding the man of God before herself and her family. The widow in the Gospel also gives all that she has, offering her last bit of money to support the work of God’s priests in the Temple. In their self-sacrifice, these widows embody the love that Jesus last week revealed as the heart of the Law and the Gospel.

She was a woman. She was poor. These are two facts anyone could tell that day in the Court of the Women in the Temple in Jerusalem. She was also a widow who was down to her last two coins. These are facts that Jesus also knew about her.

This unnamed woman is known now by her marital status and her coins rather than her name. The woman had two small coins. Each of her coins were worth one four-hundredth of a shekel or what we might think of as an eighth of a one cent each. Too small to bear a legible imprint, they were the grubbiest of coins in the empire of Rome.

Jesus has been teaching in the temple courts. Now, on his way out, he pauses at the treasury to watch as offerings are made. Each person would walk up to one of the thirteen trumpet-shaped receptacles, which were lined along the wall of the Court of the Women. As they tossed in their offering, the person was expected to say aloud the amount and purpose of the gift in order to be heard by the priest overseeing the collections.

It would have been an impressive sight to see people tossing in large sums, calling out to all how much they gave. And in such a group, who would notice the widow tossing the two smallest coins  into the offering? Yet, Jesus notices and calls attention to this act of faith.

Jesus calls his disciples together and says, “ I tell you solemnly, this poor widow has put more in than all who have contributed to the treasury; for they have all put in money they had over, but she from the little she had has put in everything she possessed, all she had to live on.”

Jesus knows that these are the woman’s last two coins. The text says, “All she had to live on,” but the Greek is starker still. What is really said is that she put in her bios. Jesus tells us that the widow put her “life” into the temple treasury that day. These were her last two coins, and rather than keep one back, she tossed both into the temple treasury’s coffers. The widow gave 100 percent of her money   she trusts it all to God.

The nameless widow who gave two small coins fades into the background. Namelessness is appropriate for this living parable. And it is best, too, that we don’t find out how her story ends. The nameless woman whose ultimate fate we never know is an even better icon of trust, for her story was a precarious one. She went to the temple that day not knowing if she would ever have two little coins to call her own again. It could have been her path to a life of begging or even a station on the road to starvation.

But in facing an uncertain future, the widow reached out to God. She trusted that if she gave everything she had to God, even the little she gave would be honoured. And whether Jesus handsomely repaid her himself, or God cared for her in some other way, we, too, have to trust. We trust that the widow’s story turned out all right. We trust that whether she lived or died, she was God’s.

And by her example, Jesus shows that what we withhold may matter more than what we offer. The widow was a woman of great faith, who held nothing back. She knew what Jesus’ disciples were just learning: we are to give, knowing that everything we have is God’s already. We can’t give God anything. But we can offer our very selves to the Kingdom of God, holding nothing back.

She was a woman. She was poor. She was a widow down to her last two coins. She was a child of God who placed her whole life back in her loving creator’s hands.

Are we giving all that we can to the Lord—not out of a sense of forced duty, but in a spirit of generosity and love. Do not be afraid,  as we sing in today’s Psalm, the Lord will provide for us, as He sustains the widow.