Little is Much

The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

November 10, 2024

Mark 12:38-44

 “Little is Much”

My wife and I have started watching a new series called “Matlock.” Some of you may remember a TV series by the same name back in the 1980s and 1990s starring Andy Griffith. The new series stars Kathy Bates as the new Matlock – Madeline Matlock. She portrays an older woman who rejoins the workforce at a prestigious law firm. Although she did once practice law, she hasn’t done so for many years, and much has changed in those intervening years. She’s got some tricks up her sleeve, though, and she’s got an ulterior motive for doing what she’s doing. It’s all very interesting. In the very first episode, she says something very telling. As an older woman, she remarks how older women can go by unnoticed by lots of people because they have become largely invisible to many. Make no mistake, though, Madeline Matlock uses this to her advantage in order to bring justice to those who need it. I think about this in light of what we hear in today’s Old Testament lesson (1 Kings 17:8-16) and Gospel lesson (Mark 12:38-44). Both lessons deal with widows. In the minds of many people, they, too, may go by unnoticed and are largely invisible. But the Lord knows who they are and his eye is upon them. Today we’ll look at the widows in these lessons under the theme “Little is Much.” May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

That very word “widow” conjures up images in our mind, doesn’t it? We think of someone who is older – a grandma; perhaps frail and in need. That isn’t always true, of course. There are lots of widows who are tough as nails and anything but frail. But the image persists. A woman can become a widow at any age, young or old. A man can become a widower at any age, young or old. What about the widows we hear about in today’s lessons? We’re not told that they were older. What we are told is that the widow who was approached by Elijah told him she was gathering a couple of sticks to make a last meal for herself and her son. Because of a severe drought, there was also a severe famine. There was no more food to be had, and so she expected that she and her son would soon die. That’s often how it was with widows in the ancient world. There was no social services network; no federal or state agencies to give aid. Without family support, widows frequently didn’t last long, often because of starvation. The widow’s comment about her son would seem to imply that she was a younger woman with a dependent child. What little she had would soon be gone: a handful of flour and a little oil in a jug to make a final meager meal. Elijah was asking a lot of this woman who had so little. But her little was much through the God of abundance with whom nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37). “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.’” And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah” (1 Kings 17:14-16).

The Lord God names widows as those for whom he is especially concerned, and he calls his people to be likewise concerned (Exodus 22:22-24; Deuteronomy 10:18; Psalm 146:9; Isaiah 1:17). And what about the psalm we read together? “The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin” (Psalm 146:9). This leads us to the widow in the Gospel lesson. She is often depicted as an older woman, but Scripture doesn’t tell us this. The French artist, James Tissot, painted The Widow’s Mite more than 100 years ago, and sold it directly to the Brooklyn Museum in 1900, where it’s been ever since. “Unlike many other renditions of this text, the widow is young, and she has a child. She is the only woman in the scene, quickly rushing away from the temple. The men around her seem to mock her. The painting is striking because it challenges some strongly held assumptions about the widow, namely that she is elderly and either has no children or they are grown. But this depiction certainly makes sense – widows can be young and have children, making their situations even more challenging” (Sundays and Seasons: Guide to Worship Planning, Year B - 2024. Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 2023; p. 301). What Scripture does tell us is that she was a “poor” widow, but that is too weak a term for the original word here (πτωχός). The original word means to be in “abject poverty, one who has literally nothing and is in imminent danger of real starvation” (Linguistic Key to the New Testament, Rienecker/Rogers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976; p. 124). And yet, this desperately poor widow put all that she had into the temple offering. From an outward perspective, it didn’t look like much. Two copper coins were 1/64^th of a denarius, a day’s wages for the average worker. That was all she had; it was everything she had. There were others who put in much larger amounts into the offering, and they undoubtedly had large amounts left over. Not so with the widow; there was nothing left over. But her little was much in the eyes of Jesus. That’s important for us to remember in our own lives today.

Don’t you wonder why the widow put her last remaining coins into the temple treasury? Didn’t she need them herself to live on? Maybe she felt like that widow in the Old Testament lesson. When you’re in such a desperate place in life with nowhere else to turn and no one left to help, then what? Did anyone intervene to help the widow or offer some word of comfort? If so, Scripture doesn’t record it. What that widow did was to entrust herself and her overwhelming need to the Lord, not knowing how it would turn out, and that is faith. As today’s Epistle lesson (Hebrews 9:24-28) reminds us, Jesus our great High Priest “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). The little of our own offering does not compare with the much of what Jesus has done for us. The cleansing blood of Jesus, shed for us on the tree of the cross, has put away our sin once and for all. Jesus’ sacrificial death has set us free for sacrificial living. With the eyes of faith, we see those around us who may be invisible to others. Not only do we see them, but moved by the love of Christ, we respond to help them: widows and orphans, the homeless and hungry, the lonely and forgotten, the sick and dying. This is our calling in Christ until Christ shall come again as the closing words of the Epistle lesson remind us: “so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28). And we are indeed eagerly waiting for him – our risen, reigning and returning Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.