The Pennies From the Treasury

First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen
November 7, 2021
Written and delivered by: Rev. Ashley Bair
Title: The pennies of the treasury

Over the past couple of years, I have started to incorporate a practice of articulating what pieces of my identity are present at the surface at the time that I am reading Scripture. We interpret what we are reading through a variety of lenses that often connect to the identity pieces we carry. I ask myself, “Am I reading this scripture as a sister, as a preacher, as an employee, as a woman, as a white person, as an activist, in my fatigue or impatience or joy because of something I hold within me?” And what lies at the surface may change depending on the day or the reading. Today I read this text as a Midwesterner and a granddaughter and a wavering optimist.

So, think for a moment about what’s going on in your mind and body as you encounter this Scripture. Let's take a moment together to let you think about what identity pieces are at the surface for you this morning.

And read the passage again, mindful of all the things that shape this text for us...

The Scripture passage for today from Mark 12 is one of many occurrences in the Gospels where Jesus engages the disciples in a discourse on money. Jesus loved talking about money, especially as it directly related to the major issues affecting his ministry on earth at the time: the issues of empirically endorsed oppression and systemic poverty.

Just some of the other things Jesus’ said about money that come to my mind are:

“Don’t extort money..” (Luke 3:14)
“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 19:21)
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6:24)

And the pinnacle of his message on money is found in the moment when Jesus went up on the mountain and taught the Beatitudes to the disciples (Matthew 6: 19-20), and he said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth... but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

I think that phrase is the root of Jesus’ discourse on money. And perhaps another helpful lens in which we can view this morning’s Scripture passage.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”….

This morning, I brought a thing that carries around my treasure. It’s my wallet. It’s like that old Capital One advertisement, “What’s in your wallet”? I thought I would see what’s in here and share with you what I carry around with me in this.

There’s money in here; I’ve got a few dollars cash and a couple of cards that are also linked to cash; a Moma membership card from my cousin that expired in 2017, Lactaid, a vaccination card, and a picture of me and my grandmother with curlers in our hair. I know you can’t see it. In the photo I have a doll in each hand. I’m probably about two here.

I have kept this photo in this wallet for a while. I like to keep it with me, and I hadn’t really thought too much about why this is important to keep next to my money, until I re-read these words from Mark 12.

I grew up with my grandparents. My grandmother was really the rock of our family. She was the mother of seven children while her husband fought a war with the Navy.
When he came back, he took odd jobs here and there before he got a full-time job and started working for the city as a garbage truck driver. At that time, my grandmother also started looking after her growing brood of grandchildren, when I came around there were about 20 of us.

With so many mouths to feed and so little to live on, they never had much of anything. She didn’t even have a wedding ring until my grandfather found one in someone else’s trash and brought it home for her.

We lived in a farmhouse a few miles outside of the nearest town. Our house didn’t have heat or air conditioning and most of our vegetables came from a compost pile in the middle of the woods where we and our next-door neighbors (a mile down the country road) would put food scraps in the summer when it got too hot outside to squelch the stench of spoilt food. To say, there wasn’t much fresh produce happening in the house. I remember the first time I ate lettuce at a friend’s house when I was 10 years old.

And yet, somehow, as people can do, in this kind of spread thin poverty my grandmother made everything work. I knew I didn’t have what any of the other kids in my school had, but I also never really felt without. My grandmother cooked us three meals of a sort a day and splurged on some occasions for a 2 liter of Ruby Red Squirt and Diet Coke. I didn’t get new clothes every year for school, but I did get things for Christmas and my birthday.

My grandmother cooked other meals for neighbors and gave money every Sunday to her Lutheran church. I saw her really give everything she had. While she did her best to care for all those around her, she was surviving. And there were moments where I knew she put her last dollar into the plate with a prayer that it would help her and her family somehow.

And the hard truth of it is: It didn’t. Because as much as the people around her saw her as a very pious, forgiving, kind and generous woman, they weren’t interested in redistributing anything to her. They all gave it to the same system and put a reliance on that system to care for people who needed help. She never got any of it.

Money, there and then, wasn’t something talked about in terms of sharing, it was a status symbol based on how much you had and how much you could give. She was poor and, even in the places that believe that all are invited and celebrated, money held power and influence.

I suppose I keep her picture in my wallet to try and remember, wherever life takes me, that these dollars and how I spend them really mean something.

Talking about money is very hard - it’s hard for me, I don’t know about you - I grew up in a culture of pretty strict societal norms that said, there are just some things we don’t ever talk about, and money is one of those things. What happens, of course, when we don’t talk about money is that those who have a lot of it get to keep the power and influence. And those who don’t have any bear the brunt of shame for that.

So, in a way, to really challenge the cultural influences of my formative years, I find a kind of strange peace in Jesus’ persistent insistence of a discourse on money. It, in itself, doesn't solve the issues that money brings but for me feels like it gives some validation to the stories of people like my grandmother. Stories of those who give their money to the treasury with a deep prayer for help, that can only really be answered when those around them take notice.

We read this morning of the poor widow who Jesus notices at the treasury. There is a common theme in Christian circles to look at this story of the widow and feel inspired by it and her giving, even of her last pennies. I acknowledge that interpretation, but this morning I’m not there.

I read the text this morning as my grandmother’s granddaughter.

I am wondering about the widow and her story, and why as people walking by were adding abundant sums of money to the treasury, did she need to sacrifice her last coins?

I wish we knew her name. And I wish we knew for sure that her real-life fierceness exceeded the piety the Church has imposed on her. We do know she was an impoverished widow in first century Palestine; a woman living on the margins of her society by those identity pieces alone. She had no husband to advocate for her, no assets to draw from, and hence no social status to lean on. She was vulnerable and invisible in every single way that mattered in her society. She would have been a member of “the least of these” group, the ones Jesus challenges his followers to care for.

And given all of this, she comes to the outer courts of the temple to the treasury with an offering of two small copper coins, the smallest coins minted in Judea at that time, equivalent to a penny. Why would the widow give the last penny she had? Perhaps she knew that once she gave her all, she would rely on the resources from the religious institution to provide for her. Perhaps, to her, giving was an important act of faith.

Perhaps, the widow was giving her last penny with a prayer.

Presumably, the reason she believes in the institution is because she was told the treasury is taking an offering so that the money can go to assist those who need it. But, as Jesus notices, that’s not what had been happening. What’d been happening was that giving had become, not an act of solidarity or repair for the harm of poverty, but an act of popularity and a public display of wealth and success.

“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces,” Jesus said. The money hadn’t gone to the poor, widowed, orphaned, and hungry. It had gone into making the temple a beautiful stone structure that, we see in the verse following this passage, leaves even the disciples in awe of its majesty and splendor. A place where the wealthy would want to come and give lots of money.

The widow giving her last pennies to this treasury is a complicated moment.

She is giving, bravely, likely prayerfully, and at the same time, is participating in a system that routinely oppresses her under the guise of faithfulness. In a profound way, she is acting with self-sacrifice and is contributing toward an unjust system. She is giving all that she has to a system that will take from her all that she has and that will, in turn, exploit her.

We see this kind of thing with the institutions that we all contribute to. I’m thinking about the COP26 and the G20 meetings that have been taking place in Rome and Glasgow these past weeks where a few wealthy and powerful leaders take the tax money of those with less to make decisions that will impact millions regarding climate change and the military and refugees of war.

What does that all mean for those on the frontlines of these issues? Those who are struggling? What does it mean for someone or some entity who is wealthy to give a small portion of their abundance to level the playing ground when families are at risk and people are putting their livelihood and bodies on the line? These are major nations with major budgets coming to decide what they are willing to sacrifice for the sake of the good of the world and its future.

And, as I saw with my grandmother, it also happens very frequently in the church. We are not immune to these things.

But what we have, as a gift in scripture, is the chance to continue to explore and hold ourselves accountable to our place in a system like the treasury. And to extend ourselves grace as people caught up in the process, who are yet still here to be a part of making the world a better place.

Jesus brings money to the attention of the disciples again and again and again, and never offers clear answers or solutions to the money problems, because without a complete overhaul there isn’t really any clear answer or solution. Jesus said, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven,” because unless we leave everything behind, we won’t be blameless, we still participate in these systems.

I don't think Jesus talked so much about money, highlighting stories of the vulnerable and oppressed, to create a world where everywhere lives poor, that doesn’t line up for me with our God of love and abundant grace. I think Jesus asked that of the disciples so that the poor would finally be noticed! I think it was to continue to proclaim that the systems in place make it so poverty continues to exist. After thousands of years, and an economy worth trillions of dollars, we still have people living in poverty. So, the work of the Church: which is to care for the poor, the hungry, the orphaned, the widowed, is laid out before us.

We are about to sing together about God’s call for us to be creators of justice, joy, and compassion and peace. This passage about a woman giving her last cents to the treasury, for me, offers a reminder of the power that money has and that we, as the people of God with this call, have an obligation to turn the systems that have long oppressed people on their head.

To recognize when the treasury is becoming a place for the Scribes with long robes who put in large sums. To recognize when we might find ourselves slipping into the hold that the power of money has on us all.

Rather than greed and power, when we open our wallet, may we find our heart there also.

Even though our budgets are not as big as any of the G20 nations, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter or that we don’t have an opportunity to notice honest, sacrificial gifts that come with a prayer and to do something more than just accepting it. We are to live in solidarity with it, which means maybe sometimes we don’t accept it because a widow keeping her last pennies is the least we can do.

This story of the widow’s offering is a reminder that to be the Church, we are to be the foundation for the continuation of the work of Jesus Christ on earth for justice, for joy, for compassion, for peace with all that we have.

Let that be what enlivens our spirits, let that be the will of our work, when we receive the bread and the cup, let us feel it with the blood pumping through our heart. In our giving and in our receiving, let us ask: Whose heart lies with the pennies of the treasury?

This is where Jesus was, and this is where he wants us to be. When we give, let it be not for a sense of obligation but for those who put their last pennies in along with ours.

Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. May it be so. Amen.