In a book entitled Plain Talk about Churches and Money, one of the authors states: "Clergy often come to their calling with a distinct aversion to conflict and to having to deal with money issues. Our culture seems to reinforce them in that behavior. So long as clergy are cowed and anxious in the face of money and wealth, they will remain silent about the spiritual issue that touches our culture more deeply than any other. The more I steeped myself in this book and looked at churches around me, the more I became convinced this behavior is the way a culture controls a challenge to itself. A money-driven culture seems to want clergy who are ‘safe' and "tame" when dealing with the spiritual dimension of money."

The possibilities go in two directions: one, Jesus is overwhelmed, startled and delighted at this woman's faith, she has done more than all those who are supposedly leaders of the church. She gives sacrificially. They give a token. He wants them all to see real faith at work.

At the same time, she is giving with purpose and meaning, she understands what she has done. Like the woman in the poem, "When I am Old I Am Going to Wear Purple", she gives with freedom, abandon, boldly, bravely, with the sure knowledge that she will not eat, but not caring. She is in control, and has decided to pick her destiny.

The other possibility, and it is a dark one, is that Jesus walks out of the Temple, condemning it to destruction, because he has seen with his own eyes the final straw: the devouring of a widow by the very Temple itself. In allowing the widow to give everything away without any thought to care, the leaders of the Temple beg for their own destruction. From those who have been given much, much is expected.