Many of you have seen the award-winning motion picture from the 1970s, The Godfather. A chilling film, it is about an aging patriarch of an organized crime family who transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son, Michael. We see as the film goes along what this responsibility and the power that goes with it does to Michael’s soul.
The closing scene of The Godfather is particularly memorable. No, it is not the horse’s head discovered by a Hollywood producer in his bed. What an awful scene that was. Rather it’s a baptismal scene, of all things. Michael Corleone’s nephew is being baptized. And Michael is there participating, ironically, as the child’s godfather.
As the baptism is taking place, the film cuts to images showing the murders of the heads of five Mafia families, murders that Michael has ordered. The images imply that the murders and the baptism occur at the same time.
The vast irony between the different scenes is striking. As the juxtaposition of the baptism and the gruesome murders takes place, the music and voice of the priest seems to get louder and louder with each murder. The voice reaches it loudest point when the priest asks Michael if he rejects the glamour of evil and if he rejects Satan and all of his works. The scene cuts and shows Michael’s rivals being murdered by his men. The guns blasting throughout the scene are also very loud. The end of the scene cements the idea that Michael is now the new head of the Corleone crime family.
Some of you remember that powerful scene. It is one of the most dramatic portrayals ever filmed--not only of corruption and violence--but of sheer hypocrisy as well. A baby is being baptized while its godfather is having his rivals murdered.
However, one commentator suggests that the juxtaposition of these merciless images from The Godfather is no more jarring than the words of Jesus in today’s lesson. Speaking of some of the teachers of the Law in his time, Jesus says, “They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” (1)
This certainly is a disturbing juxtaposition--“devouring widows’ houses and saying long prayers.” I personally have been guilty of saying long prayers, and devouring some unhealthy junk food, but I hope I haven’t been guilty of devouring any widow’s house. What is Jesus talking about?
Jesus warned people in his day to watch out for those teachers of the law who seek praise from people while at the same time they abuse their privileges. Listen to these words from Mark’s Gospel: As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.”
Now, all of this seems rather harmless, though somewhat hypocritical--“flowing robes and important seats.” Who among us doesn’t like to wear nice clothes and be treated with honor--whether we are a pastor or a lay person? Who doesn’t desire the best seats in the sanctuary or the football stadium?
But Jesus’ next charge is the one that is jarring. He says of these religious leaders, “They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers.” Then Jesus adds, “These men will be punished most severely.” What’s he talking about?
We are told that some of these religious bureaucrats were employed in Jesus’ time in making wills and conveyances of property. And some of them abused their position. When a man died, these officers of the temple made a visit to the man’s widow under the guise of counseling her about settling her husband’s estate. In those days, the wife did not inherit her deceased husband’s property or money. People often left their whole fortune to the temple, and a good deal of the temple money went, in the end, to these unscrupulous clergy. It was a despicable practice, and Jesus gave it the condemnation that it deserved.
Of course, such practices occur even today. Television crime shows will often portray greedy clergy taking advantage of weak, vulnerable people. This, too, is a despicable practice. Of course, producers of these shows ignore the tens of thousands of clergy who faithfully serve their people every day, some under very difficult conditions. But there are, of course, a few rotten apples in every barrel.
Pastor Scott Knowlton gives us one example. He tells about a well-known pastor who was supposed to go to a prison to talk to the prisoners. A problem arose when the people wanting to bring him into the prison and this man of the cloth couldn’t agree on the money he was to receive. The result? He didn’t go to the prison.
To me that is unimaginable, especially since visiting prisoners is one of the directives of the Gospel. But it happens. Knowlton also tells about watching a televangelist soliciting gifts for his ministry. He was offering to “give” his viewers a study Bible . . . for a $125 gift to his ministry. That’s a pretty expensive Bible. Of course it came with a promise that anyone who gave money to the ministry would receive a hundredfold in return. (2) Convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff had nothing on this evangelist.
Fleecing gullible religious people out of their money via television is just as evil as “devouring widows’ houses” was in Jesus time. These teachers of the Law that Jesus described abused their influence with widows. They took advantage of their helpless condition and confiding character to obtain possession of their property. The fact that they did so in the name of religion makes their sin particularly odious. As Jesus said, “These men will be punished most severely.” One translation infers they will be damned to hell. [I kinda hope so. Oops, I really didn’t say that.]
The fact that they used long prayers to hide their cynical practices multiplies the odiousness of their sin.
Here is what is important, however. At this point in our scripture, we have a most amazing transition that simply can’t be accidental. The scene cuts from the court of the Gentiles where Jesus has been conducting his public teachings and where he has been condemning religious leaders who take advantage of vulnerable people, to the court of the women which Jesus enters after making these sharp denunciations. Against the wall of this courtyard are 13 trumpet-shaped vessels for collecting the freewill offerings of the people. Jesus is observing how the Passover crowd is putting their money into the temple treasury. In contrast to the many wealthy people who are giving large amounts of gold and silver coins, his attention zooms in on one poor widow . . . whose name we do not even know. She is dropping into one of the temple vessels two small coins. Lepta, they were called. A lepton was the smallest bronze Jewish coin in circulation, worth only a few cents.
Jesus looked at her gift, given in secret without any show and praise from other worshippers and said solemnly, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on.”
In other words, she gave the church (or the temple) her last two cents. She gave everything she had. We say, “What wonderful faith in God”--and it was. But here is what both disturbs me and yet also gives me hope. What if she was one of the widows who had actually been victimized by an unethical temple official? Think about that for a moment.
She may have been giving her last few cents while, at the same time, she may have had every right to be angry with the religious authorities. There are people in churches even today who have been hurt by clergy or other church leaders, or perhaps by the church itself. You may be one of those persons. Oh, it may have been unintentional. Most pastors are ethical, caring people. But not all. And some churches are quite rigid and judgmental. As is often said, the church is the only army that shoots its wounded.
What is the response of Christian lay people who have been hurt by someone who is considered to be a representative of the church? Some drop out, to be sure. But, thankfully, some hang in there. They stay committed to their church. Somehow they are able to separate their hurt by someone in the church from their commitment to God and to the church. And they are greatly to be praised.
Certainly this widow in the temple that day was faithful in her commitment. So much so that Jesus noticed her and held her up as an example for others. She was faithful in spite of the fact that she could have easily had issues with the church.
She also could have been angry with God. It would have been very human for her to have issues with God as well as the temple. After all, she was a widow. She could easily have blamed God for taking her husband away from her. Have you ever known anyone who blamed God for taking away a loved one?
That happens sometimes too. It is quite understandable and very human. This widow also could have been angry with God over her poverty. That happens as well. In fact, people get angry with God over many things large and small.
One man tells about an incident that occurred when he was about 7 years old. He lived on a dairy farm and he was given the responsibility for bringing the milk cows in from the pasture to be milked each day after school. They separated the milk cows from the other cattle that were allowed to stay out in the pasture to graze.
On one particular afternoon the milk cows just didn’t want to come in. They wanted to stay with the others. He says he would get one or two headed the in right direction and then they would run and circle back. When he chased after them they would dodge to the side and stand looking at him as though they were engaged in some sort of game. This young man got madder and more frustrated as he tried to herd these cows and became exhausted from running and shouting. Finally, with tears running down his cheeks and his face red with anger, he stopped, looked straight up into the sky and shouted, “It’s all your fault up there!”
He just knew, he says, that God was up there and could have done something about this problem but for some reason God didn’t seem to be paying attention to his problem with the cows. He had this powerful sense that God knew everything about him but that afternoon God just wasn’t helping. (3)
Now, we could pass this off as the immature theology of a seven-year-old child, but haven’t many of us felt the same way as adults? Life can sometimes be quite rough, and God sometimes seems non-responsive. Getting angry with God is quite a normal experience.
The amazing thing actually is that there are so many people who have been hurt by life or hurt by the church who do not transfer their feelings of anger to God. They may have felt that way at one time in their life, but somehow their faith has conquered their feeling of perceived betrayal. With time they have both remembered and discovered that God is the best friend they could have in a time of hurt.
You have heard me speak before of a man named Victor Frankl. Frankl was a Jewish psychologist who was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during WW II. While seeking to survive the horror of this imprisonment, Frankl began observing his fellow prisoners in the hope of discovering what coping mechanism would help him endure this horrendous existence. What Frankl discovered was this: those individuals who could not accept what was happening to them, who could not make their present suffering fit with their faith, who could not find its meaning in their worldview . . . they despaired, lost hope, and eventually gave up and died.
But those individuals who could find a meaning from their faith to fit their circumstances, were then able to find hope for a future beyond their present suffering, and so could accept what they were enduring as a part of their existence, and they survived. (4)
This poor widow who caught Jesus’ attention was evidently in that latter group. She was able to incorporate her present condition into her faith and find meaning in it. And so her faith in God remained strong. She knew when she threw her last two cents in the offering plate that God would provide for her. She would survive. She was a woman of courage, of maturity and of a strong faith.
Jesus praised her because she gave out of her poverty and gave everything while others had given out of their abundance at little cost to them. In giving to God sacrificially and for no acclaim or to be seen by others, she completely trusted God to provide for her needs. Jesus used her example to teach his disciples the value God places on wholehearted commitment.
It cannot be an accident that Mark juxtaposed these two very different stories . . . One story about religious men who took advantage of peoples’ piety, especially widows, and actually stole from them . . . They would be severely punished, said Jesus.
The other story . . . about one of these widows who may have been taken advantage of . . . Jesus praised her for her total commitment to God. Though she had practically nothing left, she gave what she had to God. Few people are capable of her kind of faith. As Jesus said about the widow, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything . . . .” Amen.
1. Henry Langknecht, Associate Professor of Homiletics, Trinity Lutheran Seminary. Cited at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=441.
2. http://scottknowlton.wordpress.com/sermons/mark-1238-44-widows-mite-beware-of-religious-people-adoration-manipulation-salvation-free-written-sermon/.
3. Rev. Roger Nostbakken,
http://www.freewebs.com/rnostbakkensermons/easter62005.htm.
4. http://terryrisser.blogspot.com/2014/08/august-21-why-god.html.