“You are worth your weight in gold!”

We use this phrase to indicate someone who is extremely useful, helpful, or valuable to someone else. It can refer either to a person or to a thing, but we most often use it to refer to a person. The idea behind the phrase is gratitude –that “we” could not manage without that person, because he or shehas become so valuable to us and to our process or goal in what he or she is able to accomplish on our behalf.

While we might say this about an old refrigerator that has been working faithfully for over 40 years, likewise a CEO might say the same about a manager, who has saved the company thousands of dollars, or a secretary, whose efficiency makes things run smoothly and easily, saving time and effort. Unfortunately, while the phrase is meant as a compliment, it’s clear that the speaker of the phrase is grateful not for the presence or substance of that person but for what that person brings to the table so to speak. It is gratitude for one’s “usefulness.” It is a kind of self-serving way of expressing appreciation for someone else’s utility.

This kind of utilitarian attitude toward people dominates often in the world of finance, corporate growth, economics, and in general, any bureaucracy, but it’s not the way we like to view people when we think in terms of a faith community.

In fact, just the opposite.

Look at any scripture story, parable, or teaching by Jesus, and you will find a strong reaction to “weighing one’s worth” by one’s deeds or acts. In Jesus’ mission and message, we aren’t “golden” because we are useful, successful, or essential to a project or institution. We are worthy of God’s grace and place in a community of faith no matter who we are or what we are capable of doing, because our worth is not measured but intrinsic to who we are, marked and made in the image of God.

This sense of “value” should have been a no brainer to those of the Jewish faith, given the messages of the Hebrew scriptures, but at the time Jesus was living and teaching, the message had gotten lost, at least lost to those “in charge.”

Last week, we talked about Jesus’ declaration of the Jewish shema, proclaiming love as the central tenant of the faith. This week in Mark 12, we see Jesus railing at the Jewish legal bureaucracy for valuing people not for their “kingdom” worth, but for their “worth in gold.”

This chapter in Mark in fact reads every bit as stark as Luther’s 95 theses. Every paragraph is another blunt socio-religious critique of the Jewish leadership and its current practices:

• Critique of the temple management’s conniving disrespect for the Messiah and God’s     true message.
• Critique of temple tax and ultimately of the temple itself, clearly beholden to Caesar.
• Critique of the Sadducees unyielding legalisms and misconstruing of the scriptures.
• Critique of what it means to love one’s neighbor.
• Critique of a biological rather than covenantal view of God’s favor for God’s people.
• Critique of the arrogance and hypocrisy of the ruling Pharisees and Scribes, who strive for the best for themselves, while ignoring their responsibility to care for the people.
• And in today’s scripture, a scathing critique of the Temple management’s focus on building Temple wealth by extracting money from those who need their money to  live, and still worse, by cloaking this expectation in guilt and devotion.

Still worse? Today, in our own churches, we many times still choose to misinterpret this story of the widow’s gift, in order to nudge people into giving money they don’t have or to guilt them into increasing their tithes and commitments. We praise the poor woman for giving the only two cents she has to live on, saying to ourselves, isn’t her faith great. Look at her sacrifice.

But here’s the rub. Jesus was not glorifying the widow in this scripture for her self-sacrificing demeanor. He was harshly and bluntly criticizing the Pharisees and Scribes for taking advantage of her goodness and preying on her faith commitment in order to extract from her the only money she had to live on. Lauded as an act of “great faith,” Jesus sees it for what it is –the worst kind of religious abuse, a manipulation of her gentle and vulnerable spirit, using the language of faith to encourage her to deny her own welfare in the name of God. Jesus calls out this act as a wretched act of treachery and evil on behalf of the Temple leadership, whom he declares “devour widows’ houses and pray just for show.”

Religion does strange things to people. While faith itself makes people vulnerable, those in the ranks of religious institutions tend toward power. And as we all know, power corrupts.

In Jesus’ time, the divide between the religious elite and the faithful poor was growing ever greater, and it was clear that the more the elite glorified poverty and declared giving one’s last dime as righteous, the poorer people became. Jesus does not mince words. He points out that this attitude meant that the institution was cheating widows out of their homes rather than caring for the vulnerable. Encouraging people to give beyond their means, whether Levites, or foreigners, or orphans, or widows, was not a celebration of faith but a robbery of the poor. Unfortunately, many people equate religious institutions and their leadership with “God” and God’s own message. While the widow gave from her bleeding heart, the vampires in Pharisee clothing were all too eager to suck her in.

Jesus’ sharp critique of the Temple system would come up again, as Jesus overthrows money changing tables in the Temple courtyard. But in a way, this passage today is even stronger, because it is all too easy for any of us at any time to cloak our own agendas as gestures of faith. This is the worse kind of sin, using faith itself as a motive for human goals and greed.

Part of what makes it so hard to understand sometimes what Jesus is saying and doing is because we have a desire to read what we want to hear. And it’s easy to “misread” when we miss what’s going on with our eyes and experience.

So I want to read with you this scripture again, and this time, I’m going to ask you to come and act out what’s happening.

[Ask volunteers to come forward to play parts and hand out scripts to each.]

Let’s look at what’s happening here.

Jesus is sitting in the courtyard of the Temple and some of his disciples are with him. He’s been teaching them and talking to them about a number of problematic issues….this all will culminate with his sentence regarding the final destruction of the Temple. They are watching some of the Pharisees and Scribes parade around looking important and haughty, expecting due respect from all. Jesus points them out. Here’s what he says:

(Jesus leans in toward his disciples and says in a low voice): “Watch out for the ‘legal experts.’ They like to walk around in long robes. They want to be greeted with honor in the markets. They long for places of honor in the synagogues and at banquets. But THEY are the ones who cheat widows out of their homes, and then to show off they say long prayers. They will be judged most harshly!”

(Jesus then motions to his disciples to follow him, and he sits down across from the Temple money collection box for the Temple treasury, and he tells them to observe the people giving money).  He wants his disciples to pay attention to what’s going on.

Many rich people were throwing in money, which is fine if they have it. But then a poor widow comes forward, and she puts two small copper coins worthy a penny into the box.

(Jesus points to her and says): “I assure you that this poor widow has put in more than everyone who’s been putting money in the treasury!”

(He points to the wealthy givers): “All of them are giving out of their spare change.”

(Then motioning again to the poor widow woman): “But she from her hopeless poverty has given everything she had –the only money she had to live on.”

Now do you hear what Jesus is doing here?

Is Jesus praising the woman? Goodness no. Jesus is appalled. He recognizes that she, in her feeling that she needed to give in order to be worthy, has been entirely taken advantage of by the Temple leadership.

This woman should not be giving the only money she had to live on. The Temple should have been instead taking care of her!

Jesus isn’t saying that giving itself is wrong. But he is saying that those who can afford to give, should. Those who can’t, should not have to, and definitely should not feel as if they must.

For the Temple, and unfortunately for many of our churches today, we have fallen into the trap of valuing people for their “weight in gold,” rather than their intrinsic worth as fellow people of God.

To belong to the Temple meant to “pay” one’s dues. But Jesus doesn’t charge us for membership in God’s kingdom. Jesus knows that all are worthy of God’s grace no matter their means, their deeds, or their usefulness.

Just as Jesus redefines faith, love, and neighbor, Jesus also redefines worth.

Whether you are a woman, a child, a person who is ill, poor, rich, or of modest means, all are worthy to sit at the table of the Lord.

[Today is All Saints Day. Today, we celebrate those beautiful souls who came before us to teach us the Way, the Truth, and the Life of Jesus and to leave behind their legacy of love and grace. We have learned from them, and we have loved them. They built for us the Church we are today –a church made up of people of all kinds, means, and personalities, a Church that values not our worth in gold, but our heritage of faith. Faith brought us to this place. And faith will sustain us long into the future. For buildings and means will pass away. But the souls of the faithful will live forever.]