The Rev. Ann R. Lougee November 12, 2006 Mark 12:41-44 The Widow's Mite Jesus the prophet cried out for truth, but he heard tedious prayers. Jesus the prophet sought signs of great faith but he witnessed only a parade of gestures. So Jesus the prophet warned the people, "Beware of those who guard their threshing floor and hoard their measures of barley; who feast on their abundance, then refuse even the gleanings to the poor!" But then a poor widow approached quietly and did what no other had done. She gave her last penny, withholding no coin for herself. Yet her little wealth was never spent, and her life was not consumed. For the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, in the realm of God. This story made me curious about charitable giving by the richer and poorer in the United States, so I ventured bravely out onto the information highway. I discovered that the averages of giving for both groups fall far short of the 10% that the Hebrew Bible advocates. I found that people with an adjusted gross income of $122,564 per year gave an average of $3,837, or about 3%. People with a little more than quarter of that income, $32, 553, gave an average of $1,514, almost 5%. I wonder why that gap exists. Why do people with more income tend to give less percentage-wise than people with less income? Do you suppose it's because they don't understand what it is to be in need? Do you suppose having more makes them forget what it's like to have less? Or is it that people who have little don't identify themselves with their possessions, so their hearts are freer to be generous? At Communion on our retreat, I told a story that Henri Nouwen, that great spiritual teacher, told on himself at our Conference Annual Meeting 20 years or so ago, which I think illustrates this thought. He said he had gone off to Nicaragua to serve as a village priest, thinking only of what he was going to be able give to them. His time there humbled him, he said, as he found he often felt he was receiving more than he was giving. He told about the day he was scheduled to leave there, to return to the United States. The family with whom he had been living, a literally dirt poor family whose hut had a dirt floor, had obviously scrimped and saved over quite a period of time to be able to afford a bottle of Coca Cola and a package of Oreo cookies, which they understood were special treats in the US. They had invited all the village to come to say goodbye to him, so he served Communion to the whole gathering, using Oreo cookies and Coca Cola. Again, he was awed by the generosity of these poverty-bound people – not only their generosity but their joy in giving. Back now to the poor widow in Mark's story. In Jesus' time and place, a widow had to depend on a brother of her dead husband to take her in, or a son to help provide for her as best he could after he'd taken care of his own wife and children. So this widow probably knew that she was at the mercy of others for her survival. That probably made her very aware of the needs of others, too. When the code of laws came into being among the Hebrew people, an expansion of the 10 commandments, it stipulated that all people must bring a tenth of their production to the religious festivals. It was these offerings, after all, that supported the priests. Later when the temple in Jerusalem was built, the requirement became that all people must bring offerings there regularly. I used to think that was a terrible demand to put on the people, but a professor put a different slant on it by saying that it led to society's care for those who were in need. It required of the whole society that all people should have their needs met to the extent that no one should be unable to bring an offering. It required that they look after one another so there should be no one so poor among them that they could not give. Giving is the proper response to having one's basic needs met. It's a blessing to have enough so that one can give instead of needing others to give to oneself. This must be the wisdom behind the saying "It is more blessed to give than to receive." It's a blessing, too, not to have so much that one forgets what it's like not to have much, forgets those who have much less. It's a blessing, also, not to fear giving, to have enough faith to dare to give. Too often faith is just "talk"—talk about feeling, talk about what might make us feel good. "Word became flesh," the Bible declares. But too often we turn it back into words or reduce it to feeling. You've heard people say, I'm sure, that people give just because it makes them feel good about themselves. Such feeling may, indeed, result from giving, but, except for those who give only to get tax benefits, the giving starts somewhere else, with faith. A great hymn of the church speaks of knowing God "with hearts and hands and voices." Voices, yes, but after hearts—and hands. More than talk, more than feeling, faith, at root, is behavior, how one lives in the world. Behavior is doing, and learning to do anything takes practice. Continued doing sets up a pattern of behavior. The more we use a behavior, the more confidence we have in using it. One of my mentors said once that people would say to him, "Oh, Reverend, I wish I had more faith." And he would say to them, "What would you do with it?" For, he said, faith is what we develop in response to what happens in our lives. Faith is our pattern of behavior. Learning to have faith is much like learning to play an instrument, or learning to dance, or learning a new skill in science or business. Short of actual practice and behavior, we can't feel good simply because we're interested and might like to feel the satisfaction of accomplishment. Faith may take sweat, not just inspiration. And nothing better expresses this understanding than the giving that "fleshes out" our would-be faith, lies at the heart of Christian living, and turns it from just talk into walk. Giving is more than money just as faith is more than worship and prayer. But as part of the faith that allows us to feel close to God, we can no more separate money from our giving than we can separate body from mind or faith from worship. We practice our faith before we can "feel" our faith. Giving generously, we come to know and experience God's own generosity. So it is that we walk with God, and feel better than ever! May it be so. Amen.