( Bible story illustrations courtesy of http://breadsite.org )
After opening prayer, and the lighting of the chalice, we had a pause to reflect on what matters to us and how we have lived up to that. In other churches this activity is usually the action involved in the reciting of a creed.
Then there were two readings from the Bible, both from the New International Version: 1 Kings 17:10-22 and Mark 12:41-44.
The reading from 1 Kings told the story of a widow from Zarephath who was part of a community, or even region, that was starving to death through drought; who nonetheless assisted the prophet Elijah with water and bread.
Jesus’ observation, recorded in the reading from Mark, was of another widow who donated from among her last few coins to the alms collected at the temple.
Our president for the day then reflected on these readings as follows.
“Two widows in the same small area of the middle east, almost a thousand years apart, and yet — depressingly — both still subject to the same vulnerability and financial uncertainty, both still recognizable as epitomizing a social and economic group much wider than their individual back stories.
“You may well know the two readings I have chosen, either as stories you were told, or texts you perhaps studied. They may awake in you feelings of nostalgia, or they may provoke old arguments you’d rather leave behind. On the other hand, you may not have heard them before today.
“I’ll wager, though, that every one of us approaches these stories through a cloud of unknowing. We make racial, class, intellectual, and, yes, theological assumptions about them. Assumptions that, for the most part, say more about our personal journeys than they say about the journeys these stories have travelled to reach us today.
“As Unitarians, we approach the Bible aware of the journey it has been on, and, in our better moments, aware of the journey we as individuals and as communities have been on. We do not look to the Bible to ‘prove’ anything — it is a tradition we share in and can draw inspiration from. We do not end discussions with the Bible; rather, it is a place we can begin them.
“When I lived in Rome I remember a Sister, a Roman Catholic nun, at my university. She had an infectious laugh, a smile that could light up a room, and a kind word for everyone. I didn’t know her well, but one year the Christmas break was approaching and we got to casually talking. I asked her if she was going home to see her family. She wasn’t: her family were gone, her home was gone, everything was gone: all lost in the Rwandan genocide. She had survived only because she had been in Rome.
“I can’t imagine that kind of sorrow, that kind of darkness. And yet there she was and there was her smile that lit up the room.
“I have no idea how much she had left to share or how little she kept for herself, but it shamed me. How often do I not spare a smile, even for a loved one, on a day that is not going to my plan? How often have I ignored that person who wanted to talk because I was too tired to give them the ten minutes I was probably going to spend scrolling on social media? Have I lashed out, enjoyed micro aggressions, to share the pain or frustration I am feeling, rather than looked to whatever scrap of hope I have instead?
“I do not make you wild promises of the cupboard never going bare, of the tank never hitting empty, and I do not say that we should give away all that we have to live on, as Jesus mentions in the second reading. Jesus does so love to push his point! But rather I ask you to think of that ‘little bit’ you can still share, like the widow of Zarephath, that little bit you can still contribute to the community, like the widow in the temple.
“Something that stands out for me in that short second reading is the way we are invited to watch this second widow from without. Jesus does not share with us her backstory, so we do not have a context to empathize with. We are simply presented with a view of someone and asked to consider what being there that day has cost them.
“Ooh but now look — we are not faced with the virtue of this person: instead we are confronted with how our view, the view we share in and help build as a society, is wrong-headed. Society values the money that the ‘comfortably off’ spend on luxury above what the average person has to spend day-to-day. Society values the leisure time of the economically secure over the family time of the hourly worker. Do not we too, as communities of belief, often value the time of those able to attend multiple services and talks over that of those whose lives allow only for briefer times given over to spiritual reflection? Do we not value the experience of those who have had the opportunity and leisure to read widely, over those for whom such is not common place? Do we ask ourselves what it ‘costs’ to be with us when we gather in community? Not in terms of cash alone, but in terms of time, in terms of what demands we make on each other, in terms of the expectations we communicate? I don’t have answers to that, and I don’t think Jesus is offering any answers in this second reading either.
“Just as in the first reading the widow of Zarephath inspires us to give a ‘little bit’ of what little we have, so in the second reading the widow in the temple challenges us to see that ‘little bit’ that we often overlook, that we often undervalue.
“We all fall short of our highest ideals, and we are all products of the world view we grew up in. Perhaps everything I have said here is pie in the sky, but if striving even for a pipe dream can make things a little bit better I’m game for that. I don’t ask you to accept everything I’ve said here, you might not like how I’ve said it, but think about it …. Just a ‘little bit’.”
