Progressive reflections on the lectionary #42

Monday 4th November 2024

Mark 12:38-44: Widows might just want to rise up and overthrow the system

Among the host of familiar stories in Mark’s gospel is the story of the widow’s mite - where Jesus and his disciples watch people paying the temple tax and Jesus notes how a poor widow pays more than anyone.

“For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

There’s an irony here because at the point where many more conservative commentators would spin this story as a kind of allegory, even a parable of sorts, about how we should give generously, or how it’s not about how much you give but how faithfully, I see this as that rare thing: a very literal story.

And I don’t see it as a particularly positive one.

My reading is that in this story Jesus and the disciples watch on as a widow gives ‘all that she has,’ her very last coins, to the temple treasury. As a result she is now destitute.

I don’t think the idea is that we should see Jesus and the disciples looking on with admiration, but rather with horror, disgust even, at this pernicious system which benefits the religious leaders “who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets!”

How do these people get their high status?

“They devour widow’s houses…”

Yes they do, they take the little that others have, leaving them with nothing. It has echoes of the story told by Nathan during the denouement scene of ‘David and Bathsheba’, where the wickedness of taking the little that another has is highlighted. To be fair - David gets away with an awful lot in that story, he’s basically outed as a vindictive, self serving, unrepentant, sex predator and murderer. Anyhow, I digress.

In this short passage, misleadingly labelled “a widow’s generosity” or something similar in many bibles, we get a sense of the iniquity of the temple system of the time, where religious leaders lord it over common folk and where the most marginal members of the community were forced into destitution by unfair financial demands.

This isn’t a nice parable about being generous or giving faithfully, it’s a real story about injustice and needs to be taken seriously.

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