The Fatherless
Scripture: The
Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary
32), A.D. 2015 B
Sermon:
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Why do we call God Father? Because He
cares for widows and orphans.
That is the simplest and clearest
explanation I can give. Ancient authors did not have our same concerns about
gendered language; nonetheless the Church Fathers are quite clear that God is Spirit,
and thus neither male nor female. There are times when the Bible refers to God
as our Mother. God is compared to a hen gathering her chicks, a woman sweeping her
house, a nursing mother, a holy lady named Sophia. But the predominant image
used time and again, hammered home in the Bible, is that God provides for
widows and orphans and would have us do the same.
It may not seem remarkable today to
say that God cares for orphans and widows, but it was pretty eye-opening in the
ancient world, when no one cared for orphans
and widows. In fact, that’s what made them widows and orphans: that they had no
one to provide for them, no one to protect them, no one to clothe and house and
feed them. There were no social safety nets, no job opportunities for single
women and vulnerable children. Without a father the entire household would
perish. And so God would be their Father. God would protect and uphold them.
God would care for the widow and the orphan and the exile and the alien and the
sick and the elderly and all of those who could not care for themselves, all the
vulnerable of society.
Remember that God is the God of all peoples,
who could easily have chosen from any number of great empires: Egypt, Assyria,
Babylon, Persia, Greece. But instead He chose the lowliest of the nations, a nation
of slaves, to raise up as His chosen people Israel. So now it was Israel’s job
to be God’s priestly people, a light unto the nations: to care for the outcast
and the vulnerable, to provide for the widow and the orphan, to be fathers of all
as God is Father of all. To this end the Law of Moses required all the people
to tithe, to give 10% of their wealth to the Temple, 10% that would provide for
the priests, who could then provide for the poor. Thus worship was for all, the
Temple was for all, and God was for all.
Poverty, of course, was never an Old
Testament ideal. Gold can become an idol, surely, but it can also be a very
powerful tool. The spiritual poverty championed by God is indeed an entreaty to
live generously. But to be generous you must first have something with which to
be generous, yes? You need money to give money. So the Israelites were to offer
10% of their wealth for the needs of the priests and the poor, but not more
than 20%—because helping the poor benefits no one if you drive your own family
to poverty in the process.
Keep in mind that there weren’t many
taxes beyond this tithe. While they had no separation of Temple and State back
then, neither did they have an ancient Israelite IRS. Tithing and taxes,
funding public worship and feeding public need, were one and the same religious
duty. A good Father, after all, provides for His children in both body and soul.
It’s a good system, I think, for a
relatively small religious state. Give 10% for the Temple and the needy. Get
called up by the king for public work projects and military service as needed.
Meanwhile, the king, the priests, and the prophets form a triad of checks and
balances, each making sure that the others don’t overstep the bounds of their
God-given authority. It wouldn’t work in a modern Western democracy of 300
million people, but it worked quite sensibly for ancient Israel. At least, in
theory it worked. For a while, it worked. On paper it worked. But by the time
of our Gospel reading, some 1500 years after Moses and his Law, things have
gone horribly awry.
Our story begins with Jesus teaching
and worshipping at the Temple, when a poor widow drops her last two haypennies
into the offering box. Meanwhile, all about her, strut scribes and religious
authorities wearing the finest of robes, and claiming for themselves the best
seats at sumptuous public banquets. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus proclaims, “this
poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
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.”
Now, some folks today, especially certain
unscrupulous pastors, like to read this passage and take from it precisely the
opposite lesson from that which Jesus intends. They hold up the poor old widow
as an example and croon through their bleached teeth: “Isn’t she wonderful? Isn’t
she great? She gave all that she had, all that she had to live on! We should be
like her, shouldn’t we? You, my friends, ought to think on that poor old widow,
and give everything you have to this here ministry, all that you have to live
on!”
That, of course, is precisely what
Jesus is condemning. Something has gone horribly wrong in the Temple.
Everything’s backwards, topsy-turvy. Widows should not be starving so that
priests can wear expensive finery. The glory of God’s House, and of God’s
servants, cannot be built upon the backs of the impoverished. The Temple is
supposed to be feeding her! Why the heck is she feeding them, when their
biggest concern appears to be seizing the best seat at the banquet? It’s not
about glory to God and love towards neighbor anymore. The whole system has
become corrupted, idolatrous, self-serving. “Beware the scribes!” Jesus says. “They
devour widows’ houses, and for the sake of appearances say long prayers. They
will receive the greater condemnation.”
So what do you suppose is our
take-home lesson from all this? What is the text calling us to do? There are
those, I am sure, who would seize this opportunity to deny any charity, any
giving. Clearly the priests are corrupt, they’d say, so don’t give to the
Church. Institutions are corrupt, so don’t give to organized charities.
Politicians are corrupt, so don’t pay your taxes (unless of course they make
you). That’s the opposite extreme from the extorting televangelist, and
unfortunately it isn’t any more helpful. The miser proves no holier than the
conman.
The Psalmist sings it best, I think: “Put
not your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no hope. When their
breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob … He upholds the orphan and the
widow.”
We are called, both by duty and by
compassion, to steward our gifts responsibly. We are called, in Jesus’ words,
to be both wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And so Christians must
indeed give of our resources responsibly in order to support charity, Church,
and state—that is, public need, public faith, and public order. But we do not
support these goods in and of themselves. We do not trust these institutions to
be any less flawed or sinful than the very human hearts and hands that run
them.
Yes, there are corrupt politicians,
corrupt clergy, corrupt nonprofits. What else is new? We are called nevertheless
to give of our time, our talents, and our treasures—because they were never
really ours in the first place. They were entrusted to us that we might steward
them wisely; that we might be mothers gathering the lost, fathers protecting
the widow and the orphan. Ultimately, our elected officials will disappoint us.
Our pastors will betray us. Our institutions will let us down. But that’s okay.
Because we do not put our trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no
hope. It is the Lord who lifts up those bowed down; the Lord who watches over the
stranger; the Lord who upholds the orphan and the widow. So have faith, dear
Christians.
Give and love. Be innocent and wise.
Forgive those who fail us, that we might be forgiven when we fail. And remember
that our trust is only and always in God.
In the Name of the Father and of the
+Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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