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.