Transcript
In this weeks’ Gospel, Jesus spots a widow who gives everything she has two small coins, her whole livelihood to the Temple treasury. The generosity of that gesture is, frankly, breathtaking. But so is something even more amazing, the widow’s unwavering and total trust. This seems almost ridiculous in a world where grasping and taking are very powerful. But here is one who has so little and still gives it, open hands and open heart, regardless of the cost. Calling me, us, to generosity and to sacrifice, a word almost out of fashion; best avoided we can kid ourselves so often and we begin to really believe it.
I used to see tiny wheat seeds in the silo on our farm. Inert, silent, doing absolutely nothing, or so I thought. A single grain or two of wheat won’t amount to much. But what happens when planted? That’s another story, scones, bread and pizza even! We can make all sorts of excuses about not sharing our gifts, nor offering our light, saying we need it for ourselves, we don’t have enough, on it goes. Aren’t we forgetting that if you light one hundred candles from one candle the original candle keeps burning brightly, it is not diminished, light multiplied many times over. But it’s a different sort of economy, not of storing up in barns and siloes.
Returning to the widow in the Gospel, Jesus talks about her very modest circumstances compared to the rich person. Jesus also shines a light on her generosity. She gave it all. And God saw it and blessed her. Like the women in the first reading, rather than losing, she gained. Having nothing she placed her trust in God and received so much more than could she have ever have dreamed of. What are we going to do where we are planted? We don’t do it alone. We have the Holy Spirit with us and we have the memories and actions of those who have gone before us. Offered what may seem to us in our twenty-first century minds so little, and yet calling us to move us beyond our very selves in faith. A prophet once said you give so little when you give of your possessions but when you give of yourself, allow yourself to be poured out, then you truly give.