Mark 12:41-44

This week’s passage in our Soar series may be a familiar one.  Often called “The Widow’s Mite” (mite being an archaic term for a small amount, a coin of little value), it tells how Jesus observed a poor widow placing her last two coins into the Temple offering box.  Jesus tells his disciples that this woman put in “more” than those who, out of their excess, gave more money.

This story ends in an unresolved way: what happened next for this widow?  We don’t know.  We may hope that her neighbors took note of her needs and helped her, or that Jesus’ disciples, hearing his comment might have lent a hand, or that God provided for her in some other ways, possibly miraculous ones.  Perhaps some of those able to give out of their excess noticed her and redirected some of that “extra” to her?  We may hope these things happened, and they may have, but Scripture is silent about them all.  We don’t know what happened to this widow, other than that Jesus noticed her and what she did.

Why is this story part of our Soar series?  Where, how, does this widow soar?

She is responding to God in obedient faith.  She has been taught, rightly, that one aspect of worship is “giving” to God.  But the only thing we can give to God is what God has already given to us!  We give in small ways as a way of grounding ourselves in the truth that all that we have and all that we are comes to us as a gift from God.  By “giving all she had,” the widow entrusts herself, her life, all that she is, to God.  Her focus is not on “the results” or the “payoff,” her focus is on the Lord, who is worthy of the worshipful offering of her life.  That’s what Jesus is seeing, and drawing our attention to.

A bit more backstory to this week’s passage.  Jesus’s relationship to the Temple was complicated.  Our story takes place during the week between Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem as a strange and unexpected king (“Palm Sunday”) and his crucifixion, death and burial less than a week later.  Just before our story, Jesus has “cleansed” the Temple, declaring that its leadership had turned God’s house into a “den of robbers.”  Just after our passage, Jesus predicts the utter destruction of the Temple (“not one stone will be left upon another”).

Perhaps our story is about how soaring is possible, even in the face of unjust and oppressive systems and institutions?  Can we soar even when our obedience doesn’t “pay off” or yield the right “results”?  

No sacrifice is too small, too “unimportant,” to be noticed by Jesus.  The widow’s focus wasn’t on “the Temple system” and whether or not it was “serving her needs.”  Her eyes were on God, and God’s eyes were on her.  Held in God’s gaze of love, she soars.

What seemingly small thing is God asking you to give – time, attention, specific obedience, generosity … something else?  What would you like Jesus to see and notice about you?