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When the preaching and presiding team decided this summer to welcome me to this ministry, I learned that they have something of a hazing tradition—often assigning new Journey preachers notoriously challenging texts such as the passion readings of Good Friday. In that spirit, Sam initially suggested that my homily focus on today’s readings in this year’s official feast in the Roman calendar, the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. (For those for whom this is not a major highlight of your liturgical year, the Lateran is a huge church in Rome , stuffed with statues in white marble and men in red hats). Needless to say I was very grateful when, after a bit of teasing, the team relented and let me reflect on these wonderful stories about generous widows—the normal readings for this thirty-second Sunday in ordinary time. Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, Jesus and the widow at the Temple, call us to give generously of who we are and what we have, even if it seems insignificant in the face of the world’s need. They call us to an interdependence of giving and receiving, asking humbly and confidently for help and giving extravagant thanks and appreciation. Above all, they call us to imitate the divine offering praised in our second reading from Hebrews, in which God’s very self is given to us through the life, death, and resurrection of our brother Jesus. When we share ourselves and what is entrusted to us with one another in community, we too will find that God can work miracles—sometimes dramatic, sometimes very simple—to move the world a little closer to the divine realm of justice and peace.

Our Hebrew Bible story for tonight is part of the prophet Elijah’s dramatic conflict with the wicked King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Elijah announces that God will send a three year drought to punish their idolatry and injustice, and that rain or dew will henceforth fall only on his command. He then takes the sensible course of getting out of town fast, and takes up residence near the Wadi Cherith east of the Jordan --a natural watercourse which fills only in the rainy season. There God sends ravens to feed him bread and meat until the water dries up, and this is where our story begins. God could continue to hand out individualized miracles by giving Elijah the power to call for rain and refill the wadi. Instead, the Spirit directs Elijah to ask help from another person—a Gentile, at that--and give her and her household help in return. He travels to Zarephath, meets the widow at the city gate, and requests a drink from her precious and dwindling water supply. She immediately and generously agrees to share with this visiting foreigner. Then Elijah ups the ante and demands bread as well, and the widow reaches her limit. Her despair erupts into a protest that she has just enough oil and meal to make a scrap of food, and that then she and her son expect to die from hunger. Elijah promises that if she shares this last bit with him, he can make her oil and meal last as long as she needs, and her faith and cooperation help make this miracle occur—they all eat for many days, until the rain falls again and normal life can go on. Presumably God could have sent the ravens to visit again, or enabled Elijah to multiply her supplies regardless of her participation—and surely would have done so if she just couldn’t have brought herself to give away her child’s last food. But when she does find the inner strength to share from her poverty and become an active part of the miracle she gains not just food, but dignity—the memory that God worked through her and not just the prophet. Elijah, for his part, is kept connected to the human community and warned against the temptation to take pride in his dramatic powers by his dependence on the gift of a poor widow, one of the most marginalized and vulnerable members of any patriarchal society. And in the following story, when her son becomes ill and dies, she experiences an even more dramatic reward for her faith and generosity when Elijah raises him from the dead.

Like Elijah, Jesus’ prophetic critique of injustice brought him into conflict with the powers of his time—the Roman invaders and those members of the privileged Jewish establishment who colluded with them. He wasn’t much threat when he stuck to healing and teaching peasants in backwater Galilee, but then he exploded into Jerusalem to messianic shouts and palm branches, and focused his challenge on Herod’s opulent Temple project—the utmost symbol of the Judean king’s corrupt alliance between God and Caesar. Jesus attacked the moneychangers in the Temple , returned there to trade increasingly pointed barbs with scribes and Pharisees, and finally responded to a disciple’s admiration of the building by prophesying its horrifying destruction. In the midst of this escalating conflict, Jesus accuses the scribes of parading fake piety while devouring widow’s houses. Then he points out such a destitute widow dropping her tiny donation into the Temple treasury—two lepta (which the older translations called mites), which equaled one-sixty-fourth of the average daily wage. Jesus says that this is really more than the large sums of extra cash showily dropped in by the rich folks, because it is all that she has to live on.

This familiar and beloved story is usually taken to be an admonition to give like the widow—to give sacrificially, well beyond our financial and emotional comfort zones. It is an important challenge to those of us who, even in this recession, are privileged beyond many Americans and certainly beyond most people in the developing world. But this may not be the entire moral of the story, which hinges on what exactly Jesus meant by the scribes “devouring widow’s houses” and the widow giving “all that she has to live on.” In Jesus’ world, even more than in our world today, men enjoyed the majority of money and social power, and women’s security for themselves and their children depended first on their fathers, and then on their husbands. A woman who was divorced or widowed, especially if she did not have a wealthy birth family or a grown son to help provide for her and defend her rights, was often in a very precarious position. Some commentators suggest that those who devoured widow’s houses would be trustees appointed to protect the property of a widow who took advantage of this position to bleed off profit—like a modern day tycoon who joins a charity board for his image and then goes on to embezzle donations. Tonight’s widow might in fact have been reduced to poverty by just such a scam, and yet given with impressive generosity from her limited resources—what Jesus referred to with Semitic exaggeration as “all she had to live on.” Other exegetes argue that “devouring widow’s houses” would consist precisely of pressure upon vulnerable people like the widow to give desperately needed funds—literally all she had to live on--to the extravagant and unnecessary Temple building project—like a modern day televangelist convincing lonely watchers to send in their prescription and grocery money in return for a friendly voice on the dial-a-prayer line. In this case Jesus would not be focusing on the widow as a role model so much as calling to conversion those who are exploiting her. Part of tonight’s Gospel message may also be a warning against what twelve step programs call codependence—giving too much and too often, in a way that fosters irresponsibility in the receiver or is unhealthy and damaging for the giver. There is convincing evidence for each of these positions, and we will never know exactly what was in the mind of Jesus, or of the early Christian community which passed on this story to us.

This ambiguity is frustrating, because like our world, and many of our individual lives right now, our Journey community is facing a crisis, and it is far from evident what response God is inviting us to. Our financial resources are rapidly running out, and our participation in Sunday worship and other activities is quite a bit smaller than some of the peak times that I, as a new member, have only heard about. There are probably a variety of feelings about our situation swirling around in this worship space, and in each of our inner spaces. Like me, you may at different times feel anxiety, guilt, hope, resentment, determination, or a host of other things I haven’t thought of. It is not an easy place to be. Like every other place to be, though, it has the potential for grace and transformation. The crisis pressing in on us, and the ambiguity of tonight’s readings about justice and generosity, call us to discernment, to an ever-more-intent listening to God’s Spirit speaking in our world, ourselves, and one another. We are called to reflect carefully on the world’s need, and also on our lives--to note when our giving brings us more life and when it drains us. We are called to pray intently for a generous heart—but also for guidance about how and when to share our time, talent, and treasure.

When Jesus encountered this widow, he was facing his own crisis of stress, grief, discernment, and the apparent failure of his ministry. Perhaps he was so moved by her situation because he could identify with it; perhaps he took strength from her courage and generosity within the limits of her unjust situation as he wrestled with God about his own. When we come to this table, we remember his choice—like the widow’s--of challenging, nonviolent love in the face of evil. Let us come in memory of him, and in memory of her, and in memory of all those throughout the world facing injustice or suffering. Let us bring all our struggles and all our questions to the challenging, compassionate, life-giving generosity of our God.