St Thomas and St John, Newport, Isle of Wight
Sunday 24th July, 2005
THE ART OF THE WIDOW’S COPPER COINS
Readings: 2 Samuel 6; 1 Corinthians 13; Luke 21:1-4
I want to look with you this morning at the Gospel passage, because it is really quite dramatic. First of all, there are two questions that would be asked by an investigative journalist that we usually overlook. How did Jesus know that the widow placed two copper coins in the Temple collection box, and how did he know that this is all she had?
In one way, these questions detract from the full meaning of the scene, which is about generosity, the generosity of the poor, a constant gospel truth and very characteristic of Luke’s Gospel. But they are worth pondering. The scene is very much of a short ‘clip’ of a drama. We are in the part of the Outer Court of the Temple in Jerusalem, where women were permitted (they were not allowed anywhere else). The Temple, of course, is long destroyed, but we know from other sources that there were thirteen collection boxes in all, shaped like upside down trumpets, so that the money placed in them couldn’t be stolen by others. So, to answer those two questions, perhaps the different ‘chink-chink’ sounds of coins being dropped into one of these boxes would have been familiar to Jesus. Perhaps he knew the sounds that different metals made. Copper was the cheapest by far, and of very little value. And, then, perhaps he knew, or thought he knew, from her face what all this meant to her; or perhaps he is exaggerating – in order to contrast her generosity with the large amounts given by others, or disproportionate to their wealth.
Generosity always humbles when it is genuine, spontaneous, and one somehow knows just how much it has meant to the giver in terms of sacrifice. Sacrifice – that’s the key word, and it makes me think of an occasion when we had a Parish Gift Day to tart off an Appeal to refurbish and reorder the church where I used to be parish priest. I was told very firmly by the Churchwardens to sit behind the table all that Saturday morning, and see what happened. And although the parish was located in Guildford, it did have some pockets of real poverty. So who was the first to arrive? An old man who lived on his own in mild squalor, long since departed this life, who used to sing the hymns loudly and slowly, always tailing off at the end of every line, and driving the choir up the wall. But sometimes choirs do sometimes need to be driven up the wall! In he shuffled, with an envelope containing what I knew to be for him quite a sum. And it gently put all of us to shame, for the experience of receiving that gift was very moving indeed.
In this passage, Jesus is not theorising about generosity. He is not telling a parable or a story. Nor is he performing some sort of miracle – note carefully, that none of his miracles is about money. They are about healing and nourishment. Here, however, he is dealing with money in another way, just to make sure that we do not avoid the issue. And the context is not Roman taxes, the Emperor’s head (cf Luke 20:22 ff, and Matthew 22:72 ff, Mark 12:14 ff.): it does not concern whether we should pay taxes or not. It is about what we think the Temple, which represents God’s presence among us, is really worth. How the money is spent – that’s another issue, which all people, religious or not, will debate until the end of time! We are not yet at that question at this stage: and perhaps as a church we leap there too quickly, before addressing the prior question, which is our generosity, the extent to which we are prepared to be generous ourselves. To contribute ‘out of abundance’, as Jesus puts it of the rich, is easy. But to give when one is one the bread-line like old Mr Eley is another matter.
So how can be become generous? One way is to ponder this morning’s gospel scene. Another is to think back to the other two readings. First of all, David dances before the Lord, as the ‘ark of the covenant’, the box containing the tablets of the ten commandments, which is the real symbol of God’s presence and promise to his people, was brought into Jerusalem; and brought there in order to be placed – eventually – in the Temple, which was yet to be built. It is a scene of delight and joy, as well as one with no economic or material purpose whatever. And that’s the point. The Christian faith, to the hard-hearted secularist, has no real function – except perhaps to help people become good citizens. But that’s not the heart of the matter. It is only a by-product. It is not what the Gospel in essence is telling us. And that takes us to the second reading, Paul’s great hymn to love, in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, Greece. Years ago as a student I walked up and down what was left of the main street in the old city in Corinth, and could imagine the wealth of that trading community, and Paul trying to reach their hearts: love never ends – but, by implication, most other things do, sermons included!
These are God’s ways of helping us be generous. There are others as well: like seeing a need and meeting it; going the extra mile with someone who has neither the strength nor the ability. The most effective way is to be alive to this world’s questions, without letting them dominate. So the defiance of Londoners has been an example of generosity; we will carry on, and not be defeated by a tiny minority of people who are totally unrepresentative of a faith that has produced one of the richest cultures the world has known.
Generosity also means self-criticism: not relying only on what we think, but realising that there are others on this planet as well. That anonymous widow with her two copper coins is yet one more example of Christianity’s endless inner resources for a very small amount to go a very, very long way indeed. How much the poorer would Luke’s Gospel be – and Mark’s as well, the only other to record the scene – had Jesus not been there observing people, ‘people-watching’, and always able to show his followers sometimes challenging truths in very ordinary circumstances.
But there is yet one more way of learning generosity, and that results from events like your Arts Festival. Art is an important way of being taken out of oneself. Many people who are, for one reason or another placing themselves on the edge of Christianity, are still able to use art as a back-door into faith: listening to music, looking at paintings, gazing at icons. All this has become an industry in our life-time, a memory back to a time when the Church encouraged the arts from a more dominant position than is the case today – though I think I prefer the more tentative, servant image of the contemporary scene, because it is more Christ-like and more convincing.
The widow’s two coins – yes, a stirring scene, and one which sits uncomfortably with sleepy Anglicans who think that keeping the church going is someone else’s problem, and that going on to enhance and develop its ministry is not worth the effort. The widow’s two copper coins in one of those upside down, trumpet-like collection boxes, in the Jerusalem temple over two thousand years ago – it is a scene to inspire and also to warn. When people say to me, as they do from time to time, that they can’t give any more, I am afraid I sometimes call their bluff: how do they spend their money? On food, recreation, a bit of travel .,.. and then I usually end – ‘I just don’t believe the money is not there.’ And why is this so? Because our gospel, the gospel, is not an idea. It is a truth. It is an event. It is about God taking our flesh upon himself, in order to show us a better way to live – where we are invited to dance the dance of faith, along with David on his way into Jerusalem and to love both him, each other, and ourselves and to go one step further – and live generosity in his sight.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
