Two Coins in the Temple

 When the widow put her two in the offering plate, Jesus said:

“Truly this poor widow put more in the treasury. 

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.”

Adapted from Mark 12:38-44

Come Stewardship Sunday, one of the most common texts you will hear is Mark 12:41-44 focusing on the widow as a model of sacrificial giving.

It’s one I used often for the same reason; make a sacrificial offering for the ministries of the church.

Another way I used the text was to highlight the difference between God’s ways and our ways.

The scribes paraded around the marketplace in their robes while they “devour widow’s houses” while this poverty-stricken widow gives her last two coins to the temple.

The widow, therefore, is a model disciple because she gave all she had.

There’s a problem here; it doesn’t seem like Jesus to ask a destitute woman to give all she had to God.

Jesus, as a Rabbi, would certainly know the scriptures don’t demand the poor to give everything they have to God.

Jesus would also know the probable reason the woman was destitute was that her husband died leaving her nothing; no adult son for support, no brothers, sisters, mother, father, or fields.

More than that, if the leaders had kept the law and loved God, the widow would not have been poor.

When the destitute widow put her two last coins in the wealthy temple, which hardly needed her coins, the purpose of the temple was called into question.

Jesus’ teaching is asking, when does a temple of God lose its reason to exist?

There are many ways to answer that question in today’s society.

For me, a glaring one is misunderstanding or misusing scripture.