“All
that is gold does not glitter,” This is the first line of a poem by J.R.R.
Tolkien. And it strikes me as a rather
fine summary of today’s Gospel story.
There are two distinctly different kinds of people represented by this gospel;
on the one hand we have the scribes who most certainly do glitter. They dress well, are extremely sociable and
give impressive and lengthy prayers.
They are seen and listened to, and they are everyone’s favorite dinner
guests. Along with them are the rich
folks who give their large sums of money, they too are seen and heard.
But
on the other hand we are shown a solitary woman. She is alone, she has no husband, no status
and no riches or fine clothing. No one
is listening to her or longing to invite her to dinner. She is the very picture of anonymity. Even the sound of her pennies as they drop
into the treasury is lost beneath the sound of all the other offerings. Only Jesus seems to notice her and he brings
her to the attention of his disciples saying to them “Truly I tell you, this
poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the
treasury. 44For 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.” This is a truly astounding thing to hear, one that turns
conventional wisdom on its head. How can
two copper pennies be more than all of that other money?
What
is Jesus really trying to tell us about this woman? Is she an example of the power of faith, and the
virtue of giving? Or should we lament this widow’s plight and cry out against
institutionalized poverty and injustice?
These are not bad lessons to learn and if we are moved by either of them
then I say Amen, but there is something else at work in this passage as well.
You
see Jesus does not exactly praise the woman for her giving, nor does he exactly
condemn the rich for theirs. What he
does do is invite his disciples, and us, to look at the world a little
differently, to see the real differences between the rich and the poor, to see
what real sacrifice actually looks like. Again and again in the Gospel Jesus moves the
spotlight away from the beautiful, stately, wealthy and seemingly important people
and instead focuses on people that maybe we would rather not notice at all, the
poor, the broken, the outcast. Not only
are we meant to notice the marginalized, but Jesus beckons us to look beyond
appearances and see them as he sees them, as God sees them. Jesus knows and wants us to know as well that
“all that is gold does not glitter.” But it is just so easy to get distracted
by shiny things.
There is a scene from
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that has stuck with me since I first saw the
movie 23 years ago. After solving mysteries,
fighting Nazis and narrowly escaping death half a dozen times Indiana is faced
with the task of finding the Holy Grail in order to save his father’s life.
So as his father lays on the brink of death, Indiana navigates his way
through trials that test his worthiness till finally he makes his way into a
room filled with shelves of gold and silver chalices each one more beautiful
than the next. The room shimmers and
glows as the light bounces off all the precious metal and jewel encrusted
vessels. In this place, out of all of
these choices, Indiana has to figure out which one is the actual Holy Grail.
Now I was 12 when I
first saw this movie but I remember my reaction to that room, how beautiful I
thought it was, and I remember my excitement as I waited to see which chalice
Indiana was going to pick. Would it be
the biggest chalice or the one with the prettiest jewels? And I admit I was pretty surprised and
somewhat disappointed to discover that the Holy Grail turned out to be a plain,
and somewhat dirty, wooden cup.
And yet, in a very real
way Jesus is that plain wooden chalice. His
whole life as we understand it is a lesson in looking closer. Born of an insignificant Jewish girl, and
raised as a carpenter’s son, he travelled the countryside with no home and no
money and he died a seemingly shameful death surrounded by criminals. Nothing about him said King of Kings, or Son
of God, but we know that even though he did not glitter he is the truest of all
gold. So when he saw this widow give away
what little she had, without any thought of recognition or reward, he saw his Kingdom,
the Kingdom of God, that topsy turvy place where the first are last, the
greatest are the servants of all and copper coins given by poor widows are
greater than any offering of the rich. And this is the challenge that we are faced
with. To look closer, to see God’s
Kingdom working all around us, and to discover that it is in those we least
expect, in the homeless, the old, the strange and forgotten people who live on
the fringes of our society, it is in them that the Kingdom of God shines most
brightly.
