Title: Religion Gone Bad
Text: Mark 12:38-44
Thesis: Religion goes bad when God is not the object of our devotion.
Introduction (Disclaimer… this introduction may not be for the faint of heart.)
I am fascinated by some of the reality programming on the Discovery Channel. One of the programs I enjoy is a reality program set in Alaska. Alaska: The Last Frontier is a reality show about the Kilcher family who live on 638 acres of land that has been home to the clan for three generations. They live off-the-grid so the show is largely about how the Kilcher family survives in that harsh place.
They have a small herd of cattle and raise sufficient prairie grass to feed them throughout the winter. They raise huge gardens. They raise chickens. They hunt and they fish. Nothing goes to waste.
On a recent episode it was time for the salmon run so the family took their net to the bay where they would set the net at low tide, wait for high tide and the running of the fish. When they arrived they found a dead fish on the beach that had gotten caught in a little tide pool when the tide went out. The Kilcher patriarch picked the fish up, looked it over, sniffed and said, “It’s still good… looks like we have supper.”
I hear that road kill is a favorite of freegans, foragers and survivalists. They say there are some risks to eating roadkill like rot, rabies and disease. However by making a few observations you can probably tell is it’s good to go. If the eyes are still clear, the fleas are still active in the fur and there is no rigor mortis it is likely good. But the final test is, if it stinks, don’t eat it!
The term “something stinks” has a much wider application than smelly fish or roadkill. When something doesn’t seem quite right we may comment, “there’s something fishy about this” or “something stinks.”
In our text today, Jesus observed some teachers of religious law and said, “Something stinks.” And the thing that had gone bad was religious piety. The first thing Jesus unpacks is a teaching on Extreme Piousness.
I. Extreme Piousness, Mark 12:38-40
Our text begins in verse 37 with what is described as a large crowd listening to Jesus with great delight.
Jesus said, “Beware of these teachers of religious law!”
In Luke 20:45 – 21:4 we find what we call a parallel passage to Mark 12:38-44. Matthew 23 also seems to parallel Mark 12:38-40 but does not include the story of the widow’s gift. And, Matthew 23 is, as a whole, a scathing indictment against the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees. He tells his listeners in that context that they should “obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they do not practice what they preach.” In the Matthew text Jesus refers to the religious teachers and Pharisees as “blind guides!” He says they “are like whitewashed tombs – beautiful on the outside but full of bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly they look like religious people but inwardly they are filled with hypocrisy.”
Piety is a good thing… however when a person become pious it isn’t. Something stinks when religion goes bad. Something stinks when genuine piety becomes piousness.
• Piety: Devoutness. Marked by spiritual devotion.
• Piousness: Conspicuous religiosity. Marked by sham or hypocrisy.
I do not believe Jesus was saying that every Pharisee was living a life of hypocrisy. But apparently hypocrisy was endemic in the religious culture at that time. When religion goes bad, it stinks.
Jesus made four observations about the religious leaders of the day. The religiosity of the religious leaders was marked by:
A. Pretense
The religious leaders, “like to parade around in flowing robes and receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces.” 12:38
As you know I sometimes were a robe and stole. Clerical garb has its place but imagine what you would think if I wore my robe to George’s for breakfast or you got a glimpse of me gassing my car up at the Shell station with my robe flapping in the breeze or swooping down the aisles at King Soopers. I once wore my robe to a gravesite. It was a cold and snowy day. I preceded the casket to the hearse. Got in the car with Mike Bolin, the funeral director and we followed the hearse out to Evergreen Cemetery. In the Midwest cemeteries are often located on hills that are not suitable for farming or building… this was one of those hilly ones. The hearse and everyone else made it up the hill but Mike’s Cadillac got stuck on the hill. There was nothing to do but get out and climb the hill to do the committal. My observation was that I must have looked like the flying nun trudging up that hill. I never wore my robe to the cemetery again. It was not so much a matter of pretense as it was practicality.
B. Prominence
The religious leaders, “love the seats of honor in the synagogue and the head table at banquets.” 12:39
These men loved to sit in the front seat at the Temple which faced the congregants. They wished to be seen as important. They loved to be seated at the head table at banquets… they were important!
C. Profiteering
And despite their show of spirituality Jesus said, “Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property…” 12:40a
Additionally they seemed to have developed a prosperity gospel that favored themselves.
Years ago a Christian attorney asked me to stop by his office. One of his clients was a very elderly couple in our church and he wanted some advice. He had observed that there was a televangelist to whom they had given a donation that was literally fleecing them with a barrage of urgent requests for more donations. Each time they received a plea for help they felt compelled to send another check because the needs were so great and the causes so important. Thousands of dollars were being sent to support a ministry that provided an opulent lifestyle for the well-known televangelist. That’s one way to devour the vulnerable…
Elder abuse is huge in our culture and it isn’t just the clergy and religious non-profits that are abusing our elders. Elder abuse includes:
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Neglect
• Emotional abuse
• Abandonment
and
• Exploitation – Exploitation is the illegal taking, misuse, or concealment of funds, property, or assets of a senior for someone else’s benefit.
Profiteering is never acceptable but it is especially repugnant when it is perpetrated upon vulnerable people under the guise of religion.
C. Piousness
Then picking up from his observation of how they shamelessly cheat widows he said, “and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public.” 12:40b (There is nothing like a good , long prayer to establish the appearance of spirituality…)
Jesus concluded his comments about the hypocrisy of the religious leaders by adding, “Because of this, they will be more severely punished.” Jesus seems to have a particular dislike for hypocrisy.
The widows were among the most vulnerable of Jesus’ day. Some were very poor and the Jewish community was charged with the responsibility of caring for them when they were without resources. But not all widows were poor and religious leaders often either acted as guardians to make sure no one took advantage of the widow of means or… it was not uncommon for a religious leader to take advantage of the generosity of a widow. You could say that they were either embezzling funds, freeloading or mismanaging wills and estates for their own good.
Commentators are all over the map on this one. But apparently many of them were skimmers and scammers who took advantage of vulnerable individuals for their own gain. And it was not as though what they skimmed or scammed was for necessities… they wished to live very well and in fact better than most. It really reeked when those who were charged with protecting the most vulnerable were guilty of taking advantage of them.
Then, following this scathing indictment against the hypocrisy of extreme piousness, Jesus points to the extravagant devotion of a poor widow.
II. Extravagant Devotion, Mark 12:41-44
“…as the crowds dropped in their money, many rich people put in large amounts. Then a poor widow came and dropped in everything she had to live on.” Mark 12:41-42
The story seems to be a deliberate attempt to compare and contrast the pious hypocrisy of the religious with that of the sincere piety of the widow. One of the things that really makes this passage pop is the possibility that the woman was one of those vulnerable widows who had been shellacked by the religious leaders. She was likely supporting a corrupt system that had exploited her.
Jesus is condemning the religious leaders and a system of economic exploitation that put the woman in the position of having to donate the last of her money. His comments were not only spoken with righteous indignation… he spoke with deep sadness.
In our text Jesus identifies two aspects in giving:
A. Means to Give
Jesus watched as the crowds dropped in their money. Many rich people put in large amounts. Then a poor widow came and dropped in two small coins. Mark 12:41-42
In the story today there were three kinds of people in the crowd and they all contributed money to the Temple treasury.
1. The ones not mentioned – we assume those not identified also had some means to give.
2. The rich people who put in large amounts – we are told they had a great deal of means and contributed a great deal. There were apparently seven, trumpet shaped offering boxes. It is unclear as to what they were made of but commentators assume the clatter or rattle or jangle of coins dropped into the box indicated the size of the donation. The rich apparently made a lot of noise.
3. The poor widow – is said to have had two small coins.
Our text says she dropped in “two small coins.” Commentators liken her gift to her last “two-cents” or “two pennies.” The point is that her gift was a pittance. One commentator pointed out that what she gave was nearly in the category of Monopoly money… another made note that this was not spare change to the widow. She was all-in, so to speak.
However it seems that the “means” of giving does not register as much as highly as does one’s “motive” for giving.
B. Motives for Giving
When Jesus made his assessment of what he had just witnessed he said, “In truth, this poor widow has given more than all the others who are making contributions. They gave a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she had to live on.” Mark 12:43-44
Jesus is not condemning the giving of large gifts. Jesus is simply making an observation that comparatively, the widow’s gift reflected a level of devotion greater than that of the largest giver.
God really does look at the heart. Having means to do an act of love and devotion is different than having the proper motive for doing an act of love and devotion. Her gift was smaller than the smallest and greater than the greatest.
High debt, ill-regulated markets, the over optimism of lenders and investors and the lack of growth in industry are all blamed for the Great Depression. During the Great Depression the government, under President FDR, implemented numerous programs as relief for the 60% of Americans who were living in poverty and to stimulate recovery of the economy.
In that agriculture is the source for food for our country, one of the things done was the creation of an agency given the task of giving seed grants and sometimes seed loans to farmers to help them stay on their farms. They were so poor they could not buy seed to plant their fields. And if they could not plant their fields there would be a severe food shortage in the country.
One agent tells the story of finding an elderly woman living in a broken down old farm house, covered in tar paper. She was barely eking out a living on a miserable plot of land.
The government agent asked the woman, “If the government gave you $200, what would you do with it?”
She said, “I’d give it to the poor.”
Given the means that woman had the heart to help those who had even less than did she.
Conclusion
The challenge for me today is in discerning the relevance of this text. How might we apply it today? Is it just about the false piety of the teachers of religious law or may false piety have a broader application. Is the pretense and false piety of the teachers who exploited widows to be viewed in contrast with the devotion of the poor widow?
Perhaps we may see the text in a larger context of how we live together in a Christian community? Is it only clergy who should guard against pretense, the desire for prominence, using roles and relationships to gain personal profit, and pretending to be more pious that they really are?
Is the comparison of the giving habits of the rich and the poor intended to cast aspersions on the rich and lift up the poor and vulnerable as models of heartfelt generosity… we all know that a rich person can be genuinely generous and a person of lesser means as miserly as miserly gets.
Maybe the over-arching lesson to be learned from this text is that everyone needs to smell good. Everyone needs to live out a faith that has not and is not going bad from the rot of hypocrisy.
If reality is not a show. If religion goes bad when God is not the object of our devotion then… maybe what Jesus should observe about us is that we have about us, the pleasing scent of genuine humility and heartfelt generosity.
