"Boots and Buttonhole" Church

Sermon 11-11-18

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

When you were little, did you ever daydream that you would become a famous movie star? Maybe you imagined that you would end up on Star Search or get discovered on American Idol or America’s Got Talent. My cousin once went to an audition for American Idol when one of those nation-wide auditions happened in a city near us. She told us it was NOTHING like what you see on TV. On the show, you see the famous three judges in a room by themselves with the lucky or unlucky singer. That was for just a small fraction of people. The rest of them, my cousin included, were corralled into a school gym, where dozens of people were auditioning all at the same time, in front of the B or even C team of judges, and she could barely hear herself sing. What a different experience to the one she thought she might have had. And, spoiler alert, even though my cousin sings very well, she did NOT make it on the show.

Pretty soon we grow up and grow wiser, through perhaps some similar life experience, and realize that we can’t ALL be famous. Maybe we might have a “15 minutes of fame” moment or are lucky to “know someone who knows someone famous.” But most of us will be famous only in the way that Naomi Shahib Nye describes in her NOT very well-known poem. “The river is famous to the fish,” She writes.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

By this time in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was getting to be pretty famous – but more like a boot than a dress shoe. At the beginning of Chapter 12, Jesus has made a pit stop at the temple to do a little teaching on his way to his crucifixion. This chapter in Mark has two big themes – about money and about belonging. At the end of this chapter, Jesus parks himself in front of the offering box in the temple and watches as people put in their offerings in.

Some rich people walked by and made a show of writing big checks – maybe even while wearing some version of fancy dress shoes. I imagine they did so with those huge prop checks – you know, the ones that you see all the time on Publisher’s Clearing House? That kind of giving reveals that they want to be famous for their “generosity.”

And then a poor widow came by, and in goes the entire amount of her social security check, without fanfare or notice. Jesus noticed, and pointed out to his disciples that, out of her lack, she had given more than the richest member of the congregation. They had all given what they could afford… out of their excess. She had given though she couldn’t afford it.

In those days, a widow was at the mercy of others to survive. She was a burden on her family. She had no disposable income; she was utterly dependent. In fact, when a woman’s husband died, her husband’s wealth was put in a trust, to which the widow had no direct access. Her husband’s estate was run by the Scribes, who were legal experts working with the people who were in power, both politically and religiously. Jesus describes them as wearing long robes and seeking all the attention for themselves by grabbing the best places and showing false piety. This is what Jesus means by “devouring widows houses” – they had “oversight” over the estates of these widows and were known to skim off the top. They then “generously” gave these widows a small allowance in order to survive.

This particular widow on has only 2 small coins to her name – the smallest denomination in circulation at the time, called Lepta –because the scribes have not left her anything else. And even then, she gave literally her last cent to the very institution that was keeping her in poverty, the same institution that supported the scribes and kept them in power. She gave everything she had to the temple treasury - to a building that in less than a few decades would be a pile of rubble on the ground, thanks to the Roman Empire that is currently in power, and with whom the scribes are collaborating. 

She gave what she had, and her offering impressed Jesus more than all the vast sums the rich had contributed. Though she was invisible to society at large, and had no legal power or religious clout, she gave away what little she did have. She trusted she would be ok, and she knew that the God would not forsake her, even though the people who were supposed to protect her and cared for her had forsaken her. 

Jesus is not praising this widow for her “giving till it hurts” attitude… though this text has been used for centuries in that way. As a pastor friend of mine puts it, “Jesus is mad that this woman is giving her very life into something that won’t last. He’s not mad at her, he’s mad at the system that forces her to do this.” This is not unlike the situation that Martin Luther found himself in, in Germany over 500 years ago. The institutional church in his time had convinced poor, vulnerable people to part with what little money they had to free their beloved relatives from purgatory… all the while actually funding a huge building project. The tagline from that program was something like: “when a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.”

In Jesus’ time, the influential, the wealthy, and the people in power had convinced this widow that she was not enough, and she had to give all of herself, her whole life, in order to be worthy. Jesus saw her, however, and saw her true value as a beloved child of God. Jesus is always seeing people that we tend to overlook, people that we undervalue. They may not be famous to us, but they are famous to Jesus… just as a tear is famous to a cheek, and a river is famous to the fish who live in it.

The rest of the not-so-famous poem by Naomi Shihab Nye goes like this:

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

Have we forgotten what our church can do? Sure, there were times that Family of God had more people, more money, and more ministries. Sure, there are plenty of churches around us who currently seem pretty flush with those things and seem pretty “successful”. Sure, there are plenty of congregation who are expanding their buildings or getting a lot of attention. And not to say that these things by themselves are bad. But Jesus is telling us to be on the look out for the times when WE think that we need to spend all our time and resources going after THESE things in order to “properly” do God’s work. Because when we do that, we give away the “might,” we do have, and have nothing left to give.

We don’t have to have a huge programs in order to be doing the work of God’ Kingdom. We don’t have to have three services on a Sunday morning, with a ten-piece band. We don’t have to be the best or the biggest, and we don’t even have to be BETTER or BIGGER.

To do God’s work, we only have to be ourselves, and to stop listening to those who are telling us that we are not enough. Because if we don’t, OUR “widow’s mite,” as this story is known for, might just get used up by “Big Successful Church Syndrome.” Are we giving our “mite” to the work of the kingdom, to work that will last… work that will transform lives and nurture faith? Or are we going to give away our mite and allow it to be used up in the endless pursuit of being the kind of church we are not?

Our “widow’s mite” may be small, but it is precious. And our “mite” can do a lot, as long as we stop trying to be what we are not. We don’t have to be a famous church.

Jesus needs a pully and buttonhole church. Jesus needs a “boot on the ground” church rather than a “dress shoe on the floor” church. Jesus needs Family of God to not forget that we might not be famous, but we are enough. We can be “Boots and buttonhole” kind of famous. Amen.