Today's gospel, Mark 12:38-44 has always been a threat to me. For one thing, Jesus begins by criticizing the religious leaders who crave public acclaim, who offer "long prayers," and enjoy prominent positions at big banquets. I get noticed on Sundays. I like respect. I have been known to go on and on in prayer occasionally. Thus, this passage makes me nervous.

Moreover, then Jesus observes "rich people," offering gifts to God at the temple. Even though I don't like thinking of myself as rich, compared with the majority of the world's people, I am rich.

Then Jesus notices a poor woman whom most of the crowd overlooks, the poor widow who offers all that she has, even though it is only a modest coin. "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" (v. 44).

We see a couple of themes here that are dear to Mark's Gospel. For one thing, there is a rather constant barrage of criticism of the powerful and the influential. Then, there is note of the poor and the vulnerable. Moreover, there is the theme of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.

When the kingdom of God comes near to us, the world breaks forth into various kinds of praise and thanksgiving. One way that we praise God is through offering money. The poor widow, it would seem, gave from more than a sense of duty or legal obligation. Her generous self-giving strikes us as an overflowing of gratitude and praise. Her gift is perceived by Jesus, not as a harsh sacrifice, but as a noteworthy expression of the kingdom. When the kingdom of God comes, there is healing, exorcism, and joy.

I say exorcism since it is clear to any who look upon our society that we need to be freed from our love of and worship of money. We need to be exorcized of the demon of materialism that holds so many of us captive.

In the fall of the year, many churches have their yearly church stewardship campaigns in which people are asked to give to the church. We in the United Church of New Westminister have started a Stewardship committee too. No doubt this text will be used to encourage a spirit of generous giving. And indeed the text is about giving.

In it, Jesus turns his disciples' attention away from the discussion of the prominent and the powerful (the scribes discussed in the first part of today's gospel) toward the poor widow. It isn't the size of her gift that Jesus recognizes or romanticizes. Rather, Jesus seems to indicate her utter self-abandonment in giving. She gives all. All.

Here is a woman whom we would label as a victim. Her husband has died, so now she is the victim of the economic and social injustices of the world. She is vulnerable.

But note what she does. She turns the whole system of accumulation and acquisition on its head. She gives all. In so doing, she becomes a judgment upon the cautious, miserly, grasping culture where most of us live and shows a way to a very different world. Jesus, being the embodiment of that other way, that alternative world, praises her.

A friend of mine; a young minister, serves at a large church that hired a church fund-raiser to help them with a large capital-funds campaign. She told this story;

At the initial meeting, the fund-raiser asked the board about our goals for the campaign.

"You have to understand that we are a church that has a high percentage of older people, mostly widows on fixed incomes. So we really can't expect to raise too much money."

The fund-raiser asked to see a list of our major givers. He took the list with him at the close of the meeting.

The next meeting, he told the board that he had done an analysis of our congregation's giving.

"Please note," he told us in his report on his analysis of the church's giving patterns, "that the majority of your top 50 contributors are 'widows on fixed incomes.' Please note that, according to my calculations, those I widows on fixed incomes I pay about 60 percent of this congregation's annual budget. I'd say if you want to improve the giving in this congregation, you need to talk to those women first, find out why they give, then try to infect the rest of the congregation with the faith of these 'widows on fixed incomes."'

That is the key to this text ... faith. Not just that the widow was an example of giving, or that we who have much should feel guilty and give more ... it is about faith. That is what Jesus was pointing to in the Widow; her faith. And her faith pointed to something even bigger ... the in-breaking reign of God. Jesus, in seeing her, saw ... himself.

For you see, this story comes just before Jesus will make his own offering. When he will, in proclamation and expression of the Kingdom of God, will place what he has been given for the kingdom of God, ... his life on the cross. So that we might experience the joy, freedom, and new life that comes through the power of God on the cross.

When the Widow gives all ... Jesus sees his mission; being the Christ. Jesus sees God's reign. Jesus sees the grace, the liberty; the table turning power of our crucified God's unfolding reign ... what some see as the most unlikely place of all. But then, that is how the Kingdom of God works.