Mark 12:38-44
12:38-40
– For regular students of the Bible, it
might be hard to recapture just how shocking these teachings of Jesus were. He
continues his attacks on “the teachers of the Law,” a category that would have
included many of the familiar foes of the Gospels—Pharisees, Sadducees,
scribes, etc. It’s perhaps worth remembering that these men were often among
the most revered in society. Some of the greatest rabbis (that is, “teachers of
the Law”) in the Jewish rabbinic tradition came from Jesus’ own period of
Jewish theology—names like Hillel, Shammai, and Gamaliel, still revered among
Jews to this day. Even among the religious leaders that the public didn’t
always like very much (think Sadducees here), they were still offered great honor
because of their important position in Jewish religious rites. Yet Jesus warns
his disciples to watch out for these teachers of the Law, and he points out not
their doctrine, but their daily habits of life. Why? Because a dangerous
teacher will often be easier to spot in his daily living than in his doctrine.
Jesus actually agrees theologically with much of the Pharisaical position (as
in questions about the Scriptural canon, the resurrection of the dead, angels,
etc., all issues of debate in the Jewish theology of that day), but he
recognizes that the Pharisaical way of living out their beliefs leads to a
dead-end of faith. It becomes faith by the rules, for the rules’ sake, rather
than a faith directed toward the God who lovingly offers a rule of life—a rule
suited towards opening our lives toward freedom, joy and love. Instead, the
Pharisees have taken that rule and made it hard and narrow, a rite of passage
which only they and a few other ascetic exemplars might be able to obtain. In
this particular passage, Jesus directs attention towards the teachers’
attachment to public acclaim. The teachers of the Law are faulted for making
their teachings an opportunity for personal gain, for showmanship. Such
behavior shows that they do not truly understand the Law of which they claim to
be teachers. The Law of God (especially as interpreted through the Prophets) is
crafted toward shaping hearts of justice and compassion for one’s neighbors and
fellow-men, and especially for widows and orphans. But these men have made it
about themselves. Jesus highlights this mark of dangerous teachers, because
this danger is particularly easy to see. Most people have a fairly good sense
of when others are putting themselves rather too much in the spotlight. This is
a necessary warning not only for the believers of Jesus’ day, but of ours as
well, because many of the things that he says about these teachers could just
as easily be said about some of our pastors.
12:41-44
– Jesus follows up his warnings about
religious showmanship with a concrete example. He points out the rich people
who were throwing large amounts of offerings into the Temple treasury, an act
that was clearly visible and thus probably done with a good bit of fanfare
(especially when one considers that the currency in use would have been a noisy
sackful of coins, not a discreet paper bill or personal check). Jesus directs
his disciples’ attention away from the rich people’s gifts, and toward the poor
widow. His point is not that all of the rich are horrible people, nor even that
they are simply in it for the attention and acclaim—he doesn’t say anything of
the kind. What he does say, though, is that their gifts don’t actually compare
to the gift of the poor widow. They have given a lot, yes, but they have plenty
to spare. She, on the other hand, has given everything. Some of the rich may
well have been pious people who gave to God with glad and sincere hearts;
others were probably just making a pompous show of their giving. But the widow’s
gift is the kind that God can truly use—it is the gift of total commitment, the
gift of loving God so much that one is willing to give him everything one has—money,
home, skills, assets, even life itself. She gave more because she gave all. Our
God is not an accountant or a hedge-fund manager. He’s not looking for the big
endowments; after all, “he owns the cattle on a thousand hills”! No, our God is
a Lover, and he wants us, our whole
selves in total, faithful commitment to him.