Well, that was a hard week for me -- on a lot of levels, not just the election. Kinda brutal. But I really don’t know why I let the election bother me as much as I did: this was the 12th time I have voted for President, and I have rarely felt any joy in it at all. And those joyous times now seem so far away. Perhaps today’s lessons give us pause to set ourselves on the right track. I wonder whether the placement of Psalm 146 on the Sunday following election day was intentional. The psalmist implores us to sing the praises of God, while at the same time telling us not to put our trust in princes, in human beings whom cannot save us. Leaders are important.
The New Testament reminds us in places like Romans 13 that they are instruments of God for the good order of societies. But in the long run, they’re just people. They’re flawed same as the rest of us, as prone to goof up as the rest of us. And they’re mortal. They are temporary. The psalm teaches us that God frustrates the plans of the wicked. Sometimes in the short term the wicked get away with far too much for far too long. (And some of those wicked people are among those who rise to be leaders of nations and a few such unsavory folks even rose to become kings in Israel!). But precisely because that is true, it only counts as one more compelling and vital reason to put our final hopes in God alone.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. And at the end of the cosmic day, we want to be on the side of that justice and of the God who insures its coming. At age 62 with the next four years now mapped out, it is hard to see the arc. But Psalm 146 should provide us comfort that, no matter what things look like around us right now, God alone will have the final say.
And so yes: put your trust in God alone. So how do we do that? The other readings for today give us some suggestions. Both the Kings reading and Mark’s Gospel relate stories about widows. Women who had lost their husbands held a special place in God’s kingdom because, though becoming a widow did not automatically mean a woman would become impoverished, the absence of a husband made her much more vulnerable to that fate. There are dozens of stories about widows sprinkled throughout the Bible. In many of them, we find God either commanding His people to care for widows or castigating them for failure to enact justice and compassion on their behalf. In Kings, a woman left with nothing to feed herself and her son feeds the prophet with what she has left. She risks starving, but still makes bread and gives drink. Mark’s Gospel relates the story of the widow and the two coins.
We find Jesus taking a break from teaching about those who were complicit in a corrupt political and religious system. He taught the crowds and then, after all that drama, He sat at the Temple and watched. He invited his friends to watch with him, and to acknowledge a woman otherwise lost in the crowd, who put her last two cents in the collection jar, even though Jesus had just taught about the corruption that money would support. It’s amazing to me that Jesus would just sit and comment about it, without any action on His part. But here, he simply asks his friends if they saw her.
We never find out how things turned out for the two widows. We don’t know how the woman with no food for herself or her child survived, or if the prophet somehow helped her. And we don’t know what happened to the woman who put her two coins in the collection box. We are left to wonder, and perhaps hope or assume that everything turned out okay. The widows in Mark could be seen as an outstanding model of sacrificial giving. But consider that Jesus doesn’t praise the woman for her offering. He doesn’t tell the disciples to follow her example. He doesn’t use her offering to deliver a sermon on the virtues of tithing and stewardship. He doesn’t deliver a lecture on the importance of supporting church operating budgets. Rather, Jesus notices her and comments on her participation in a society that had turned its eyes away from her plight.
God sent Jesus to bring to our attention the invisible among us. In that way, God walked along with us to help us direct our gazes toward those who may not have a great deal to celebrate in the coming Christmas season. And God not only placed a star in the sky to light the way to the manger, God placed a light in our hearts and minds that we might learn to see through the eyes of Christ. Christianity calls on us to love, care and give extravagantly. Saints such as Francis of Assissi took that challenge to heart. We should too.
But the acts of the women in our readings today go against every instinct that we as people have. Protecting our assets, those we love and our integrity are natural reactions. When on an airplane, we are asked to place our own oxygen mask on before assisting others. We need to survive. In his new book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, statistician, political wonk and professional poker player Nate Silver lays out a statistical analysis of how to calculate the risks you take in your life. He notes that your upbringing largely defines how much risk you are willing to take. He notes the anxiety you suffer when you go beyond the risks you’re used to. But his ultimate conclusion is that even if you become fabulously successful, the financial markets will quickly limit your ability to play. At the end, Silver shows how you may succeed but wonders if it is worth it.
But in a spiritual sense God asks us to try. It is not easy or comfortable to see who God sees. For when we open our eyes to the suffering of others, we also come face-to-face with our own complicity in systems that maintain our comfort while keeping “widows, orphans and strangers” in their place, out of sight and out of mind. We act just as the scribes of Jesus’ day did. We don’t want to see the immigrants who work in our fields, washing dishes in our restaurants or doing other jobs we believe are beneath us. And now they face horrible deportations. We don’t want to see homeless people on city sidewalks as we make our way to the football game or the theater. We don’t want to see the children living in group homes around the country because they’ve been removed from violent families and are considered unadoptable.
But however difficult it is, we cannot ignore Jesus when he calls us over to sit with him for a moment and watch. Watch who participates in the life of our churches, our communities, our schools, our politics and our economies. Look into the dark corners of the world for the people in need of food, clothing, shelter, decent wages, a helping hand, an advocate, a friend. See the people who stand on street corners and speak only through messages written on cardboard signs. And then don’t simply observe. Help those who we see. Show them that God is love. Through us, God does what earthly leaders at their best are supposed to do (but too often do not): care for the weak. See the invisible people. Work justice for all and not just for the rich and the powerful. God’s greatness is seen in this work among us no less than in the majestic spectacle of His creation. So we need to do it. Amen.