“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.”
Spiritual exertion won’t end suffering.
Where did she go next? The woman with the coins — Did she return home, and continue sobbing into her sleeves about the memories of her deceased children? Or had her children abandoned her for dreams far away years before? When she placed her coins into the treasury, did she remember the days long past when she came to the temple as a child? The days when she was too naive to imagine how dark, lonely, and desperate life can get.
When Jesus hangs out with depressed and rejected characters, he always lifts them up — he shocks us with his affirmation of society’s least useful and most needy.
Think about this: When you or I see something needy, we first feel guilty like we should help. Then we start creating algebraic formulations to determine our emotional sustainability in this situation. I can be this person’s friend for three days without losing my will to live.
The point is: none of us really know how to deal with depressed people. Being depressed is basically an inability to deal with ourselves. This is part of what makes depression so lonely. On the other hand, self-assured people lure us into their orbit without any effort — we chase them around with cameras and force them to write self-help books. How is your marriage so perfect?!!! Give us every tip and trick!
When Christ hangs out with self-assured people, he always sends them hurtling back to the harsh realities of life under the sun. Crash landing. Why is Jesus pouring gasoline on our spaceship to the heavens. Jesus is torching it. What the hell. Starship Glory is ablaze. How will we get ourselves back to the stars? Then Jesus, with that wry smile and a “can full of gas and a handful of matches”(Eminem) reminds us: “With man this is impossible” [of course it’s impossible! You just torched our only spaceship] “but with God all things are possible.”
The spaceship is a metaphor for holiness — or whatever it is that you think will get you to the stars. The spaceship is a metaphor for the dirt and dust that we roll around in like pigs and then try to pass off as some sort of divine currency which God neeeeeeeds so badly that he will strike a deal on our terms. We love bartering. It makes us feel strong. In control. Together. Not desperate.
But the woman wasn’t bartering with her few coins. The realities of life had set in. She knew the dull, perpetual pain of life that only yielded to even sharper, more disillusioning pains of life. She knew this desperation in ways that you or I are culturally limited from ever grasping.
The bible isn’t a record of the most successful glory-hoarders in written history.
The bible is the story of God’s gracious truth eclipsing mankind’s hopeless delusions.
Torch your spaceship.
Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
