Archive for the ‘Stewardship’ Category

Giving it all away – what must I do to inherit the kingdom?

October 25, 2025

Pentecost 20 – 2025

Luke 18:15-30

Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer and Life-giver. Amen.

The Gospel of Luke differs from Mark and Matthew in a number of significant ways. Among other things, Luke demonstrates a particular interest in the Holy Spirit and in prayer – Jesus is often to be found praying in this gospel. Another way in which Luke differs from Mark and Matthew – one which is evident in today’s gospel – is wealth: its power to seduce and its false assurance of security.

Some parables are found only in Luke and some of these specifically target the wealthy. The parable of the barn builder exposes the folly of holding on to excess wealth. You will remember that after a particularly good harvest, a rich man thinks that he will store up his wealth for himself and will “eat, drink and be merry.”  That very night he dies. His wealth has not been able to protect him, nor has he benefitted from it.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man is convinced that he is justly rich and that Lazarus deservedly poor. Even though Lazarus lies at his door, the rich man does nothing to alleviate his hunger. Finally, the rich man dies and finds himself in Hades, looking up at Lazarus who is in the arms of Abraham. The chasm that divided them in life has been reversed in death and it is too late now to change anything. In life the rich man’s wealth might have given him all that he needed, in death no amount of wealth will serve to quench his thirst.

That said, Luke doesn’t seem to have a problem with wealth per se, but with a person’s attitude to it. As best we can tell, Theophilus was an educated, and possibly comfortably well-off Greek and the parable of the steward who makes provision for his future supports the view that Luke doesn’t advocate that to follow Christ all of us need to give everything away.

In Luke’s mind, the problem with wealth is at least three-fold. In the first instance, Luke can see that wealth often gives to those who have it a sense of entitlement and that this has the potential to blind the rich to the suffering of others. Secondly, Luke understands that those who possess wealth tend to become dependent on their standard of living and unwilling to make do with less. They do all that they can to preserve their wealth because they don’t want to experience the sacrifices endured by poor.  Thirdly, Luke observes that wealth has the ability to seduce the one who possesses it such that he or she can believe that enough money and sufficient possessions will be able to protect them from the vicissitudes of life. Those who are rich are tempted to place their trust in their possessions rather than in God.

Unlike the barn-builder and the rich man who ignores Lazarus, the certain ruler in today’s gospel is a real person, a man who, as his query implies, is seeking to faithfully practice his beliefs. It is possible that his query is sincere. He seems to have a sense that something is missing, that despite his observance of the rules, something is not quite right.

It is equally possible that he is trying to justify or reassure himself – after all the language he uses – that of inheritance – suggests a degree of entitlement.  

Jesus’ response is to tell the ruler to obey just five of the commandments which, in and of itself, should tell us something. Intriguingly, Jesus omits reference to the two commandments that elsewhere he insists are the most important – love of God and love of neighbour. Instead, he refers to the commandments that flow from those two: “you shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honour your father and mother.” Why these five? My best guess is that Jesus has already discerned the problem – the ruler is good at obeying the law, but not so good at trusting God. Of all the commandments, these five are the easiest, they are those that even non-believers can subscribe to. What is more is that these five are measurable, evidence based. The ruler can (as can we), hand on heart say: I have never committed adultery, I have never murdered anyone, I do not steal or lie, and I give my parents the honour due to them. I obey the law in every respect.

More difficult to keep, and almost impossible to measure, are the two great commandments: to love God with all one’s heart and all one’s mind and all one’s soul, and one’s neighbour as oneself – to put all one’s trust in God and to live in such a way that one’s life benefits rather than harms another.

Jesus’ radical solution to the ruler’s problem is twofold. First, that he should sell all that he has and give the proceeds to the poor.  Second, that he follow Jesus. Only in this way, Jesus claims, will the ruler find the peace he is seeking and the treasure that is above all his worldly goods. Only by selling all that he has and giving it away will he be able to demonstrate his love for his neighbour. Only by following Jesus will he be able to demonstrate that he loves God with his whole being and trusts God with his life.

In this dialogue Jesus is directly responding to the ruler’s question. The answer for the ruler is clear.

As for us, it is only by listening to and responding to Jesus that we will fully understand what is demanded of us. In the meantime it is clear that belonging to the kingdom does not mean blindly following a set of  rules that anyone can follow but rather that belonging to the kingdom means aligning ourselves body,  mind and soul to the one God who created heaven and earth, who sent Jesus to redeem a sinful humanity and who continues to guide and strengthen us through the Holy Spirit. And if that means giving up all that we have then that is what it takes.

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Praise or sarcasm – the widow’s mite

November 9, 2024

Pentecost 25 – 2024

Mark 12:38-44

Marian Free

In the name of God who consistently demands that we care for the alien, the widow and the orphan. Amen.

Recently I had cause to meet someone for lunch in Beenleigh.  Just prior to the shopping centre I made a wrong turn. We found ourselves in what had been a park. Well, it was still a. park, but now every square inch was covered with tents and tarpaulins. People who for whatever reason had nowhere to live had made homes of a sort in this relatively out of the way place. 

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a parent who has to put their children to bed without a proper meal, to send them to school  without the right school books or who has to tell their children that their home is no longer their home and that they will be living in a tent or in a car or in someone’s garage until they can find another home to rent. The current cost of living crisis and the shortage of accommodation means that more and more people are finding themselves in these sorts of situations – tossing up between paying the power bill and buying nutritious food, having to rely on food banks and the kindness of others, and constantly having to say “no” to one’s children.

In Jesus’ time there was no welfare. The poor were totally reliant on the kindness of others. Women were entirely dependent on their families – their fathers and then their husbands and then their sons.  Widows who did not have sons were particularly vulnerable. The Temple offerings were meant in part to support the widow and the orphan, but Jesus’ attack on the scribes suggests that this was not a current practice.

Our use of scripture is fascinating. Despite the fact that this morning’s gospel begins with Jesus’ attack on the scribes (scribes who ‘devour widow’s houses’). Most preachers (myself included) have tended to use the widow’s actions as an example of sacrificial giving. Many a stewardship sermon has urged congregation members to give until it hurts, using the widow’s willingness to give her last coins as a model for the giving approved by Jesus.

At first glance, Jesus does appear to commend the widow for giving everything (in contrast to the rich whose large gifts represented only a small proportion of their total wealth).  “For 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.” But is this really the point that Jesus is making? Can we really imagine Jesus – the same Jesus who raised the son of the widow of Nain and so saved her from destitution – taking delight in the actions of a widow that will leave her nothing to live on? Could Jesus, raised on the Old Testament insistence that the Israelites care for the widow and the orphan, simply commend the woman from a distance and allow her to return home to die (if indeed she has a home to go to)?

The usual interpretation, tempting as it is to all clergy who would like to encourage parishioners to be more generous, denies the widow of her personhood. She becomes an object lesson rather than a flesh and blood individual. No attention is paid to her life, how long she has been widowed, whether or not her husband had left her with something or nothing, whether or not she ever had sons, where her father and brothers might be, or how she has survived until now. No thought is given to her current state of destitution – her two small coins would only have been able to purchase enough flour to make one or two biscuits. No one asks whether she is giving away the coins, not as a sign of generosity, but as evidence of her complete despair – her willingness to give up and die.

Interpreting the widow’s act as a sacrificial also fails to take into account the immediate and the wider context of the story. Given Jesus’ prior comments about the scribes – who not only do everything they can to draw attention to themselves, but who also use their status and their education to impoverish widows – (charging for legal assistance, taking advantage of a widow’s hospitality, taking money on the promise of a prayer)[1] – it is more likely that Jesus is here continuing his critique of the scribes. You can almost hear his voice dripping with sarcasm – rather than commending the widow, he is condemning the scribes – she is giving all she had to live on. The scribes, whose task it was to interpret the law, appear to have forgotten the law’s instruction to care for the widows. While they give only what they can afford, they treat the widow as if she doesn’t exist.

Rather than be an example of sacrificial giving, the widow serves to expose the self-serving, self-obsessed scribes who think only of the attention that they receive if they wear their long robes and make long prayers. 

The wider context of these verses supports this interpretation. It commences with Jesus’ Cleansing of the Temple (11:15-19) and concludes with Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple (13:1-2). Throughout the section the focus is on the corruption of the Temple worship and on the failure of the leaders of the church.  

In this broader context the widow becomes an illustration of just how far from God’s ideal the church has fallen. That a widow, who has nothing left to live on should feel that she has to continue support the Temple (instead of it supporting her) indicates that the system has become so corrupt that it cannot sink any lower. 

This gives us pause for thought. What does Jesus see when he looks at our society, our care (or lack of care) for the poor, the vulnerable, the homeless? Had Jesus been in the car with me in Beenleigh, would he have commented: “Look how simply they live.” meaning, “how well you and your kind are living”?

What does Jesus see and how is he calling us to respond to the present economic crisis?

[1] Chelsey Harmon points out that the scribes were guilty of taking advantage of widows: 

  • though it was forbidden, many took payment from widows for providing legal assistance;
  • while serving as lawyers, some cheated on the wills or mismanaged the widows’ estates;
  • some scribes were known to take advantage of, and freeload upon, the hospitality offered to them by widows;
  • certain scribes were in the habit of taking payment and promising to make intercessory prayer for widows (i.e., making it a business transaction);
  • and if a widow could not pay, there were known cases where scribes literally took the widow’s home as payment for services rendered,
  • offering to invest their money, then robbing them of it. https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2021-11-01/mark-1238-44-3/

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