To answer today’s question, you’ll need to go back to your childhood. For some of us, this may require a very good memory. On the other hand, I can recall a lot of things that happened when I was a little kid, even if I forget what I was doing five minutes ago, or why I made a special trip upstairs to get something important. But my question is this: When you were a child, what did you collect? What were your childhood collections?
For some, it was baseball cards you got with bubble gum. Remember, back then, you didn’t go to a special card-shop to buy them! Others collected marbles, special shooters and aggies, which, for you non-Yankees, are not students from College Station. Many little girls collected paper dolls. Later on, they became more expensive “Barbies” and all of their clothes. As for me, I had a great collection of comic books, especially “Batman” and “Captain Marvel.” Some of that kind of collecting is still around. But now, there are collections of games for Nintendo, Play Station or X-Box 360.
However, no matter what you collected, the real problem was what you traded. What you were willing to give away. For most kids, you gave away only your “extras,” the duplicates, the ones that no longer had any real value for you. A true collector always kept the best. You traded off your “left-overs,” the stuff you didn’t need, or no longer liked. And when we grew up, the habit persisted.
We still tend to give away the stuff we don’t need, we no longer have use for. Many charity organizations know that’s what we do. They even make a special effort to encourage us to do it. How many times have you received a call, especially around dinner time, saying such-and-such agency will just happen to have a truck in your neighborhood next week, and what can you leave in a bag by the door?
Well, I have the same question for you in this homily. My real question for today is: What do you have to give away? Today’s Gospel Reading has a lot to say about give-a-ways. We heard how there were crowds of people who put a lot of money in the collection box for the poor. Some, who were very wealthy, gave considerable sums of money. They, no doubt, felt very good about it. They wanted to help those less fortunate. Perhaps, they even expected to be complemented about it, told how good they were to follow the Laws of Moses, the instructions of the Lord God, to help the poor, the widows and orphans, to perform a mitzvah, a good deed which would hasten the day of the coming of the Messiah.
Who cares if they, themselves, did not need the money and wouldn’t really miss it? After all, had they not been told they must leave only the harvest “leftovers” for widows and orphans? At the end of the harvest of olives, they were not to beat the trees to make all of the olives fall. They were warned to leave the ones which hung on, so that the gleaners would have something left when they came. The gleaners, who were the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, the foreigner. And not only were the olives to be left, the same was true for grapes and grain. The gleaners had a God-given right to leftovers. It had always been that way.
And Jesus did not criticize this ancient custom. There, as he stood outside the treasury building, where donations were being made, he did not say the wealthy were in error in what they did. But as in so many other things, he urged his followers to go one step beyond. Those who were truly his disciples should give, not what is left over, but rather they should give the “essentials” of their own lives. This is his new teaching, an instruction which goes beyond the dictates of the Mosaic law of giving remainders to the poor.
His new commandment was to give from one’s own being, from one’s own essence, to give not leftovers, but the essentials of life. And, so, the question now becomes: What are the “essentials” of our own lives, the lives of the followers of Jesus the Christ? The first response might be “money.” Isn’t that the point of the gospel story? Aren’t we asked to increase our financial contributions so that we feel the loss. The loss of the essentials for our own lives? Essentials like food, clothing and housing.
But what about the first part of the gospel reading we heard? The lines coming immediately before the story of the wealthy crowd and the widow’s penny. In this opening passage, we heard about the community leaders, the scribes, who are interested in the trappings of the good life, in fancy clothes and the best seats in restaurants and public gatherings, where they would be noticed. Their ostentatious display of wealth suggests they have resources which could be used to help others, instead. Were all of these trappings of the “lifestyle of the rich and famous” essential to this group of Jewish society?
What trappings are essential to those of us who make up the Community of Christ the Good Shepherd? Are luxury cars and big homes overlooking a golf course the “essentials” of life? And what happens when they are lost in a flood or in a fire? What happens when we must give them up because the economy crashes? Do the essentials of life consist of prestige and the respect others have for what we own? Or do the essentials of life really consist of conditions like: health, integrity, trust, honor, and confidence? Are relationships more important than things that can be purchased?
Perhaps, we need to remember that the real meaning of “essential” is the same as “essence,” the same as “being,” the same as our “inner self.” Perhaps, we need to be reminded we are asked to give our “inner self” to others. This giving of “self” is what Jesus the Christ required in all of his teachings, including the one we heard, today, in which the widow gave all she had to live on. She gave from her very self.
What is it to give of our self, to give our time and talent to others? Are we the blessed widow and a disciple of Christ, when we teach an R.E. class? When we help in a social ministry? When we work in a soup kitchen? When we help staff the interfaith project for the homeless? Perhaps, we, also, give from our “self,” from our essence, from what is essential in our life, when we listen and respond to a friend’s cry for help. When we speak kindly to a stranger. When we speak without sarcasm to a spouse.
When we praise and encourage a child. When a child helps a parent without being asked.
It is said that actions speak louder than words. It’s also possible actions yield a greater return than what money can purchase. Perhaps, it is now time to go beyond our early habit of collecting things, of keeping the best for our own use and trading or giving away only the leftovers. Now, may be our time to give away what is truly essential, not only from our livelihood but from our inner lives as well.
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time; November 6, 1994 (rev: November 8, 2009)
1 Kg 17:10-16; Heb 9:24-28; Mk 12:38-44