“Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honour in synagogues, and places of honour at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers…this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.” Mark 12: 38-44
For decades, I had been led to believe by a succession of Sunday homilists that Mark had told this story to hold up to his community this destitute widow and her extraordinary selflessness as models to be imitated. While Jesus was clearly in admiration of the widow’s boundless generosity, he, in his very last visit to the Temple before he was arrested, falsely charged, tortured and executed, took the risk of bitterly criticising the system that extorted the poor of all they had to live on. Jesus was equally critical of religious leaders who devised and maintained such a system while they themselves lived in comfort leaving those for whom the Law obliged them to care to eke out an existence in loneliness and destitution.
Moreover, there is additional irony in the fact that the disciples accompanying Jesus and who had listened to his rant, entirely missed his point. As they walked off with him, they began to gush over the magnificence of the Temple building. This prompted him to reassert that what they were praising represented an institution that was so full of self-importance and self-interest on the inside, so flashy on the outside and so riddled with corruption on the inside that it would one day collapse into total ruin. Self-seeking and self-interest among leaders like the scribes had replaced the institution’s ability to reach out to the people it was meant to serve.
For at least 2000 years, the economy of Jerusalem has been built on religion. That’s because it has been a city bustling with pilgrims throughout that long period. Pilgrims create business simply because they need meals, accommodation and transport. Moreover, Jerusalem is a city sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. The Dome of the Rock, the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple and the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre (the site of Jesus’ burial) are all located within the walls of the old city of Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is sacred to Muslims because it was from there that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. King David had earlier erected the first Jewish Temple on the same location. Tradition says that the same Temple Mount was where Abraham had set up the altar on which to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. And Jerusalem is still the place of non-stop Christian pilgrimages it has been for over 2000 years, simply because it was there that Jesus was arrested, tried, tortured, executed, buried and resurrected.
Historians and archaeologists tell us that the Temple at the centre of today’s gospel-reading was a bustling place crowded with pilgrims, Temple guides and priests, vendors selling animals for sacrifice and pilgrims all congregated there. The Temple itself consisted of three distinct but connected courts. – the Court of the Gentiles to which all-comers could be admitted, the Court of the women in which collection boxes for donations were located, and the Court for Jewish men only, where sacrifices were offered. Women were excluded from the holiest section of the Temple but still encouraged in their Court to make donations for the upkeep of the Temple. It was in the Court of the women that Jesus and his disciples witnessed the widow making her contribution. The widow was on the bottom rung of the social ladder of the time. Effectively, she was a non-entity. Those who attracted attention at the donation box were wealthy, well-dressed men, many of whom apparently made a show of how much they were giving. Jesus drew the attention of his disciples to the widow and her action because she was too insignificant even to be noticed. He put the focus on her and her action because she and what she had done were in stark contrast to the empty religious display of the rich and important.
The three great religions of the Book – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – are labelled as such because they all regard the Torah as sacred. All three religions are still practiced devoutly in Jerusalem. Yet all three practice prejudice against women in different ways. Does that still sit comfortably with us Catholic Christians? ”The more things change, the more they remain the same!’
In his account of this incident, Mark has given no indication of any Temple official coming anywhere near the widow. By comparison, the widow of Zarephath at the centre of today’s first reading, was not only treated with respect and dignity by the Prophet Elijah but was the object of a miracle that saved her and her son from starvation. She had clearly learned the practice of the second great commandment of last Sunday’s gospel-reading. There was no indication that to her Elijah was anything other than a total stranger in need of something to eat. Yet she responded heroically to his request.
Together, the stories of these two widows on the bottom rung of the social scale are an object lesson for all of us. Their actions prompt us to look at ourselves and the way in which we engage (or not) with those whom we encounter from one week’s end to the next. Who are the people we ignore, the neighbours and strangers we don’t even notice, the ones we prefer to overlook? Whom do we relegate to the bottom rung of the social order? Who are those who venture into our churches without so much as a word of welcome?
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