The Widow’s Warning

Luke 20:45 – 21:5-9

In the past two weeks, I have listened to two different sermons on Luke 21 and the so-called Widow’s might (or mite depending on who you are). A conversation from many years ago with my sister keeps needling my conscience about this passage, though, and I would like to address what I think may be an alternate approach to the text based on the context. 

               Most sermons around this passage go something like this: The scribes and pharisees and rich give out of their abundance, but look how amazing it is that this woman gives out of her poverty. This is a reasonable interpretation in many ways, but there is something strange about it. One pastor I listened to said that Jesus commended her, but let’s look at what Jesus says. Jesus says “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contribute out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

               First: He says that she put in more than all of them. This is not necessarily a commendation for her as much as it is a condemnation of the others, but we will address that in a moment.

               Second: He clarifies saying that they gave out of their abundance, but she gave out of her poverty. He makes clear that he is not talking about the absolute value of the coinage added, but rather the comparative value of what she gave versus what they gave.

               Finally: He further explains that she put in all she had to live on.

               I am going to take this in the reverse order to try to explain what might be the case.

               To put in all she had to live on could mean, on the surface, one of two, very different, things (with a possible third we will address as well).

               One: She had faith that God would provide for her needs, and therefore it is an act of brilliant faith. This is the typical interpretation of the passage.

               Two: She actually had no faith left and was giving away all that she had to live on to essentially give up and go die.

               There is a third option. Rarely are we motivated as humans by a single thing at a single time. We are fragmented beings. It is possible that her giving up all she had to live on was both an act of faith and an act of giving up. The logic would go something like this – if the Lord is good and real and gracious, He will provide, but if He does not, I will go to the dust. It might have been a kind of final test of God’s goodness. It is disturbing perhaps how often despair can look like faith – after all. The widow here might be at the end of her rope, to use a colloquial expression. We might call this a kind of fatalist resignation.

               So, what does the passage as a whole support for interpretation? Jesus seems to be using her action to shame the people present, the rich and the scribes (at least in part). If that is the case, then this doesn’t really help us choose between interpretations, because whether the woman is being commended for faith or giving up in resignation, both equally shame the wealthy. One shames them by demonstrating greater faith and generosity in the widow, and the other shames them by showing how their so-called generosity is not efficacious to help the very widows and poor the money is supposed to go to. One shames by degrees, the other by a display of impotence. The phrase about the comparative value doesn’t help all that much in choosing between interpretations either. It could indicate to the scribes and wealthy either their lack of generosity or their impotence (or both). Where have we arrived then? This verse alone doesn’t give us enough to discern whether the comment about the woman is a commendation or merely a comment (or even a condemnation). That happens often in Scripture, and praise be to God that He gives us more than just discrete verses from which to understand His Word!

               What other questions can we ask that might help? Well – who is Jesus audience? For the answer to this we need to go back to the end of chapter 19 and into 20. Jesus is in the temple. By the time we get the discussion of the widow’s offering, we have in verse 45 of chapter 20 that Jesus is speaking “in the hearing of all the people… to his disciples.” This creates a complex relationship in the audience. He is speaking directly to His disciples, but in the intentional hearing of all those gathered in the temple. If we remember, the temple is likely to have been packed due to the upcoming Passover feast, so the broader audience is people of every walk and perspective and place around the kingdom, from the youngest untrained girl, to the elderly chief priests and scribes.

               Still, we cannot forget that Christ’s primary audience is His disciples. His secondary audience includes everyone around, including the scribes, wealthy, and pharisees. Does this help us clarify the question from before? What does Jesus want His disciples to learn from the example of the widow? To give all they have to shame the people around them? For this, we need to keep reading from verse 46 in chapter 20. “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” (46-47 emphasis mine).

               Jesus tells his disciples explicitly to beware of the scribes who do all these hypocritical things and devour widows’ houses. How do they devour widows’ houses? Doesn’t that seem an odd inclusion in this moment? It seems very specific. But then, our Lord, who is sovereign over all, looks up and is immediately provided the object lesson of the widow having been devoured – a poor widow who puts in all she had to live on.

               One could almost see it like this. Jesus condemns these scribes, and then immediately sees an example of the type of behavior he has just been describing, from both sides. He sees the wealthy putting in their gifts alongside a widow who is turning everything she has left over to the Lord – whether in faith or resigned despair we are not told. A possible problem with the widow’s might interpretation is not that it is impossible, but rather that it is not explicit. Remember, Jesus is trying to warn His disciples against certain behaviors and underlying beliefs, so here we have a poignant object lesson of both the act and the consequence of the scribes’ pretensions. Wealthy people place gifts in an offering for the poor while standing next to a poor widow who herself requires utmost help. Do we see the duality of this picture?

               The offering, meant for the poor, was clearly not being used to take care of the poor as the Jewish Law demanded (or at the very least had not reached this particular widow), so what was it being used for? One possibility is implied in verse 5 of chapter 21. “And while some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said, ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down’” (Luke 21:5) It is possible that the offerings were being used for the adornment of the temple rather than the aid of the poor.

               It is sometimes too easy for us to look at chapter and section headings in our Bibles and forget that they did not exist in the original text. This is one story, and the events are not discrete but connected. It is not an accident that immediately after seeing the widow put in her coins, which follows immediately on the warning against the scribes, that the Lord’s next words are a prophecy of the destruction of the temple – and of the whole temple system which has twisted God’s intent and devoured widows for the sake of outward show. The temple itself here has become an object lesson of the scribes’ pretensions and hypocrisy, as its adorning is in stark contrast to the poverty of the widow. The widow herself is the chiastic center of this story, pulling together the outward actions of the scribes, and the outward adornment of the temple and showing them both to be the hypocritical whitewashing of tombs – outward beauty which obfuscates inward death.  

               What then do we say about the widow herself? Was it might that put those last two coppers, all she had to live on, in the offering? I can only say I don’t know. The Bible does not give us her intent, or give us a peak behind the curtains of her mind and heart, but what it does do is contrast her action with the fake actions of others, the intent of the temple, and the eventual promise of destruction. Whether or not the widow’s act was a mighty one of faith is, to me, a bit of a red herring. More important is Christ’s warning to His disciples, and truly to the whole Jewish nation (and to us as the Church) of the hypocrisy inherent in the systems expressed in the scribes and the ostentation of the temple, and how Christ will bring it to an end, that He may bring a new beginning. Truthfully the story was never about the widow, rather about Christ and His people.

               The irony of the “widow’s might” interpretation is that it might create a new kind of hypocritical pretension by focusing on the woman instead of on the lesson Christ was trying to teach. It tells us to give everything we have to live on in some kind of sacrificial display, but there is pride even in that. “Look how much I gave up,” can be a trap that hyper spiritualizes practical issues of stewardship in our lives. It can elevate poverty to a moral good, when no such thing is taught, in the same way that we can denigrate wealth as a moral evil (which is also not taught – though the love of money is indeed the root of all kinds of evil). The real trap here isn’t in our moral reckoning of relative states of wealth, but in the comparison of states between people for ourselves. Christ uses the comparison to demonstrate issues of concern for His disciples – don’t be like them – outwardly good yet inwardly inconsistent, incoherent, and evil. It is a deadly snare for us to use similar comparisons, however, to rank or understand our relationship to the Lord since as debtors we are all of us without a single penny before the Lord of Glory.

               I will break now my own rule of comparison to prove a point. Where the widow had two copper coins which could be given away temporally, we have literally nothing of value to offer unto God spiritually. If the wealthy were to look at the widow and see their shame, we should look at her and see Christ’s mercy that though we had and have absolutely nothing to offer Him, still He has saved us by His abounding grace. We should also see in her, alongside the other object lessons of Christ in this passage, a warning against all pretense that says – in giving, in poverty, in wealth, in outward show, or in inward “goodness” – we have anything at all good to offer unto the King of Heaven. Rather – “What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32)

               The widow is a warning that should point us to the eternal and magnificent might of Christ – to the praise of His glorious grace – and erase all pretension from us. The generosity of Christ beggars all our so-called generosity. The justice of Christ invalidates every notion we have of human justice. And any so-called sacrifice we might make, whether in goods, time, energy, even our very lives is as nothing compared to the perfect sacrifice of Christ upon the cross.