How long has she been a symbol of stewardship? How long has this nameless widow been trotted out sometime in October or November…told to rehearse her act of giving…only to be used by some preacher to encourage people who have more than two pennies to rub together to give generously? How long?

And then there is Naomi. For how long has she been the symbol of the weak widow…the one who must be looked after and taken care of…the one who, as we said last week, lost it all when she lost her husband.

And how about Ruth? This widow who is a stranger in a strange land…who is seeking to care for her mother in law and herself, who is dependent on the kindness of strangers…on the wheat they leave in the fields for those who must scavenge to stay alive…How long has Ruth, the great-great-great-great add on a whole lot more greats grandmother of Jesus…how long has she been portrayed as the humble young widow who followed her mother-in-law’s advice and so found a husband or as just another symbol of those we need to take care of with our tithes and offerings…with the extra wheat we leave in the offering plate?

How long have we seen these three women as mostly powerless?

I want to suggest that we must come to terms with the possibility that we’ve missed the point in these stories…that in our male-centered, male-dominated theologies, we’ve lost sight of what is really happening.

Did you notice the context in which Jesus places his comments about the widow who leaves 2 pennies, the only money she has? It is in the context of condemning the church and its leaders for making her a poor widow in the first place….”Beware of the preachers who parade around in their flashy clothes and show up at all the important political rallys” Jesus seems to be saying…”for they have made life more miserable for the poor…for the widows.”

Jesus isn’t lifting the woman up as a paragon of virtue…He is identifying with her as a victim of a system that has failed...of society’s failure…the church’s failure… All the way back in Exodus, God’s law declared you shall not abuse any widow or orphan. Moses proclaimed: cursed be anyone who deprives the widow of justice. The pleading of the prophets -- Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah – all reveal widows shamefully oppressed by the church and its leaders. Despite the laws of God, widows are so oppressed that the prophet Malachi has to declare that the God of Israel is the protector of widows. And it continues into Jesus’ day. The weak are exploited by the strong.

This widow offering her last penny is not an example Jesus praises. Rather, she represents a situation Jesus deplores. Meeting religious obligations is easy for the rich—they can afford it. But for the poor, like this woman, the burden is crushing. It's not that Jesus doesn't admire what she is doing, but that is not his point. Instead, he’s angry on her behalf. The system, the temple, the church is taking everything from her…and do Jesus...that is deplorable. It gets him about as mad as he ever gets in Mark’s Gospel.

Let’s be clear. Why is Jesus so angry? Because the church…the place that is supposed to be the home of freedom…the place that is called to be a manifestation of God’s grace and love and power and hope…has instead become a place of oppression and exploitation.

This is indeed a text about Stewardship…but not in the way we thought it was…It’s not just telling us to give til it hurts… instead it’s about reminding the church what its job is…it’s about reminding me and you and the session, and the Presbytery and the General Assembly…It’s about demanding that we all take a long hard look and see…what are we about? Are we about building ourselves up, making ourselves feel good, or are we about lifting up the least among us…about bringing Good News to the poor…it’s not just about proclaiming the saving love of Jesus Christ…but about demonstrating a way of living that says ALL are created in the image of God…that asks those who are in need what they need and then responds by providing it…It’s about honoring those who are poor, oppressed, lonely, wanting, waiting….by listening to them…by being with them….by befriending them…by working with them to change their world…and so the whole world…

If the church isn’t about that, Jesus seems to be warning us today, then every pledge we take…evey dollar we collect, is robbing the widow of her final two pennies.

You may have noticed that there’s something a bit odd about the title of today’s sermon. It’s not the singular "widow apostrophe S"…it’s not mite, M I T E, the thing she throws in the plate…It’s might…might…might as in power…might as in possibility…might as in strength…

The might of the widow in Mark’s gospel is that she is our teacher…she is the one teaching us and those pompous pastors Jesus condemns in today's texthow to be good stewards, good shepherds of our resources….not because we should give as she does, but because she is the reason we give….Yes we give in gratitude….but we also give because there are needs…our needs to be sure, but also the desperate needs of the world…

And that plural widows is in reference to those other two widows Ruth and Naomi….What do they do in today’s text that's relevant here? They make a new life for themselves… Naomi uses her knowledge, her cunning, her understanding of human nature….to bring together Ruth and Boaz….to make a new family…for them and for her…to make a new family from which shall spring King David…and eventually Jesus Christ. These widows have might too…because they remind us…that the oppressive systems…the failure to follow God’s law and care for the widows….does not mean that the oppressed and exploited are necessarily powerless, desperate unless we go save them…it reminds us that our call is to join them….not fix them…to join them in their journeys and struggles…for like Naomi…many know their situation better than any other…and many are already at work seeking to make a new way for themselves…And they don’t ask us to fix the situation…they invite us to join them....to work with them…to learn from them…and together, with God, to make a new world for us all…

And so we come near to that time of our commitment…Many of us have already prayerfully determined what we will endeavor to give to God through this Church for the coming year…and others will do so in the days and weeks to come…But all of us are invited, actually more like commanded this day…to commit what we dedicate this day will be to the glory of God…not the glory of us….it will be to join our lives and our struggles to those whose needs are great…to join them and God in making this a church and a world that is more just, more loving, more a home for all, more a refuge for all. May that opportunity and that challenge inspire our grateful hearts and the quantity and spirit of our giving.

Is there any greater invitation than to join this great cloud of witnesses in that journey…to join our might, with the widows’ might…in the Divine quest for peace, the Divine exercise of hope, the Divine life of compassion….