The story of the Widow’s Offering, found in Mark 12 and Luke 21, never made it into my book Junkyard Wisdom. It’s an amazing story, but I couldn’t find the right spot in the book so it was cut.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the story: Jesus was watching people put money in the temple treasury and noted how the rich gave large sums; then the widow gave two coins, all she had.
Jesus says to the disciples, “…all these people gave out of their wealth, but she out of her poverty.” The Message has it as, “All the others gave what they’ll never miss….”
The story came to mind recently because I read a book by a celebrity preacher about how we should view money, and he got it all messed up. If you listen to most preachers they’ll tell you the Widow’s Offering story is about 1) sacrificial giving of your wealth, 2) and the importance of proportional giving.
But I think that simplifies the message to the point of being condescending. Jesus had a more important and subtle message.
The key line, often glossed over, is “…the others gave what they’ll never miss…”
A wealthy person can give a lot of money away before the lack of money calls for significant sacrifice. They are giving out of their abundance, the very thing Jesus was unimpressed with.
So how would a rich person EVER be able to match the gift of a widow who gives everything she has? As I said, if you listen to the celebrity preachers the answer is proportional giving — if the widow can give one hundred percent of what she has, why can’t the rich give thirty, forty, ninety, or even one hundred percent?
But Jesus never said that. He never even implied it. What he said was that the widow gave out of her poverty, and the rich gave out of their abundance, and the widow’s gift was far more valuable to God. Jesus wasn’t impressed with the value OR the percentage of the gift. He was impressed with a person giving out of their poverty.
In our cultural context, if a wealthy person wants to really give sacrificially, he or she has to give something they have the least of: time, emotional energy, and relationship with others.
As I said in Junkyard Wisdom, if you want to break the hold of wealth on your life, it’s not just about giving generously or proportionally (though I do think you should do that too). It’s about building genuine relationships with the poor, the oppressed, the disadvantaged.
God wants our hearts far more than he wants our checkbooks. Making a gift with a lot of zeroes is important and needed, but it is far more important to give our hearts to the least of these.
Give out of your poverty. Not your wealth. For many of us that means time, vulnerability, humility, and intentionality. It means relationship, not just extra zeroes on a check.