Widows play a prominent role in the Scripture Lessons appointed for today.  . . .  There is the widow of Zarephath who ministered to Elijah, . . . and there is the widow at the Temple treasury who catches the attention of Jesus.  . . . Now, not all widows are the same.  There are two types of widow in ancient Middle Eastern society.  And the kind of widow you were very much affected your chances of survival.  A widow without a son was under the protection of her deceased husband’s family, . . . but a widow who had a son was on her own; . . . she was completely dependent upon the charity of her neighbors (I & II Kings, John Gray:  The Old Testament Library; Westminster, p. 380).  And it was to just such a widow that Elijah was sent.  . . . Now, why do you suppose the Lord God Almighty would do such a thing?  . . . Of all the people who inhabited the country adjacent to the Kingdom of Israel, from the wealthy to the moderately comfortable; . . . of all the people who inhabited the country adjacent to the Kingdom of Israel . . . why would the Lord God Almighty send Elijah to be fed and sheltered by a destitute widow who had but a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a cruse and was, when Elijah arrived, just then gathering sticks to prepare a cake for herself and her son so that they might eat it and then die of starvation, having nothing more?  Why would God pick the most destitute widow in all of Zarephath and demand that she share the last of her food with His prophet?  . . . Well, I believe today’s Sequence Psalm provides us with the answer: . . . Psalm 146 reads,

“Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them.  . . . Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help(!) whose hope is in the Lord their God; . . . who keeps his promise for ever.”

The Lord God Almighty did what He did in order to give us, in the widow of Zarephath, an example of the reliable and infallible advice which Holy Scripture gives us.  Because the widow doesn’t chase Elijah off with one of the sticks she is gathering, . . . but in the simplicity of her poverty believes and trusts in the promise of God.  And so, she “did as Elijah said,” the First Book of the Kings tells us, . . . and it happened just as the Lord God Almighty promised it would.  Elijah and the widow’s household ate for many days.  And while God didn’t make the widow fabulously wealthy, neither did He allow her subsistence to run out:  “the jar of meal was not spent, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by Elijah.”

    Saint Mark doesn’t tell us which type of widow it was who caught Christ’s attention as He sat opposite the Temple treasury.  . . . But I suspect she was the same sort of widow as the one Elijah encountered at Zarephath:  an unprotected widow who had to beg for the food she and her son ate and the cast-offs that clothed them.  . . . So, here Jesus is, sitting opposite the Temple treasury, and He sees a widow deposit, as her offering, two copper coins.  Two copper coins, which are, in all likelihood, her “take” for the day.  . . . But instead of going to the market to barter for a turnip or a potato with those two coins, . . . the widow comes to the Temple to make an offering of gratitude to God.  Remembering the widow of Zarephath and the counsel of Psalm 146, . . . the Jerusalem widow brings an offering to God of everything she had collected that day . . . so that she might honor the Lord her God by sharing what she had with the poor for whom the treasury offerings were intended.

    The story puts me in mind of Ruby Stensland, a Parishioner of Christ Church in Gilbertsville many years ago.  I was attending an ECW meeting at Christ Church, back then, and the question arose as to whether or not to have a Christmas party for the residents of the adult home which was in Gilbertsville at the time.  . . . And Ruby’s immediate response was that we needed to do something “for those old people” (she said).  Now, Ruby, at the time, must have been in her 80’s and exceeded the average age of the adult home residents by at least 10 years.  But Ruby was a Christian widow who did not think of her needs, but the needs of those to whom God expected her to minister.  . . . And so it was with the Jerusalem widow.

    Of course, you might reasonably ask, if the Temple treasury offerings are intended for the poor, why isn’t there a Temple Authority on hand (a scribe or a pharisee or a priest) to notice that widow (as Jesus did) and take her out of the line of contributors to give her a sack of groceries and a bag of money and send her on her way with both copper coins tucked safely away in her pocket.  . . . Well, Jesus tells us why no such thing happened, . . . “Be aware of the scribes who like to go about in long robes and to be greeted and to have the best seats . . . while they devour widows’ houses.”  . . . In other words, Jesus is telling Peter and Andrew and James and John and the others and us; . . . Jesus is telling His Church not to model ourselves after secular and secularized examples of privilege and profitability, . . . but to be like Ruby and obey Holy Scripture instead, and “put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth,” but, rather, out of our poverty honor God with everything we have, our whole living.  For, the person who loves Jesus as Lord and Saviour in Whom they put their entire trust and love . . . honors God with the substance of their life.  They hold nothing back from Him.  Such a person rises in the morning with gratitude toward God . . . and measures the day with prayer.  Such a person, while getting their living, does not withhold from anyone else any physical or intellectual resource for revealing the generosity and mercy of God or the wisdom of Christ.  Even money for such a person is an indifferent thing.  If money were essential to your personal good, Jesus would not have commended the widow for putting her penny into the temple treasury.  But money is merely another thing we use to show people the goodness of our heavenly Father; . . . money is a thing with which we do God’s good; . . . we don’t entrust our futures or our security to it; . . . we don’t entrust ourselves to money.  God is the one to Whom Jesus expects the Church and each of Her baptized members to entrust ourselves:  our entire living, . . . putting not our trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth.