From Our Archives

Debie Thomas (2021) What Are We Building?; Debie Thomas, Out of Her Poverty (2018); Debie Thomas, The Widowed Prophet (2015).

This Week's Essay

For my birthday a few years ago my daughter gave me a tiny "widow's mite" that was made famous in Mark 12 for this week. A lepton was the smallest denomination of currency in Jesus's day. A footnote in my Bible at Mark 12:42 explains that whereas many rich people were giving large gifts in the temple, a poor widow gave two leptons that amounted to 1/64 of a denarius — a denarius being a day's wages. The wealthy "gave out of their surplus," says Jesus, whereas her fraction of a penny was "all she had to live on."

I still keep my lepton in my desk drawer. It reminds me that the ways of the world and life in God's kingdom are sometimes very different. "I tell you the truth," said Jesus, "this poor widow put more into the treasury than all the others. She gave everything she had to live on." While Americans understandably obsess about the presidential election on Tuesday, the lectionary readings suggest some counterintuitive challenges to political power. Taken together, the readings this week give us both a warning and a reminder.

First the warning. As Americans vote for their president on Tuesday, the Spirit of God speaks through the psalmist: "Do not put your trust in princes, in mere mortals, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing." (Psalm 146:3–4). This text from Psalm 146 was included in the readings for last Sunday November 3. With impeccable timing for this election week, it's like we needed a double dose of this ancient wisdom. Similarly, Isaiah 40:23 says that God "brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing." The only place in Scripture where God laughs is at the pretensions of political power (Psalm 2:4). 

And then the reminder. Widows are actually mentioned six times in the readings for this week. They epitomize the reversals and subversions of political power in God's kingdom. Mark 12 describes the poor widow as the extravagant benefactor instead of the vulnerable beneficiary. Then, there are the three widows in the book of Ruth, the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17, and the widows mentioned in Psalm 146:9. That God cares for widows, and that we should too, are prominent themes throughout the Bible. The Greek word for "widow" occurs about twenty-five times in the New Testament.

Naomi and Ruth.

"The Maker of heaven and earth," says Psalm 146, cares deeply for those who live on the margins of society. He feeds the hungry, frees prisoners, and heals the blind. He lifts up those who are weighted down, he defends foreigners, protects the orphan, and "sustains the widow." These eight categories of people face different challenges, but what makes them similar is that they are all vulnerable to forces beyond their control. God cares for them, and so should his people.

In the book of Ruth, three widows play a conspicuous role in the coming of God's kingdom here on earth — the Hebrew Naomi who fled Israel to the enemy country of Moab in order to escape famine, and her two foreign daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. 

The story of Ruth occurs during the time of the judges, perhaps the darkest period in Israel's history. Famine ravaged the land. Anarchy reigned, and “every person did what was right in his own eyes.” Whereas idolatry was rampant, "the word of the Lord was rare” (1 Samuel 3:1). On the moral level, it was a time of debauchery. Judges 19, for example, records the murder of a nameless woman who was gang raped all night and then dismembered, a crime so heinous that it provoked a civil war within Israel. "Think about it!," exclaims the narrator, "Consider it! Tell us what to do!" (Judges 19:30). 

After ten years in Moab, and despite Naomi's protests, Ruth returned with her to Israel. Back in Bethlehem, Ruth was the foreigner from an enemy country. She was childless. She was widowed from a mixed marriage. But she vowed to cling to Naomi, her Hebrew people, and to their God. Ruth secured an economic livelihood for her mother-in-law by gleaning fields among the hired hands. She ingratiated herself to Boaz, the owner of the fields she gleaned. All Bethlehem knew this foreign widow as a “woman of excellence” (Ruth 3:11).

Elijah and the widow of Zarephath (Paris, 14th century).

Boaz was both a wealthy man and a near relative to Naomi's deceased husband Elimelech. As such, he not only had the means but also the obligation to “redeem” Ruth (and, in the process, Naomi). Another relative was even closer to Naomi than Boaz, but when he refused to redeem Ruth he cleared the way for Boaz. This second mixed marriage conceived a son, Obed, the grandfather of King David. Ruth's improbable story culminates when we meet her again on the very first page of the New Testament as a forebear of Christ Himself (Matthew 1:5).

The widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17 likewise lived at a pivotal juncture in Israel's history. In his book The Kings and Their Gods (2008), Daniel Berrigan interprets 1–2 Kings as self-serving imperial records that portray Israel's kings as they saw themselves and wanted others to see them — God favors my regime and hates my enemies. There's one political imperative in the book of Kings, says Berrigan: extra imperium nulla salus, "outside the empire there is no salvation." The kings employ many pathological means to this political end: untrammeled imperial ego, political retaliation with absolute impunity, military might, revisionist history, manipulation of memory and time, grandiose building projects, economic exploitation, virulent nationalism, and, sanctioning it all with divine approval, legitimation by religious sycophants.

A few dissenting voices objected to imperial power, but they were silenced as unpatriotic and seditious. The prophet Elijah was one such exception. Elijah was a lonely prophet, alternately manic and reclusive, who faced down the political powers of his day. His story begins with a foreign widow from Zarephath in Sidon, who at great personal sacrifice cares for him during a severe drought, and who in turn is cared for by Elijah.

The Widow's Mite by W. T. Blandford-Fletcher.

This narrative of a nameless, alien widow and a Hebrew prophet offering each other mutual care across nationalistic boundaries assumed such central importance in Israel's sacred story-telling that Jesus repeated it a thousand years later. The impact was the same — the listeners were outraged at the role reversals. "I assure you that there were many [Hebrew!] widows in Israel in Elijah's time," said Jesus, "when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a [foreign-pagan!] widow in Zarephath in the region of [enemy!] Sidon… All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this." (Luke 4:25–28).

The church is called to two complicated and complimentary tasks. On the one hand, Psalm 146 warns us to be wary of the seductions of political power. On the other hand, the six widows remind us to engage the political process for a truly just society. The trick is to fully embrace the world without becoming worldly.

I like how the two poem-prayers by Walter Brueggemann that I've posted this week — the Weekly Prayer below and the Weekly Poem on our home page, capture these twin tasks. Despite the incessant "noise of politics" that can seduce and distract us, this election week I am praying for God to "come by here and make new the public face of his purposes." It is, after all, the love of God "that binds us each and all to one another."

Weekly Prayer

Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933)

The Noise of Politics

We watch as the jets fly in
     with the power people and
     the money people,
     the suits, the budgets, the billions.

We wonder about monetary policy
     because we are among the haves,
and about generosity
     because we care about the have-nots.

By slower modes we notice
   Lazarus and the poor arriving from Africa,
   and the beggars from Central Europe, and
   the throng of environmentalists
     with their vision of butterflies and oil
     of flowers and tanks
     of growing things and killing fields.

We wonder about peace and war,
     about ecology and development,
     about hope and entitlement.

We listen beyond jeering protesters and
     soaring jets and
   faintly we hear the mumbling of the crucified one,
   something about
     feeding the hungry
     and giving drink to the thirsty,
     about clothing the naked,
     and noticing the prisoners,
     more about the least and about holiness among them.
We are moved by the mumbles of the gospel,
   even while we are tenured in our privilege.

We are half ready to join the choir of hope,
half afraid things might change,
     and in a third half of our faith turning to you,
     and your outpouring love
     that works justice and
     that binds us each and all to one another.

So we pray amidst jeering protesters
     and soaring jets.
   Come by here and make new,
     even at some risk to our entitlements.

Dan Clendenin: dan@journeywithjesus.net

Image credits: (1) Galus Australis; Jewish Life in the Antipodes; (2) Flickr.com; and (3) Worcester City Museums.