Mark 12: Give It Your All

At our church, we have an annual budget figure that is approved by our congregation.  Each week, when our offering is collected by our financial secretary, he compares the offering collected to the total budget figure divided by 52.  If that offering is greater than 1/52 of our budget, we think of it as a good week.  If our budget is lower than 1/52, it wasn't such a great week.  In church terms, our offering becomes a zero sum game.  It is very clear if a certain week is good or not.

Jesus challenges our conception of giving in Mark 12.  He reminds us that giving is not really about amounts but about context.  The rich people come and pile up the cash.  I can imagine the treasurer looking on saying, "It's going to be a good Passover season.  We are going to be in the black this year."  But Jesus is less impressed.  He knows that the rich are not giving sacrificially.  They may be giving a lot but the reality is that they could give more.  Jesus is far more impressed with the giving of a poor widow that He sees.  Widows in Jesus' world were in a tough spot.  Ancient Israel was indeed a man's world.  A woman without a man would have had a hard time both producing income and protecting that income from unscrupulous people when she produced it.  Thus, widows were often the poorest of the poor.  In fact, widows function as symbols of abject poverty in the Bible.  And this widow that Jesus sees was poor.  She had basically two cents to her name.  Yet, she put those two cents in the offering.  Two cents wasn't going to impact the balance of the Temple ledger sheet.  It would hardly be a great offering when balanced against Temple expenses.  Yet, Jesus is impressed.  He recognized that the giving of the widow was much more sacrificial than the giving of the rich people.   

While it is good stewardship to track our offerings versus our budget, we should never think that amounts tell the bottom line about an offering.  When it comes to offerings, we should not just ask how much but more importantly we should ask how sacrificial?  Do we give what we give because it seems large enough to us, because it surpasses most of the other offerings and brings us a reputation as generous?  Or do we give what we give as a sacrificial act of worship, knowing that we are being generous only with what God has entrusted to us?