Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

There was a notice on our community bulletin board last week, warning us about scam messages popping up on our computers.  There is something a little insidious about these scams.  They appear to be very authentic and legitimate and they prey upon the vulnerable, innocent, and gullible.  They are an effort to make a profit at the expense of others through deceit and pretense.  They are callous and uncaring about the harm they might inflict on others and are fueled by a disrespect and contempt for those who might be hurt by responding.

But maybe they represent a more common character of our society.  It is a bit like looking for Morel mushrooms in the spring.  They are hard to find, but once you spot one you find all the others.  Scamming is much more endemic to the way we function. Once you identify it, it pops up everywhere. We try to compete and outsmart each other.  We feed off the losses of others.  The rich get richer, and the poor get what they deserve.  The Scribes devour the houses of the widow.  It is the way the system works. 

Even the apparent generosity of the wealthy becomes part of the cloak of authenticity and legitimacy.  It becomes a sign of benevolence and superiority, deserving recognition and applause, greetings in the market places and seats of honor. They have all contributed from their surplus wealth. They feed off the houses of widows and the esteem from exalted social status.  They go around in long robes which reinforce the appearances of justification and centrality to the machinery of society.  They wear robes and roles which give the appearance of legitimate success and security, but cover up the fragility and poverty hidden within.  They are covered with a cushion of surplus and protection that avoids all danger, risk, or jeopardy to well-being.  It all looks too familiar and raises the question of our own reluctance to move beyond safe circles and rather to parade in covers and robes of socially approved scripts, but which sound hollow and tinny even to our own ears. Our beliefs devolve into pat slogans.  What is feeding our souls?   From whom and from what are we feeding ourselves?

The actions of the widows in our readings are necessarily scandalous to the ethos of a world structured on self-concern and care. They are not paying homage to the rules that run a society.  Why in the world did they do that?  If anything, they seem victims of scams.  The widow in the Gospel had been conned into supporting a religious society that offered her no support.  The widow of Zarephath succumbed to male pressure that demanded to be fed while she was on the point of starvation.  Bring me a drink.  First, bring me a cake.

These were women who didn’t know the ease of living out of their surplus.  They lived on the edges of life and death.  But they had a clarity of vision which enabled them to respond with the whole of their beings.  She has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.  It has been said that the prospect of dying in the morning marvelously clears one’s head. 

It took Jesus to see what was really happening, that the offering of two small coins expressed the offering of her whole livelihood, her whole being.  This is only visible to one with the clarity of comprehension that comes from passing beyond the surplus of self-concern, the surplus of cheap grace that never penetrates beyond the limits created by fear and self-preservation.  Jesus could “spot” the act of trust that relied on the loving presence of the One invoked in this offering.

He himself lived in this same trust as he approached the hour of his offering on Calvary.  It is a trust which makes us capable of presenting and offering the whole of ourselves as we live our lives before God.  Christ has entered heaven itself that he might appear before God on our behalf.  It is a trust and grace which gives us the eyes to see (like a Morel mushroom) those moments of total self-gift, often hidden under inconspicuous forms, that have really sustained our life.  We have fed off the generosity of others, even as we are daily called to feed off the Bread of Life, that we might become that bread.  Please bring along a bit of bread.