Mark 12:38-44

“As he taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’”

My greatest insecurity is that I don’t believe “right,” that I don’t have enough faith. I know that God isn’t up “there” with a scale or a giant chart, tallying all the good things I do and measuring them against all the bad things I do. But I cannot stop the cash register, the faith checking account that says “insufficient funds.” I come up short in the economy of faith every day. And I’m reminded of my poverty every time I step on my seminary’s campus, every time I long to be friends with someone more “conservative” than I am, every time I have to cross my fingers during the creeds at church. I try to find hope that my church is “a reformed church, always reforming,” but I still may never have enough coins of faith to get me through the doors, no matter how much they discount the admission fees.

But after the birth of my son, I can’t help but wonder whether or not this “economy of faith” is what Jesus talks about at all.

Just last week we had the raising of Lazarus as our Gospel Reading. Martha stops him from entering Lazarus’s tomb because of the smell of a decaying body, and Jesus says, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” He sees Martha’s lack of faith, and raises Lazarus anyway.

Another favorite: The father of a boy who is possessed by a spirit, comes to Jesus and says, “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” And Jesus says to him, “If you are able! – All things can be done for the one who believes.” And the father cries out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Perhaps, Jesus comes not just to reward those who believe, but to help those who don’t.

When Jesus asks the paralyzed man at the pool, “do you want to be made well?” the man answers him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” The paralyzed man doesn’t answer his question, doesn’t say, “Yes! And YOU can do it!” No, the man begins to whine, to give excuses as to why he hasn’t yet been healed – hardly an example of ideal faith.

Jesus heals the paralyzed man who is lowered through the roof by his friends, for “when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” It’s not the faith of the paralytic that heals him; instead, the faith of his friends is recognized by Jesus.

And even Jesus’ closest friends don’t understand his teachings. They don’t recognize him after his crucifixion. Thomas is famous for his struggle to believe.

For instance, when Jesus calms the storm, Jesus rebukes the disciples, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

And when Peter, walking on the water, begins to sink, Jesus says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

The people in the Gospels who suffer from the poverty of belief are many, some notable, future leaders, others, simple, desperate.

We pray the “Our Father.” We often think of God as the perfect parent.

Would I love my son any less if he didn’t believe I existed?

Do I love my son less because he doesn’t really know me?

When he cries out to me in his hunger, do I make him profess that there really is milk before I nurse him?

The story of the woman with the two copper coins can be about how God can make small things great, or about how God can create greatness where there is none. It can be a story of the mustard seed, that when planted, yields great fruit. But for me, today, this story is about how God’s economy is not our economy. Contrary to what many CEOs and conservatives might argue, God is not a capitalist. There is no exchange of goods when we enter into a relationship with God. I used to think that one had to believe “right,” to “profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior” in order to be “saved.” But that is only continuing with the language of an exchange of goods. “God, I give You my belief, if You’ll give me salvation” (or security, or money, or whatever) – a quid pro quo.

Some people come before God with shopping bags full of faith. And oh, how I envy them. They are rich in belief; they live in mansions of security and assurance and closeness to God. But I am so grateful that there are those stories of people who come to God with empty paper bags, and God heals them anyway. Jesus invites us, even in the poverty of our doubt. He says, “Take up your mat and walk.” He says, “Come here, touch my side, feel the wounds in my hands, experience me, even in your doubt.”

Simone Weil: “We must only wait and call out. Not call upon someone, while we still do not know if there is anyone; but cry out that we are hungry and want bread. Whether we cry for a long time or a short time, in the end we shall be fed, and then we shall not believe but we shall know that there really is bread. What surer proof could one ask for than to have eaten it? But before one has eaten, it is neither need for nor particularly useful to believe in bread. What is essential is to know that one is hungry…”

And really, the bag is not empty. God just counts with different currency. The faith is there because the hunger is there. It’s there when I doubt and struggle and worry. Faith is like the air we breathe. And our faith is there because we need to breathe. When it is there, and we realize it, we are grateful. But when we don’t, we still keep breathing.

A "low Sunday" reflection from 12/28/08

As many of you know, I’m one of eight kids. I’m third in the line, but that just means that there are four or five of us who all suffer from “middle child syndrome.” I was the kind of middle child, though, who tried to get her attention from always doing things right. I was always trying to gain praise by being good. This, however, backfired. Whenever I got an A on a test, ran a tough race, or learned a new skill, my parents’ response was always, “well, I knew you could do it.” Don’t get me wrong; my parents are great, and extremely supportive – especially as I continue to collect Masters degrees like Hummel figurines. But their extreme confidence started to wear on me a bit. What would happen if, heaven forbid, I got a B? What would happen if I slept in and missed the race? What would happen if I were – gasp – a human who makes mistakes?

My mom loves to collect these fancy figurines that go together to make an elaborate Nativity scene. She’s collected almost all of them. She has the three wise men, complete with camel, a donkey, the shepherds, sheep in various positions, and even an angel that hovers above the scene. But she also has these figures that, as far as I can tell, had no place in the original nativity story. There’s this kid with a fishing pole, a girl looking, somehow, both devote and morose, and a boy with a drum. And it’s to this boy with a drum that I want us to think about now.

We’ve all heard of the song, “The Little Drummer Boy.” And when I was little, I had thought that this Drummer Boy was an original observer to the whole Jesus-in-the-manger, star-following, wise-men worshippers gig. His story had been swept up, at least for me, into the greater story of God entering human history. But let’s think about this story of this boy for a moment. You’ve just heard what happens when you give a kid a drum and say, “go at it.” Here’s what David James Duncan reflects on this song:
“Here is some uninvited urchin, standing right next to the cradle of a newborn baby, banging away on a drum. Have any vindictive relatives ever given a child in your home a drum? Pa rum pah pum pum is an extremely kind description of the result. Yet, out of reverence and love, the unidentified “poor boy” marches up to the manger of the (probably sleeping) Christ child and bangs the hell out of his drum.”
The funny thing is, when I read this reflection from David James Duncan, this was the first time I’d thought that maybe this Drummer Boy wasn’t any good at his drumming. When I was little, always worrying about getting my parent’s approval, I had always thought that he was some drumming prodigy, some kid in a tux straight from the New York City Orchestra.

But what if he was just some kid off the street. Some smelly kid who turned his mother’s clay pot upside down and stole her best ladle when her back was turned? And what if God liked it?

Sure, this is just a story. There is no historical evidence that this Drumming boy existed at all. But I wonder what Mary and Joseph were feeling when they went to Jerusalem, with this tiny, diaper-wetting – if they had diapers then –, spit-up covered baby, and heard these old people saying how great he was? Maybe Jesus had colic and Mary and Joseph had had sleepless night after sleepless night. Maybe they were scared, as many parents must have been, that their baby was so weak that he wouldn’t survive his first year? And as is the custom for all good Jews, Jesus is brought to Jerusalem eight days after he was born. Now, picture an eight-day old baby. Wrinkled, maybe a little jaundiced, maybe he still has a bit of a cone head from the birth. Now picture an eight-day old baby after a trip on a donkey across the country from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. But here comes Simeon, stealing Jesus out of his mother’s arms, and starts shouting about how he’s going to save the world. And as if that’s not enough, out comes this old woman, Anna, who must have looked a little crazy - old, and fasting and praying all the time - who goes around shouting about the child to everyone she lays her eyes on.

Now, as far as I can tell, Jesus has done nothing but be a baby at this point. He has no magic aura permeating from his skin that heals the sick; he has no telepathic qualities that call the sinners to repent. He’s a squirmy, fussy, probably still wrinkly baby, that has probably soaked through his diaper on occasion, and kept his parents up all night. Maybe Jesus has been so human, such a baby, that his parents, in the stress of being first-time parents of a newborn, have forgotten the unusual circumstances of his birth. Sure, they’re thrilled, as most new parents are, and they believe that they have the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most amazing baby that has ever been born. But the thing is, I’m willing to bet, that all first time parents, who have conceived a child out of love, think the same thing. And they’re all right.

Why? Why are all parents right? Because of what delights God. Can you imagine God’s delight as God looked upon the baby Jesus? Think about your own face as you looked upon your child for the first time, or your niece or nephew, or your friend’s baby. What went through your mind? What might that baby have seen reflected in your face as you looked upon him or her?

My friend was talking about how he knew of his unconditional love for his newborn daughter. He was changing her diaper, and just as he was about to grab the wipes and the baby powder, she peed all over him. And he said he just laughed and laughed. He said he just couldn’t be more tickled about what she’d done to him. And maybe this is what I had been missing when I interpreted my own parents’ exclamations about how they always expect me to do well. Maybe, instead of mounting expectation after expectation upon me, they were just saying, “we’ve always thought that whatever you did, no matter how well you did it, you were amazing”?

What if we were to come to God just as we are, with our own natural gifts, with our pounding of drums, our hatred of paperwork, our nail-biting, our chewing with our mouths open, our inability to stick to a budget or balance our checkbooks? What if we were to come to God as an infant, to get back to where we knew exactly what we needed and knew exactly from whom to get it, and let God hold us, let God marvel at us with wide eyes and a huge smile, even as we make messes and cause sleep depravity? What if we remembered that no matter what our circumstances, no matter who our parents are, or what struggles we’ve gone through, that we were conceived in love? What if Jesus was the one who truly knew how much God loved him? What if Jesus knew exactly what God’s face looked like as God gazed upon him? Perhaps Jesus, then, is the one who can teach us how to truly realize that we are God’s children.