Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44
“The Greater Gift”
This sermon was prepared by the Rev. Amanda Currie, and presented by Andrew Donovan during worship at First Presbyterian Church in Regina on Sunday, November 11, 2018.
After criticizing the religious leaders of his time for both a lack of humility and taking advantage of the poor, Jesus sits down near one of the offering boxes at the temple to observe as the worshippers come to make their gifts for the temple.
Having watched both the rich and the poor placing their gifts in the treasury, Jesus comments that a poor widow has contributed more than anyone else because the rich people “have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
In practical terms for the temple budget, Jesus’ statement simply isn’t true. The widow’s two coins wouldn’t have made much difference at all for the institution’s ministry. They would have represented the tiniest of drops in the biggest of buckets. The small copper coins (Greek: lepta) were the smallest coins circulated, and sixty-four “pennies” equaled one denarius, or a day’s wage.
The rich people had the resources to give more without much of a … Read more »