Sunday Gospel Reflection; The Widow's Mite

Tissot: The Widow's Mite

In the course of his teaching Jesus said to the crowds,
"Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes
and accept greetings in the marketplaces,
seats of honor in synagogues,
and places of honor at banquets.
They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext
recite lengthy prayers.
They will receive a very severe condemnation."

He sat down opposite the treasury
and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury.
Many rich people put in large sums.
A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them,
"Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more
than all the other contributors to the treasury.
For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood." – Mk 12: 38-44

da Costa: The Widow's Mite

It really is possible to derive a political message, of a sort, from the Gospel. It is not so simple as an advocacy for the poor over the rich. Here we see the poor praised, but it is not the rich who are condemned. All Jesus says here is that the widow’s contribution is worth more than the rich folks’. And in the famous story about the camel and the eye of the needle, Jesus first says the young rich man is doing fine so long as he has kept all the commandments. Only when he presses for what more he can do does Jesus ask him to give up his riches. Similarly, Jesus does not rail against the political rulers or the military. When prompted to, he will not condemn Caesar, nor tax collectors, nor soldiers.

But he does condemn others Here, we have an obvious comparison and a contrast: the scribes on the one hand, the poor widow on the other. This is emphasizes by the reference to “devouring the houses of widows” in the first part of the passage, linking it to the second. The poor widow is an image of moral goodness, and the scribes an image of moral evil.

And the scribes are in fact an identifiable class in the political sense. Along with Pharisees, and Sadducees, these are the bad guys in Jesus’s politics, his analysis of society. Who were, or are, the scribes? The Wikipedia article on the topic observes that “scribes” in ancient societies evolved directly into the lawyers, civil servants, accountants, and journalists of today. Broadly, the professions, the educated professional class; or what Coleridge called the “clerisy.” The “Pharisees,” in turn, were the teachers and academics. The “Sadducees” were the professional clergy.

Put them all together, and you have the educated class, the professions; what Coleridge called the “clerisy.” Marx has obscured the fact that it is this class, in fact, who runs society, everywhere and at all times. Which is why he is so loved by the clerisy. In the Estates General before the French Revolution, the First Estate, the top dogs, were the clergy, not the nobles; they were overthrown by the lawyers, not the bourgeoisie. In India, the top caste is and has always been the Brahmins, the educated priestly caste, not the rajas and maharajas. In China, everything was controlled by the Mandarins.

The New Testament understands this clearly, and condemns this class as essentially exploitative. There may be and, in the New Testament, are, good people in it, but the class as a class is an evil; so that both Jesus and John the Baptist consistently condemn it as a group. The relevant condemnation here, especially given the contrast with the widow, is that they live high by taking money from people who need it more than they do; and yet they claim some sort of moral superiority.

If I may be so bold as to extract a further political point here, this class sounds a lot, to me, like the class that backs the modern left. The support for and the actual leadership of the Democrats in the US, or the Liberals and NDP in Canada, comes from the educated professions: the lawyers, civil servants, accountants, journalists, academics, teachers, and mainstream clergy. Their common claim is indeed that they are morally superior: that they care for, and about, “the poor” and “minorities.” Unlike Republicans and Conservatives.

Jesus suggests that this is a sham. Those who gain moral credit from such programs, after all, are not the bureaucrats who administer them, the pundits who call for them, or even the voters who vote for them, but the ordinary taxpayers who pay for them. The many widows with their mites.

This should seem obvious, but apparently it is not. I recall a religion professor of my acquaintance introducing his wife as a Bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint. Why? Because she had a nice cushy job working for a charity.

That’s not a Buddhist saint. That’s a hypocrite. In the precise New Testament sense.