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32nd Sunday, Year B, November 11, 2012
1 Kgs 17:10-16; Ps 146:7, 8-9, 9-10; Heb 9:24-28; Mk 12:38-44
Is Religion Good or Bad for Us?
Today’s Gospel tells us of Jesus’ final public act before he enters Jerusalem
to undergo his passion and death. This Gospel is a two-edged sword. One edge is
Jesus’s strong judgment against the abuse of faith by the religious authorities of his
day, who were exploiting the weak and vulnerable for their own benefit. The other
edge is praise for the extraordinary faith of a poor widow who gives “her whole
life” to God because of her deep trust in God’s goodness to her. It raises an
important question that many people ask today: is religion good or bad for us?
That religion is bad for us the central argument of the so- called “new
atheists.” In his recent book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,
Christopher Hitchens contends that religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied
to racism, contemptuous of women." The gospel today could add that religion is
exploitative of widows and anybody else who is weak or vulnerable.
Jesus is teaching in the temple. The temple was an extraordinary place—
twice as large as the Roman forum, a religious and commercial center with a large
staff, requiring great financial resources. The clerics staffing the temple—the
scribes, along with the chief priests and elders of the people—were the major
leaders of Jewish religion in Jesus’ day. Jesus’s conflicts with them had been
steadily growing. Now, as he entered Jerusalem, they were conspiring about how
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to get rid of him by killing him. And Jesus knew this.
So it is a dramatic and dangerous confrontation when Jesus lashes out at the
scribes who are using their position in the temple to advance themselves. He
pillories their social and religious posturing. The long robes they wear for official
duties they continue to wear publicly at other times to attract respectful greetings in
the marketplaces. They contrive to have special places set aside for them at
banquets as a mark of their importance. Most harshly Jesus condemns them for
using their religious position to win the trust of widows and other vulnerable
people who have almost no support in the society of Jesus’s day. As Jesus puts it,
they use their position to devour “the houses of widows.” If this is what religion is
all about, Hitchens is right when he says it “poisons everything.”
But our two-edged gospel doesn’t end there. In contrast to the hypocrisy of
the scribes is the action of a poor widow. Jesus sees many rich people making big
contributions to the Temple treasury, while a poor widow throws in just two
pennies. Jesus solemnly tells his disciples: this poor widow has given more than all
the others. They gave from their excess wealth, while she gave out of her want, all
she had—“her very life” is the literal translation. In monetary terms her gift is
paltry, yet in the eyes of God who sees the heart she has put in "more" than all the
rest. Her offering is a sign of her fidelity to the Commandment Jesus called the
greatest of all commandments in last week’s gospel: “love the Lord your God with
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all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” She entrusts herself
totally to God. In the words of today’s responsorial psalm, she trusts that God
truly “sustains the orphan and the widow.” She surrenders here heart to God in the
perfect trust that Jesus has been commending to his disciples.
Is the widow just foolish when she gives her last pennies in a religious act
like this? Jesus strongly condemns the way the religious leaders exploit her. But
he praises the widow’s trust in God. It is the same kind of trust that Jesus himself
places in God as he faces threats to his very life from these same religious leaders.
Despite the threats, he moves on to Jerusalem and his passion, proclaiming God’s
love for every person, especially the vulnerable like this widow. When the threats
reach their climax in the crucifixion, Jesus still entrusts himself totally to God’s
love when he says on the cross “into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The widow knows what true religion is—trust in God even when we are
vulnerable. She is following the same path that Jesus followed. Her God is Jesus’s
God—the one who loves us and is with us especially when we face the threats the
widow and Jesus himself faced--poverty, illness and death. Let’s give thanks for
this good news as we share our faith together around the table of God’s love.
David Hollenbach, S.J.
St. Ignatius Church
November 11, 2012