November 8, 2009
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
The big thing today is to buy local. Besides the fact that locally grown fruits and vegetables are tastier and healthier, we are buying locally in order to support neighborhood industries. Every dollar we might spend in the communities where we live or in San Francisco, we believe that that dollar will keep stores open, goods and products on the shelves, and most importantly, people staying employed or getting hired. In Sausalito, residents get a free parking card in the shopping area so that we may support local businesses.
Out in western Massachusetts, the town of Great Barrington has developed their own kind of money. They call their currency, “Berkshares,” a play-on-words since Great Barrington is located in the Berkshires where some of you have visited for spectacular fall foliage. “Berkshares look a lot like Monopoly money.
For every 95 cents, local residents get one dollar’s worth of Berkshares they can use to buy goods and services from one of the 400 participating businesses in the area. Berkshares aren’t legal tender anywhere outside Great Barrington.
The president of Berkshares Inc. said, “Local currency helps to keep the money flowing between friends and neighbors, local businesses, which helps everybody to have a better life.”
Even the design and printing of the Berkshares currency is a local operation. Berkshares feature pictures of local artists, heroes and historical figures and come with individual serial numbers that make them tough to counterfeit.
One local resident said, “I think it’s nice to have a constant little reminder that we’re a community and we’re in it together. It’s kind of like a Great Barrington pride moment. I’m a citizen of Great Barrington. Here’s my Berkshare.”
Now in doing some research for this sermon, I discovered that folks in Great Barrington aren’t alone in their currency creation. From Detroit to North Carolina to upstate New York, at least 12 other communities are trying to encourage people to buy and spend locally by printing up their own greenbacks or whatever color their Monopoly-inspired money is. Maybe we might print up some “FCBC Dollars!”
The Widow’s Lepton
When we take a closer look at Mark 12, we get a glimpse into the different coinage that circulated around the temple. In verses 13-17, we read the famous “render unto Caesar” passage, in which Jesus has the Herodians and Pharisees produce coins from their pockets with the likeness of the Roman Emperor Tiberias stamped on them.
The coin in question, a silver denarius, was worth about a day’s wage, so it was no small change. Imperial coinage was circulated throughout the empire both to standardize trade between Rome and its various conquered territories and to promote the current emperor’s reputation and divinity. Around the likeness of Tiberias on the coin was the inscription, “Augustus Tiberias, Son of the Divine Augustus,” while the flip side displayed the likeness of the female figure representing “peace” (but often associated with Tiberias’ mother, Livia). To the righteous Jew, such inscriptions were idolatrous.
To avoid those idolatrous images, most first-century Jews continued to use the local Jewish currency, some of which had been in circulation since the Hasmonean dynasty 100 years earlier. The most basic coin of this period was the bronze or copper lepton (plural lepta), which avoided violating the second commandment by inscribing natural or man-made symbols instead of human or animal likenesses. At the time of Jesus, a very common lepton in circulation featured an eight-rayed star or sunburst on one side and an anchor on the other. It was likely this coin that the moneychangers exchanged for Roman currency in the temple (Mark 11:15).
The lepton’s monetary value was pretty small at the time—so small, in fact, that it may be one of the least-valued coins ever struck. Take a look at one and you notice right away that it looks like the image was just stamped haphazardly in a tiny dribble of molten copper or bronze—kind of what happens when a kid stamps something in a piece of Play-Doh and leaves the edges untrimmed. The coins aren’t rounded or finished and weigh next to nothing. Truth be told, a lepton looks like the kind of currency anyone can make.
Now that you have gotten your ancient history lecture, it is very likely two of these tiny lepta, or “mites,” are what the widow dropped into the temple treasury in this morning’s text. Compared to the wealth of Roman coins that the religious leaders and other rich people seemed to be carrying around the temple, those two rough-stamped coins were about as valuable as Monopoly money. And yet, this isn’t a story about the value of coins but rather about the value of commitment and sacrifice.
Caring for One Another
Berkshares are about a community taking care of its own, keeping the wealth within the community for the benefit of the whole. In Mark 12:38-40, Jesus condemns the community of leaders of the first-century for doing exactly the opposite.
Besides the fact that the scribes wore long robes and occupied VIP seats, they were more concerned about themselves than their community.
Moreover, they “devour widows’ houses,” which was a way of saying they preyed on perhaps the weakest and most vulnerable segment of society. Widows who lacked male relatives had no status and no prospects for income. Some have suggested that the scribes may have acted as guardians for some of these widows, but they did so by exploiting for themselves the property that the women’s husbands may have left them.
So when Jesus makes his remarks about this poor widow dropping her two tiny coins in the temple treasury, “all she had to live on” (Mark 12:44), the context suggests he’s continuing his condemnation of the religious leaders and the system of economic exploitation that would cause her to donate her last two pennies.
Giving Voluntarily
We don’t know the widow’s motivation to give up those two lepta. She just dropped them in. Jesus recognized that her offering, even though it was less than pennies, was far more valuable than the sum total of all the other coins offered up that day.
What would cause a person to voluntarily give away her last two pennies, especially to a community and political-economic system that continues to exploit her?
Perhaps it’s because the widow still believed. Maybe she still believed that regardless of all that had happened to her, everything she was and everything she had still belonged to God. Despite the corruption and exploitation going on in God’s name there in the temple, somehow she believed that God was going to set things right. So the widow continued to invest in her community, a community of faith, by giving her last two coins for the good of the whole.
I know that in this time of the year, it seems like we are always asking you to give. If it’s not one thing, it’s something else. If you are getting tired of hearing me ask you to give, I am getting tired of asking!
But on one Sunday in the year, we invite you to consider the opportunity of making a planned gift. Like the Berkshares, your gift would keep the wealth within the FCBC community for the benefit of the whole. The widow’s lepta were all she had—she lived a hand to mouth existence. But many of us here are blessed with resources that surpass our daily need for existence. By planning now on how to direct these blessings that we have today to invest in the strength of our church tomorrow, we would better ensure that this church will continue to serve God faithfully. You can say that your planned gift is converted into “FCBC Dollars” enabling our generation to support future generations to serve God. Like the widow who still believed in God, we still believe that the Good News of Jesus Christ needs to be preached right here in San Francisco Chinatown until his return.
Giving Leftovers
A couple of years ago, someone called the Butterball Turkey Company’s 800 number. The person calling said, “I was just cleaning out my freezer, and I discovered that I’ve had a turkey in there for 23 years. Is it still OK to eat?” The Butterball Turkey person said, “Well, if the turkey had been frozen the whole time, and has never been defrosted, then it should be safe. But if it’s been in the freezer that long, the quality of the meat probably won’t be too good.” So the person calling said, “That’s what I thought. I think I’ll just give it to the church.”
That’s how a lot of people are when it comes to giving. We give what’s left over. After all, when we give clothing to the Salvation Army or to Goodwill, people give away the clothes they don’t want. They give away what’s extra. After giving away those clothes, their closets are still filled with newer and better clothes.
When we give money to the church or to charity, many people only give out of what’s left over. People make sure that they have money for movies, eating out, vacations, and all sorts of things. If there happens to be any money left over, maybe, just maybe, they’ll give away some of that.
When you make a planned gift, you are saying to God, I want to give to you, Lord, first. If for whatever reason, you are not able to put God first while you are living, you can put God first when you return to him in heaven. By your gift, you may be setting an example for others to also give first to God whether in this life or in the next.
One day a certain old, rich man of a miserable disposition visited a rabbi, who took the rich man by the hand and led him to a window. “Look at there,” he said. The rich man looked into the street. “What do you see?” asked the rabbi.
“I see men, women and children,” answered the rich man.
Again the rabbi took him by the hand and this time led him to a mirror. “Now what do you see?”
“Now I see myself,” the rich man replied.
Then the rabbi said, “Behold, in the window there is glass, and in the mirror there is glass. But the glass of the mirror is covered with a little silver. No sooner is the silver added than you cease to see others but see only yourself.”
Widow’s Might
We have often called the widow’s lepta, the widow’s mites. But the widow’s “might” is demonstrated in the strength of her faith. She isn’t just dabbling in spare change. She is, to borrow a poker term, “all in” with God, unlike the scribes and others. For example, the rich young man who Jesus encountered earlier couldn’t give up the belief that his possessions were his to keep (Mark 10:17-31). Are we able to see beyond ourselves and see others in the world? Are we willing to see what God might be doing through this church beyond the days when we are here?
Today, we challenge you to think about how much you can invest in our community of faith. It’s easy these days to look at how governments and banks and big corporations and even religious institutions have mismanaged their stewardship and say to ourselves, “I’m going to hold back giving my money.” But the widow invites us instead to focus on the currency of commitment, trusting that God will take what we give, and despite humanity’s brokenness, use it for God’s glory.
We trust that when we give a planned gift, God will take those resources and exchange them to become FCBC Dollars to invest in life-changing ministries for generations to come.
When we make this commitment, it turns all of our little mites, tiny lepta, almost worthless copper pennies together into a mighty witness for God in our community of faith.
Let us pray.
Holy and gracious God, with thankful and glad hearts, we offer our lives to you. Thank you for the privilege of participating in your kingdom, of spreading the good news, of taking care of the “least of these,” of investing in the future vibrant ministries of this beloved church. Use each one of us and the resources that you have blessed us with for your purposes and will in the world. For Christ’s sake we pray. Amen.