Dove Sermons

Mark 12:38–44; Leviticus 19:9–10; 25:8–12 (NRSVUE)

Sermon for October 4, 2026

It’s week three of our stewardship series, and we’ve come to the story of the widow’s offering. You know where this is going, right? A poor woman drops her last two coins in the offering box, Jesus talks about her, and your pastor is supposed to say, “If she can give everything, surely you can give a little more.”

Well… I’m not preaching that sermon this morning. I don’t think Mark wrote this story to make that point.

Look at where Mark sets this story. Just before the widow walks up, Jesus is teaching in the temple. He says:

“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.”

They devour widows’ houses. The Greek word is katesthiō, to eat something down to nothing. Mark has used it once before, in chapter four, for the birds that swoop down and eat the seed off the path. Jesus told us who those birds are: Satan. Mark is drawing a straight line from the powers that oppose God to religious professionals who look perfectly respectable in the marketplace.

Historians give us some idea how that devouring worked. Scribes handled legal affairs. Some charged widows for services they were forbidden to charge for. Some mismanaged estates. In some cases they took the house itself as payment. All of it was done by men who prayed long and well in public.

But back to the text. Mark writes this next, “He sat down opposite the treasury and watched.” Jesus takes a seat and watches the system do what it does.

The Mishnah, an early written collection of Jewish tradition, describes thirteen collection chests in the temple, each shaped like a shofar, a ram’s horn, with a flared mouth at the top narrowing down to the box below. Picture a heavy purse of coins pouring down a brass horn. People could literally hear the big gifts being donated.

Then a poor widow drops in two lepta, the smallest coins in circulation. Together they would buy about a handful of flour, enough for one small loaf of bread. Falling down the brass horn, they would barely have made a sound.

Jesus calls his disciples over and says she has put in more than all the rest. Now notice what he leaves unsaid. He never says “good for her.” He never says “go and do likewise.” He says the rich gave out of their abundance, and Mark’s verb there describes an ongoing condition, a surplus still waiting for them when they get home. She gave out of her poverty, and now she has nothing.

Hold that next to what Jesus said three sentences earlier. They devour widows’ houses. And here stands a widow, emptied out, putting her last coins into an institution run by the very people he just warned you about.

The painfully ironic part? The temple treasury was supposed to be one of the ways Israel kept its promise to care for widows. The money was meant to flow toward her. Instead it’s flowing away from her, and the machine keeps clanging along as though nothing is wrong.

So is Jesus praising her or grieving over her? Both.

It would be easy to make her a prop, the timid little woman creeping out of the shadows. Mark says nothing of the kind. Picture her walking up with her back straight and giving, with dignity, to a God she trusts more than the men who currently run the building. That’s what makes the scene so hard to watch. Her faith is real. The system receiving it is broken.

Now it gets uncomfortable. Nobody in this room wants to be the scribe. We all want to be the widow. Here Jesus asks his disciples to consider whether they sit a lot closer to the robes than to the two coins.

One commentator called it the “soft prosperity gospel” that lives in most of us: the quiet assumption that people who are doing well are probably doing something right. That the nice neighborhood is full of nice people. That the biggest givers must be the most faithful ones.

So let’s be careful here. The scribes earn Jesus’ warning through status and self-importance, and that disease shows up in every group that gets a little power. It shows up in clergy, too, and I’m the one wearing “the robe”. Churches have been putting names on plaques and giving big donors the best seats for a very long time.

So what do we do? Well, the word this week is Reimagine, and for that we go back to Leviticus, because God already drew up a better economic design.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.”

Do you see when this command kicks in? It’s planned out before the harvest. The farmer doesn’t haul everything into the barn, count it, and then decide whether he feels generous. The mercy is built into the field. It’s already there when the sickles come out.

Nine verses later, in the same chapter, God says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” When Jesus names the second great commandment, he’s quoting Leviticus. And in Leviticus, loving your neighbor looks like leaving your field unfinished on purpose, for the poor, the immigrant, the person most in need.

Then comes chapter 25, the Jubilee. Every fiftieth year, debts were canceled, land went back to the families who had lost it, and people sold into debt slavery went home. The word jubilee comes from the Hebrew word yovel, the ram’s horn.

“Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the Day of Atonement.… And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”

The word for liberty is deror, release, the idea of something set loose to run free. Did you know, Those words from verse 10 are cast into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia? This country rang a bell that quotes Jubilee. We just never got around to the debt part.

So this morning we have two trumpets. In Mark, a row of horn-shaped chests clangs out who gave the most. In Leviticus, a ram’s horn sounds across the whole land to announce that debts are gone and everyone can go home. The first horn makes the powerful louder. The second sets everybody free.

And on what day do the Jubilee horn sound? It gets sounded on the Day of Atonement. God forgives first, and then the people release each other. Release flows downhill from grace.

Did Israel ever fully practice Jubilee? Scholars argue about that. Maybe they didn’t. But the Scriptures put it in writing so nobody could claim they didn’t know what an economy built on God’s justice looks like.

So what does reimagining look like for us?

First, reimagining how we give. Leave the edges. The law in Leviticus asks its modern readers whether we’ve packed our budgets so full, right to the very edges, that we have nothing left to share. I know what the edges look like for a lot of us: a mortgage, a loan, monthly bills, daycare, braces, a car with 140,000 miles on it. I won’t pretend the margins are wide. But God’s command in Leviticus doesn’t ask for what’s left over. It asks you to plan the edge before the harvest. This text challenges us to decide first, and let the rest of the budget make room.

Next, Reimagine why giving matters. Some of you are in a season when you can give more. Some of you are in the widow’s season: a layoff, a divorce, a medical bill that swallowed the savings. If that’s you, hear me clearly. You don’t owe this church your last two coins. In God’s economy, we look out for each other. That’s what the Temple Treasury was supposed to be for. That’s what the edges of the field were for.

If you’re one who can give, if you can provide the edges of your field, this is one of the reasons why your giving matters: so nobody has to empty themselves out to belong. We stop the cycle of making the widow give the last of herself. We make the Temple Treasury do what it what supposed to do all along; take care of the needs of the widow and those most in need. 

Finally, Sit down and watch. Jesus sat across from the temple treasury and watched the system work. Do the same with the systems you touch; at work, at school, in the marketplace. Notice the patterns and ask how it lines up to the economy of God that we encounter in the Bible.

In his hometown synagogue, Jesus stood up and read from Isaiah that he came “to proclaim release to the captives… to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That’s Jubilee language. Then he went to Jerusalem and sounded that second trumpet with his whole life.

Two horns sound in this story. One announces who matters most. The other announces that everyone is free. We get to choose which one this church sounds like.

Amen.