The Irony of the Church's Reading of the Story of the Widow's Mite

In Mark's gospel Jesus tells the story of a widow who gives her life savings to the temple treasury.  The widow is contrasted with those who are rich who give significantly more money out of their abundance, but proportionately, much less than the widow.  This has become known as the story of the widow's mite.  This story is typically used as a text for Sundays when stewardship is emphasized.  The typical reading of the story is that God wants us to give significantly out of our abundance, like the widow.

This is not a story about the virtue of giving money to religious institutions.  In fact, it is an illustration of the corruption of religious institutions and the danger of giving of our resources to religious institutions.  If we take a careful look at the story, we see that it is preceded by Jesus' condemnation of the religious authorities of his day for wearing long robes and building expensive temples with expensive chairs for the religious authorities to sit in.  Significantly, Jesus says that such religious authorities devour widow's houses.  The story of the widow giving all her money to the temple follows immediately after.

The widow in the story is a tragic figure.  As a widow, she has no means to support herself other than her life savings.  And she has given her life savings to the temple, thinking, reasonably, that her amazing sacrifice will be used for God's purposes.  Instead, her sacrifice does nothing but perpetuate the lavish lifestyles of the religious authorities and bolster their narcissism.

There is corruption in religious institutions today just like in ancient Israel.  Not just the obvious examples of clergy flying around in Lear jets, wearing $2,000 suits, and otherwise flagrantly wasting the money that is tithed to their religious institutions.  Churches are human run and human driven institutions that can, at times, do nothing but perpetuate the same narcissism and gluttony that Jesus preached against.  Sometimes Churches fail to imitate Christ.  Given the fact that this text is a warning about the corruption of religious institutions, the fact that Churches today use this text to compel their constituents to give large sums of money is both revealing and disturbing.

As representatives of the Church, its all about perpetual and incessant self examination and perpetual and incessant internal reform.  We have to remember our humanity, be aware of our humanity, and get over ourselves.  And we cannot give our money and resources to religious institutions blindly, naively assuming that our resources will be used for God's purposes.  Before giving her life savings, the widow should have been more calculating and discerning about what she was giving her money to.  So should we.