Noise.
A noisy loud bombastic world.
A wall of sound, a storming, stewing cacophony.
And then out of all that something very quiet happens, hardly anyone notices.
The widow walks up and puts in her two cents worth, not much, but everything, few notice in all the noise. Let there be Light! Creation begins anew.
An icon of God. The Gospel in a moment. The vision of God that sustains.
The widow.
She shows us God, in the middle all the noise, God is quietly made known.
Mark’s Gospel keeps showing us examples of what the way of God in the world is and is not.
The widow is.
The world used her up.
Widows had limited legal authority so their estates were sometimes managed by scribes who sometimes abused that trust. Devouring widows’ houses.
A dangerous world full of predators, some wolves wear sheep’s clothing.
Her house devoured, she gave her last freely.
She foreshadows the cross of Jesus.
The universe redefining event, the cross of Jesus, God’s all in a noisy devouring world, and few noticed.
Like the widow, putting in her two cents worth, not much, but it’s everything.
Life is like that isn’t it? In all the noise we so often miss what is really happening, what really matters.
God is quietly blazing and we somehow miss it.
Imagine God pulling up a chair and keeping watch.
So Jesus sat down and he watched. He paid attention. He cared.
The man who is the attentiveness of God, the caring of God, the watchfulness of God, the two cents worth of God.
Jesus pulls up a chair and sits a spell, and people watches. He sees the widow.
And he says there are two kinds of people, those who give because it is easy, and those who give because it is hard.
Those who give out of convenience and expedience and those who give all.
Jesus sits, from a still place, a quiet place, he calls attention to the difference.
We see the widow moving from the hapless victim that dwells under God’s protection to becoming the living example of the very power of God.
She was not defined by those who abused her. She was defined by the mercy of God.
This is the story of the Gospel. What was grief, abandonment and weakness is transformed into the revelation of God’s Way in the world.
We are to walk away from these scripture lessons with a heightened level of curiosity and wonder.
It is in weakness, in vulnerability and in need that God is known.
It is the cross that is the glory of God, it is in darkness, in despair, in no hope, that God is present in a way that is so powerful that the dead live, the blind see, the lame walk.
Two small copper coins quietly offered up in a loud world and creation begins anew.
Who could have imagined that was all it took to let the glory of God silently blaze?