Blessed Are the Fleeced

This last Lord’s Day, something occurred to me in the course of the sermon, something which I mentioned in passing. But then as I was reading the Scriptures this last week, the same point jumped off the page at me, and in a far more explicit way than what I had seen before.

I was making a standard point about generosity, and mentioned the widow who had put her “two mites” into the Temple treasury, and who had been praised by Jesus for the proportions in her generosity. I then went on to point out that she was actually donating to a thoroughly corrupt ministry, one that was going to be judged in a severe way by God in the course of just a few years. Jesus didn’t rush up to the widow, and tell her to save her money for a more worthy cause, or to keep it herself.

I then compared this to the well-intentioned widows today who live in poverty, but who send more money than they can afford off to television stations where the thrones are gold and the women have big hair. God receives the intention, and not just the money. A great song about this problem, incidentally, is Dire Strait’s Ticket to Heaven.

Then a day or so later, I was reading through the gospel of Luke, and noticed that this appears to be a contextual point, and not just a point of application.

“And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all: For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had. And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said, As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Luke 21:1-6).

All the standard points about the widow’s open-handedness remain. But those who brought in their showboating abundance were decorating a temple with “goodly stones and gifts,” and it was all going to come down. But the true goodly adornment, the heart of the widow, will remain on the true Temple throughout eternity. Her two mites, on the physical level, were lost along with everything else. But the spiritual value of what she did was not lost simply because, as it turned out, she was donating to the men who killed Jesus. It was not lost simply because she was being fleeced.