Two Small Coins

Two things happen in these verses and Mark set them side by side. Taken apart they are a warning and then a pleasant story about generosity. Taken together they are one scene, and the second half is much harder.

Watch out for the scribes. They like to walk around in long robes, to receive greetings in the marketplaces, and to have the chief seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.

None of that list is against any law. Wanting the good seat is not a crime, and neither is enjoying being recognized on the way to work, which is exactly why the list is uncomfortable to hear read out. Most of us find something of ourselves in it. Then the sentence turns.

They defraud widows of their houses, and for a show make lengthy prayers.

Those two halves are one sentence for a reason. A widow in that world had almost no standing to fight back, and some of these men were trusted with managing estates, so the theft would have looked like administration. The long prayers were the cover. Nobody suspects a man who prays at length. Jesus says they will receive greater condemnation, and greater means there is a scale, with knowing better placing a man further up it.

Then Mark moves the camera. Jesus sits down across from the treasury and watches people put money in. He is not teaching and he is not being watched himself. He is sitting there looking at the boxes and the hands, and when the rich put in large amounts Mark records it without a word against them.

Then a poor widow comes and puts in two small copper coins that are worth almost nothing together. Jesus calls the disciples over. They had not seen her, so he had to point.

For they all contributed out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.

He is not weighing the gifts against each other. He is weighing what each person still had walking home.

Hold the two halves of the passage together now, because Mark put them together. He has just said that scribes eat widows' houses. Then he sits down and watches a widow drop her last two coins into the treasury those same men administer. Mark reports what Jesus said about her and adds no opinion of his own. He does not tell us the offering was wasted, and he does not call it noble either. He tells us she gave everything, and he tells us who was running the place, and he leaves both of those standing.