November 8 Proper 27
Have you ever wondered whether a scribe or a poor widow would make a better motorcycle mechanic? Well, if you have, you’re in the right place. Let’s start with a little story about how not to do motorcycle repair.
Phaedrus’s bike needed help, so he found a shop and took it in. And he describes the experience like this: “The shop was a different scene from the ones I remembered. The mechanics, who had once all seemed like ancient veterans, now looked like children. A radio was going full blast and they were clowning around and talking and seemed not to notice me. When one of them finally came over he barely listened to the piston slap before saying, ‘Oh yeah. Tappets.’”
The shop made quite a few misguided attempts to fix the motorcycle in the days that followed, and when Phaedrus finally arrives to pick up his machine for the last time, the tappets, of all things, need adjusting.
“…The kid came with an open-end adjustable wrench, set wrong, and swiftly rounded both of the sheet-aluminum tappet covers, ruining both of them… [Then] he brought out a hammer and cold chisel and started to pound them loose. The chisel punched through the aluminum cover and I could see he was pounding the chisel right into the engine head. On the next blow he missed the chisel completely and struck the head with the hammer, breaking off a portion of two of the cooling fins.”
When the motorcycle is finally released from the shop Phaedrus finds that the mechanics failed to bolt the engine back onto the frame. And a few weeks later, he discovers that the cause of his original problem was not tappets, but a sheared off twenty five cent pin in the oil delivery system.
Of the incompetent mechanics, he wonders, “Why did they butcher it so?…They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it… But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing—and uninvolved… There was no identification with the job. No saying, ‘I am a mechanic.’”
In case you were wondering, that story isn’t in the Bible. It’s from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
For Pirsig, it takes more than training and experience to be a good mechanic. It takes involvement. It takes a little investment of the self. “Nothing personal in it,” he says of the chimps in the shop. They were the precise opposite of the woman with the two small copper coins in their approach to their work and their lives.
We usually read the story about the widow’s mite as being about proportional giving. And the upshot of it is, give a higher proportion of what you have and Jesus will like you more. We soften it a bit, but that’s the gist. The difference between the rich people and the widow is that the widow gives till it hurts.
But Jesus never says that the widow’s gift hurts her at all. What he does say is this: “all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
The life of faith for the widow Jesus admires is about giving away what we have to live on. It’s not about dabbling. It’s not about contributing what’s left over or the excess in our lives. The life Jesus calls us to is about putting everything in.
The contrast to the widow’s way of life is the way of the scribes and the wealthy givers that Jesus was watching. And his most colorful description, of course, is of the scribes (the clergy, that is). “[They] 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!”
As a person who walks around in a long robe, as a person whom some people call “Father” or “Reverend” in the marketplaces, as a person whose seat is right up front in church and who is asked to say grace at banquets, Jesus’ criticism of the scribes hits pretty close to home for me. And the heart of his question to me is this: “Are you putting in what you have to live on, or are you contributing out of your abundance? Or, to be clearer, do you do this work because you can put the best of yourself into it, or do you do this work because of the honor you can extract from others?” I’d rather not answer that for myself in this sermon.
But it seems that the scribes Jesus denounces were living like those worthless motorcycle mechanics. We’re at our best in this life when we’re invested. When we’re contributing what we live on. When we’re giving from the part of ourselves that is most alive.
We’re at our worst when we’re uninvolved, living on the surface, gliding around in robes, soaking in and puffing up on the praises of other people, pleased with the wealth and honor we’ve managed to accumulate. Throwing around a little of all that we have just helps keep the praises coming and our place of honor secure. It seems to be abundance well spent.
But Jesus says it’s not. Because all that spending is out on the surface of our lives. In fact, it may be so hard for us wealthy folks to enter the kingdom of heaven because our deepest selves become insulated by all that abundance. It’s hard for us to even locate the parts of ourselves that we actually live on. Not the parts that the people in the marketplaces see and admire, but the deep parts of our selves that want to be known and understood and loved. The deep parts of our selves where the gifts we really have to offer this world live.
There’s something in the clarity of a poor widow’s gift of two coins that Jesus wants us to see. And I think his point is much more subtle than that it’s better to be poor. Her poverty just means that when she gives, she’s giving something that she lives on. Something that she needs. She’s always living close to that vulnerable center of herself. She has no robes, no seat of honor to distract her or us. And Jesus says, “Look at that. There’s a woman who is giving from the part of herself that is really alive. Might the rest of us live that way?”
There is a curious irony in this story. Jesus condemns the scribes both for their pretense and for the fact that they help bring about the widow’s poverty. They “devour widow’s houses” he says. But Jesus doesn’t hold up the woman as someone to be pitied. She is someone to be emulated. Someone we should learn from.
So Jesus demands that we consider what impact our shallow lives have on others. Does the work we do, or the stuff we buy, or the investments we make devour someone else’s house or family or land or country? If so, we’re living like scribes.
But at the same time, in an economically unjust world, even if we find ourselves at the wrong end of that injustice, we have a way to go that is pleasing to God. Because God’s economics are not ours. God doesn’t care whether we have two copper coins or two Falcon Jets. God wants us to give from what we live on. Because when we truly give of ourselves, life doesn’t get used up. Our lives come to life.
Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove says that many of us contemporary Western Christians say, “Let the church be the church and the world be the world. We’ll be Christians in our hearts and citizens and businesspeople with our bodies.”
And the real problem with this division in our lives may be that we can easily loose track of our hearts. Jesus mocked the scribes in their flowing robes and seats of honor. But if we let ourselves be Christians in our hearts and citizens and businesspeople with our bodies, do we end up just like them? People whose lives have beautiful things on the surface, and nothing at their center.
Maybe those scribes were to be pitied as much as condemned.
But Jesus shows us a better way. “Look at this woman,” he says. She is giving what she has to live on. Her faith isn’t a superficial touch on a beautiful but empty life. She is alive because she knows how to give life away. The surface of her life is in harmony with her heart.
So if your motorcycle breaks down and you have to choose between the shop owned by the poor widow and one owned by the scribes, choose the widow’s shop. Because she knows how to involve herself in life. She knows how to give what she has to live on. In life and in work this makes all the difference. The scribes’ shop might have snappier advertising campaigns. They might be impressive and smug walking around in matching jackets and t-shirts bearing the logo of the hippest shop in town. But they will be uninvolved and distracted in their work. And they won’t do you or your bike any favors.
Likewise to be Christian is to live an integrated life. Our hearts and our bodies, the things we believe in and the way we spend our money, our values and our work are all meant to be in harmony. Jesus calls us to give like that widow gave: to give what we have to live on. He calls us to pull away the layers of honor and wealth and influence to find that part of ourselves that we live on. “Give from that place,” he says, “and even if you have nothing but two copper coins, your life and the world will be blessed.” Amen.