Observational Theology
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44
What does it look like when the reign of God breaks through into this world? What are the signs that God’s will is unfolding around us? Where do we look for evidence that God is still God when it feels like the ways of the world are squeezing God’s reign out of our lives?
One of my favorite things about Education for Ministry, the four-year, small-group formation program we offer at St. Paul’s, is its emphasis on theological reflection. Perhaps more than anything else, EfM teaches participants to think theologically—to identify situations for potential reflection, examine them for theological meaning, connect them with the broader Christian tradition, and apply the insights that are gained back into their lives. The part of EfM that usually gets the most attention is the reading—the really long weekly readings from the Bible, church history, or other theological texts—but those readings are designed to equip participants for the real goal of the program, which is to engage the world around us through the lens of our faith.
That practice of observational theology has its roots in biblical examples like today’s reading from Mark. In this gospel lesson, Jesus identifies a situation that has potential, examines it for theological meaning, connects it with the broader faith tradition, and then invites his disciples to apply the lessons it offers to their lives. But, as we see in the story of the widow’s mite, the insights we gain must sometimes be mined from deep beneath the surface of our experience.
One day, Jesus was hanging out with his friends in Jerusalem. This was during the series of events that we call Holy Week. Jesus had already made his triumphal entry into the holy city, when the crowds had hailed him as God’s anointed. Then, Jesus had gone up to the temple and overturned the tables of the currency exchangers, openly challenging the legitimacy of the religious operations taking place there. In response, the religious leaders had challenged his authority to carry out such a prophetic action. One by one, the different groups of leaders—the chief priests, scribes, elders, Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees—came up to test him with different questions about faithfulness, and each time Jesus turned them aside with an impressive interpretation of the Jewish tradition.
When no one else was left to ask him a question, Jesus offered a scathing critique of some of the most prominent religious figures of his day. “Beware of the scribes,” Jesus said in today’s reading, “who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts.” He was inviting the crowd to turn their expectations of who was truly faithful upside down. He invoked the sort of religious figures whom society praised for their generosity and sliced open the motivation behind their religiosity: “They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
That’s a hefty criticism, but only later does the significance of that teaching become clear. Having finished his critique, Jesus sat down outside the temple proper, across from the place where people came and dropped their offerings into the treasury. Among those who placed money into the treasury was a widow, recognizable by her distinctive dress. Jesus noticed her and heard the subtle sound of the two small coins rattling in the treasury chute, and he recognized faithfulness at work. Before the woman could slip away, he called his disciples over and pointed her out. “Do you see that widow over there?” he asked them. “She has put more into the treasury than everyone else combined because she has given her last two pennies. Others gave out of their abundance, but she has given out of her poverty, everything she had left to live on.”
The prominent religious leaders, who were admired by everyone, had achieved their prominence by exploiting the weak and the vulnerable, even this widow. Yet this woman, whose livelihood had been stolen by the very religious authorities who get credit for being faithful and generous, gave all she has to God by contributing to a religious system that was governed by the same people who had robbed her. Jesus recognized that the Torah’s repeated command to protect vulnerable people, including widows, conflicted with the contemporary religious practice of putting money in the temple treasury. That’s not because contributing to the temple was a faithless act but because those contributions were being managed by self-interested religious authorities who had failed to alleviate this widow’s poverty. And only those who look carefully beneath the surface of success, piety, generosity, and status are able to see what real faithfulness looks like.
Interestingly, Jesus does not finish this theological reflection with an imperative. He never tells the disciples to go and do likewise or that it is to people like this widow that the kingdom of heaven belongs. In other words, he never tells his followers that they, too, should give their last penny to the temple treasury—the same religious institution whose legitimacy he challenged by overturning the moneychangers’ tables. Instead, he reinterprets the significance and size of the people’s offerings in a way that isn’t obvious to the casual onlooker but becomes clear to those who see in this episode what God sees. God knows that true faithfulness depends upon the heart, and only a heart that belongs to God can become a vessel of faithfulness.
Finding ways to contemporize this story is difficult. When we think of modern-day religious leaders whom Jesus would criticize, we naturally turn to the charlatans on television who swindle billions of dollars away from vulnerable people in order to fly around in private jets and live in luxurious mansions. And, while it’s true that Jesus would certainly have had some not-nice things to say about them, I think it’s hard for us to appreciate how universally respected the religious leaders whom he calls out were. Jesus wasn’t calling out the televangelists who make most Christians cringe. He was singling out faithful icons who were held in the highest esteem across the religious culture—the sort of people who get invited to banquets, palaces, and inaugurations—and not just the inaugurations you aren’t excited about.
Only those who dare to peel back the curtain and look beneath the power and trace back the lines of success to their origins are able to see what God sees. No matter how faithful someone looks or sounds, if they got where they are by stepping on the backs of vulnerable people, they are not the paragons of faithfulness that they seem to be. No matter how good and generous and successful a congregation, organization, or denomination is, if it was built on the subjugation of human beings or achieved its status by excluding people from the community of faith, it cannot be an institution of faithfulness until it grapples with its sinful past. And, if you want to see what God sees, you have to learn to notice where real expressions of faithfulness are made—those little gestures that most of us don’t have time for—the kind of faithful actions that come from people whom the world has forgotten to value but whose hearts belong to God.
The work of theological reflection is as important now as it has ever been, not only for participants in EfM but for all of us. We need to learn where to look for God’s presence among us and to hone our skills at recognizing how God shows up in a sinful world. We need to engage in the work of observational theology, and, to do that, we must equip ourselves by reading the Bible, coming to church, saying our prayers, remaining in community, and serving those in need. Those practices shape us into a people who can recognize and respond to what God is doing all around us. Thus, we practice our faith not to look good in anyone else’s eyes but to learn how to look at the world through the eyes of Jesus Christ.© 2024 Evan D. Garner
