The Gift That Cost Everything

Clink. Clank. Clatter. Handfuls of heavy coins rattling into the temple offering chests. Then, almost too quiet to hear: tink, tink. Two tiny coins. And Jesus says, did you see that?

It is the last week of Jesus' life, and he is teaching in the temple courts in Jerusalem. The city is crowded for Passover. Jesus has been debating with priests and scholars all day. Moments before, he warned the crowd about religious teachers who love long robes and the best seats, who make long prayers for show, and who devour widows' houses. Now he sits down opposite the treasury, where people bring their gifts for the temple. And he watches.

Many rich people come by. They cast in much, Mark says. Perhaps they made sure it was noticed: a full purse, emptied with a flourish. People would have nodded and whispered. That is a generous man. Then a woman comes. She is a widow, and she is poor. In those days a widow often had no one to provide for her, no husband's income, perhaps no son to look after her. She comes up to the chest and drops in two lepta, two of the smallest coins there were. Together, Mark tells his readers, they make a quadrans, a tiny Roman coin. It is almost nothing.

Jesus calls his disciples over. Truly I tell you, he says, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are giving to the treasury. The disciples must have looked at each other. More? Two tiny coins? Then Jesus explains. They all gave out of their abundance, from what they had left over. But she, out of her poverty, put in everything she had, all she had to live on. The rich gave what they could spare. She gave what she could not spare. Heaven does not measure gifts by size. It measures them by cost, and by love.

Mark does not tell us her name. We never hear what happened to her afterwards. She walked away, probably without ever knowing that Jesus had seen her. But he had. And within a few days, Jesus himself would give everything he had, all of his life, on a cross outside that city. The widow gave two coins. Jesus gave himself. That is the gift that cost everything. And it was given by the one who first came to us as a poor baby, laid in a manger.

The Mishnah, a collection of Jewish teaching from around AD 200, says there were thirteen collection chests in the temple, shaped like trumpets, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. Each was labelled for a different kind of offering. Coins dropped into them could be heard as they fell, which may be one reason the rich people's gifts were so noticeable.

The Gift That Cost Everything. You'll find it in Mark chapter twelve, verses forty-one to forty-four. At Christmas, gifts are often measured by how big or expensive they are. Jesus measures them differently. So here is a question to carry with you. What could you give this Christmas that would really cost you something, given out of love?