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Feb. 14, 2007 In Luke 21:1-4, we find Jesus at a temple watching the faithful cast in their gifts. Apparently, the congregation included a number of wealthy men as well as a poor woman. The wealthy gave more, the poor woman little, which was all that she had: “And
he (Jesus) 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 more than they all: For all these of their abundance
cast in unto the offerings of God: but she in her penury hath cast in all the
living that she had.” It’s
very moving to see poor little old ladies sacrificing their meager coins to the
church. I have seen this very thing
in México. An ancient
penurious woman in long black habiliments, gaunt and frail, will put a few
coins in the collection box in the narthex of a church or in the basket that is
passed around from pew to pew during mass.
I marvel at such piety and devotion. However, as
touching and lachrymose as such selflessness may be, it is money that makes a
church, with its schools and hospitals, operate
efficiently. I might be the dearest
soul in the world if I give my last two dollars to a church out of sheer
charity and love, but it is the big donor, no matter what his motives, be they
ostentation or delusions of grandeur, that a church
needs. In a word, a church needs
money. If we are to have churches
as all, and why we should is a good question, then we will have to fund them adequately.
A dollar here and a dollar there are not enough. Recently I
read an article
about how No doubt
there has been or will be an outcry in Los Angeles, and, hopefully, as
incidents like this begin to proliferate, there’ll be a slight move in
the direction of socialized medicine or a national medical insurance. But if such a thing comes about, it will
cost billions of dollars in taxes.
Leaving the solution to random charity just won’t work
satisfactorily. The kind
little benefactor does not offer any real lasting help. Jesus should have understood this. Apparently he didn’t. What we really have in the writings of
Luke is a large dose of wishful thinking in concert with a sprinkling of pious
platitudes and angry sermons, put in Jesus’ mouth to make then sound
divinely inspired. They provide no
real guide to practical problems.
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