Living Stories
Mark 12:38-44
President Franklin Roosevelt created the March of Dimes in 1938. It was a brilliant idea — really an idea ahead of its time. His thinking was that if we all gave a little, our combined efforts would enable us to fight birth defects and polio.
In the town where I grew up in Northern Indiana the downtown stores stayed open until 8 p.m. on Monday evenings. Everyone ate supper early on Mondays, including most of us who lived on farms. Even if we didn’t have money to spend as we strolled up and down Main Street, we would spend our time window shopping and visiting with everyone else who was in the same boat.
During my high school years in the fifties, the Y-Teens headed up a project to raise money for the March of Dimes. We got permission to draw a chalk line down the sidewalk on the main downtown block. In our poodle skirts, pony tails and bobby socks, we stood behind the line all evening and shouted, “Put your dime on the line!” When the line was covered with dimes and if the guys weren’t busy combing their duck tails, they would help us scoop up the dimes in a coffee can and we would begin our chanting all over again.
In 1955 a loaf of bread cost fourteen cents and minimum wage was 75 cents per hour, so a dime wasn’t exactly a widow’s mite. It wasn’t much money for a few; but it was a lot for many. Some put all the dimes they had on the line. Others held back. Some made a big show of putting lots of dimes on the line; others quietly offered their dime or dimes. I suppose some gave out of their abundance, some out of their scarcity, their poverty.
As I thought about this long-ago fund raiser, I wondered if it was a custom just in our town or across the nation so I e-mailed David Rose, the archivist at the March of Dimes. Here’s just a part of his response:
“Dear Rev. Porter – Thanks for contacting the March of Dimes. The “dime line” fund-raiser that you describe sounds like a variation of the March of Dimes fund-raiser called “Mile of Dimes” that began in 1939. In this, a community was challenged to contribute one mile of dimes, lined up edge to edge, which is roughly 92,000 dimes, or $9,200. Special booths, and instructions for building them, were created to arrange all those dimes. “Mile of Dimes” lasted well into the 1960s, I believe. However, during the polio era, communities rallied to create March of Dimes fund-raising gimmicks and events of all kinds, and it’s quite amazing what a plethora of ideas there were: everything from spaghetti dinners, square dances, and turnip auctions to polio roadblocks, telethons, and high-society fashion shows.”
“I reviewed some of these ideas in our fund-raising campaign guides of the 1950s, and I found one called “Buck on the Line” in which one Georgia community set up a clothesline around a city block and challenged passersby to contribute dollar bills to hang from clothespins thereon. I didn’t find the “dime line” idea, and this could well have been a local custom in Elkhart as you suggest, but the March of Dimes usually succeeded in circulating such ideas via its campaign guides.”
There wasn’t a dime line that day in Jerusalem but there was a charity drive, of sorts. We know a little bit about how it worked. We don’t know exactly how it worked from what Mark wrote. He was a master of the understated. He told skeleton stories that we are left to flesh out in ways that speak to each one of us individually.
Mark tells us that Jesus was teaching that day in the Temple about the scribes who made a big show of their importance while at the same time taking advantage of the poor. He sat down for a while with his followers and watched people put money in the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. One widow gave everything she had — two small copper coins. We don’t know her motivation; we don’t know her name; we don’t know what happened to her after she gave her all.
The treasury was located along the wall of the Court of Women. It consisted of thirteen trumpet-shaped containers. As people tossed in their offering, they called out the amount and the intended purpose of the gift to a priest who oversaw the collection process. It must have been impressive to see rich people decked out in their finery tossing large amounts into the collection while announcing the amount and their intent in loud and proud voices.
Who would possibly notice an old nondescript woman quietly offering her two small coins? Each was worth only one four-hundredth of a shekel, about an eighth of a penny each. They were of so little importance, so small, that they didn’t even bear an inscription. Jesus noticed. He always notices. He called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For 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.”
This is where Mark’s story of the widow’s mite ends. But to me, it is where the story begins. I want so much to know what happened next. I want to choose the ending which, if truth be told, would be another beginning. Here are three that I can imagine:
Maybe this happened: After Jesus spoke to his disciples, he moved toward the woman before she could melt away into the crowd. He gently put his hands on her shoulders and said, “Blessed are you, for you have given everything you had to live on. You shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Then he motioned for Judas Iscariot, the keeper of the purse to join him. After a brief exchange of words, Judas closed the widow’s hands around a handful of coins.
Perhaps this happened next: As Jesus was speaking to his disciples, one of them (I couldn’t see which one) led the woman to where he was speaking. There was a moment of silence in that place. Then almost as one, the disciples began to dig down to the very bottom of their pockets. They found small coins they didn’t even know they had, and one by one they placed all that they had in the widow’s hands.
I like to think maybe this happened: The quiet voice of Jesus seemed to pierce the air that day in the Court of the Women. As he offered a blessing to the widow, the crowd was suddenly very still. No one moved for a moment or two. Then one of the wealthiest men slowly stepped forward. (I think he was a scribe.) He pressed a coin of much worth into her hands. He did it without his usual grandiose show. He didn’t shout out the amount or the purpose. In fact he seemed to mumble and stammer a bit when he spoke to her. I don’t know what he said.
We often can’t control the things that happen to us. When someone we love becomes very ill or our children struggle with growing up, or our house burns down or a lay-off claims our livelihood, we realize that we don’t always control our destiny. We can’t predict if we will come to the dime line with lots of dimes or only a few. We can’t predict if we will have a lot to give or a very little at different points in our lives. What we do know is that when we step forward in faith like Bartimaeus did, like the widow with her two small coins did, we are turning the control over to God.
Each day we are given many opportunities to write a different ending and thus a new beginning for the stories we are living.
Amen.
The Rev. Betsy Porter
November 12, 2006
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