RADICAL GENEROSITY

Jesus glanced up and saw the rich putting their offerings  into the treasury and also a poor widow putting in two copper coins.

           Luke 21

The closest thing today to the Temple in Jerusalem of Jesus’ day - at least in my experience - is a downtown cathedral. Just as the Temple in Jerusalem attracted a host of characters at the time of Jesus, most downtown cathedrals today attract a cross-section of humanity: millionaires and street people, tourists and residents, the non-religious, the marginally religious and religious fanatics. Some are possessed and some are merely obsessed. Like bees to honey, an important religious landmark, be it the Temple or a Cathedral, attracts a human circus. They come to p-r-a-y and to p-r-e-y. Some come to make contact with God and some come to make a few bucks by working the charity system.

For 14 years, from 1983-1997, I had the privilege of being the pastor of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville. From confessions that would curl your hair, to mental cases that would work your nerves, it was, by far, the most interesting pastoral assignment I have ever had, bar none! I had to deal with a strange man who had the urge to take off all his clothes to scare old ladies. I had to pull a drunk out of the bishop’s throne. I had to wrestle a stalker to the floor who pulled a knife on me over a homily. I mistakenly called the cops on the archbishop. I have had a man drop dead during a wedding, babies pee on me during baptisms and altar servers vomit on me during Mass. I had to drag a screaming woman from the altar steps to the back door through a wide-eyed congregation, too frozen to move. I was panhandled and manhandled.

In my 14 years, I probably met at our Cathedral most of the types that Jesus met in the Jerusalem Temple, including the poor “widow woman” of today’s gospel. This woman taught me a very important lesson about priesthood.

I was running late for the noon mass. I was going to the back of the Cathedral for something when I was confronted by a “bag lady” coming at me, with both arms waving to get my attention. I was used to it, so used to it, that I thought I “had seen it all” when it came to “street people.” As soon as I spotted her, I just assumed that she wanted money. I had been down that road so many, many times. Before I could get my well-rehearsed “come back later” or “go see our social worker” speech out, she asked excitedly, “Father, where is the poor box? I want to make a donation!” At that she opened her dirty hand and there she clutched her gift of a few nickels and pennies for the “poor box.” I had stereotyped and judged her by her appearance. Her generous “widow’s mite” judged me!

This modern-day version of the “widow and her mite” taught this priest several lessons. (1) You never know what is going on inside people, merely through external observation, so always “take off your shoes” and approach them as you would “holy ground.” There is nothing as dangerous as a judgmental, “know it all” priest, be he young priest or an old priest. (2) As Jesus taught the Pharisees, some of the people may have the appearance of saints, but inside are like whitewashed tombs, while some of those who appear to you to be terrible sinners may just turn out to be living saints. “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” (3) Generosity has very little to do with the size of the gift. Many big givers give once in a while from their surplus and blow a horn when they make their gifts, but the ones who really keep parishes going are the many consistent little gifts from people who have to sacrifice to give. When I used to go to parishes to ask for funding for the home missions, I soon found out that I came home with more money when I went to “poor” parishes than when I went to the so called “wealthy” parishes.

In our first reading, the widow of Zarephath, who risked being generous when she herself was close to starvation, is also one of my Biblical heroes. The widow-woman, down to her last handful of meal and a few drops of oil, had to choose between feeding herself and her son or offering hospitality to a traveling holy man. Ignoring her own needs, she chose to be generous. She took that handful of meal and those few drops of oil and made a small cake and gave it to a stranger. For her radical generosity, God rewarded her with bread that never ran out the whole next year.

What she teaches us today, I was taught in spades when I was a young priest. I was stationed at a mission church down along the Tennessee border. We had a handful of parishioners and money was very tight. In fact, one of my first jobs was to raise my own salary. Often it was a strain to even pay the church’s electric bill. I lived in the basement of the church to save the parish money. One of the ministries we had was a used clothing store for poor people who needed access to cheap clothing. One day, we got a load of clothes from the family of a man who had died. I was going through his stuff, trying to organize it. I came across a box of old shoes. In the bottom of the box, under the shoes, was a stack of $20 bills that amounted to about $400.00. I knew in my heart of hearts that the old man had hidden it there before he died and that the family was not aware of it. I stood there holding it, knowing that we could really use it, but also knowing that the family did not know what they had given us. I finally decided to send it back to the family who thanked me for my honesty. A few months went by and one day a letter came in the mail. The family sent us a $1,000.00 check from his estate because we had been so honest! That kind of thing happened all the time down there. We would get down to almost nothing, be generous to someone even needier than we, only to see an unplanned donation come in from some unexpected source, often on the same day!

Both these women today have an important lesson to teach us and that is this: generosity is always rewarded, and often extravagantly! My mother was like that. She practiced radical generosity. We didn’t have much growing up in Rhodelia, but no one left our house without taking something with them whether it was out of the garden or a jar of canned vegetables or something out of the freezer. She was not the only one in Rhodelia who did things like that! It has almost become a family trait that is still passed down by their children. As Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl from Holland who was forced to live for two years in a secret attic by the Nazis, being caught and ending up dying in a prison camp, wrote during World War II, “No one has ever become poor by giving.” That is exactly what many simple holy women have taught me over my lifetime!