First Things First - Deacon Ray
The widow of Zaraphath and her son were starving. There was a famine in the land, announced by Elijah because of the idolatry of wicked King Ahab. For six months it hadn’t rained a drop. Elijah also was hungry and thirsty when he arrived at her town and saw her gathering dry sticks and twigs. They were all that remained to be gathered in the parched and barren land. She intended to make one last bit of bread for herself and her son, using the sticks as fuel for her cooking fire, after which she knew they would surely die of starvation. She probably assumed nobody would notice her. It seems they never did, for she was starving and nobody cared; they cared only about themselves.
Elijah sees her at the city gates and asks her to bring him a small cup of water. A small request indeed. Seeing the man of God take notice of her, she left to get it for him, but then he called out for her to bring him something to eat too. That request hit her like a ton of bricks. Something to eat?! It would have been better to remain unnoticed, as usual! Besides, she didn’t have anything. She told him so, and explained her desperate plight. Elijah persisted, first make me a small cake to eat — after which you shall eat. His message was clear: give first to God, and in faith give all that you have. First things first.
Jesus saw another poor widow at the Temple gates. No one else noticed her. In the company of rich and powerful men dressed in fancy long robes and throwing their money around to attract attention and praise, who notices a poor widow dressed in rags? Who notices? God notices. Just as God noticed the widow of Zaraphath and sent Elijah to her, God saw the widow of Jerusalem and came to her in the flesh. And as He watched, a miracle unfolded. Nobody asked the Jerusalem widow for anything. Why bother anyway? She had nothing: a measly two cents! But such was her devotion to God that she placed before His temple all that she had! Her whole livelihood as Jesus called it. Without any money left for food, she literally gave her life to God, an extraordinary act of faith and thanksgiving. And in praising God, God incarnate praised her. First things first.
What happens next is left unspoken. But what do you think? In exchange for one meal’s worth of bread from the widow of Zaraphath, God provided her with thousands of meals worth of bread for her and her son (and later saved the life of her son to boot). Would the widow of Jerusalem be left to starvation and death in the presence of God Himself who was so pleased with her heroic and extravagant faith? Of course not! Just moments earlier in the Gospel text, Jesus had preached that the love of neighbor is worth more to God than all offerings and sacrifices, and He also condemned the rich scribes for their neglect of widows. Admittedly, His disciples were often slow to understand, but I cannot believe that not one of them would lift a finger to help this holy woman in need after what Jesus said. And once one rose to help her, all of them — perhaps the whole assembled crowd — would rise and bless her as Jesus had blessed her. Sometimes it just takes one person to notice to begin a miracle.
But no matter the miracle that may have been, wherein the poor widow might have received in exchange for her two cents more money than she had ever known, the greater miracle is that she already enjoyed the blessing of God who was so well pleased with her. In the crucible of her poverty-borne gratitude and faith, she was transformed. In the economy of the kingdom of God, she was now the richest of all. Because she put love of God before everything else, even before her own life. First things first!
Jesus had more in mind when he pointed out the example of the widow than merely taking up a collection to help her. He also had in mind the needs of all of God’s children, scattered throughout the world and throughout the ages. His intention, perhaps, was to show how by putting God first, we can at the same time love our neighbor and love ourselves. But the same is rarely true in the other direction. If we put ourselves first, we never have enough to share to help our neighbor, let alone please God. That is the way of the world, but it is not the way of our Lord. The more we operate in the paradigm of the world, the more worldly we become. But the more we embrace the ways of God, the more God-like we become. The choice is ours, but it really matters what we put first, for where our ultimate treasure is, there also is where our heart is, where our life is.
The Eucharist itself reminds us that whatever we give to God is sanctified and deified. When we offer humble gifts of bread and wine, these are made holy and they become the very Body and Blood of Christ. It is a vastly uneven exchange, in that we receive far more than we give. But gifts of bread and wine are not the only offerings we lay on the altar of sacrifice. We also bring forward our money gifts at the Offertory — representing our time and effort, the currency of our lives. Along with the bread and wine, these fruits of our lives also are sanctified and deified. In other words, that part of ourselves which we place on the altar of sacrifice likewise is made holy and shares in the divinity of Christ! The more of ourselves that we sacrifice, the more fully Christ we become. It is a marvelous exchange: sinfulness for holiness, poverty for riches, mortality for immortality.
In the pre-Eucharistic world, the Jerusalem widow already knew this in her heart. That was the whole point of the ancient rites: to point the way to their ultimate fulfillment in the Mystery which we now celebrate. Yet our choice is the same as hers. It is a question of priorities and faith. And it begins with first things first.
