A Mentor for Good Giving

Mark 12:38-44
If you saw Daniel Huffman at the local McDonald’s, you’d never realize what an outstanding and unusual young man he was. When he was 17, he stood 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighed 275 pounds, and football meant the world to him. He was a defensive lineman for his high school team until his senior year. In July of that year, Daniel decided to skip his senior year of football to give his ailing grandmother one of his kidneys.

That’s right, a kid who loved football set it aside to give life to another. People who know Daniel would tell you he was just that kind of kid. He was an honor-roll student, member of the school chorus, class vice president, writer of poetry, co-captain of the football team, and he’s also known as “The Screamer”—a one man pep rally!

Yet he had no designs on stardom. Daniel once told his team’s star running back, “It will be my privilege to block for you.” That’s how Daniel was. He really believed it was a privilege to help others. He loved to set the stage for others’ good and blessing. So, it wasn’t out of character for him to give one of his kidneys to his diabetic grandma who had raised him since eighth grade.

High school students are great. They can do wonderful deeds of kindness in this world, and their hearts can be as big as Texas. Here’s what’s great about Daniel’s case—even though he had to quit the football team, the team didn’t quit on him. As he recovered from surgery, the team insisted he wear his jersey each Friday. And that he ride on the senior players’ float at homecoming. And that he make the speech at the pep rally before the game. On Friday nights, people at the games could hear his voice all over the field. “C’mon, everybody!” he’d shout to his teammates.
One Sports Illustrated writer said, “It’s funny, how somebody who wasn’t even playing could be the toughest kid on the team.” Doctors said he’d recover from the operation, and his kidney would soon be twice the size it used to be. Knowing this the writer said, “They may be able to measure the size of his kidney, but they still haven’t figured out how to measure Daniel’s heart.

It would be enough if that was the entire story, but it’s not. Daniel had always dreamed of playing for the powerhouse Florida State University football team someday. When Daniel donated his kidney, that became impossible. Still, during his freshman year of college, Daniel found himself right in the middle of the Florida State Seminoles football team every Saturday afternoon. He was a student trainer. How did that happen?

The December following his senior year, as he was receiving an award at Walt Disney World for most courageous student athlete of the year, Daniel mentioned to the crowd that he was a huge Seminoles fan. Florida State Seminoles’ head coach, Bobby Bowden, heard about Daniel and arranged a full scholarship to the university for Daniel and gave him a position on the team as a trainer.

FSU head trainer Randy Oravetz says they don’t regret their decision. “I feel lucky the kid’s working for me,” Ray said. Daniel feels lucky too—mentioning that he feels a little like Forrest Gump. “I’ve gotten to work for Bobby Bowden and travel and meet all these people. It’s like a fairy tale.”

And here’s the icing on the cake. In 1999, Daniel’s story was told in Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story, a made-for-TV movie. The entire nation was inspired by his kindness, sacrifice, and love. He is a mentor for good giving. How many of us are willing to sacrifice what we most enjoy for another person? If we want to be Jesus’ disciples, if we truly want to follow him, then we may be asked to give up the very things we cherish the most. 

Our New Testament text tells the story of the Widow’s gift of two coins to the temple treasury. For many of us, pennies are more purse-clutter than currency. You can't even find 1¢ gumball machines at grocery stores anymore, so what good are they?

In this text from Mark 12, a penny was all that a widow had to live on. One penny. Well, the Greek words are lepta and kodrantes. Two lepta or coins are worth less than a kodrantes or a penny. Compared to the average wage of a day laborer in Jesus’ time, which was one denarius, the widow’s offering is 1/64th of a denarius.

This story Jesus shares embodies the stewardship law that all persons have some gift to give, no matter how large or small. It’s a story more about the willingness to give rather than the ability to give.[1] 

In this passage, Jesus is teaching the people in the temple (v. 35). As the religious leaders strolled about the courtyards, Jesus used them as a foil (v. 38). Their garments were ornate -- a cultural sign of leisure and dignity. They expected formal public greetings -- the first-century equivalent of saluting an officer. They always looked for VIP seating. They maintained their status through the financial support of widows. They prayed publicly with pomp and eloquence. In short, they were consumed with external abundance. They wanted prominence and deference. They liked their standing in society and the comfort that came with it.      

In like fashion, Jesus noticed the rich giving their huge offerings in the temple. Clearly the right hand knew what the left hand was doing, because Jesus could tell they were giving large amounts, even from across the room.
Then a widow came and put two copper coins into the offering. She, too, is a mentor for good giving. She’s willing to sacrifice what she most needs. She knows she has a gift to give, no matter how large or small, and is willing to give it. Two coins were nothing compared to the sacks the rich had offered. In fact, our idiom "my 2 cents" probably draws from this story. We say, "I'll put in my 2 cents, for what it's worth." 

Recall the adage, "See a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck." Well good luck may not be worth 1¢ anymore. If you saw a coin on the sidewalk, would you pick it up if it were a quarter? A dime? A nickel? How about a penny? That creates a powerful comparison to this text. A couple of pennies -- that's what the widow gave when the temple passed the plate. Jesus commended her for giving what most of us would not stoop to pick up off of the sidewalk.

So what’s the lesson here for us today about what real giving is?  

First, real giving must be sacrificial. In the open salvos of World War II, a large British military force on the European continent, along with some English citizens and diplomats, retreated to the French coastal port of Dunkirk. With its back against the English Channel, the British army faced a German army that threatened to drive it into the sea. To save what he could of his army, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called for all available sea vessels, whether large or small, to evacuate the soldiers and civilians from the besieged French beaches and bring them back across the Channel to safety.

An incredible array of ships and boats raced to the rescue—fishing boats and cruise ships alike. As the flotilla made its way to the beach to pick up soldiers and then move out again, Nazi aircraft set upon them like vultures while German artillery pummeled them with shells. Ships were strafed with machine gun fire, and some were blown out of the water altogether.

Three German fighter planes attacked the defenseless Lancastria, a converted cruise liner, whose decks and hold were packed with soldiers. One bomb dropped directly down the ship’s smokestack, tearing a huge gap in her lower hull. Nearly 200 men were trapped in the forward hold of the now severely listing ship. No one doubted that the liner was going down. Chaos, smoke, oil, fire, and blood, mixed with terrified cries of the men trapped below, created pandemonium on deck as those hopeful of surviving searched for lifeboats or simply leaped into the water.

Moving through the middle of this living nightmare, a young Navy chaplain quietly worked his way to the edge of the hold and peered in at the darkness below.

Then, knowing he could never get out, he lowered himself in.

Survivors later told how the only thing that gave them courage to survive until passing ships could rescue them was hearing the strong, brave voices of the men in the hold singing hymns as the ship finally rolled over and went to the bottom.
The amount of the gift never matters as much as its cost to the giver, not the size of the gift, but the sacrifice. Real generosity gives until it hurts. For many of us it is a real question if our giving to God’s work is ever a sacrifice at all. Very few people will do without their pleasures to give a little more to the work of God. It may well be a sign of the decadence of the church and the failure of our contemporary Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of the people of God and that often they will not give at all unless they get something back in the way of entertainment or goods. There can be few of us who hear this story without some shame.
Second, real giving has certain recklessness in it. The woman might have kept one coin. It would not have been much, but it would have been something, yet she gave everything she had. There is a great symbolic truth here. It is our tragedy that there is so often some part of our lives, some part of our activities, some part of ourselves which we do not give to Christ. Somehow there nearly always something we hold back. We rarely make the final sacrifice and the final surrender.

Third, it is a strange and lovely thing that the person whom the New Testament and Jesus hand down to history as a pattern of generosity was a person who gave such a small gift.   

Russell H. Conwell, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia before the turn of the last century, shared a story about a little girl named Hattie May Wiatt. She lived near a church where the Sunday school was very crowded and he told her that one day they would have buildings big enough to allow everyone to attend who wanted to. Later, Hattie May Wiatt became sick and died. Rev. Conwell was asked to do the funeral and the girl's mother told him that Hattie May had been saving money to help build a bigger church. She gave him the little purse in which she had saved 57 cents. Rev. Conwell had the 57 cents turned into 57 pennies, told the congregation the story of little Hattie May and sold the pennies for a return of about $250. In addition, 54 of the original 57 pennies were returned to Rev. Conwell and he later put them up on display. This was in 1886 when 57 cents was no small savings account for a little girl from a poor family. Some of the members of the church formed what they called the Wiatt Mite Society which was dedicated to making Hattie May's 57 cents grow as much as possible and to buy the property for the Primary Department of the Sunday school. A house nearby was purchased with the $250 that Hattie May's 57 cents had produced and the rest is history. The first classes of Temple College, later Temple University, were held in that house. It was later sold to allow Temple College to move and the growth of Temple, along with the founding of the Good Samaritan Hospital (Now the Temple University Hospital) have been powerful testimonies to Hattie May Wyatt’s dream.

We may feel that we have not much in the way of material gifts or personal gifts to give to Christ, but, if we put all that we have and are at God’s disposal, he can do things with and with us that are beyond our imaginings.

The widow, Daniel Huffman, the chaplain aboard the Lancastria, and Miss Hattie May Wiatt are mentors for good giving. They were willing to sacrifice what was most important and valuable to them. They know they each have a gift to give, no matter how large or small, and they are willing to give it. We, as Christians, are called to be mentors for good giving and not called to hoard our gifts, our time, or our pennies. We are called to give them away. Amen.






[1] The Stewardship Companion: Lectionary Resources for Preaching, by David N. Mosser (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) p. 157.