The poor widow giving two coins

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[Note: This is one of a series listed under the heading: Wordie Post." It was originally posted on the Word Press blog entitled "Our Daily Bread," found at rtippett97@wordpress.com. The changes at Word Press are similar to those on Twitter and Facebook, where I was posting to an empty space. That was because I began and maintained that blog as one of their free offerings. When their force to change to a paid blog website did not move me, they cancelled their "Reader," so posting on Word Press has become like a caged animal at the zoo, where only workers occasionally toss the animals a bite to eat. Word Press [et al] is like what I imagine life was like in the satellite countries of the Soviet Union: meager, bleak, spiritless. So, I am transferring those forty articles here.]

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In the local Baptist minister’s sermon, he preached about Jesus seeing a poor widow woman discretely place two coins in the treasury of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Back in my rebellious youth, when I was unchurched, a friend was on the mailing list for a local Baptist church, because his parents were members and they had taken my frind to church there.  As a registered Baptist of that church, he received their weekly bulletin, or church news.  One day I read that bulletin and then went back with a pencil and circled all the words that mentioned giving.  The whole thing was about how much it cost to operate a church.  My friend still went there, because the church had a basketball gym and he just loved to play basketball.  Operating a basketball gym costs money!

Well, the Baptist minister I watch via the media might or might not run a church with a basketball gym, but his church does possess several cameras and cameramen, obviously with a producer, director and control room personnel, in order to produce a televised performance.  Ever since man invented nickelodeons and realized people would slip a nickel in the slot to see a show, shows have been the name of the game.  Religion is very theatrical these days; and, theatrics costs a lot more than running a basketball gym.

In the sermon, the pastor quoted from Joshua 24:15, which says (in part), “for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  His point was said to be that giving begins with the family.  He then went on to talk about how much it costs to raise a family, especially paying to send kids off to college.

That mention of Joshua 24 was interesting to me, because I recently wrote about that chapter of Joshua.  Joshua had just set the Tabernacle and the Ark into a safe place in Shechem and he had called a meeting of all the Israelites there, to discuss their responsibilities about giving.  He told them [paraphrasing], “You are now free to worship any gods you want.”  Then he added, “for me and my household, we will serve Yahweh.” [The actual word written is “Yahweh,” not “the Lord.”]  That means Joshua told the Israelites they were free to choose whatever “lord” they wanted to serve – the gods of Egypt, the gods of Ur [where Abraham came from], or even the gods of temples and basketball – but Joshua was going to become a “house of Yahweh” and his congregation would be his family, who would all be taught to give their souls to Yahweh.  All the Israelites who came to that meeting agreed with Joshua, saying they were going to also do like Joshua and all become households of Yahweh.

That got me thinking: “Maybe it was Solomon building a fabulous Temple [in his name] that began the need for treasuries and the preaching of guilt-inspiring sermons [and bulletins] that make tithing the equivalent of an Olympic event. [In last place, but not giving up, is the widow woman, who only gave two coins.]

So, I went to the temple of “Lord Internet” and I asked it, “How much tithing did the Israelites give during David’s reign?”  Here is one of the results that came up, which I found interesting.  I’ll leave you to read that at your leisure.  What I want to do now is craft a deeply inspired sermon about how many times David witnessed widow women giving coins at the Tabernacle in Zion, after he moved the Ark from Kirjath-jearim to the City of David. 

[Grab a sandwich and cold drink, before finding a comfortable chair to lounge in.]

Ahem.

….

That’s it.  Nada.  Zilch.  There are no stories about giving coins before kings began building temples [the Baptist minister reminded that these modern days includes church buildings, some with gymnasiums].  It seems all the upkeep of permanent buildings became quite costly.

That takes us back to Joshua, when he said he would let the Ark stay in a tent in Shechem, but he would become a house of flesh, in whom Yahweh would reign.  The costs of maintaining that temple was everything: All one’s heart, All one’s soul, and All one’s mind.  Nothing less than everything is acceptable.  Ten percent is what agents get for selling religion as entertainment.

Then my mind recalled the same Baptist minister, (not long ago) telling how the lame man from birth held up his cup to Peter and John [of Zebedee], saying “Alms for the poor.”  The Baptist minister recited Peter saying, “I have neither gold nor silver, but in the name of Jesus Christ rise.”

That is the Biblical quote that needs to be used in a sermon about giving.  Not, “Forget about the name of Jesus Christ stuff.  We want major credit cards and direct deposit, but the faces of dead American presidents will buy us lunch today.”

This new revelation from divine insight then opened my mind’s eye to seeing the COVID19 pandemic has come with Yahweh’s blessing.  It has spread a curse over all the buildings that charge admission for the entertainment they provide.  Since they are not houses that spend anything towards teaching pew-sitters to become themselves a house of Yahweh, Yahweh has allowed the governments to ban all useless gatherings, which can be the definition of all entertainment assemblies.  If Joshua’s household had internet TV back then and he saw news of a pandemic causing no assemblies for religious purposes, for fear of sickness, with hospitals and doctors killing the fearful, Joshua would have smiled and said, “Good thing Yahweh resides within my soul.  I have nothing to fear but the loss of Yahweh Himself; and, He ain't going nowhere away from me.”

The people using heaven as a place that churches preach souls will never reach, if they do not give some money to a building and its organization of hired hands.  Now a threat of a disease [which most people recover from naturally] has forced many churches into selling off their basketball gyms, in order to make the mortgage payments.  They fear government.  They fear airborne agents from China.  They fear losing money that the government might start taking back; and, they fear employers making people go back to work.  They fear facing the world without their holy mask and their high priest Fauci and his cave-dwelling CDC priests [they must be high on something]. They fear everything except losing God.  [That happened long ago.]

Imagine how well it would have gone over had Joshua told all the Israelites he had gathered, “Go back to wherever you live, knowing Yahweh is safe in this tabernacle in Shechem … as long as you send in a tenth of everything you own, so the priests who maintain the tabernacle can buy thread to mend the tears in the fabric and buy charcoal for the barbie-q altar.”  It would take hundreds of years for the breakdown of Israelite society to occur, making that concept possible to arise.  Since that origin, however, it has become quite commonplace.

#Joshua2415 #templegiving #tithing #widowwomanandtwocoins