REFLECTION 10^TH NOVEMBER 2024

“The Gifts of the Poor”

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai

Remember the days when we had make all our gifts for birthdays and Christmas because we had no money to buy presents?  Mum and dad were going down Karangahape Road the Thursday night before Christmas and they went around the children in the family and asked each one of us what we wanted for Christmas.  I knew straight away I wanted gumboots.  I woke up the next morning and there were a bright shiny pair of red gumboots under my pillow.  Oh wow, I was so excited.  My sisters, thought they also had a great deal, they asked for “swaps” you know those paper dolls that you can put different dresses on by folding the tab over the shoulder?  How very boring.  Anyway for us as a big family to be asked what we wanted for Christmas and then receiving it was a wonderful surprise for us all.  I know that as a child I never knew what poverty was.  I remember asking my mum on day after school, what were those green spots on my sandwich?  It was mould.  My mum was horrified and apologised saying in Samoan “talofae I si o’u tama”  My poor chlld I’m so sorry.  I think she has hoped that I would not notice the mould on my sandwich.  That’s the closest I came to what may have been a sign of poverty?  Yes?  No?  Perhaps poverty was not having lunch at all.

As a child it seemed like all our money went to the building of our new church back in the 70’s.  I know that every family had a weekly target of $100 to donate to the new church each week.  I calculated that $100 in 1975 would be the equivalent of $1,215.85 in todays money.  We gave that much to the church every week maybe for about 5 years.  In my Ph.D research there were many similar stories and the ones who were the most critical and judgemental of their parents financial giving to the church were their children, us NZ born Samoans who could not comprehend and probably today many still do not comprehend this level of giving.

But we were taught that our riches were in heaven and so we shouldn’t complain.  We will be blessed abundantly in return. I know when my parents gave it was everything that they had probably equivalent to the widows mite of 2 coins because for her it was all she had.

This story is one of those anecdotes about Jesus where he is not the hero: the woman is. The scribes exploit and grab in their spiritual poverty; she in her poverty has a wealth of generosity. She is a type of Jesus a self-giving person. The parading men are upstaged by what most would have seen as an insignificant woman, probably a beggar (Greek: ‘ptoche’ – really poor). She is as memorable as the suspect woman who will anoint him a chapter later in 14:3-9.  . Jesus needs no oil. In both, the point is the total openness, the costly self-giving, the vulnerability.

Mark 12 firstly Jesus warns against the Teachers of the Law “Watch out for the teachers of the Law.  The like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synogogues and places of honour at banquets.  Etc. etc.

The first words that Samoa’s new Archbishop Mosese Vitolio Tui spoke when he was ordained at Archbishop a couple of months ago was “When I become Pope, I will get rid of all these flowing robes and ceremony” to which the whole congregation responded in raucous laughter.  I for one watched the ceremony on television on You Tube and I had absolutely no idea who he was or where he was from.  I had a few Roman Catholics colleagues that I knew well in the procession and I did wonder if their names were ever in the running for this prestigious role.  But, as soon as he opened his mouth and utter those first words, I laughed hysterically and I knew why the Pope had chosen to take on the role of Archbishop.  He was down to earth, very funny and a no nonsense man.  I have watched him over the last 2 months and I like him very much.  Choghm invited him to open the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting with the blessing.  Samoa being a predominantly Congregational Christian Church dominant country this was a pleasant change.  Already he has won the hearts of the people.  People, including the prime minister of Samoa were literally crying in the aisles as he said many a true thing in jest.  He didn’t speak the high “T” language of the church but spoke with the down to earth “K” language of the common people.  A travesty in the Congregational and Methodist churches.  His predecessor I thought was a very humble man and he reminded me of a gentle giant softly spoken with much mana and respect.  Little did I know and I soon found out that all the widow’s mites that had been collected along with the offerings of the poor people in the villages were used to purchase land for his own family and there was so much underbelly misuse and misappropriation of funds.  I am so very sorry this happened but I am also so very happy that justice is now being served and poor and humble now being lifted up.

Everywhere we go there is exploitation and corruption sadly, even by people that we know and are related to.  What is done in the dark will come eventually come out into the light.  (talk about how Cyclone Gabriel unearthed literally the corruption behind the bodies of those who had been buried in the Crypt including my dear mother)…The person responsible thought that her dishonest deeds would be dead and buried, no one will ever find out that she did not placed our beloved bodies in the prescribed Zinc coffins then in the wooden coffins before being place in the crypt.  No one would find out she used black rubbish bags instead.  As far as she was concerned once placed in the crypt they would be there forever, no one will ever know.  But due to cyclone Gabriel her crimes were uncovered when all the bodies had to be removed from the crypt due to a leak.  What she did in darkness came to light when no one was expecting it, especially her.  So much has surfaced since then and she has recently been arrested and facing court.

In 12:38-40 Mark is returning to the theme of corruption for which judgement will come.  Human nature has a way of corrupting the most sacred and turning it to the ends of greed and self aggrandisement. The vehicle of grace which rescues us from the need to assert our importance and establish our worth becomes the instrument by which we seek to manipulate the same from others. People acting out of their inadequacy seek power, seek to impress, and it is little surprise that the abuse becomes concrete.   It is not many verses back in chapters 9-10 that we found the disciples wanting the top seats and the chief places. We need to protect people from the abuse which that pattern generates. It is all around us, sometimes even institutionalised in our structures, and rewarded. We can wear it, sit in it, feast on it. We also need to bring salvation to the perpetrators who live out their sense of inadequacy in this way, if we are to break the cycle. Old parental and power patterns can be broken by the touch that allows people to drop the striving and stop long enough to be loved – deeply, thoroughly.

Mark reads the events of his time – the destruction of the temple – as divine judgement on a God-given system which had become corrupt. That comes next in Mark 13. It is speculative to claim that a changed attitude might have avoided that disaster – perhaps so. But Mark is clear about one thing: God’s way is the way of self-giving love and God’s community needs to be a place where love has freed people to be like that, and that includes its leadership, which can often become an instrument of violence. Leadership and the grace to liberate leaders from living out their own needs at others’ expense are a key theme.

One cannot help thinking back on the alternatives: the rich man too big for the kingdom, the disciples too obsessed with themselves to understand, the authorities needing to protect the confusion of their own interests unrecognisably tangled with what they saw as God’s. In contrast: the little child, Bartimaeus the sidelined, this widow, then the woman anointing his feet, and Jesus, himself.  Amen.

Audio of selected readings and reflections

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