However, we do not yet find ourselves in our stewardship season, and so as I approached this text this past week I was able to see in it another theme, one which had eluded me before, and one which, perhaps, may be even more instructive for us.

So may those with ears to hear, listen! And may those with eyes to see, see!

“A poor woman at the intersection? No, I don’t remember seeing one,” I replied, sadly.

Jesus is sitting at the Temple, and there is much to see. The Temple was a glorious structure, acres across, huge stone walls, people everywhere, the prominent religious people striding around in their flowing, decorative robes, the wealthy elites of the city imperiously striding on through, their attendants at their heels, perpetually ready to meet whatever wishes their patron might command. Jesus has a prime viewing spot, right opposite the treasury, and in full view of all the wealthy come to make their large contributions. You can almost hear the exclamations from the onlookers, oohing and ahhing at the size of the contributions.

But it is something else that catches Jesus’ eye, so much so that he calls his disciples over for a word with them. He notices a widow.

“Widow” in those days was a by-word for poor. Widows, because they had no male protector to provide them security and protection, because this was long before pensions and social security and other elements of what we consider to be the “safety net” to protect us in case something goes wrong, were among the most vulnerable members of society. Just before this scene, Jesus had condemned the scribes, and for what? -- for “devouring widow’s houses” – for foreclosing on the mortgage, evicting them from their homes, throwing them out onto the street.

Everyone else notices the big-wigs, the powerful, the rich, the famous, the big-donors – but Jesus notices this tiny widow. A tiny widow who throw into the collection box “all she had to live on” – in Greek, literally “her whole life.”

Preachers down the years have lauded this poor woman as an exemplar of faith, “casting her future upon the arms of God” – and so we should as well.

But I don’t read it that way, a way that in reality exploits the most vulnerable among us.

The legal system, Jesus has just angrily denounced, fails to protect the most vulnerable in society when it devours the home of widows. And now the religious system has done the same – in convincing this poor woman that she should contribute to the treasury, it has taken from her whole life, all she had to live on. The rich who give lavishly still have plenty set aside to feed and house and clothe themselves, but now she, she who had only two cents to her name, she has nothing.

And Jesus notices.

Jesus was forever noticing people whom we had overlooked. He noticed those poor fishing men down by the sea, no seminary training, no college background, no accreditation from the denomination, and he calls them to ministry. He noticed the woman of the city, a “notorious sinner”, who enters the dining room one evening and pours sweet perfume all over his feet. He noticed an anonymous woman in the crowd who tentatively reaches out a finger just to touch the hem of his garment in the hope of a cure – and he heals her.

This is one of the gifts Jesus gives to us, his followers: the ability to truly see people, to see the people that without him we would have missed.

Which is why we move out of our comfort zone to fly to New Orleans or Chile or Sri Lanka to be with those who have next to nothing, why we take a meal down to the NOAH homeless shelter in Hyannis, why we periodically host a Day of Hospitality here at West Parish so that the homeless can have a nice home-cooked meal and some time off the streets.

Because Jesus gives us the gift of really seeing not just those the world considers worthy of notice, but all the people.

Amen.