The Rev. Keri T. Aubert  Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont Psalm 146

November 8, 2009   Hebrews 9:24-28

Proper 27, Year B, RCL     Mark 12:38-44

Every once in a while I learn something that completely disrupts the assumptions I have made about how things work in the world. I had just such an experience last week while reading an article in Seven Days about, of all things, milking machines.[i] The article profiled a dairy farm in Fairfax. After their dairy barn burned down in 2008, the farm’s owners replaced their traditional milking machine with a robotic system from the Netherlands. With traditional equipment, the farmer has to manually attach the four individual milking arms to the cow’s teats. With robotic equipment, lasers find the teats and direct the arms. Each cow is individually known to the robot, which tracks a variety of information about each cow.

For the farmer, this type of system saves hard labor and offers built-in quality control features. But perhaps best of all, it is said to be much less stressful and generally more healthy for the cows, which are reputed to live three to four times longer. A big part of the reason why—and this is the part of the story that really got my attention—is this: the cows go to the barn for milking when they decide they’re ready to go. The farmer is not involved in the decision and doesn’t even have to be there. Maybe it’s just me, but it had never occurred to me that a cow could know when she needed to be milked or act to make it happen. The expert quoted in the article had this to say about it:

The robot runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the cows are free to come in and get milked up to four times per day. They’re lured with grain. After a little training, they know to walk through the gate. . . . The concept of milking cows twice a day, that’s for human comfort, not for the cow. The cow here is volunteering her milk and going at will. You’ll see cows come in within minutes of the day before. They establish their own hierarchy, their own schedule. It’s amazing to watch.[ii]

By the time I read the cow article, I’d already had my thinking shaken up at the training I attended in Chicago last month. It was training for clergy about leadership during periods of change. Infused throughout the training was a concept called appreciative inquiry. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is among the businesses reporting big success with appreciative inquiry.[iii] Originally developed for business, some are also applying its principles to the church. With appreciative inquiry, the goal is essentially to look for the best in an organization and to make the most of it. You might say that appreciative inquiry is a rebuttal to the tendency of organizations to always look for and respond to their deficiencies rather than their strengths. One proponent puts it this way:

“Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system ‘life’ when it is most effective and capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI [appreciative inquiry] involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to heighten positive potential. It mobilizes inquiry through crafting an ‘unconditional positive question’. . . .”[iv] 

My training was led by an Episcopal priest who has a doctorate in psychology. Rob gave us a simple example of this technique from a church he once served. Members of the church had identified worship as being particularly important to them as a community. Therefore, immediately after church every Sunday, the worship committee gathered for five minutes. Rather than discussing what went wrong that day, each person answered this question: “At what point in the service did you most feel God’s presence?” Rob summarizes the appreciative approach as being purpose-centered, future-oriented, solution-focused, values-informed, and love-inspired; he describes the process as incarnational leadership.[v] Let’s hear this idea of incarnational leadership again: purpose-centered, future-oriented, solution-focused, values-informed, and love-inspired.

Believe it or not, all this is related to today’s Gospel reading. In the reading, Jesus watches people donating money to the treasury. These funds would have been used for the support of the Jerusalem Temple. It’s thought that people made their offerings by throwing coins into one of thirteen trumpet-shaped receptacles. As they landed, the coins made a clatter, drawing attention both to the donor and to the amount donated.[vi] As Jesus watches, and presumably listens, he observes that a poor widow gives two small copper coins—which is all that she owns.

This text is often used to encourage church stewardship. But if you read the text carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus describes the events without editorial. That is, he neither praises nor condemns the woman’s actions. As one commentator puts it, “. . . attention to the Markan context leaves open whether the widow is presented as a model to be imitated for her sincerity and generosity or as someone to be pitied as a victim of religious exploitation.”[vii] We do know that, as a widow, the woman would have been ripe for exploitation. “The Hebrew word for widow connotes one who is silent, one unable to speak. In a society in which males played the public role and in which women did not speak on their own behalf, the position of a widow . . . was one of extreme vulnerability.”[viii] Even if the woman is being sincerely generous, she still comes across as an object of pity, and objects of pity are unpopular subjects of emulation.

As we try to break open this text, we might turn to the woman herself. We might try to listen not only for the coins she clatters into the receptacle, but also for the voice that others would deny her. When Jesus defers comment, maybe he’s inviting us to use that very approach. And so I imagine us appreciatively asking the woman, “Why do you contribute to the treasury?” When I listen for her answer, the first thing I hear her say is that her contribution is rooted in neither sacrifice nor exploitation. Instead I hear her say that she contributes because it provides her with an active means of claiming her place in the community of Jewish life, which is centered on the Temple. In doing so, she is looking toward the future, trusting that contributing to the practice of the traditions also contributes to the arc of salvation that God promised to all, especially to the oppressed and the exploited. You might say that she is doing what she can to participate in her own salvation.

This by no means makes it okay if she is exploited and oppressed. But it does allow her to reject the role of perpetual victim. As she contributes not from weakness but from strength, she becomes a survivor, but not only that. She may lack voice, but she has made herself an active agent in that great and mysterious process by which God will redeem the world.

Taking all this into account, we might still hear in this text a call to stewardship, though perhaps not for the usual reasons. If we choose to support the church, and to support it generously, it needn’t be because we are ignorant dupes. It needn’t be about guilt or responsibility. Instead it can be about our shared vision of a world that is filled with loving-kindness, of our church as providing the means to realize that vision, and of ourselves as active agents of that transformation. As we think about what we are willing to offer this church, I suggest that we think appreciatively. Think about this church’s vision for the future, about its unique gifts, about its contributions to God’s unfolding kingdom. Perhaps that will call you, too, to give willingly and generously.

As you know, Diocesan Convention took place this weekend at St. Paul’s Cathedral. During his address yesterday, Bishop Ely ended with some comments about what it means for us to be agents of transformation in the world. He offered as a mantra the title of a video he recently watched: “Celebrate What’s Right in the World.” He said to us, “Celebrate what’s right in the world.” Then he quoted Michelangelo as saying, “I saw the angel in the stone and carved to set it free.”

You might not be able to concisely describe the vision of this church. But I suspect that you know it in your hearts. And I’m pretty sure we saw it in action very clearly last Sunday as we all made the flags that are hanging on the wall. We are agents of transformation helping to realize God’s kingdom. All we have to do is claim our agency.

As you leap into the spiraling love of God’s redeemed kingdom, freely and willingly following God’s call, look for the angel in the stone, and carve to set it free.