WHAT DOES ENOUGH MEAN?

One of the perplexing things about managing our worldly wealth is that we never know what’s going to happen to us today and tomorrow, so we never know whether we have enough resources to see us through to the end of our lives. 

Many years ago I recall one of my friends telling me about a dispute he was then having with his father, who was then about 80 years old.  His dad owned a lake home in Wisconsin, a very large, nice one.  But the DNA in the family suggested that his dad could very possibly live another 20 years, to the age of 100, and he didn’t have the assets to do that without running out of money. 

So my friend was pleading with his father - maybe arguing would be the better word - to sell the lake place, which he rarely used anyway, as a way to provide for his needs as an older man and a widower.  But his dad was stubborn on that topic, and refused to consider selling that place, because he wanted his children and grandchildren to have it, although they rarely went there either.

About six weeks after that conversation, my friend’s father abruptly died.  We just never know what’s going to happen next, and what resources we will need to provide for that when it happens.  Many of us and our loved ones know that we are always just one incident, one sudden crisis away from having all that we need, to being in a state of desperate need in terms of money and housing and healthcare.

Ironically, when I was 11 years old we had a terrible fire in our family home.  Within a couple of hours, we had no place to live.  All of my siblings were scattered to the homes of whatever friends would welcome us that night.  I ended up in the very home of this same friend and his parents, including of course, his dad.  In a moment we had gone from a situation of being just fine to one of being in great vulnerability and worry and uncertainty about the future.   Thankfully we were able to be back on our feet after several months because of this thing called homeowners insurance.  But there wasn’t anything like that in biblical times -- or health insurance, or unemployment benefits, or PROP, or so many of the safety nets that help us now.

But even today we stand vulnerable to whatever may happen next: a car crash, a fall, a stroke, a heart attack, a cancer diagnosis, or dementia.  And these aren’t just spiritual and personal crises.  They are financial ones as well.  So how do we know when we have enough to weather those unexpected storms?  I think the answer is that we can never know, so there can never really be “enough.”

To pose a question like this can really be an invitation into a profoundly religious decision about how to live, about who and what to trust, and for whom we imagine ourselves to be responsible and accountable in our use of this world’s resources -- not least, the resource of money. 

When the prophet Elijah arrived in the town of Zarephath in today’s first reading and encountered this desperate widow gathering sticks, he was a stranger there.  Yet he had the audacity to request that she take care of him before attending to her own needs and those of her son, who were confronting this prospect of starvation.  It was a test of spirit.  How easy it could have been for her simply to say, “I don’t have enough,” and to walk away.  She did the opposite.  And in the gospel, how easy it could have been for another poor widow at the Jerusalem Temple, when confronted by the treasury box, to decide, “I don’t have enough and what good would a few cents do anyway?”  She also did the opposite. 

As both of these scriptures point out to us, it’s not so much about the size of the offering as it is about where we place priorities.  To whose voices do we listen?  And what really is “enough?”  The biblical widows didn’t withhold what little they had, because it was for the right purpose.

When we really don’t know what’s going to happen next, how do we best prepare?  To whom do we attach ourselves and our resources?  And why?  What’s our “insurance policy?” 

I’ve been saving up for my own retirement for decades now, and I think it will be enough, but I don’t know, because I don’t know how long I’ll live or what will happen to me tomorrow.  So the better question is, what ought I to do with what I now have?  It is wise to be prudent with our resources, as the scriptures elsewhere tell us, but in the end it is about who or what we worship as absolute, because there will never be “enough” of this world’s goods in which we can place ultimate trust.

Both of these prophetic, unnamed widows of the Bible understood themselves to be responsible to a community larger than themselves, larger than family, larger even than the people they knew or shared faith with.  And being responsible didn’t mean only praying for them, it meant putting themselves at physical and material risk by helping others to eat or to find shelter.  They probably didn’t know whether they had “enough” to spare, but they did know that there were others around them who surely were in need.  The question wasn’t about “enough,” but rather about solidarity.

We are presented with the very same challenge and the very same mission now.  As we continue our Eucharist, we remember in prayer the many, many human beings who stand in great need, not only of our kind thoughts and well-wishes, but of our self-sacrifice, even when we may feel that what we have to offer isn’t “enough.”  In fact, maybe especially then.  Maybe it’s money.  Maybe it’s food.  Maybe it’s time and attention.  Maybe it’s political advocacy.  Maybe it’s through a difficult word of correction to one who is losing the way.  Jesus praised the widow today: “She, from her poverty, gave all that she had.”  This is our task, too.