Are you interested in money? Dumb question, right? I haven’t met too many people who aren’t. Whenever I’m in my local library I browse through the magazine rack. There is magazine titled ‘Money’. There’s a section at the end of the magazine where a successful person is interviewed. One of the questions is: How would you spend your last $50? One person said: ‘I would spend my last $50 on a big breakfast – with as many sides as possible – and a few coffees at a gorgeous Bondi café’. Many others respond with similar comments. Sometimes someone will say they would invest the money, or pay for some sort of lessons to upgrade their skills, or even give the money away to charity! The one thing I have never read is for someone to say they’d give the money to scammers! Well, that would be crazy wouldn’t it?

Factoring in inflation, $50 dollars may not be far off the two copper coins the widow in this week’s Gospel reading puts into the temple offering bowl. It’s her last $50. It’s everything she has. But, Jesus does not have very complimentary things to say about the people who are supported by the temple offerings: “They devour widows’ houses”, he says.

So, who is this unnamed woman? Does she know what she’s doing? Is she crazy?

The serpent said to Eve in the garden: “You will not die . . . your eyes will be opened and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:4-5) Half-truths are insidious. The two half-truths told by the serpent continue to lure us and fascinate us and shape us. We (understandably) look to avoid death and anything that goes with death (pain, suffering, heartache, grief) by ignoring death, denying death, minimizing death, celebrating death (just look at the skeletons and tombstones and ghosts plastered all over fences this week), controlling death and by doing so we think we are being like God. Well, perhaps in some ways we are, but there is a price to pay for trying to be like God. It’s a price we may be willing to pay, but it’s a price God is not willing to pay.

We all love to receive something for free, it brings us great joy. It’s a concept we know and understand, but what does it mean to be set free? Free from what?

Are we, like the Jews who had believed in Jesus, stating that we have never been slaves to anyone? Let’s explore this concept together and see if we can get to the bottom of what it means to be set free, free indeed!

Dr Reverend Tim Stringer