A sermon on Mark 12:38-13:2 by Rev Richard Keith on Good Friday 2026
Today, I’m going to ruin a beautiful story. Not by going too long, and not by using poor illustrations or making bad applications, but with the truth. Because this is what Good Friday does. It spoils our beautiful, sentimental stories with the stark reality of the cross. It takes what looks like a simple moral lesson and shows us what is really going on underneath.
This is not just a story about a woman who gives everything. It is a story about a system that takes everything, and a Saviour who is about to give everything.
Jesus was sitting in the temple courtyard in Jerusalem with his disciples. It was the week of the Passover, the week that leads to the cross. He had been answering questions from his opponents: by what authority are you doing these things, is it right to pay taxes to Caesar, which is the most important of all the commandments? Now it was late. The show was over, the crowd had gone, and Jesus sat near the entrance to the temple building.
As he watched, people were going into the temple treasury and placing their money into an offering box. Some gave what they could afford. Some gave large amounts. Some made a show of it, looking around to see who was watching, perhaps waiting for just the right moment to become the centre of attention. With a dramatic pause, and maybe a dip of the shoulders as if they were unloading a great burden, they threw their money in so it would not make a small clink but a loud, impressive clash.
What is the point of money if it cannot buy respect? What is the point of giving much if it does not gain attention? What is the point of affluence if it does not translate into influence?
While this was going on, a widow came along. She had no breadwinner in her household, no husband to work and provide. He had died, and she was surviving on the last few copper coins he had left behind. Soon they would run out, and she would depend on charity and the pity of others to survive.
She was poor, but rich in faith. She loved God and loved his temple, and she would not come before the Lord empty-handed. So she gave her last two coins, the smallest in circulation. In our terms, it was ten cents, but it was ten cents she could not spare.
No one noticed except Jesus. No one else drew attention to it. No one went home to tell others about the sacrifice they had seen. But Jesus saw her and honoured her, saying she had given more than all the others. They gave out of their abundance, but she gave what she needed to live on. She gave her life. She gave her all.
Here we learn that the Lord sees. He is not distracted by appearances or impressed by large displays of generosity. He sees the heart and values the gift in proportion to what remains. He knows what is done in secret. He knows the quiet prayers of the heart. He knows what we have, what we give, and what it costs us.
It would be easy to stop there. It is a beautiful story. But two things cast a shadow over the widow’s gift. One comes just before this account, and the other comes just after.
Before this moment, Jesus had warned the crowd about the teachers of the law. They loved recognition, honour, and public display, but they also devoured widows’ houses while making long prayers for show. He rebuked their hypocrisy, their greed, and the way the temple had become a centre not of peace with God but of national pride and agitation, funded at the expense of the vulnerable.
It is no coincidence that this warning is followed immediately by the widow’s offering. The same system that exploits widows is sustained by the sacrificial gifts of widows. Her offering is not diminished, and her devotion to God is not questioned, but those who received it were unworthy of it.
Faith is not meant to make people worse. The good news of Jesus is meant to bring life, love, and hope, not to place crushing burdens on the vulnerable or to use religion as a means of exploitation. It is a challenge to leaders to be a blessing, not a burden.
After the widow’s gift, as Jesus and his disciples left the temple, one of them admired its grandeur. The temple dominated Jerusalem, occupying a vast portion of the city. It was an extraordinary achievement. Yet Jesus said that not one stone would be left upon another.
Forty years later, that prediction came true. The temple, begun by Herod in 20 BC and still under construction in Jesus’ day, was finally completed around 63 AD, only to be destroyed seven years later. What the widow had given her all to support would not last.
Jesus had said something similar before when he cleared the temple. Challenged to prove his authority, he said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” His hearers misunderstood, thinking he spoke of the building, but he was speaking about his body. After his resurrection, his disciples understood.
Jesus came to make the temple obsolete. God does not dwell in buildings made by human hands. In Jesus, God dwells among his people. He is the true temple, the meeting place between God and humanity. His sacrifice on the cross replaces all others.
So here is the truth that unsettles the story. The widow gave everything she had to a building that would not last. A building unfinished in her lifetime and destroyed soon after its completion.
Or did she?
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands, but the true one. Jesus is the true sanctuary, the true meeting place between God and humanity. Not built on the backs of the poor, not maintained by those who exploit, but established by his own sacrifice.
When the widow walked past Jesus to place her coins in the treasury, she walked past the one to whom the temple pointed. The true temple was there, watching her. And he would not bring the blood of animals, but his own blood, offered once for all to secure eternal redemption.
This is what we remember on Good Friday. Just as the widow gave everything she had to live on, so did Jesus. She held nothing back, and neither did he. She was unnoticed by the powerful, and so was he. They thought they were preserving the institution, protecting what mattered, but they failed to see what was truly before them.
Jesus saw her. And the Father saw him.
The temple is gone. Its stones are scattered. Its systems have passed away. But the sacrifice of Christ endures. And the widow’s two coins? Jesus said she gave more than all the others. Because God does not measure gifts by earthly standards, but in light of the cross.
He measures them against the one who had everything and made himself nothing, who was rich and became poor so that through his poverty we might become rich.
This is what Good Friday does to the widow’s story. It does not diminish it. It completes it. She did not know that the one watching her would soon do what she had done, only with his life.
Two copper coins, and a cross. Both overlooked by the world. Both counted as everything by God.