Here is an extended excerpt from a sermon on Sunday's gospel (the widow's offering) entitled "Eye Drops," by Pastor Tim Brown of Luther Memorial Church in Chicago (definitely worth following the link to read the whole thing!):

[The scribes] act and behave as if the economy of the world is the economy of God. They work with the scriptures; they translate them and interpret them. Yet, as Jesus points out, it is clear they do not see them. They do not see the Scriptures because if they did, they would not mistake the economy of the world for the economy of God.

The economy of the world says that you are more when you wear the better thing, when you have more people who report to you, when you act publicly.

Knowing the cost of everything, that is the economy of the world.

But how does God see?

While others are counting coins, Jesus is looking at something different. This woman is different because she is giving “out of her poverty,” as the Gospel notes.

That’s a harsh phrase for most of us. It’s harsh to think that someone might be asked to give when they have little.

But there is the difference. There is the change.

You know, I’ve sat with many people on my couch who tell me that their church, or their faith, or religious structures just aren’t meeting their needs. Sometimes they’ve even said that I’m not meeting their needs.

To that sort of thinking, all I can do is shrug. The economy of the world is one where we seek out places to have our needs met.

But the economy of God…

In God’s economy, we seek to have our needs changed.

In this place, where we worship the creating God who gives so that we might know what giving means, we have our needs changed.

This woman in the treasury has had her needs changed. She doesn’t see her self-worth in what she owes, owns, or has. She knows that what little she has doesn’t define her.

God defines her.

She sees herself through the eyes of God, and therefore can see the world through those eyes.

Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and contemporary mystic states, “When we see the image of God where we don’t want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.”

That, I think, might be what it means to have our needs changed.