Proper 28A
November 19,
2017
You wicked and lazy servant. Harsh words. Those are not words we’d imagine
coming out of Jesus’ mouth. Ever. Even as he’s telling a story about what that
day will be like. It’s startling isn’t it?
Except it really shouldn’t be. At
this time of the church year, we have these stark, almost harsh, readings. Last week, the Gospel talked about the 5
foolish bridesmaids who were unprepared when the bridegroom came, and they were
shut out of the wedding banquet. I do not know you, said the lord of the
banquet. Today, we have the master
calling one of the servants wicked and lazy, and sending him out in to the
outer darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth. And as a preview
for next week, we have more cheery stories from Matthew, where the son of man
comes in glory, and separates the sheep from the goats, and the goats he sends
to the eternal fire prepared for the devil.
And the following week, after this trio of
doom, we start Advent, with the incarnational coming of Christ. It’s jarring, and unexpected, and seems
wrong. And there’s a reason it’s set up like this.
I struggle with this harshness. I don’t like thinking God will ever do
this. But clearly, this run of judgment
and end-time parables are designed to make absolutely sure we understand that
there is a judgment, and ultimately, there is a right answer, when we meet
Christ.
A little about today’s lesson. We’ve got the master who leaves for an
extended time, and leaves three slaves in charge of money – a lot of money.
It’s estimated that a talent was about 15 years’ worth of wages, so even the
slave who received only one talent received a lot, with the other two slaves thirty
or seventy-five years of wages. A lot of
money, to be sure.
Two of the slaves traded, and basically
doubled the master’s money. The third
slave, “knowing the master was a harsh man”, buried the money, so he could
without risk, return the full amount of the money to the master.
One obvious lesson to hear from this is that
we are freely given gifts of money and skills, and that we should not bury them
but rather grow them for God. So don’t bury your gifts and money. Don’t think
about these “talents” as a scarce resource to be hoarded, but rather share them
from a place of abundance.
So why did the third slave bury the
money? What did he do that warranted
being sent away to a place with weeping and gnashing of teeth?
The first two slaves have a sense of trust
and faith in their master that shows itself in their willingness to take risk
with the money, without fear of reproach.
They have a sense of purposeful and abundant abandon, when sharing the
“talents”. It his this faith and trust in the abundance of the master, and the
resulting actions of the first two slaves that makes them “good and
trustworthy”. They are deemed good and
trustworthy, because their actions clearly indicate a trust in their
master.
The third slave has a marked different
impression and understanding of the master, and that perception affects how he
behaves, how he stewards the talents.
He’s fearful of the master, and he definitely doesn’t trust the master,
and as a result, he doesn’t grow the talents given. He hides them, protects
them. But in that protection, he’s also not sharing or leveraging those
talents. His condemnation from the
master, I believe, stems from his lack of trust and faith in the goodness of
the master, and his resulting actions.
I believe
this story about talents is asking us to trust in God so that we can share God’s
gifts, whether time, talent or treasure, with purposeful, and abundant abandon. And I believe that the ultimate judgment we
face is most frightening because of our actions, or inactions, then from
God’s. If we turn away from God’s
abundant and faithful love and mercy, we willingly walk right into that outer
darkness, rather than being sent there. It’s that choice we make that lands us
where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
So back to this concept of judgment, and eschatology.
That’s a great word, eschatology. It means the end times, when God’s kingdom
comes, and that’s what these readings before Advent are all about, God's kingdom coming. And in Advent, we prepare for God coming into our lives in the incarnate Jesus.
My greatest challenge with these readings,
these end time stories, is that I’m pretty literal and linear. I don’t really
understand, in my head, the concept of the end times, of when we meet Christ
face to face again. So let me try to put it in some context that works for me,
and is supported in our faith and in scripture.
This idea of the day of the Lord, or the end
times, or when we meet Christ can be seen as three distinct moments.
The first is that at some point in the
future, Christ will return to Earth. In several places, scripture says the son
of man will come in or on the clouds. Weekly, we say, “he will come again in
glory to judge the living and the dead”.
Clearly, at that time in the future, there is a sense of Christ’s
presence and judgment. Some call this
the last judgment. It’s a point in time in the future, maybe something I’ll
experience and maybe not. And given where I am in this living world, I can only
believe or trust that this moment of meeting Christ will happen, and judgment
occurs. Because I don’t know when it
will happen, I don’t know how to prepare. The reading from Thessalonians speaks
to this point. “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night”. We are encouraged to keep awake!
The second understanding is that we will meet
Christ face to face at the moment when we die. At commemorations for the dead,
we pray, “For us faithful people, life is changed, not ended”. Some call this the particular judgment. Having recently sat with my father-in-law as
he died, I absolutely believe his life was changed and not ended, and he had
some sort of personal account with God, at his death. It’s a point in time in the future, but
something I’ll absolutely experience. And given where I am in this living
world, I can only believe or trust that this moment of meeting Christ happens,
and judgment occurs. I don’t know when that moment will occur, but I know that
it will. It’s still hard to prepare.
The final understanding is more imminent and
more earthly. We pray weekly, “thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven”. And in our baptismal covenant, we commit to
seek and serve Christ in all people. In this final understanding of meeting
Christ and judgment, we meet Christ in others in our daily world, dozens of
times each day. This understanding of
meeting Christ, I absolutely understand, and will encounter.
Just as in the final judgment at the end of
time and at the time of our death, we are judged in these encounters, in our
daily world. In next week’s Gospel we hear Christ say, when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was a stranger, you welcomed
me. But when did I see you hungry, or
the stranger? Just as you did it to the
least of those who are my family, you did it for me.
We meet Christ. We are judged. Every day.
Eschatology.
I cannot know about what will happen
when you or I die. What we’ll see, or what that judgment moment looks like. I
cannot know about Christ’s eventual return to Earth. But I do know
about meeting the stranger, the hungry, the poor, the prisoner. But I do know
how to serve Christ every day. I know
how to help bring thy kingdom come. To
be clear, I’m not suggesting that I do it successfully all the time, but it’s
not foreign, or distant, or unknown. I
do firmly believe Christ is in others, and that daily, I am called to seek and
serve that holy Christ in all others.
If I live like that, with ultimate trust in
God, and seeking to serve Christ every day, striving to make thy kingdom come,
I have a better chance of being judged as a good and faithful servant, both
today, and at the ultimate end.
This is how I think we prepare for that
judgment. In today’s encounters, because
ultimately, our life is nothing but a collection of individual days lived,
people loved, and Christ served.
Amen.
