The Cost of Kindness

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Epiphany 6B

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: Mark 1:40-45

⁴⁰ A leper^* came to him begging him, and kneeling^* he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ ⁴¹Moved with pity,^* Jesus^* stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ ⁴²Immediately the leprosy^* left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ ⁴⁵But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus^* could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

Have you ever done something nice or kind for someone and later come to regret it? A simple act of mercy, a momentary act of friendship and kindness that turned out to be not so good? It would seem to be the case for what Jesus did in this morning’s passage. Maybe something backfired.

A stranger approaches you and asks for some money. You happen to have some handy, not too much, but enough, and you don’t NEED it, so you give it to him, and what ends up happening is that the person begins to show up every so often, asking for ‘help’ – gas money, money for a bill, money for some food, whatever seems to be the need of the day, and you get caught up in this repeating cycle where you are aware that what is happening, while in one way it’s a good thing, in another way it is not so good for the long-term health of your relationship, OR for the person you are ‘helping’.

At first, this doesn’t seem to be a bad thing that Jesus does. After all, this is kind of Jesus’ THING – to heal people, and in Mark to tell them NOT to tell …

It is a straightforward telling. There don’t seem to be many nuances to explore or unravel. There’s a simple step-by-step progression. The stage is set with the leper coming to Jesus, asking to be healed. Jesus responds – predictably – by healing him. Jesus warns the man to not tell anyone, but to go and show himself to the priest in order to be reinstated into society. Remember, that was the process to be followed. He did the same thing when he healed the ten lepers and only one of them came back to thank him. The local priest had the say on whether or not someone was allowed to remain with the ‘in’ crowd or whether they were to be banished. Imagine the power of a simple yes or no from that man.

If I were to ask you to stop and think for a minute and choose three or four words that would describe Jesus, I would imagine that ‘compassionate’ would probably be at or near the top of the list. In the first verse of the passage I read a few minutes ago, the writer says Jesus was moved with pity – another word for compassion – when the man asked to be healed. But there is a letter next to the word in my Bible that refers me to a brief note at the bottom of the page, and the note says: ‘Other ancient authorities read anger’.

It is worth noting the different wording because what it tells us is that a few – sometimes maybe even more than a few – of the earliest manuscripts that have been found of this passage have the alternate wording in them – manuscripts that are in some instances older than the ones that began to use the ‘accepted’ or current wording.

So it is worth stopping to consider the implications of the alternate version of the verse. What would be going on if the emotion was, in fact, anger, that moved Jesus? How does that change the meaning of the events that are then related in the passage?

We tend to think of anger as something nearly opposite of compassion, don’t we? Compassion is the word, it is the understood emotion, and it is the one that describes so much of Jesus’ character. It DOESN’T seem to make sense that Jesus’ response would even approach anger … but let’s entertain that thought for a moment.

In the movie ‘The Blind Side’ the true story is told of the Tuohys, a well-to-do white southern family who take in a seventeen year-old young black man and how their lives are changed by the experience.

In one scene, Leigh Anne Tuohy is having lunch with three of her friends in what seems to be a country club restaurant and they are joking with her about Michael, the young man. One of them makes a joke about “why don’t you go ahead and make it official and just adopt him?” Leigh Anne’s response is to say that, “He’s almost eighteen, it doesn’t make sense to go through the adoption process at this point.” She answers the joke in full seriousness, letting her friends know just how profoundly the experience has affected her.

Her friends are stunned into silence when they realize this. One of them speaks up and asks her if what she is doing is prompted by some sense of ‘white guilt’, another asks what her father says about it. As it turns out, Leigh Anne’s father was an outspoken racist, he was also dead five years at that point in their lives, something Leigh Anne points out to her friend, asking if she wondered what he was saying before or after rolling over in his grave. Leigh Anne also points out that what makes her comment even worse is that she attended the funeral. She goes on to respond with these words: “I don’t need y’all to approve my choices, but I DO ask that you respect them. You have no idea what this boy has been through, and if this is going to become some running diatribe, I can find an overpriced salad a LOT closer to home.”

Her friends are appropriately ashamed, and they apologize to her. One speaks up and says how much she admires what she is doing in welcoming Michael into her home, that she is changing his life. Leigh Anne’s response is “No, he’s changing mine.”

There is a degree of anger that can be prompted when compassion is engaged. It is anger that is directed at the conditions that make compassion necessary – it is anger at the idea that selflessly doing something good for someone could be questioned and even criticized as naïve or stupid – senselessly acting in a miniscule way in the face of an overwhelming onslaught of “that’s the way the world IS.” Or even that you are simply not SUPPOSED to interact with ‘certain people’, as the religious leadership was so eager to point out to Jesus.

In this case, I believe I can understand if the original word WAS anger – on Jesus’ part – because he knew that what he was about to do would change the hopes that he had of setting out to bring his message to the people of Galilee. It also explains a little more for me this ‘Messianic Secret’ thing that is so much more present in the Gospel according to Mark – where he performs some miraculous healing or does something that makes it patently obvious that he IS the Messiah, but after doing or saying that thing he tells the people most affected – and convinced – by it to not tell a SOUL about what they’ve seen and heard.

What was the outcome of Jesus’ healing of the leper? The leper goes out and tells EVERYONE he comes in contact with about what has happened to him, and names Jesus, points to him and calls him the Messiah, says he’s the one – in short, he does everything BUT what Jesus told him to do – which was to BE QUIET about being healed. You’ve got to admit, it WAS kind of hard to keep something like that to yourself.

And what was the outcome of THAT – of his not being able to obey Jesus’ stern warning to not tell anyone? “Jesus could not go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and the people came to him from every quarter.”

So Jesus wasn’t able to keep going into the towns, to preach in their synagogues, to proclaim the message of the good news, like he had been up until he met this man.

But you know what is interesting? We’re not even out of the first chapter of the Gospel yet. If there was a derailment in the original plan, it still worked out. The Gospel was still proclaimed, people kept being healed, kept coming to and following Jesus, and the message has continued even to this day to be proclaimed.

Jesus realized really quickly that his ministry was going to consist of interruptions – needy people always clamoring for his attention, crying from the roadside, grasping at his garment hem, lowering a sickbed through the roof, trying to get the healing he can offer them.  You can't blame them.  These are people in need.  But I imagine that living with constant, overwhelming requests for help would be exhausting for anyone, and Jesus had so much to do and so little time.  I imagine that if Jesus were angry for a moment, it may have been, in part, at the realization that there would never be just a sermon, just a dinner with friends, just a moment to pray.  He was going to have to live with continual interruption.

We live with continual interruptions too, don't we?  There is always something coming up, something clamoring for our attention.  As those interruptions arise, we struggle to balance them: a stranger whose car needs a jumpstart when we're already late for a committee meeting or a daughter's soccer game.  A child who enters our home, filling our hearts with joy even as our lives change forever.  A friend weeping in the pews on Sunday because her husband or father or mother or daughter was just diagnosed with cancer.  This story of Jesus interrupted on his preaching mission teaches us something about how to handle those interruptions, how to live with the uncertainty of changing schedules and shifting priorities.  Jesus may become angry for a moment--it is only natural to feel frustrated or disoriented or, yes, even angered when our hopes and intentions are thrown into chaos.  But Jesus does not let that first emotional reaction control his response.

Too often, we get drawn into believing that faithful discipleship means cultivating the correct emotion in our hearts: peaceful contemplation in worship, when truly our minds are roiling with worry; sympathy for a person in need, when truly we are preoccupied with our own concerns; excitement for a mission trip or a life change, when truly we are apprehensive.  When Jesus feels anger and then acts with compassion, he reminds us that discipleship can mean loving God and our neighbor with our actions even when we are angry or anxious or distracted.  Discipleship can mean responding faithfully to God's surprises and life's curveballs, even when it is hard.  And in that endeavor, we are never alone.

The promise of this story is that Christ is always ready to turn toward us.  On that Galilee road, with so many limits and demands on his time, with so many consequences for stretching out his hand, Jesus chooses to touch and heal because, to Jesus, each one of God's children matters.  Each one of us is a beloved and beautiful child of God.  Each one of us is unique and precious.  The good news of this story is that you matter to God, and so does everyone else.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The challenge of this story is to go and do likewise.  The challenge is to approach those interruptions and disruptions, those unexpected intrusions and inconvenient crises, those times of uncertainty and change, as moments of opportunity.  The challenge is to set aside everything we think we know about God's plan for us, all of our rush and hurry, all of our ideas about who and what is important, and to turn toward our neighbors to bless and heal, to be blessed and healed.  Because when we do that, when we take a moment, take a breath, and turn towards each other, we see Jesus, with us on the road.

Let’s pray.

See Heaven Opened

Sunday January 15 2012

Epiphany 2B

Text: John 1:43-51

⁴³ The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” ⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” ⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

John is … different. 

The Gospel of John, I mean, not … any given John that you may have in your life, however accurate the statement might be in applying it to HIM. 

It is something we were reminded of on Christmas, as we read the nativity story as related in the fourth Gospel.  Remember the nativity without a star, or shepherds, or a manger, or sheep, or an angelic chorus or wise men coming from the east. 

John focused instead on WHO Christ was, not on HOW he showed up. 

And he does something different in relating the story of how Jesus’ ministry began. In the synoptic Gospels – the other three – Jesus goes looking for his disciples, and he finds them fishing and calls them away from their day jobs in order to follow him. 

In John, the first disciples are brought to him – and they are brought to him through having been disciples of John the Baptist. In the verses immediately prior to today’s passage, beginning in verse 35, we have John standing with two of his disciples, and as Jesus walks by, John exclaims, “Look, here is the lamb of God!” and that is enough for the two, they step out and follow Christ.

I wonder how it must have felt for John to see the … completion of his task begin. He had been preaching and proclaiming for an indeterminate amount of time in the wilderness.  Long enough to have worn out any clothing that he went INTO the wilderness with, and long enough to have adjusted his diet to what was most readily available as well.  But to have that day come when he could stop talking about the Messiah and start pointing him out to people – right there! – it was enough to trigger the response from these two disciples that he had probably been hoping for all along – to step away from him and step towards Jesus.

If we stop and think, we could probably come up with more than a few John the Baptist stand-ins in our lives as well.  I’ve shared with you about Hermana Elena de Alarcon – Sister Helena – who was my Sunday School teacher as a pre-teen, who took her responsibility to instruct the children of Third Baptist church in Santiago with a dedication and a faithfulness that made an impression even then on children who were so easily distracted by the least little thing.  I remember her comparing the white snow of the Andes Mountains that looked down over Santiago in the winter with the spotlessness of our souls when God looks at us and sees Jesus standing in for us.  It made an impression.

I could relate multiple stories of people in my life who pointed me in the direction of Jesus, who in one way or another declared to me ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ but I know that we all have someone like that in our past – and perhaps in our present – whom we hold with an esteem and a love that we can’t quite put into words, but who are so dear to our hearts that when we think of them we don’t think of them in isolation, but we think of them standing next to the one to whom they pointed us. Jesus is standing right beside them, smiling.

So the text today is actually a telling of the second stage in Jesus’ gathering disciples. Andrew has begun to follow Jesus, and he went and found his brother Peter and brought him along, and now we are back to a scene that is a little more in line with the gathering of disciples that happens in the other gospel narratives. Phillip is called, and he then goes and hunts down Nathanael and tells HIM about Jesus, he does his own impersonation of John right there.  It is interesting to note that in each telling of the disciples’ selection, there is no exact duplication. Either the way they are called, or the order in which they are called, or their NAMES don’t match up. Some have attempted to harmonize the different storylines, but it is, I think, healthier to leave them as they are – mismatched and highlighting different aspects of the story.

For John, it was important to point out that, even for Peter, who ended up being the leader of the disciples and the early church, there was someone there before him, someone who stepped in at the right place and the right time and brought him together with Jesus.

And that is the first lesson we can learn from Andrew. There is someone out there, maybe even our brother or our closest friend, who needs to be brought together with Jesus. And notice that Andrew didn’t spend a lot of time arguing and convincing Peter that this Jesus was the one they were all expecting; all he said was ‘come and see.’

It may sound odd coming from a preacher, but when it comes down to it, while words ARE important, actions DO indeed speak louder than words. That is as true in my life as it is in anyone else’s. Pay attention to words. Pay MORE attention to how they are followed through on.

John had been preaching about the Messiah, but when the Messiah showed up, he knew when to get off the stage.  He knew it wasn’t about him. And so did Andrew. That is the second lesson we can learn from him this morning. Andrew didn’t pull rank when it came to taking his place among the disciples. We don’t really hear anything else about him after this. He becomes one of the twelve, and lets that be that. It speaks to a humbleness that may have taken some settling into (after all, we do have that episode where the disciples are arguing about who would be sitting at Jesus’ right hand later in his ministry), but which ultimately won out.

Finally, we come to Jesus’ interaction with Nathanael. Straight up, from the beginning of the encounter, we know there are some idiosyncratic – some unique – forms of communication going on. ‘An Israelite in whom there is no deceit’; ‘Sitting under the fig tree’; and ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ are not phrases that can be easily explained or understood. Sometimes scripture is just like that. You come across a saying or a phrase that probably made perfect sense to the person who wrote it and the people who heard it read to them, but to us, nearly two thousand years later, the cultural references have been lost to the mists of time and we can surmise a possible meaning, but are for the most part guessing as to the full significance of a statement.

‘An Israelite in whom there is no deceit’ could be Jesus simply stating his assessment of Nathanael’s character. He was, we know, perceptive enough to cut through the surface fluff and uncover the truth that sometimes lay beneath. But it could equally be an instance where Jesus was using humor and making a sarcastic statement. There are other instances where Jesus said things in a joking manner, and this could in fact be one of them. From Nathanael’s response we could understand it two very different ways: a genuine ‘how did you know me?’ or an equally sarcastic retort ‘you have no idea who you are talking about’. ‘Under the fig tree’ might be a way of describing someone who was a philosopher at heart.  One who dedicated time to contemplating the world, society, and how things work. In other words, one who sat and thought about STUFF, and may have at some point done that sitting under a fig tree. After all, they were around. Maybe he had a big forehead, or a receding hairline – not that those would actually indicate any inclination one way or another to deep thought. The point is, there could be some contextual communication going on here of which we are missing the full import simply due to the fact that we don’t have the full context at hand. But that is okay. We draw what we can from what we have and trust the Holy Spirit to do the rest.

Finally, we have this ‘angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ business. It is straight out of Genesis 28:12 – what we popularly and through the children’s chorus call “Jacob’s ladder”.  In the account of Genesis, the ladder is a figurative description of the relationship between God and Humanity through the covenant he is establishing with Israel.

Remember how John is big on WHO Jesus is? Here is where that comes into play. John is telling his listeners through Jesus’ words that he – Jesus – is the new connection between God and humanity.

And here is the word for us today, the ‘what this means for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton’:

As Christ was breaking in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through his public ministry, we now, today, as his body are tasked with the same responsibility. We are the ones who get to tell someone that if they come and see, they will come to believe; if they watch us in what we do, and we have this unthinkable treasure to take care of – to be ministers of the Word – but just as the Word in John was anything but passive, the Word today is active – actively working through our lives – if we let him; actively reaching out to those around us – if we let him; actively showing what the Kingdom is like, and not just talking about it on Sundays and forgetting about it Monday through Saturdays – if we let him.

For those of you who may have had a chance to visit our Facebook page, you’ve probably noticed that the picture that is there – it is called our ‘profile picture’ – is not a picture of the sanctuary either inside or out, but a picture of a clay jug – a clay jar. It happens to be from last summer’s governor’s school. Caleb was taking a photography class, and he took the picture and then manipulated it in such a way that the only thing that was in color in the image was the jar itself. Everything else was in black and white.

I have always appreciated the image that Paul gave us of holding this treasure in jars of clay – as a way to remind us that, even though what we carry inside is of incalculable worth – we are still frail and fragile human beings – still imperfect, still broken and fallen creatures.

But despite that fact – that we are imperfect beings living in a fallen world – God still works through us. And we can take great comfort in the fact that God does not expect perfection from his children, just obedience and trust.

And it is through that obedience and trust – obedience and trust that we see most perfectly modeled in Jesus – that we will allow others to see heaven opened up – and in the process, maybe even catch a glimpse of it ourselves.

***

Let’s pray.

   

Seeing Salvation

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Christmas 1B

Text: Luke 2:22-40

²²When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord ²³(as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), ²⁴and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” ²⁵Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. ²⁶It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. ²⁷Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, ²⁸Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, ²⁹“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; ³⁰for my eyes have seen your salvation, ³¹which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, ³²a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” ³³And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. ³⁴Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed ³⁵so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” ³⁶There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, ³⁷then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. ³⁸At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. ³⁹When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. ⁴⁰The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

Simeon and Anna.

They were fixtures at the Temple. They’re the ones who knew where those special candles and the decorations were stored from one year to the next, and just as important, HOW they were supposed to be stored. They kept track of that stuff because, for the most part, being in and around the Temple was their LIFE.  That is what they’d come to dedicate themselves to.

But they weren’t the only ones.  There were the priests, the assistants, the moneychangers, the suppliers, the deputy assistants and THEIR assistants. 

They were all there just as often as Simeon, and had structured their lives around Temple worship from the time they were kids. Some had been there longer than Anna, which was saying a LOT, considering how old she was now and how young she was when she lost her husband.

So what was different about Simeon and Anna? How did they key into what was really happening when Joseph and Mary showed up with their newborn baby, and not the others?

Scripture gives us part of the answer in introducing us to Simeon: The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he held the Messiah in his arms.  We find that in verse 26.  But if we go back just one phrase, we read this at the end of verse 25: ‘The Holy Spirit rested on him.’ So how does that happen? Does the Holy Spirit just show up one day and say ‘here I am!’ and move in like an unwelcome guest?

Not at all. 

To be in a relationship, there must be reciprocity – a mutual exchange.  That is, there is something offered and received by both people who are involved in the relationship.  If you have ever been involved in a one-way relationship it doesn’t take long to realize that the word relationship doesn’t quite apply when everything flows in one direction and one direction only.

It is no different when we enter into relationship with God. What WE struggle with is to try to identify what it is that we bring to the relationship.  After all, we ARE talking about being in a reciprocal relationship with the creator of the universe…talk about figuring out what present to give to the person who has everything … this is kind of the ultimate example.

But that IS the question, isn’t it? What would God want with us, much less FROM us? As soon as we hear that, if we’ve spent any time in Sunday School, the quick and easy answer is right on the tip of our tongues: our hearts, or our lives, our souls.  But I think that might actually skip over what is at the heart of the question.

Let me back up a little bit.  We think of being in relationship with God in terms of salvation.  Or we’ve been trained to think that way: that a relationship with God MEANS being ‘saved’.  And to a degree that is correct.  But let’s look at this from a slightly different perspective. 

We believe salvation is by grace through faith, not by works, to quote scripture, so if salvation is a done deal as soon as we have the faith to declare that Jesus is Lord of our lives, then what does that mean for our relationship with the Lord?  In other words, if, as soon as we move in the direction of God and receive the gift of salvation, THAT aspect of our relationship is taken care of, God is saying, essentially, ‘you know all that stuff you worry about doing and being and following in order to gain salvation?  The right living, the right thinking, the proper attitude, the right schedule of church attendance, all that stuff, it’s dust in the wind.  You HAVE salvation.  Here, it’s yours.  Free to you.  Somewhat costly to me, but that’s just the kind of God I am.

So, now, what are you going to DO about it? How are you going to carry on, in the understanding that what you do has absolutely no bearing on your salvation, on how much I love you or on what I was willing to do for you, because that’s all been taken care of?

If we reframe the question of our relationship with God away from that initial salvific connection into an ongoing, growing, and developing relationship, then we begin to understand that THIS relationship is not that different from other relationships in our lives – of course, this one MATTERS exponentially MORE than other relationships we may have, but it is also one that we express THROUGH ALL the other relationships in our lives.  But in the sense that it is one that we have to work at, that we pursue, that we engage, that we … nurture, that we tend to, that we CARE about, it is not so different. 

You see, God wants company.

God created us to be in communion with him. Genesis tells us that God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Actually, if you read the verse, it’s not exactly such an idyllic picture. That verse, in chapter 3 verse 8, says that Adam and Even heard God walking in the Garden, and they hid themselves, because they knew they had sinned. It is not an image of pre-fall perfect harmony, but of a post-fall seeking – on the part of God – for his creation – even then, however you want to interpret the beginning of Genesis, the image we have is of a God who is already, as soon as that separation happens, working to reestablish the relationship with us.

And that is the story that is found throughout scripture. Time after time after time, we turn away from God, or turn away from who God intends us to be, and are either distracted by other shiny but ultimately worthless ‘treasures’, and God is always coming after us, sending food in the night, prophets to declare his jealous love, sending angels to announce his purpose into our lives, and, eventually, coming and living with us.

So how we ‘see’ salvation changes depending on how we view our relationship with God. If we think of that relationship in formulaic terms – sort of like a math equation – A plus B = C; where A is God and B is us and C is salvation and that’s IT, then it is a very bare-bones, shallow image of salvation, isn’t it?

If, however, we think of our relationship with God as one that is as involved, as interesting, as demanding as our relationship to our dearest and closest friend, then we begin to get the picture of who God has been throughout history – you’ve heard me say it before, God is about relationships – God is a relational God – that is how God communicates, that’s how God operates.

Will you join me in entering into that relationship more deeply and fully this year?  

Let’s pray.

Announcements and Blessings

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Advent 3B

Text: Luke 1:39-56

³⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” ⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” ⁵⁶And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

My knowledge of Mary growing up was limited to basically two events.  She was present at Jesus’ conception and birth, and she was present at his death.  She kind of ‘bookended’ the gospel story.  Part of the reason she was limited to that in my upbringing was I’m sure, due to the fact that I was a Baptist in a country that even now professes to be over 80% Roman Catholic. And while it is a sad statement, it is also a true statement that just as the reformers were apt to do, Baptists in Chile who came out of the Roman Catholic tradition tended to leave lots of things behind; the veneration of saints, the theology of sacraments, the confessional, infant baptism, and the veneration of Mary – in many instances simply because they were so tied to the Roman Catholic tradition.    

I think that dearth of knowledge – that scarcity of exploration of Mary’s experience, and most importantly, her response to what is the single biggest event in human history made for a lesser understanding of the message of the gospels for me.

I’m not going to come out and tell you we need to begin to set up an altar with the image of Mary, or that we should think of her as co-redemptress alongside Christ, or that we should pray to her so SHE can speak to God on our behalf, I am too Baptist to do that. 

What I will say is that we DO need to stop and think about Mary more often than simply twice a year.  And I say that fully realizing that in some cases, the only time many people DO stop and think about JESUS is at those same two times each year, so we’re crowding the scene a little bit, but bear with me.

If, as it is commonly accepted today, Mary was a young teenager – around 14 years of age – when she found out she was pregnant, I wonder what the REAL first thought that went through her head was.  I mean, yeah, the first words RECORDED that came out of her mouth were ‘how so, I’m a virgin?’ followed shortly by ‘here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.’   But I would love to know what her first THOUGHT was.  I wonder if it might have been something that would be impolite to translate from the Aramaic she spoke?  I wonder if her first thought was fear?  Societal norms were different in those days – to put it mildly – and young girls of fourteen were already of an age when they could begin to conceive, so I don’t think there was a freak-out moment when she realized she wasn’t going to get to play with her friends anymore.  She had probably long since given up childish things and had for at least two if not three years been a working member of the household – whether in keeping house, or cooking, helping with the family business or tending to some responsibility or other, she was not a child. 

In our society today, we enjoy an extended childhood far beyond what our ancestors did – and far beyond what many other cultures in the world today do as well, and our expectations of what is proper for a young woman of 14 and what is not are different from that which was common in first century Palestine.  But in one way they do remain somewhat aligned – in that a child is better BOTH conceived and born within the bounds of a loving relationship between his or her parents. I fully realize that seems to be less and less the norm, but that line in the gospel narrative still resonates with us today.  We can associate with Joseph’s response to the news of Mary’s condition – that he would quietly and discreetly dis-engage from her so that there would be less of a hullabaloo when the folks in town began to notice the growing baby bump. 

I am of two minds when it comes to the “Magnificat” – that is the name given to the song that Mary sings after she and Elizabeth get together - it is called that because ‘magnificat’ is the word that comes first in the Latin version of scriptures that we read in English as ‘my soul magnifies the Lord’ – it is a beautiful hymn, a beautiful expression of someone being totally in love with the will of God for their lives, totally submitted to whatever that means for them, totally engaged in moving forward into it.  It even manages to include echoes of God’s justice that sound an awful lot like it comes from Psalms than from the New Testament.  It’s closest in wording to Hannah’s song, which is found in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.  So there is a pretty good chance that Mary was paraphrasing a passage of scripture that she grew up with and personalized it for herself on this occasion. 

There is also the chance that the whole hymn was inserted at some point in the early oral history of the church – the words being placed in Mary’s mouth by faithful followers who would rather hear this than Mary’s cries of joy and fear intermingled with peals of laughter when Elizabeth comes to her door and opens it and sees her and says “Holy crap! You too?!”  There are many possibilities that can be explored in that way. 

But God has seen fit to give us the Canon in this form, and we believe that to be for a reason, and however it came to be, God was in the process, so here we have this joyful, faithful, spiritually uplifting and idealized response to God’s moving in her life from the woman who stuck it out.  She never denied Jesus.  She pushed him when he needed to be pushed, at that wedding in Cana, scripture doesn’t say she gave him a spanking when he got away from the family when they went to the temple when he was twelve, and she didn’t, but I can promise you that somewhere in there with the fear any parent feels when they temporarily lose a child in a place they don’t live, she probably thought ‘just wait … when we get home …’

You see, Mary has, to some degree even more than the apostles and Jesus himself, been dehumanized in the centuries since she found out she was pregnant.  It makes it that much harder to connect with her today.  We read about the disciples making mistakes or being boneheaded about something, we read about how Jesus cried, or was angry, or was tired and rested.  We read the letters of Paul and his humanity comes through loud and clear.  He is angry, he is sarcastic, he is blunt, but he can also be a poet, he can evoke images with sublime words that cut to our very core. 

So don’t be shy about studying Mary, reading books about her, doing Bible Studies about her.  She’s no more or less human than every other character in the Bible. 

And while God DID use her in a special way, the bottom line is that she was willing to LET God use her – in whatever way God needed to.

We can all learn from her submission, her faithfulness in the face of the uncertainty of what the future held, and her willingness to continue to follow and to believe – wherever that ended up taking her – even if it was to the foot of the cross at Calvary.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Announcements and blessings … we have been blessed beyond measure, insofar as we have also, within us our Lord Jesus.  But a blessing as we know, is not something to be contained within ourselves, but is to be shared.  So insofar as we live out that blessing of having Jesus in us, we are announcing his presence.  We are announcing that he is active and living in the world, and he is doing that through us.  So that is our challenge. That is what has always been our challenge – to make our living in that sense comparable to Mary’s.  And it’s not a perfect model to go after, as idealized as her life IS in the gospels.  It is achievable.  It’s not just an idea we hold within ourselves, it’s not just a concept that we profess to believe; it’s not just a life ethic that we follow.  We host in ourselves the Holy Spirit.  And the Holy Spirit is out to do amazing things.  REALLY amazing things, if we just let him.

Let’s pray.

All The Nations

 Sunday, November 20, 2011

Christ The King A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: Matthew 25:31-46

³¹“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ ⁴¹Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ ⁴⁴Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ ⁴⁵Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Jesus talks about salvation in different contexts to different audiences and in different ways throughout the Gospels.

Sometimes he’s pretty cryptic. Sometimes he’s a little clearer. Sometimes he speaks in parables and stories. But, nowhere else does Jesus so explicitly tell us who’s going to Heaven and who’s going to Hell like he does in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew.

In Matthew 25, there’s that theme of separation again. Jesus divides humanity into two teams: the sheep and the goats. The sheep go to his “right hand,” are declared “blessed” by their Father, and “inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world.” When it is all said and done, they go into “eternal life.”

The “goats” on the other hand, aren’t quite as fortunate. They go to his “left hand,” are declared “accursed,” and are relegated to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” for an eternity of “punishment.”

Stop and ask yourself, which team would you prefer to be on? I think Jesus makes this choice a pretty easy one.

Now, how do we get on the sheep team? How do we get picked for sheep duty? Well, the Good News is that Jesus tells us in detail.

“…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Folks who do such things get to play on the sheep team, where the signing bonuses are out of this world.

The “goats” on the other hand, let hungry people go hungry. They don’t bother giving thirsty people anything to drink. They ignore strangers, letting them know that they are absolutely unwelcome. And they don’t give clothes to people who need them, don’t visit the sick and lonely, and let people rot in jail or prison without a thought.

It’s interesting to notice the importance of this teaching being given by Jesus in the last week of his life.

In fact, this is one of the last things Jesus says to his followers before he’s nailed to the cross in the Gospel of Matthew. What Jesus is doing here, at the end point of his earthly ministry, is making it very clear to people who claimed to be his disciples and supporters that there is no gray area at all when it comes to following him.

You’re either with him, or you aren’t.

The way to tell which it is, is by looking at how you live your life. To be on Jesus’ side means that you’re actively caring for the poor, the needy, the sick, and the lonely. To not do such things means that you’re really not with him at all, but against him. And if you’re against him, the signing bonus carries with it … fire and brimstone.

This being one of Jesus’ last teachings should add some weight to this message. After all, who remembers the coach’s locker room speech from some game in the middle of the season? But, the one before the big championship game is seared into our hearts and minds forever.

One of the interesting things about this lesson from the last few pages of Jesus’ earthly life is that the sheep didn’t know that they were earning heaven by their actions! These sheep said:

Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?

They had no idea that their good deeds meant that they were inheriting the Kingdom prepared for them. They weren’t trying to earn God’s favor, or sneak around his mercy. The sheep weren’t fending for themselves, desperately trying to avoid punishment and earn eternal rewards for themselves.

They just saw people in need, and they served them. They were just living their lives of faith the way that they always did. They were living their lives focused on God and the needs of others instead on themselves and their own needs.

The difference between some group of sheep doing these deeds trying to get to heaven, and sheep doing the same exact deeds unaware of the incredible consequences, is that the actions of the latter group are authentic. They are genuinely loving their neighbor, and genuinely serving the needs of others, instead of selfishly looking out for themselves.

That is what God wants of us.

And, in the last week of Jesus’ life, that is the kind of life Jesus is calling his followers to live.

This is what loving our neighbor as ourselves is about. Loving our neighbor just to get ourselves to heaven wouldn’t be real love, it’d be selfishness. Preoccupation with our own salvation therefore is exactly what Jesus is warning us against. When you’re living your life loving your neighbor, you don’t have time to selfishly worry about YOU!

Nor do you have to.

The Good News here is that there is no checklist of good deeds to fill out.

Jesus is talking about a way of life here, and it’s one that isn’t motivated out of the fear of Hell or the hope of heaven, but a life that’s driven by an authentic love.

It’s a way of life that recognizes that Christianity isn’t about us! It’s not about self-preservation, feeling good, or getting front row seats in Heaven.

If this isn’t crystal clear from the sheep and goats story, read on in the Gospel of Matthew until you get to the crucifixion. There, Jesus demonstrates the exact same selfless, genuine, and authentic love that he demands of us. He was flogged, mocked, tortured, and executed for God and for us, not for himself. It wasn’t some selfish egomaniacal stunt to gain fame and fortune. He loved God and us with his life and his death, and that is exactly what he asks of us.

And with that, it makes sense that Jesus gives this lesson in the last week of his life. It also makes sense to replace the well-known query used by modern evangelists, “Are you saved?” with the more appropriate, “Do you genuinely love God and your neighbor, not for your own gain, but for true brotherly and Godly love?”

Yeah, it takes a little longer to spit that out, but so do most important things.

Being sheep of the shepherd isn’t about us. Nor is it about being saved, or getting rewards, however eternal they may be. Being sheep of the shepherd is about following our shepherd’s lead, and loving others as he has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:2)

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

I think it serves as a reminder of how we need to be checking our motivation, not just our actions, but how we come to the decision to do something – however good it may appear to be – and why?  Are we doing it with an eye towards how it will look to the surrounding community?  Are we looking for a good reputation among sister churches in the area?  That may be all good and well, but I hope that is not the ONLY reason we do stuff.  Are we doing things to be able to include neat little tidbits in our annual church report that tallies how many people have participated in our various activities, or joined us for special events? 

What it boils down to is this:  Doing things is important, but WHY we do them is AS important as DOING them. 

Let’s pray. 

Into The Joy

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

Ordinary 33A

Text: Matthew 25:14-30

You know how when you watch a movie, not in the theaters, but either on television or in some recorded format, before the actual start of the movie, a black screen comes up, and, in white letters so that it is clearly legible, a message is projected about the movie you are about to watch?  If you are watching it on television, it usually has something to say about the movie having been formatted to fit the screen, and edited to run in the allotted time, or edited for content.  If you are watching it on tape or DVD, the message has more to say about the rest of the material – the bonus features – that is on the DVD or the tape – about the views and opinions expressed in the interviews and commentaries not necessarily being those of the production and distribution companies, but that they are solely those of the participants – the actors and the production staff as individuals? Those are known as disclaimers.  In a legal sense, they are messages letting you know in advance something specific about what is coming next. 

I open the message this morning with a disclaimer, and it is this:  The Parable of the Talents has, as long as I can remember, been at best unsettling to me.  At worst, it has caused me to view my call to obedience and faithful service in a terribly negative light – I mean, seriously, who wants to be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth?  But is that enough of a reason to ENGAGE in that obedience and faithful service, out of FEAR of being cast into the outer darkness?

If we’ve spent any amount of time in our upbringing listening to hellfire and brimstone sermons, we immediately associate that phrase – weeping and gnashing of teeth – with judgment – and almost universally with the judgment of God. It would seem to tie in with the preceding passages that start back in chapter 24, as I mentioned last week. 

These two chapters are considered by some scholars to be the last of five great discourses that Jesus gives in Matthew’s Gospel.  If you remember, Matthew was specifically focused on highlighting Jesus’ fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament – to identify him as what the Hebrew people were looking for – the Messiah. It is a commonly held understanding that Matthew laid out these five discourses as a counterbalance to the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures; in some ways, a mirror in which the fulfillment of those ancient writings could be viewed.

 

To my best recollection, I have only heard this passage preached on in one interpretation: as an exhortation to Jesus' disciples to use their God-given gifts in the service of God, and to take risks for the sake of the Kingdom of God. These gifts have been seen to include personal abilities ("talents" in the everyday sense), as well as personal wealth. Failure to use one's gifts, the parable suggests, will result in judgment.

I can understand that.  That is a clear interpretation and a sensible one as well, taking into account the surrounding parables, and the general tone of the discourse.

So let’s go with that interpretation first, and then look at a couple of other, less well-known ones. 

It is fairly straightforward.  The man is Jesus, and he has gone away and left his servants, that is, US, to tend to his business.  He gives each of us varying amounts of things to tend to, and we are responsible for seeing that his business grows, that his wealth increases, that his kingdom grows, in other words.  The first two servants take what he gives them and do amazing things with it.  They invest it, they end up multiplying it like a well-connected Wall Street insider, who knows who to call, knows what to buy and when, knows the ins and outs of high finance, because we are talking about high finance here, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars being entrusted to the servants.

The interpretation works out something like this:  the talents being discussed, rather than being a sum of money, are to be understood in OUR normal, run-of-the-mill use of the word:  our skills, our abilities, our gifts.  You have a knack for putting words together with music, you have a natural ability to be a welcoming presence to anyone who walks in the door, you are able to put people at ease in an otherwise tense situation, you can defuse an argument and bring the opposite sides to an agreement that is more than acceptable to those who would otherwise end up as enemies.

The message of the parable is this:  use those talents, those skills and gifts for the furthering of the Kingdom of God.  Yes, each of them involves risking something – personal time, energy, an investment of effort, of emotional capital that COULD potentially result in a negative outcome – there is a real possibility that the people you are investing IN will reject what you offer, will reject the welcome, will reject the proffered solution to the conflict, will not be moved by the song you wrote, and remain untouched by the Spirit.  That risk comes with the territory.  But that doesn’t keep you from risking anyway. 

Or at least it didn’t keep the first two servants from taking the risk with what they’d been given. 

That third servant though, he didn’t get it.  He didn’t understand the treasure he’d been given.  Sure, it was a smaller amount than the other two had received, but it was still not an inconsiderable amount. 

The lesson is: no matter what you’ve been given, no matter how insignificant it appears to you, God will still use it if you invest it – if you risk it for the sake of the Kingdom. 

The consequences are too terrible to be ignored.  See what happened to the servant who was given just the one talent and then turned around and HID it rather than RISKED it?

So this first interpretation lands on this conclusion: we’re reminded of it in our congregational benediction every time we share it: Risk something BIG for something GOOD, and that “good” thing is nothing less than the Kingdom of God.     

And it is an especially timely understanding of the passage, since most churches across the country dedicate some portion of the fall of each year as Stewardship Emphasis time.  It ties in with the question of how well we are stewarding what God has given us – both financially and in terms of time and skills and abilities and gifts – and makes for fairly easy dovetails into reviewing what the upcoming budget year looks like, what we hope to accomplish, and how. There is good evidence to suggest that this understanding of the parable of the talents is, in fact, the reason we THINK of gifts and skills and abilities AS talents – the meaning of the word was changed through this interpretation of THIS parable.

So that is the first and most common interpretation.

The second is not really that different from the first.  The only shift is in whom the parable is focused on.  It’s still about wasting what you’ve been entrusted with, and the end result is still the same, but the subjects of criticism are not the listeners.  This is not a warning to each individual hearing the story to do what they can with what God has given them for the sake of the Kingdom, rather it is a criticism of the Religious Leaders of the time for squandering that with which they had been entrusted by God – namely, the word of God and the care of God’s people – and simply maintained their place in society.  They’d lost sight of the commission that God included in the covenant with the people of Israel to be a blessing to the nations of the world; basically, to spread the just and righteous precepts of God across the world. They had opted instead to bury their treasure and keep it to themselves, not spread it and double it’s size while he was away. 

There is plenty of room to understand the parable in this sense.  After all, Jesus spent a lot of time calling a spade a spade when talking – to not say arguing – with the religious leadership that he kept running afoul of.

Before I get into the third interpretation, I need to review something with you.  There are different types of parables found in the Gospels.  Some of them are Kingdom Parables – usually they are easy to identify, because they start out with the words “The Kingdom of God (or Heaven) is like …”.  These parables are usually presented as an image of what the Reign of God will look like, or will speak to God’s action that brings that reign into more of a reality through Jesus’ followers.  There are also Wisdom Parables, which are teachings that are just that – words of wisdom – knowledge to be retained for future reference.  Here is the interpretation of the parable of the talents as a wisdom parable, and I am freely borrowing from David Ewart, a minister of the United Church of Canada, who says,

How might this parable have sounded to the peasants who were Jesus' followers?

First, they would not see themselves as any of the characters in the story. They certainly were not "masters," nor were they even the slaves of a master.

Second, they would have been well aware that it was against the law of Moses to charge interest. And, they would remember that when the twelve tribes entered the Promised Land, the "promise" was that every family would receive and hold a share of that land - FOREVER. Therefore, those who had gotten rich, did so by stealing land that rightly belonged to others. This understanding of the rich is shown in Verse 26:

I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter.

In other words, the rich get rich by stealing what belongs to others.

Third, for the followers of Jesus, the slave who buried the talent was doing the honourable thing. He was not using the wealth to steal even more. He was protecting his master's wealth in the safest way possible.

Fourth, notice that this parable does NOT begin, "the Kingdom of heaven is like..." In fact, the opening two words in Verse 14 are variously translated:

                    

                   "For it is as if" (New Revised Standard Version)

                   "Again, it will be like" (New International Version)

                   "It's also like" (The Message)

But what exactly is the "it" that the following parable is like? Does the "it" refer to the Kingdom of Heaven (i.e. referring to the subject in Verse 1); or does the "it" refer to the delay of the coming of the Kingdom (i.e., referring to the subject in Verse 13)?

In Luke 19, this story is told following the story of Zacchaeus - a rich man who changes his evil ways! Surely this is a sign that the Kingdom is eminently at hand? Verse 11 then gives this introduction to the parable:

(Jesus) went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the Kingdom of God was to appear immediately.

I take it that Luke intends us to hear this parable NOT as a teaching about the Kingdom, but as a caution against thinking that the Kingdom was coming immediately.

And so, similarly, the "it" in Matthew 25:14 refers to the subject in the previous verse 13:

Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour (when the Kingdom of Heaven will arrive).

The parable of the talents then is NOT intended to be an introductory lesson on how the Kingdom of Heaven is like modern Western capitalism - extolling using wealth to make even more wealth.

As George Hermanson puts it in his sermon, A Kingdom of Surprises, the servant who buries the talents acts as a whistle-blower. He takes a very public action that draws attention to the injustice that has come to be taken as "business as usual."

Burying the talents is a classic piece of non-violent resistance: the servant does nothing to harm anyone, but he makes a public act of refusing to participate in the unjust system of acquiring wealth for the few by impoverishing the many.

The master's wrath is the response of an elite who has been publicly shamed by one of lower status.

It is highly ironic - to say the least - that the master's words to the servant have been taken by the church to be Jesus' words, and have been used to continue to support the very practices that the parable condemns.

David Ewart believes this is NOT a "Kingdom" parable; he believes it is a “Wisdom” parable teaching us about the perils and difficulties of the ways of the world until the Kingdom comes. It warns us to continue to expect the rich to steal from the poor; and for the followers of Jesus to expect to be punished by the rich for behaving honorably. (And in passing says ‘So much for all the stewardship sermons I have preached using this text!’)

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

A Sunday morning message is not supposed to be a lecture on biblical interpretation.  It is supposed to be an encounter with the living word of God.  I would invite you to reflect on each of these interpretations of this passage and consider which brings it most to life – which resonates with you the most at this time in your life and in this place in your life, because that is the way the living word works.  That is how the Spirit prompts and moves and nudges us into a deeper knowledge of who Christ is and of how God wants to be in relationship with us.

Whether you resonate with a given interpretation or not – you may even have an understanding that is unique to you – know that God is working through your understanding to bring to full fruition God’s Kingdom in your life.  It is that specific, that individual, even as God is working to make the Kingdom a reality on the macro level – across the world.  

And so we move into the response time of the service of worship.  Whether you identified with the servant entrusted with five talents, two talents, one talent, or as none of the above; whether you took this parable to be a word of admonition for the religious leaders around you – including me – or whether it clicked for you as a warning about how things might continue to be until the Kingdom of God is truly and completely established here on earth as it is in heaven, I invite you to live out that reality in your life this afternoon, this evening, this week. 

Let’s pray.