Judges 4: 1-7
Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11
Matthew 25: 14-30

Did I Hear That Correctly?

Once in a while I come across a biblical passage and I wonder if someone, or a series of them, at some point in the thousand or more years of hand copying these texts over and over, omitted a word or an entire paragraph. I read the passage and I say, incredulously, “this cant be right!” Today’s gospel reading is one of those passages. On the surface it is downright disturbing. It doesn’t seem like something Jesus would say; it doesn’t seem like the God we have met in Jesus of Nazareth. I have a good friend who refers to this passage in nothing but negative tones. In face, she hates it. When she talks about this passage she becomes a champion of that poor “one talent” slave. I read it and I do feel sorry for that poor one talent guy, who wasn’t very adept in the first place. The text tells us that he distributed the money according to the ability of the slave in the first place. Surely the master could have cut him some slack! After all, isn’t God about mercy.

The first thing we must accept is that interpreting this parable is an extremely complex task. Much like the layers of an onion, the parable reveals more and more, the deeper we go toward its centre.

The first layer we must uncover in this parable is that of the lowly talent. What was a “talent anyway?” We think of talent as a gift or an ability, such as an affinity for music, or sports or complex mathematics. But that is only an accident of the English language; to EVERYONE in Jesus’ original audience a “talent” meant a “sum of money”. That is what it was: MONEY. While the various commentaries that I consulted offered differing exchange rates, but by and large a talent was worth about 20 years of labour at a “denarius” a day. A “denarius” was the unit of money used to pay a labourer “the usual daily wage”. A “denarius” was just enough for a man to support his family - no frills, no “rainy day fund” - just enough. If a man did not work his family did not eat on that day.

So, if my math is correct, the first slave is given enough money to employ a hundred slaves for one year or fifty slaves for two years - any combination will work. For a slave it was an ENORMOUS sum.

The second slave was given only 2 talents - enough for 40 years wages - not nearly as much as the first but to a slave still an ENORMOUS sum.

The third was given one talent, only 20 years wages for a slave. More than the average slave would earn in half a lifetime (life expectancy was very short in those days). All in all, even though it was only one measly talent, it was still an ENORMOUS sum of money to be given.

The second layer of meaning in this parable concerns the word that is used for the giving of the talents. People who know more than I do about the original Greek words that Matthew uses in his gospel, tell us that the word that is often used is “entrusted”, but that it could be better translated as “gave”. Even when he calls them for an accounting at the end of his trip, he does not ask for the money back, they just tell him how much they multiplied it. This was not a loan or even a “trust account”; it was a GIFT and what an enormous gift.

The third layer of this parable concerns the meaning of this parable: what does the ‘talent” represent? Even though the talent was money and not a “skill or ability” per se, this parable can be interpreted to include these skills and abilities as an example of a ‘talent’. Other examples can include our privileges of economic status, education, citizenship and so on.

The fourth layer of meaning that I see in this parable is that a great deal centres on the attitude of the third slave toward the master. He regards the master as a harsh man who benefits from the sacrificial labour of others. It seems that he resents the excess power and wealth of a man who can give away the equivalent of 160 years wages. Unlike the others who go and trade and put the money to work, this man buries the money, not in an interest bearing savings account, but in the ground.

Now that might have been a good strategy about 6 months ago. If you had cashed in all your investments before the ‘so called’ meltdown, and had buried the money - you would still have had that money (provided that thieves did not find out about it and dig it up) - but this parable really isn’t about appropriate investment strategies.

There are some people who bury their “talent” and not only does it not grow, it sometimes moulds and decays.

For example, some people have been given the gift of growing up in a bilingual or even multilingual home, but they avoid using one or more of the languages and over time they lose them. Recently the CBC Radio One has run stories about the effects of the school consolidation of the 1970's on Acadian families in PEI. Before school consolidation many people used English books in school but, by and large, lived in French. After consolidation many people did not use their French and thus lost it. The process of recovering it has begun, but only after many years of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Some people have a talent for art or music, for example but they do not use it or try to develop it and it does not grow and mature. I do now know many musicians who do not practice and work at their talent on a regular basis. I know very few gifted musicians who can play anything at the drop of a hat, who do not also spend a great deal of time doing just that, playing to keep their gift alive.

My nephews and niece are gifted hockey players but they are expected to practice and are not exempted from it. I know of a young pro hockey player who was booted from the team because he thought he was so special that he did not have to practice or do the other drills and exercises expected of the others.

I was raised to treasure a gift and that is good; sometimes the giver made a sacrifice to give me that gift. On the other hand, though, if you put a gift away and keep it “for good” for too long, you may find that it no longer has a use. The good sweater or blanket may have been eaten by moths, or no longer fits. Someone gave me a gorgeous candle as a hostess present when they stayed at my house. I commented that it was too nice to burn but they said, “we gave it to you to use, so go ahead and use it. That’s what candles are for.

My mother has a friend who decided long ago to use her good silver every day - it cost a great deal of money, why not enjoy it herself? Silver does not deteriorate in storage, but why not use it.

The third slave saw the master as a harsh man, which leads me to ask the question, “How do we characterize God, the giver?” Are we a people who live by the grace in which we claim to believe or are we secretly afraid of the punishment that will surely come if we mess up. If we bite off more than we can chew will God not punish us? Better to do nothing than to fail. No one has failed at doing nothing, after all.

It seems that the others, who had far more with which to risk, had a different attitude toward the master. Is our God loving and generous ? Is our God harsh and cruel?

This parable plants the thought in my mind that perhaps our view of God will affect our response to God’s grace in our lives. Are we afraid that we will take too great a risk and lose what we have been given. If we view God as harsh and living off of the work of others we may indeed miss the grace and generosity which surrounds our lives. Grace is not earned, it is gift. Gifts are to be used and responded to - not buried and hoarded.

The reality is that, at the end of their lives, I believe that more people regret the risks they did not take than the failures to succeed. More people regret the opportunities wasted than their choices which did not pan out.

Today we are celebrating the gift of a child in the sacrament of baptism. Together with the parents, N and N, we are making promises to guide and nurture this gift who is Reece James George, child of God, beloved and cherished. We know that children cannot be kept at home and out of harm’s way forever. If we kept our child in a crib till she was 40 we would probably receive a visit from Child Protection Services long before the 40th birthday, but of we put him outside to fend for himself at age two, we would also receive a visit!

An infant is totally dependant on whatever the adults in his or her lives can do for them. A toddler needs firm boundaries but more than avoiding injury a toddler needs activities which will foster learning and growth. The same is true for a child at all ages; appropriate restrictions and appropriate goals and activities.

As a faith community we promise to provide an atmosphere where God’s love and grace is both taught and modelled. We promise to provide Christian education and Christian community.

We promise to encourage the child to participate more fully as the child grows so that as an adult that child can make the same promises to be community to others.

We are a gifted people. Like the slaves in that long ago parable, even though we may have differing abilities, we are all given gifts in great abundance. May we treasure our gifts, share them with others and be assured of God’s grace that makes it all possible.

Amen.

Ezekiel 34: 11-16, 20-24
Psalm 100
Ephesians 1: 15-23
Matthew 25: 31-46

Surprise!

My father loved to drive big roomy and comfortable cars; which he could only afford when they became “second hand”. In later years the only cars that really suited his like of “comfort” were also what you might call “luxury cars” which had all sorts of bells and whistles, which he didn’t want and rarely used and which often stopped working properly shortly after he bought the car. The last car he owned had a feature which allowed him to program in his trip so that it would tell him when he had “arrived at his destination”. Before the advent of GPS there were obvious drawbacks to this kind of technology; any change of route or slight miscalculation of distance mean that the car would tell you that you “ had arrived at your destination” when in fact, you had not! You had to rely in other things to tell you if you had actually arrived, or not.

This is the end of road, the end of the journey; it is our destination. This is what we have been waiting for all these last 12 months. Yet, we also know that next week we will begin the journey again, as we have done before and will, we trust, do so again once we reach December 2009.

The lectionary is a set of scripture readings that takes through the liturgical year from Advent 1 to the Reign of Christ. And on this day, after a programmed journey of 52 weeks we have arrived at Reign of Christ Sunday - we are where we set out to be when we began expecting the birth of the Christ child, 51 Sundays ago.

But, we may need to ask the question: “Just where are we?” What do our passages for today say about the Christ whose coming we expected and then celebrated, whose teachings we heard and whose death we mourned and resurrection we celebrated? Who has this Child of Bethlehem become?

In this passage it seems that the Child has become a judge who has returned and assembled all of the nations before his throne, asking for an accounting of their activities during his absence. Often called, “the parable of the last judgement”, it depicts a judgement at the end of time in which those judged are separated, just as a shepherd separates the animals at night.

In this passage the nations, whatever that term may symbolize, are either sheep or goat - there seems to be no in-between. And, to put it mildly, you wouldn’t want to be one of the goats in this passage. Weeping and gnashing of teeth is a favourite phrase of Matthew’s Jesus to describe eternal punishment, and it certainly doesn’t sound very pleasant!

Life though, is often quite different from the pure black and white of the parable. During the children’s time on this passage, a minister asked the children: "If the sheep were green and the goats were red, what colour would you be?"

A child answered, "Striped!" This joke came from Pastor Wes Morgan of the Christian Church (Disciples) from Conroe, TX

The reality is that there are days when we are quite sheep-like and other days, more than some of us would like to admit, we are just an old-goat or maybe someone has ‘got our goat’ and we don’t respond well at all.

I love the television series “er”. For those of you who don’t watch it, it’s an American hospital based drama (on NBC) that is in its final season. In a world of “for profit” medicine, “County” treats the homeless on Chicago’s mean streets, the mentally ill, the victims and perpetrators of gang violence and a host of other folks who happen to wander through the doors.

In a big city, publically funded, hospital with not enough resources it is so easy to fall into the habit of doing nothing more that “treat and street’ - when what each and every patient needs is for someone on staff to look deep and see who is really inside one who is homeless, the drug addict, the gang member, the messed up mom, or the elderly man with Alzheimer disease. As the drama progresses we learn about the er staff and why some of them respond in the way they do to certain patients. In a story line that has continued over several weeks now, one such person had initially appeared to be an average homeless and disturbed young man, but Dr Gates, a former member of the Marine Corps, saw something and managed to find out that this homeless man was a veteran of the Gulf War. The doctor thought that he was probably suffering from an undiagnosed combat related brain injury but knew that if her was not properly diagnosed he would fall through the cracks and not receive attention to which he was entitled as a veteran. But he had to convince him that life would be better if they knew the truth. The current problem is that they cannot find him so they can do the proper tests.

In the movie Hook , Robin Williams plays Peter Banning, who is a grown up “Peter Pan” , working as a cut-throat merger and acquisitions lawyer, tied to his cell-phone, whose children are kidnapped by Captain Hook. Peter must quickly change his priorities and return to the mythical Neverland to rescue his children. But Peter has forgotten who he is; he has forgotten how to fly. He is required to think a “happy thought” so that he can fly and his thought, the thought that enables him to fly, is his children. He is a man who is blessed and that blessing enables him to reconnect with his true identity.

When he arrives in Neverland, the “lost boys” who have lived there since forever, do not believe that this adult is really Peter Pan, until one of them looks deeply onto his eyes and sees that, yes, the real Peter Pan IS in there somewhere. Together, they defeat the evil “Hook” and Peter succeeds in rescuing his children. Thanks to Anna Murdock, from the Midrash preaching list for reminding me of this part of the movie and this approach to the text.

We are all familiar with the story from Matthew’s gospel of the visit of the Magi; strangers from ‘the east’ who travelled to Bethlehem to worship the one who was born ‘the King of the Jews’. Matthew does not tell us that there were three of them, (only that there were three gifs), but tradition has cemented that so firmly in our minds that all pageants which have wise men, have three of them.

The Fourth Wise Man is a story written by Henry VanDyke, who incidentally is also the author of the popular hymn, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore You”. This story, still popular over one hundred years after it was written, imagines what would have happened had there been one more magi who didn’t make it to Bethlehem because he missed his connection with the others and ended up making the journey alone. This man had packed several very expensive and exquisite jewels as gifts for the Christ child but spends the rest of his life, the next 33 years, looking for him. He does not just search though, he spends his time feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. At the end of his journey his jewels are gone. One he spent on the journey, one to rescue a baby from the decree of Herod and the other to rescue a young girl on the verge of being sold into slavery. His blessing in life is to be a blessing to many. He arrives in Jerusalem during the crucifixion and he is fatally injured in the earthquake which followed. At this point this mysterious eastern visitor hears a voice, who is surely the voice of the one he has been seeking, praising him for ministering to him in his need by giving clothing, food and comfort.

The dying Artiban expresses surprise saying to Christ that he has never seen him in need. He then hears the words of assurance, “just as you did it to one of the least of these my friends, you did it also to me”. He has reached his destination.

Clearly based on today’s passage from Matthew’s gospel, in this well known tale, the mysterious Artiban finds out what the sheep do in today’s parable; that in helping the needy, one ministers to the Christ.

The key to this passage, I think, is the surprise with which the goats and the sheep greet the criteria for division. This parable is addressed to the church; to the faithful; to those who call upon the name of Christ.

In this parable, BOTH would have helped the Christ in need. BOTH would have clothed the naked if they had seen Jesus in need. BOTH would have visited Jesus in prison. BOTH would have offered food to their Master.

BUT

Only one did so, EVEN THOUGH there was no recognition of Jesus or perhaps even with their faith. Only one did so, even when they saw nothing in it that could offer them anything in return.

If Jesus were to come back today even the most cynical of believers would offer the cup of water or the warm coat (especially the warm coat). Winter weather has arrived here with a vengeance The question is not really how we identify the Christ in our midst, but the extent to which we have been changed by the love of God so that we respond to the need - even though the one in need is the least Christ-like person we can imagine.

Some people are their own worst enemy; some people bite the hand that feeds them; some people, if you gave them the shirt off your back, would sell it to buy drugs or lose it - and some would give it to someone in greater need.

As individuals we can’t help everyone in need; as a community we can help a greater number and as a nation we can do even more.

What we need is to allow the transforming love of Christ to change us so that we see the need and the person in the need and not calculate what we can get from it - whether it be “stars in our crown” or community status or, in the case of nations, some other benefit.

We are blessed by God’s love and grace, whether we have much or little. As we end our year’s journey of seeking Christ and prepare to start another, let us let the transforming power of the Spirit fill us and change us so that we can respond in love to the love and blessing we have received in such abundance.

Amen.