The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of Proper 28
24th Sunday After Pentecost
19 November 2017
Readings:
Judges 4:1-7
Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30
Nearing the end of this long season after Pentecost, we’re hearing our second out of the four parables in Matthew’s gospel that talk about the end of the age or the day of the Lord. Each of them focuses our attention on how we are living out our faith in our day to day lives and the fears we face as we near our own Day of the Lord, or end of our lives.
Coming the two weeks following All Saints Sunday, and two weeks before the start of Advent, the trajectory continues to look at our concerns about who God is in response to our perceptions of how far we stray from the ideal of living our lives as God’s children—of being Christ’s hands and heart in the world. This theme will continue in Advent, but with the expectation of God’s coming, of God’s walking amongst us, culminating in the celebration of God’s birth into the world in the person of Christ.
As the close of the cycle of the church year, it is fitting that as we prepare for an ending, we also prepare for a new beginning.
In our visioning process, many voiced concerns about the diminishing of our community paired with our hopes for new paths that will draw others into our currently thriving and vibrant community to keep it thriving and vibrant for years to come. Paradoxically, we live with both anxiety and fear, and with hope and expectation, which is also the reality of our lives in an uncertain and unstable world. The balance, and where we hope our faith plays a deciding role, is in the opportunities we have to be the difference, to be the change we want to see in our communities and our world.
It is popularly said that we seldom if ever learn anything from periods where life is easy and enjoyable—in fact it is typically during these times that we become complacent in both our lives and in our faith. But when we are challenged with problems, we learn new perspective, focus our creativity, and grow in unexpected and life-changing ways.
If we can learn anything from the stories of faith passed down to us it is that the same has always been true. What is also true is that it can take quite some time before we recognize that we’re broken, that we’ve lost our creativity, that we’ve grown apart from God and even remain complacent in our suffering. It can take some time to recognize that we don’t have to be.
The formula for the book of Judges is the repetition of Israel’s hot and cold relationship with God. After Moses and Joshua died, in each succeeding generation, Israel is said to have done evil in the sight of the Lord—which is described as forgetting God’s relationship with them and their ancestors, and falling into the practices of other local religions that based their practices on fear of the elements surrounding them rather than on hope in a loving God. As each generation faltered in their hope, a new Judge arose, each as a prophetic voice and a champion who tried to lead Israel back to healthy relationship with God. What is significant in these repetitions is that God was not only waiting for each generation’s return, but was ready with blessings and renewed assurance of God’s accompaniment with them.
The Psalmist describes their experience as one of looking for and finding God in their times of need, and this describes Israel’s relationship with God fairly well. Since the time of Abraham, each generation of his family knew they could count on God’s presence, listening ear, and help in their times of dire need. But as the generations unfolded, times of plenty and success brought with them the ease and comfort that allowed them to forget how important their faith was to them and lulled them into a place of stagnation and spiritual indifference. As we heard several weeks ago, it took those in slavery in Egypt generations before they cried out to God—remembering God’s promises to them and seeking again the blessing of God’s presence in their lives. Again in today’s reading from Judges, it took this generation twenty years of harsh oppression before they remembered God and sought again that sustaining relationship with God that gave them hope, strength, and life.
Throughout scripture we hear about the Day of the Lord, frequently in terms of fear and trembling out of fear of God’s wrath against us for not behaving as we know we should. However, we also hear in each of these references the reversals that are encountered when people hear God’s call, and remember God’s character is not reflective of our own vindictiveness, but is one of compassion, forgiveness, love, and grace. Thessalonians picks up on this theme from a Christian perspective—the devastation and destruction of the day of the Lord, long foretold, is once again coming… and woe unto all except Christians who will not be taken by surprise as a thief in the night, for we are people of the day, of the light, of wakefulness, of mutual support, and of salvation.
But are we? As Christians, we have collectively blamed countless catastrophes on out-groups, contributed to multiple genocides around the world, forced conversion on conquered peoples, hardened our hearts to the amazing encounters with God made available to us by those who believe in different ways from us, started wars of tremendous atrocity premised on God’s will, raped the environment in the name of “dominion” we have claimed was God’s charge to us in creation, and individually have become some of the most hypocritical practitioners of any known faith group—leaving our faith at the doors of the church on Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday, depending on our sect, and dealing ruthlessly in business and society to get ahead the other six days of the week—and these include our religious leaders and even our clergy. Karl Bart once commented, specifically on today’s passage from Thessalonians, that the call to Christians isn’t a call to a group that remains awake, but is a call to a group that has been awoken but that needs constantly to reawaken. He notes that rather than taking this passage as an us-vs.-them difference between day-treaders and those belonging to the night. He says, “We cannot, therefore, define Christians simply as those who are awake while the rest sleep, but more cautiously as those who … constantly stand in need of reawakening” from “the sleep of all kinds of errors and [f]antasies and falsehoods.”
Like those in the generations of the Judges, and like, in fact, all those in the history of human relationship with God, we too can forget, we too can fall into destructive practices Paul equates to “the night”—practices that draw us in on ourselves, draw us out of healthy relationship with one another, and draw us out of relationship with God.
The question then becomes, who is the God we face on the Day of the Lord?—who is the God we face when we turn back to God and find God waiting for us?
Today’s Gospel gives us an unexpected response.
As is so frequently the case in Jesus’ parables, the point isn’t the two who do what is expected, but the one who doesn’t. The first two have almost identical responses and similarly the master’s response to them is the same. But the one is different.
Taking the hint from last week’s reading, and the other three stories in this section of Matthew’s kingdom parables from Jesus, if we look at the difference between how the one is living in contrast to how the other two are living in the time between the master’s leaving and return, we find a profoundly different message from the usual stewardship take on this parable as encouraging us to make use of our gifts for the betterment of the whole community rather than burying them in the ground where they do no one any good.
Looking at the actions of each, there is a marked difference between how the master acts and how the third servant perceived him. The master entrusted considerable wealth to each servant, and for the two slaves who risked boldly and acted from a place of trust and hope, the master transformed their relationship from master and servant to one of joy and mutuality—almost as equals.
The third however, acted out of fear. The master even comments that if the third actually believed what he said he did about the master, he would have given the money to bankers so it would gain in interest, but he didn’t. Out of fear of a vengeful and wrathful master, he buried the money in the ground. He didn’t act on his master’s faith in him at all.
Fearing his master, that which he fears is realized. Perhaps, for Matthew, the God we face is the one we imagine. Likewise, the emotion that the passage initially provokes in its readers—fear that our impending judgment includes the possibility that we too will be thrown “into the outer darkness”—is the emotion the passage calls us to resist. This passage is not so much about stewardship and the wise use of resources as it is about a willingness to resist fear and, like the first two slaves, to behave in bold and trusting ways, for in so doing we enter into joy upon the master’s return.
As this ties back into the themes from the other readings for this Sunday the return to a God who hears his children’s cries as they call out from their oppression is manifested in the faith and story from Judges, and is reflected again in the tenor of our Psalm, while the fear of an end in darkness and night is contrasted against the Christian hope of light and life echoed in Paul’s message to the Thessalonians. In light of Paul’s rendition, the theme takes a turn toward hope in Christ toward the God of light, of love, of forgiveness, of beneficence, of wakefulness, and of salvation. But as Barth reminds us, it is an ongoing process of reawakening to God as one whose awe inspiring presence is one characterized by generativity, love and grace rather than condemnation and destruction. And this becomes perhaps the most important element that ties all of our readings together today. In each, the expectation based on our lack of love, fidelity, trust, and compassion with one another and with God is that God judges us as a harsh and wrathful creator, and impugns us for our lack of faith. Truly the God we fear facing is the one we imagine—and moreso, the faith we live is characterized by the faith we hold. Jesus’ parable illustrates not the reality of God, but our expectations of God that translate into how we live out our faith in the world.
While it may be true that the Christian church is diminishing in general, that organized religion is becoming less and less of a given in our society, what this means can either be taken in fear or in faith and hope. Perhaps we can no longer be a religion of empire—one that survives by our own power—but must become again a religion of action.
My experience of seekers who are skeptical of religion, skeptical of Christianity, skeptical of communities of faith, is that their skepticism is aimed at a belief system that is out of touch with their real lives, with the real problems of our society and nation, and that has no patience for wisdom teachings that all sound like platitudes in the face of an unjust and unstable world. They want their beliefs to matter and to be grounded in reality. They want their actions to come from a place of making a difference. They want their communities to focus on advocacy and positive social change. They don’t want to be told to wait for some deity to do it all for them or that it doesn’t matter because they’re going to a better place. And they want to be valued for who they are and not be told they have to change before God can love them. Basically, they are looking for the same things Jesus was looking for. Whether we call it God’s kingdom, God’s reign, living as Christ’s hands and heart in the world, or living out social justice and working for equity in our world, where the rubber meets the road is in how we are living out our beliefs. Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion. He came to revolutionize our understanding of how being in relationship with God calls us to action—to stand up and make a difference in our world as partners with and agents of God’s abundance and love.
In this time of stewardship at Calvary, I think the theme of fear and scarcity versus faith and abundance is an important message for us during this time of both the current realities of our community’s gifts and assets, and the renewed excitement and hope for paths that will lead us to growth and continued flourishing. Is the faith we want to live out in our lives and community one that draws us under cover from a God of fear, and reinforces social fears of religion as oppressive and outdated, or is it one that draws us out, brings our light into the community as a beacon of hope, and draws people to Calvary to find out what it is that makes this community of welcoming, of hospitality, of generosity, of social justice, of advocacy, and of mutual love and support such an amazing and unique gift in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz?
My experience of this place is one of hope, trust, boldness, and faith.
May the faith we live continue to reflect the God who inspires our faith, and may this place of worship and community always be also place of welcome, of hope, of faith, and of action.
Amen