In the Arms of Our Mother

Merry Christmas to all!  Like most of you I spent Christmas Eve in church, celebrating the Feast of the Nativity on that special night when I get to see folks whom I haven't seen since Easter (and many whom I have never seen before at all)!  It is a holy and sacred night.  

Silent Night by candlelight on Christmas Eve at Good Shepherd, Asheboro.

O holy night, the night when angels sing, when the earth herself cries out for joy, and God breaks through history once again as a little baby.  It is the night of our dear Savior's birth.  Of course, we can get into all kinds of conversations about whether THIS is the actual night of Jesus' birth; after all, contrary to popular opinion, the Bible says nothing about December 25, or winter, for that matter, since the Roman census was taken during the spring.  And we can get into all kinds of conversations about what actually happened that night, where he was actually born--a stable, a cave, the part of the house where the animals were kept--or what miracles really took place.  Still,  there was one sure miracle:  the faith of a little girl named in Hebrew Miriam, whom we know as Mary.  

There were no banners that were unfurled, no royal procession with incense and choirs that marched around that little town of Bethlehem when God came a-calling.  Instead, there were the arms of a teenage girl, who, no doubt, must have been terrified at the prospect of what all this meant.  No one had believed her--typical!--and there was a legitimate fear that her husband would abandon her, as would have been his legal right.  Nevertheless, she persisted, resisted the social and religious constraints of her time, and said yes to God.  It is because of her that joy, hope, and mercy were made flesh, and in time the world would call her Theotokos, God-bearer, the greatest among the saints.  But right now she is just a mother holding her newborn son.  It's just Miriam and Yeshua, and like any mother she looks at him with so much love and hope for his future.  There in her arms lies everything. 

For several years now my dad has sent me an Advent calendar at the beginning of December, and this year's has been particularly special.  The doors on this calendar contain different pieces of art showing Mary and Jesus.  Most are from the Renaissance period, though there are a couple from the late-Byzantine era, each showing Mary holding baby Jesus, who is usually reaching for his mother while she has a rather annoyed look on her face, as if to say, "Why won't this kid let me nap for five minutes?!"

The images are beautiful...and weird.  In one painting, the Madonna and Child in a Garden by Tura (c. 1460-1470), Mary is a dead ringer for The Simpsons character Mr. Burns, complete with huge bald head and hands that are in the "Excellent!" position.

Excellent!

In another, the Madonna and Child and Goldfinch by Teipolo (c. 1767-1770), Jesus is holding a bird in his hand in such a manner that it looks as if he's going to squeeze the little thing to death.  The look on his face doesn't help!

He's totally gonna kill that bird!

Each day during Advent I was gifted with images such as these, all showing a mother and her son.  In so many, even the weird ones above, you can see the hope that she has for him and the future that he does not know or understand yet.  Each of these pieces of art has taken me back to that moment on that night, when God reigned on earth in the arms of his mother.

Those daily images have hit me in an indescribable way over the last two weeks, after my own mother, Susan Mitchell, died suddenly on December 14.  I have felt all the feels during that time, and I certainly was feeling them in the pulpit and at the altar on Christmas Eve.  Prior to the funeral my fiancee Kristen and I spent time going through a bunch of family photos, and we saw so many of her holding me, or my sister Ashley, when we were babies.  I saw my mother looking at me with hope for a life that would be better and brighter than the one she had known.  I saw love radiating from my mother, and yes, sometimes I even saw her a bit annoyed that her child would not settle down.  I saw the look in her eyes that would be echoed over and over through the years to both of her children, a look that said, "If I could take your pain away and make everything perfect for you, I would do it!" Such a sentiment is no doubt shared by every mother when her children are born.  I suspect that Mary's eyes said the same thing to her son that night, and again some 30 years later when she watched him die.  It is a kind of love only a parent can know, and as I continue to grieve for my mother I cannot help but think of this mother and her son, along with all the hope and love that was held between them on that holy night.  

My mother with my sister Ashley and me at Ashley's wedding in 2007.

The holy night of Christmas Eve, and the season of Christmas as a whole, reminds us that Blessed Mary is not just the God-bearer, but she bears all of us.  Christmas reminds us that Jesus is, of course, Emmanuel, "God with us," and that means that God is not some "Divine You Up There", utterly unknowable and far away.  No, Christmas reminds us that God is here, all around us.  And God is here, inside each of us.  The dualities of old are gone, and there is no separation between us and God, for Mary has brought God here among us.  This Christmastide she is our mother.  She holds us as she holds her baby boy, she knows our joys, our excitement, and our Christmas dreams.  She knows our sorrows, our sadnesses, and our pains, as well, just as she knew his.  (As an aside, regardless of what the song says, Mary most certainly DID know!  Read the Gospel of Luke!!)  Mary holds it all, as a mother holds her child, and she looks at us with that same hope, that we may be agents of healing and love, along with her little boy, who, in all our trials, is born to be our friend.  This Christmas, whether you are filled with joy and excitement, or with sadness and sorrow, you are held in the arms of Miriam, as you were held in the arms of your own mother at your birth.  You are safe.  You are loved.  For you too are a child of God.

This is God's dream for the world, the dream of shalom, of the kind of peace that comes when we all know that we are children of God.  It is the dream that we will love one another in that deep, powerful, earth-shattering way that Miriam's baby boy loved.  He is the living embodiment of that dream, and this Christmas, thanks to the faith of a little girl, that dream is ours for the taking.  Merry Christmas!

#Prepare

Make his paths straight.

Prepare.  It’s that time of year when we are all scrambling to get things in order, preparing for all sorts of things and doing so at a frantic pace.  Did we get all of the gifts? Is the house in order?  Do we know who is coming in from out of town and where they're staying and for how long?  We have to be prepared, we tell ourselves.  But what is it, exactly, for which we are preparing so feverishly? 

Advent is the season when we prepare for Christmas, right?  It is a time to get our house in order for the greatest guest of all to come and visit us once more.  I wonder, though, if we sometimes treat Jesus less as the greatest guest, and more as that one relative who comes each Christmas and criticizes everything from the color of the wrapping paper to how dry the turkey turned out.  Y’all know who I’m talking about!  That’s not a person we’re hoping to see; in fact, it's more like a person we’re afraid to invite into home for fear of being judged the whole time.  It doesn’t exactly make for a pleasant visit, and if we know that that person is coming to stay for a few days we’re likely to prepare from a place of fear and dread, rather than hope and joy. So what does it mean, then, to prepare for Jesus?

Our preparations during Advent are not just in anticipation of Christmas Day, after all, but of Jesus’ coming into the world once again.  It’s a promise that is at the core of our Christian beliefs. Santa Claus knew that promise, which is why St. Nicholas was at the Council of Nicea, which gave us our Nicene Creed, and week after week we affirm that promise that Jesus will come again, and his kingdom will have no end.  Yet many Christians look forward to this promise with the same fear and dread as that unwanted relative coming to stay at Christmas time.  You know, it's around this time of year that I see those church signs that say, ‘Jesus is coming.  Look busy!’  We have to hurry up and get the house in order and everything just right because he’s not going to be happy when he gets here!  Is that really the kind of preparation that Advent is about? 

It’s certainly not the preparation that was illustrated in our Scripture readings this past Sunday, all three of which are urging God’s people at various points in history to prepare for the greatest guest of all.  Seven hundred years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah was speaking to the Jews held in captivity in Babylon, calling them to prepare for a glorious day of salvation, as God was about to bring them home (Isaiah 40: 1-11).  In the beginning of the Gospel of Mark we hear John the Baptizer preparing the people of 1^st century Palestine for the promised Messiah in their midst, who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1: 1-8).  Fast forward about 35 years, and the writer of Second Peter encourages his audience to prepare for that promised day of Jesus’ coming again and to do so by being at peace with one another and through patience and repentance (II Peter 3: 8-15a).  Any of those messages of preparation sound fearful to you? 

John the Baptizer.  He got it.  

I wonder sometimes why the thought of Jesus coming again is so scary, resulting in some fear-based modes of preparation.  I suspect it is because, as we look around us we see a world that, quite frankly, doesn’t look much ready for Jesus.  It’s a world that has gotten so far away from Jesus’ message of hope and salvation, and many Christians end up scapegoating others as a result, pointing the finger at this group or that group and saying, accusingly, "They are the problem!  They need to prepare for Jesus' judgment!"  I reckon if Jesus came back and saw us acting like that then yeah, he'd be pretty unhappy, and maybe we would have every right to be afraid.

But that, brothers and sisters, is where we come in.  We who are the Body of Christ are the very ones who must prepare this world for Jesus to be born anew.  We could use those scapegoating fear-tactics to try and get people in-line, but what good has that ever done?  That's too easy, too seductive.  It's the Dark Side! (Yes, I got a Star Wars reference in this week!)   Instead, we do the actual preparing ourselves.  We prepare for Jesus first and foremost with prayer, which is always an active engagement with God. We prepare by feeding the hungry and not just during the holiday season—plenty of folks go to volunteer at soup kitchens this time of year—but year round.  We prepare by clothing the naked, and not just with our ratty hand-me-downs that we’ve been meaning to throw out, but with the kind of clothes that we ourselves would wear.  We prepare by welcoming those who feel estranged or unwanted, not just by handing them a bulletin at the door of our church, but by sitting with them, asking them to tell their story, and inviting them to coffee hour or to one of the many Christmas parties we have planned.  We prepare by loving our enemies, not just by saying that we hope they change their ways, but by genuinely praying for them, commending them into the care of the God who loves them, even when our hatreds are so very fierce.  We prepare by striving for justice and peace for all God’s children, not just by hoping for change but in action inspired by prayer, by speaking up against the sins of racism, misogyny, and systemic violence and oppression.  We prepare, in the words of St. Augustine, by praying as if everything depended upon God and working as if everything depended upon us!"

These are ways that we prepare the way of the Lord.  Not with gloom and doom, or with fear and dread, but with energy, excitement, and the same hope we hear in Isaiah, Mark, and Second Peter.  How can we be so hopeful in our preparation when the task seems so daunting and the world seems so insane?  Because of Jesus!   What we do we do with the very love of Jesus in us, stirring our hearts and calling us into action.  It has been said that God is a woman, and that her house is a mess!  Well then, if that's the case, let’s get out there and clean it up and get it ready for the greatest guest of all to come in and take up residence once again.

Prepare, brothers and sisters.  Prepare your hearts for Jesus to be born in you anew this year, but what's more, prepare this world for his coming in real and meaningful ways, by praying as Jesus prayed and doing for others exactly the things that he himself did when he was here the first time around.  He is the greatest guest of all, the one for whose coming we should be hopeful, not fearful.  Together, let us prepare this world to meet him.  

#Awaken

For those who have been following the social media campaign #AdventWord, the word that was used for this past Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent was 'awaken.'  #Awaken.  It's a fitting word to describe the beginning of Advent, the time when we prepare for Jesus to be born anew in our lives, for Christ to be awakened once more.  It's like a whisper on the ever-cooling winds, inviting us.  Awaken.  From what?  To what? 

With Advent comes a new season and a new start to the church year.  Gone is our Ordinary Time with its day-in, day-out routines.  They’re comfortable, but comfort can lead to complacency, and by this time of year many of us find ourselves tired and weary, and we’re not sure why.  Perhaps because we have been lulled into a dream-like state by the intoxications of our so-called Ordinary Time, and our anything but ordinary world. We see some pretty extra-ordinary things happening around us, yet we are so numb to them that we write them off as normal, ordinary.  We see people in power abusing that power, people dying in senseless ways, and humanity continue to destroy this planet of ours, yet when we see it all we just shrug and say, "That's ordinary." If we settle in too much into the ordinary we can get caught in that dream-like state.  Still, by the grace of God, it happens again every year:  here comes Advent, reaching out to us, calling us to awaken from that ordinary state, to breathe in something new that is not so intoxicating, something that will allow fresh life to be born in us as we wait for him to be born.

It’s like a scene in The Matrix, one of my favorite films, and one of the most theologically rich films ever made. The protagonist, Neo, finds himself in a world that is ordinary, routine-based and lulling him into an almost intoxicated state.  Deep down, though, he knows there is something more.  He meets Morpheus, a man who offers him a choice—Neo can take a blue pill and remain in this ordinary world, or he can take a red pill and be awakened to an existence that is nothing like where he is now, but one that is, in fact, his true calling.  Neo takes the red pill.  Go watch the movie and find out what the reality looks like to which he is awakened. 

Morpheus offers Neo the choice of the blue pill (stay in the ordinary world) or the red pill (wake up) in The Matrix. 

Advent is like Morpheus, reaching out to us and inviting us to awaken to our own true callings.  We get so caught up in the day-to-day grind—get up, go to work, come home, eat at some point, fret over the state of our world, go to sleep, get up and do it all over again—that we seldom stop to pay attention to that invitation that God is giving us to something that is not so ordinary.  Advent is that invitation, and it is not just about remembering Jesus’ awakening from the darkness of eternity and being born into our world, rather it is a present reality that invites us all to be awakened to who it is God is calling us to be. 

We use the word call a lot in church circles, especially with regard to people who have gone to seminary.  Those folks have to routinely answer questions about their call:  when did you feel it, what do you think it means, how will it change in five years???  It can be overwhelming.  Honestly, though, call is something that God puts on the heart of every person, not just those with fancy degrees from seminaries, but when you’ve got this kind of world vying for your time and attention, it’s hard to hear or see God, or to even find time in the day to be with God.  We end up feeling like Isaiah felt, like God is distant, hiding from us (Isaiah 64: 1-9).  All we want is for God to come and give us the red pill and wake us up.

The truth, however, is that God is always there, even when the noise and stress of Ordinary Time overwhelms us.  Even when the world around us is madness and we cannot see, hear, or feel God, the ever-present God that we know and love is always still there.  Isaiah knew that, deep down.  So did Paul.  “God is faithful!” he told the Corinthians (I Corinthians 1: 9).  That means that God does not give up on us, even when all around us is madness, even when we can’t hear or see God or understand the call that is being given to us.  God comes to us now in the stillness of this season of Advent, inviting us to be awakened.  To be awakened is to know our true calling, that one thing that only we can do, the one way that only we, and nobody else, can grow the Kingdom of God. When we are awakened to our own calling, then, we can heed Jesus words to keep awake, to hold fast to that calling in spite of the madness (Mark 13: 37).  Keeping awake means knowing our calling and living into it each and everyday.  Advent reminds us that we are waiting not only for Jesus to be born anew in us, but we are waiting for his coming again.  If we keep awake, living into the call Jesus has placed on our hearts, then when he comes he will find a world that is ready for him.  

Awaken, brothers and sisters.  Awaken your hearts and minds to the love of God that is ever-present in your lives.  Awaken your spirits to your own calling, to a reality that is more real than anything you’ve ever known.  God is inviting each of you.  It can sometimes be like a parent trying to awaken a sleeping child, and we might might need to yawn and stretch and move about, but the invitation for us sleepers to awaken is still there. It will not pass away, for it is of God.  What does your call, your awakening from the ordinary, look like?  Welcome to Advent. 

Behold Our King

Jesus said, “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. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then 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; 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.’ Then 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? 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?’ And 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.’ 

Then 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; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I 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.’ Then 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?’ Then 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.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

--Matthew 25: 31-46

The first time I walked into the church where I serve in North Carolina my eye immediately went to the Christus Rex behind our altar.  Looking at the Christus Rex, which means Christ the King, we see a grand and mighty image of the royalty and magnificence of Jesus.  He isn’t nailed to the cross, instead he reigns from it.  His crown is one of jewels, not thorns, and his clothes are fancy priest garments.  Instead of appearing in agony he has his arms stretched out to welcome all who come to him. It is a lovely image of the kingship of Jesus. 

The Christus Rex at Good Shepherd, Asheboro.

Fittingly, we focused on the Christus Rex this past Sunday as we celebrated Christ the King Sunday (or Reign of Christ Sunday, depending on where you were).  It's not a feast day, but it is a celebratory day; after all, we wear white for the occasion.  The day also marked the end of our Ordinary Time, as well as the final Sunday of our liturgical calendar.  Why have a day to celebrate Jesus' kingship on the last Sunday of the church year?  Because it is a reminder for us that Jesus reigns throughout all time and space--past, present, and future--for ever and ever, world without end.  Amen.  

Our Christus Rex sure makes him look like a king, doesn’t it?  Still, when we pay attention to the parable Jesus gives in Matthew 25,which is the the Gospel text for Christ the King Sunday, we notice a different image of kingship being painted.  Like nearly all of the parables we have been studying in Matthew's Gospel over this past year, this parable is meant to evoke images of the eschaton, the final judgment.  It doesn't take a biblical scholar to see that the king in the parable is Jesus and that the judgment he is passing is an allusion to the eschaton.  The king gathers the nations before him and says to the people that he was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, and in prison, and that those who took care of him are blessed, while those who did no such thing are not so blessed. 

Does this sound like any king you know?  Does this sound like the sovereign that rules over the universe?  Hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, in prison?  This sure doesn't sound like any king I know or can think of, which is the same reaction the king’s assembled subjects have in the parable.  "When did we see you in those states?" they ask.  "When could we have possibly offered you help?  You!  Our king!"  For them the idea of seeing a king in any of those states, all vulnerable, wounded and weak, is antithetical to the very idea of sovereignty, of what a ruler should look like.  The king’s response:  you saw me in those states when you saw anyone else in those states.  When you helped them, you helped me. When you ignored them, you ignored me.

This is what makes our Lord Jesus unlike any sovereign that has ever ruled, and will ever rule.  This is what makes the Gospel so radical.  Every idea about what royalty is meant to look like, how royalty is meant to act, is turned upside-down in the person of this Jesus.  Kings are seated on thrones in palaces, they eat at banquets and are clothed in splendor.  While Jesus does reign in glory, the very glory we see depicted in our Christus Rex, his earthly glory is something quite different. Here his throne is the bed in a hospice room, or homeless shelter, or prison cell. Here his clothing is tattered, with holes in his shoes.  Here he reaches his hand out to us and asks us to help him before pulling the newspaper over himself so as to keep warm.  This, brothers and sisters, is our lord Jesus, our king.  And we encounter him every single day.

Do you want to see the face of Jesus, the face of our king?  Look around you. Do you see anyone who is hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, or in prison? Seek out that person.  Look that person in the eyes.  That’s Jesus! He is known to us in the sorts and conditions of every human being, especially those that are so very easy for us to forget and ignore, those whom he called "the least of these."  To serve them is to serve him.  To respect their dignity is to honor his glory. 

In a very real way, each person bears the image of our king.  This is the cosmic Christ, the Jesus that exists in all living things.  Thus, when we give to someone else, we are giving to Jesus.  It's not about charity but relationship.  When we seek out folks who in such great need and we establish a relationship with them, then we are nurturing our relationship with him.   

In several cities and at several churches—including St. Alban’s in Davidson, NC and the Church of the Savior in DC—you will find statues of a homeless Jesus.  As you might expect, these statues troubled many folks when they were first set up. These folks, who were of a more considerable economic means, had serious trouble with a Jesus in such a sad state. These folks need the Christus Rex, the Jesus that reigns in glory and power, the Jesus who is in full control; after all, we aren't exactly in full control of our own lives.  It's easy to forget, but Jesus is just as human as any of us.  This is what makes our king so different.  He can be found in the coldest, harshest corners of our lives.  It’s here that he invites us into a relationship with him.  When someone is there, in those cold, harsh corners, and we take their hand, we are taking the very hand of the one who holds the whole world.

Homeless Jesus at St. Lucy's in Syracuse.

This is our king.  He reigns from heaven above, from the wood of the cross, from the coldness of the prison cell, from the eyes and hearts of his own children, and all points in-between. As we celebrate his kingship may our eyes be open to seeing him reigning all around us, and may our hearts be set ablaze to serve and praise him by serving and praising others.  For his is the king of glory, the king of peace, and we will serve, praise, and love him!  

We've Always Done It That Way

Jesus said, “It [the kingdom of heaven] is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

--Matthew 25: 14-30

Do you know the last 6 words of a dying church?  "We’ve always done it that way!"  You’d be surprised how many times church folks say that.  Once when I was in seminary I was having a conversation with a classmate who worked at a huge, prominent parish in New York City.  When I asked about the fact that they did not allow women to serve at the altar in any capacity, refused to use any of the new liturgical resources from the wider Episcopal Church, and had no ministries focusing on incorporating kids and young adults into the life of the church my friend said, “Well, they’ve always done it that way.”  That church, even though it was huge and had tons of money, was a dying church.  That’s because dying churches aren’t necessarily the ones with older populations, or the ones that don’t have money, but they’re the ones that do nothing with the gifts God has given them, the ones who see an opportunity to do something fresh and new and turn it down, giving in to the fear of any kind of change.  They repeat their mantra:  we've always done it that way.  

 An artist's rendering of the Parable of the Talents

It was true in Jesus’ day, just as it is now.  We call the above story the Parable of the Talents, and it only appears in Matthew’s Gospel, perhaps because Matthew was a tax collector and would’ve used such a term himself.  When we say talent in this context we don’t mean what we would mean today—things that folks show off on America's Got Talent.  Instead, a talent represented a large amount of something.  The Greek word used is talanton, which was said to be equal to about 113 pounds.  In the parable the word refers to a large sum of money, in which case it would have been equal to 15 years’ wages for a day laborer.  Obviously Jesus is talking about a huge sum of money when he describes the master in the parable entrusting one servant with five talents, another two, and another one. The first two servants both invest their talents, doubling their amount, and they are rewarded.  The third does nothing with what his master gives him.  He doesn’t invest it, he takes no risk at all, and while the master does still get his original talent back, he chastises the servant for not being more proactive with what had been given to him.

The third servant was a victim of the same mentality as those who live by the code of ‘we’ve always done it that way.' It's about fear, particularly the fear of doing something new, of taking any kind of risk  Scholars like William Barclay have said that the third servant represents the scribes and Pharisees, those in Jesus’ time who had been given the gift of God’s law but had sought to hoard it, to hold onto it.  Even when Jesus, the living embodiment of the law, was standing right in front of them and inviting them into new ways of being, they still refused.  "We're good," they said, "because we've always done it that way!"  They, like that servant, refused to take a risk for fear of losing what they already had, and when the opportunity for change came, they dug their heels in and refused. The chastisement of the servant's attitude in the parable is thus Jesus’ own chastisement of those fearful attitudes, attitudes that he experienced from those who squandered the gifts given to them by God.

 The talents in this parable may not have been a reference to talents in our modern sense, but they are certainly gifts.  So this parable speaks a very real truth, that God gives each of us gifts and entrusts us to be active with those gifts.  The amount is not reflective of any personal value—notice that the master does not speak more highly of the servant who made 10 talents than he does the one who made four.  Thus, what matters is what one does with the gift(s).  The first two servants did something with what was given to them.  They didn’t know what was going to happen.  Certainly it was a frightening risk, but they stepped out in faith, and look what happened.  The third servant, however, took no such risk, just kept doing what he’d been doing, didn’t try doing something new, and look what happened.

The only way to keep a gift is to put it to good use, to work with it.  That’s what Jesus means when he says “For all those who have more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”  If we do nothing with what God is giving us, it’s as if we never had it to begin with.  Sometimes it’s risky, but stepping out in faith and doing something with the “talent” God has given us is always worth it.  That’s true for individuals and for larger church communities.  This weekend at our annual convention in the Diocese of North Carolina our bishops spoke about the gift God is giving us to create and become beloved community, which is scary because it often means coming to grips with hard truths of our past and deciding to be something we’ve never been before.  Furthermore, on a national level, a resolution will be put forth at this summer's General Convention, setting out a new relationship of full communion between Episcopalians and United Methodists, which will mean the two denominations can share clergy and work together on common mission.  While it could mean some change for our two denominations, it is also a gift that God is giving us to explore new ways of being the Church in our time.  

One might ask, “Why change at all?  We’re fine just the way we are!”  Sadly, that’s the attitude of the third servant, and of the scribes and Pharisees.  It’s always easier to just keep doing what we’re doing, to give in to our fears of the unknown. Jesus understood this.  He understood that fear is the corrosive thread that runs through every fiber of our being.  It can cripple us.  But Jesus also knew what it looks like when people take the gifts that God has given them and step out in faith, risking something big for something good.  Every one of us who goes to church on Sunday is sitting in a space that exists because someone, somewhere way back when, decided not to live by the code of 'We've always done it that way!' and stepped out in faith to do something with the new thing that God was putting in their hands.

So I wonder, what is the new thing that God is giving to you right now?  What “talent” has been placed in your hands and on your heart?  What will you do with it?  Will you bury it, sit on it, discard it because it’s new and scary and you have never done anything like it before?  Or will you cultivate it, invest it, nurture it, and let it grow into something wonderful?  And what of our respective church communities?  What new way of being is God inviting them into?  Whatever it is God is giving us, may we have the grace to do something with it, and the courage to step out into something new, even if we’ve always done it that way!