Proper 28 -
Zephaniah 1:7,12-18
Psalm 90:1-8(9-11), 12
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30
I hate scheduling dental appointments. Sometimes, I skip prayer before bed and fall asleep with an episode of Star Trek Voyager instead. I have been known to cheat on my budget by using my credit cards.
What is it about knowing what we ought to do, then not actually doing it? Do you have some things that you know you ought to do, things that are even good for you, like exercising and eating more salad greens, that you just can’t seem to actually do?
Sometimes, we know what we ought to do, but we don’t the resources or the energy to do it. Often, however, it’s not a matter of resources at all; it’s a matter of perception. Why is that? Why is it so hard to overcome perception so we can do those things we do have the resources and energy to do? Every one of those things I mentioned is something that I would actually benefit from. So, why am I so afraid to do the right thing? Because sometimes, the fear of the possibility of failure is greater than the consequences of failure itself. Let me say that again - The fear of the mere possibility of failure is greater than the actual consequences of failure. And I’m only talking about salad greens.
Still, did any of you hear this mornings readings in this fearful way? Did you hear Zephaniah talking about days of wrath and the Psalmist talking about being consumed by wrath and Paul with his sudden destruction and Matthew’s weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness? I admit, that was what stood out for me when I first looked at these lessons. Stuff like this makes it really hard to trust God - makes it really hard not to worry too much about failure - makes it hard to trust that actual failure isn’t as scary as the possibility of failure.
All that doom and fear does makes the servant with one talent from today’s gospel a lot more sympathetic. Believing his master to be “a harsh man, reaping where he did not sow and gathering where he did not scatter seed” he took his talent and hid it in the ground, rather than use it. For this servant, the fear of the possibility of failure was greater than anything else he could imagine.
I think that the difference between this slave, with his one talent, and the other slaves with their two or five talents is an imagined scarcity. One doesn’t sound like a lot. One doesn’t sound very abundant. But I think that depends on what you have one of.
The parable talks about talents. It is a trans-literation rather than a translation of the Greek word talanta. But where English uses the word talent to mean those things we have natural aptitude for and can enhance with skill and training, talanta is a monetary term for about 15 years worth of income for a day laborer. Life expectancy being what it was, this was the equivalent of a lifetimes worth of skill and talent and money.
Think about that for a minute, a lifetime of labor.
Jesus is using money as a metaphor in this parable but he’s talking about faithfulness. That one talent is no small thing. We receive this parable at the very end of his earthly ministry, at is a time when he is investing heavily in the faithful relationships he has built with his disciples. If the in-breaking kingdom of God that his life and ministry have begun is going to continue, it is going to be in the context of human lifetimes, in the context of human faithfulness.
A lifetime of faith. It’s all we can do sometimes to take things one day at a time, but what might those days be if we considered our faith, our labor, in the wonder of a whole lifetime? And in this parable, some are given as many as 5 talents. What might that even look like?
I think it looks like us. It looks like liturgy. Within the context of our faith, we are handed from generation to generation, lifetimes worth of faith. Not just our own lifetime and it’s potential, but the work of the whole communion of saints. It’s in the Lord’s Prayer that we have directly from Jesus, it’s in the Creeds that connect us to the clarifying moments of the fourth century, it’s in the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, where inward grace is made explicit for the whole community.
Does it change the size of your faith to know that it is composed of the investment of lifetimes of faithfulness? It changes mine.
The lessons today were full of this trust and faithfulness. Zephaniah says we are consecrated guests of the Lord. The psalmist says God has been our dwelling place since before the earth was even formed. Paul says that we belong to the day, so awake or asleep we live in Christ. Two servants in this parable have entered into joy.
So why is, then, that when I listen to Scripture, I hear so loudly the fear of the saints who have gone before? This because I have stopped listening to God and to Scripture in faithfulness and start listening in fearfulness. Sometimes it seems easier to hear the bad things that could happen than to hear the trust in the good things that do happen.
If we believe that all there is to God is a master who demands much and offers little, who doesn’t have room for failure, then it’s not surprising if we don’t notice these parts. If we believe that we have only one talent, and don’t believe that talent is worth a whole lifetime of faithfulness, then it’s not surprising we are afraid to grow that faith.
But, I wonder, what might we be missing, because we are afraid of the possibility of failure, afraid of letting God down?
Because our lives matter. And because there are consequences to how we nurture and maintain the kingdom of God, there is a lot of fearful talk in the Scriptures. As so many parables remind us - the harvest is not complete, the kingdom is now and not yet, the first fruits have been resurrected but not the last.
The full abundance of our faith is not the work of ourselves in isolation. It is the heritage of the whole communion of saints. It is the faithfulness of those who have come before to enrich us, and it is our legacy to enrich those who come after. Our children and grandchildren, our neighbors and friends, people on the other side of the globe and people on the other side of the century.
In truth, none of us who have even a mustard seed of faith have only one talent of faith. We have this abundant cornucopia of faith. And even if it were one talent, a lifetime is so much bigger than we can even imagine.
I look around this space, at all of you, and I see this abundant faith. The results of New Consecration Sunday reinforced for all of us that we have abundant faith, abundant grace. Our one lives are bursting with the abundant talents that we bring, that we receive, that we share. Listen to the faithfulness and know that it matters.
