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

Every so often we hear a news story that leaves its hearers scratching their heads. On Friday night I was watching CBS News as I ate a late supper and the lead-up to the news item billed it as the ‘ultimate in multi-tasking’, and sub-titled it, as ‘another of the dumb things people do while talking on a cell phone’. This time it was bank robbery. An as yet unidentified woman, clearly visible on bank surveillance footage was talking on her cell, going “uh-huh, uh-huh”, as she flashed a handgun and handed the bank-teller a note asking for money.” We scratch our heads and wonder “what next!”.

Jesus’ parable that I read a few moments ago is one of those stories. It is one of those stories that provokes a reaction of some kind in most of its hearers; some find it confusing, while others find it very disturbing. In some ways it just doesn’t sound right. Why should the guy be punished for being prudent? The land-owner’s reaction only confirms the tenant’s accusation, and assuming he is a symbol for God, we don’t like it very much.

Many of you will know this as the “Parable of the Talents”, but that title is confusing because the “talents” referred to in other translations are clearly, units of money, NOT gifts and abilities. The parable involves such abilities but using the word talent for money just makes the issues more cloudy.

So here we are. A wealthy man is going on a journey and he gives his employees some money to manage while he is away. (In the end, it seems that the money is gift and not trust, though that is not absolutely clear.) To the first he gives a sum of money equivalent to 75 years wages for a labourer. Wow! To the second he gives the equivalent of 30 years’ wages. That’s still a great deal. To the last he gives 15 year’s wages, which is still no small amount. So even if we see these differences as unfair we must remember that even the last received an exorbitant sum of money. Most people in that day and age lived from hand to mouth and earned only enough to keep body and soul together.

These men were not strangers to the landowner though. The parable tells us that the master knew to whom to give the most money. In the end both the first and the second had doubled the money, while the third, out of fear, buried it and when the master returned, that’s all he had to show for his efforts. He is not commended for being prudent but severely punished by being thrown into the outer darkness; the eternal equivalent of being locked up and the key thrown away!

Once upon a time a minister was invited to be a guest preacher at a small country church. He took his small son with him for the day and arrived early. As he looked around he noticed a donation box in the foyer. He put a dollar in it and went about preparing for the service. The crowd was reasonably large and he was happy with the service. After the last parishioner had left, the treasurer came up to him and said, “It is our custom to pay the guest preacher the contents of the donation box. In the box was a single dollar!

As they were going home the boy said to his dad, “Dad, if you had put more into the box, you’d have gotten more out of it.”

According to the parable the third servant regarded the master as a harsh man who benefited from the labour of others. This is never really challenged in the parable and it is up to us to determine for ourselves if it is an accurate description. I would venture to say that most folks I know are very uncomfortable with this as an image of God, but there we have it. It is clear that this parable asserts that there will be a judgement and how we have spent our lives, makes an important difference.

This parable is presented as advice about how the faithful should occupy themselves until the awaited ‘day of the Lord’, or ‘the second coming’.

What I find interesting in this parable is what is actually commended as correct behaviour.

Some people believe that the righteous are those who believe the right things. They would make a list of things you have to believe in order to be saved, or to get into heaven, to use other metaphors. Examples could be believing that Jesus is God’s son and believing that God created the world.

Still other people would have lists of things you have to do and things you can’t do in order to be on the right side on the day of judgement. Give to the poor and don’t steal, for example.

Still others believe that you have to sit and wait, in prayer in meditation. You can’t do anything but wait.

This parable presents a different view. It is not the success or failure of the investment that is applauded here, it seems to me that what is applauded is the willingness to risk. However, we must remember that this parable is a metaphor for the life of faith, not about how to grow your RRSP portfolio or be a success in business.

Followers of Jesus are called to be people of faith who take risks of faith and who trust in the goodness of the landowner.

We take risks all of the time.

On a 7th Heaven episode, Kevin Kinkirk is standing by their baby’s crib and talking to his wife Lucy and he says something like, “I just can’t believe that the hospital let us take our daughter home without any kind of instruction manual. What if something goes wrong?’

We know that babies don’t come with instruction manuals. Teenagers certainly don’t. Many things in life cannot be predicted, or planned as if it was like a set of instructions for building an entertainment centre or a pattern for making a new Christmas dress.

One of the things that many organizations, including our churches, will be doing soon is forming nominating committees to fill committee vacancies. At other times we look for Sunday School teachers, or elders, or leaders for various programs. One of the common reasons for people to say “no” is the belief that the task is too hard. “No! I couldn’t possibly do that” is often given as a reason, as well as,”I don’t have time”.

Many years ago I was taking a course in which we had to write down verbatim accounts of pastoral conversations we had. A common question was, “Why didn’t you say such and such ,,,,,,,” The response was often, “I was afraid of taking the conversation in that direction.” Then the professor would say something like, “Well, what is the worst thing that could have happened.” Through this course we learned that pursuing the hard questions was not nearly as difficult as it seemed and that talking about deep hurts and experiences was a very important step in that person’s healing. We had to learn not to let our fear get in the way of the ministry to which we were being called.

The issue boils down to trust. The man in the parable did not trust in the goodness of the master so he hid the money in fear and trembling. If we are certain that God loves us and will go with us as we participate in the ministry to which we are all called we will have nothing to fear.

We are called to believe that we are well equipped for service. The man with the least money given to him had an enormous amount when you consider that the sum of money given to him was the equivalent of FIFTEEN years’ wages. Give the very short life expectancy in Jesus’ day, it was a lifetime of wages. No matter how you slice it, that is a lot of cash.

I was reading somewhere the other day that if each of us was to make a list of the things that we fear the most it would be far of failure and fear of rejection. Apparently this is true even in a congregation of well-educated professionals and businesspeople such as doctors, lawyers, and business executives.

Yet one of the marks of success is to be able to control the fear that would prevent us from doing anything at all and stepping forward in faith. GOD has given each of an enormous amount: our call is to respond in faith and trust. This parable warns us that the fault of the one talent man was that he did not trust in himself and I his giftedness.

It’s not just those of us who are ministers who need to call upon the presence and goodness of God and to step forward in faith. All Christians are called to venture forth in faith; both in terms of our service to the community of faith but also in our lives in family, community and the places where we work.

The life of faith is not to be divided into compartments: one for religion and the other for the rest. We are called to live our whole lives under the umbrella of the Gospel call. Our response is to be one of faith and taking the risks of rejection and failure because we know that, in the end, our God is with us and will not, in the end, see us fail. The alternative is to live in our old age the myriad of regrets and what iffs: “If only we had tried this or that”. Let us venture forth in faith and trust.

Minister and hymn-writer, Fred Kaan, in his hymn, “Worship the Lord” has written,

Called to be partners with God in creation
honouring Christ as the Lord of the nation,
we must be ready for risk and for sacrifice,
worship and work must be one. 

Amen.

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

One day a man parked his car on a street in a poorer section of town. As he pressed the button to lock his car he saw a young boy sitting on the steps of one of the nearby apartment buildings. He greeted the boy saying, “Hi, how are you?”

“Is that your car?”, the boy asked.

“Yes it is, “ said the man. “My brother gave me this car.”

“Wow” said the boy, his eyes becoming even bigger, “I wish....” Now, the man was sure that the boy was going to wish for a brother like that, but what he said next truly surprised him, for the boy continued, “I wish I could be a brother like that!”

Today is the equivalent of the New Year’s Eve of the Church year. We have come full circle since last Advent when we began with the hopes from the coming of the Messiah. In a sense this passage sums up what is most important for Christian faith and mission. But we need to be careful or the passage may lead us in some wrong directions.

After a quick reading, it sounds easy enough: help those in need and we will find favour with Christ and eternal salvation. However, a closer reading shows us that it’s not that simple. There is more here than meets the eye.

This parable, (and it is most often referred to as a parable) speaks of the nations being divided into two groups: sheep and goats. And it’s clear, you’ll want to be a sheep. To sum it up quickly: The Son of Man divides the nations as a shepherd divides sheep from goats at nightfall. There is nothing intrinsic about sheep or goats that we need to know; that’s not the point of the parable. The point of that illustration is simply the act of separation, using a certain criteria. The criteria in this case is the giving of aid to the Christ, the Son of Man.

I think that most of the meaning of this parable hinges on the reaction of those so separated. It seems that both those on his left and those on his right, are surprised. Neither saw the Christ in need. The difference was that those who were placed on the right gave care and comfort to the naked, the prisoners, and the hungry, regardless of any award promised or merit gained. Although they did not see the Christ in the needy there was something in them that caused them to extend hearts and hands in love. Perhaps the love of Christ in their lives had so changed them that their hands and hearts were extended in love, because that was who they were - plain and simple. The goats, it is clear, would have helped others, if they had seen the connection to Christ or their faith. We need to be clear here: the goats were not “bad” people; they were not put on the wrong side of the “Son of Man” because they had lied, murdered, stolen or cheated on their marriage partners. They were put out because they had not cared. Like the sheep they had seen no connection with their faith; but un-like the sheep they probably had seen no connection with the poor, the naked, the prisoners, the needy.

The connection: there’s the point! That is the what this parable was trying to get at; that’s a large part of what Jesus was trying to teach his whole ministry: life is relationship. Our lives as followers of Jesus are to be about relationships, not about drawing lines of separation between “us” and “them”. Christianity is about tearing down barriers, not building them. We are to live in relationship with the God we have met in Jesus, the Christ, and part of this relationship is opening our hands and hearts to others in love.

In Jesus day the government had no social safety ent whatsoever. Early on, the Christian communities organized themselves so that some could be freed up for evangelism and building up the community while others were charged with the task of caring for the widows and orphans. It seems that the members of the early communities pooled their resources so that no one was worse off than another. They worked at their connections with one another and at their outreach to the community and their lives reflected this connection.

This parable is also about our motivation; it’s about not keeping score: about our right hand not knowing what our left hand is doing. The surprise of the sheep is as telling as the surprise of the goats. We are not here to earn brownie points; we’re here to care and to share what we have received with others.

If I asked each of you to make a list of those who have influenced you I am sure that each of you could come up with a number of names. I am sure also that some of you would be on someone else’s list, without knowing it. Teachers and ministers and youth group leaders frequently encounter people from past classes, groups or churches and are told how influential they were to them. Sometimes, often, it was not the persons the teacher or leader might have thought of; sometimes it’s not the ones they tried to mentor or influence; sometimes it’s the ones who were difficult, who didn’t listen, who horsed around in class. I suspect that most of the time we never find out what our influence has been: with students, our children’s friends, or those others with whom we come in contact.

The residents of our larger cities know all too well about the needs that are on every street corner, in the doorways of many businesses and outside restaurants and coffee shops. Many people walk on by and try to ignore the outstretched hand, saying, “They’ll only get drunk”! Or they toss a few quarters and hope the guilt will go away. While the best way to help may be through social agencies it is important that we don’t distance ourselves from the person that we encounter. While we can’t possibly meet every need in every person, it’s important that we try to develop relationships of meaning and not erect artificial barriers that only serve to dehumanize the other.

I was talking to a colleague in Toronto a number of years ago and I said something like this: “Many of the folks in my churches don’t see that they have any connection with the street people in Toronto, or other large cities”. To this he said, “Well go home and tell them that many of the street people in Toronto are from the Maritimes.” They are us. They are our children. They are our runaways. They are our neighbours children. They are God’s children. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ. In fact “they” are “us”.

Illustrations abound about churches who rejected poorly dressed strangers who turned out to be other people in disguise, or the well worn one about the student ministers ignoring the street person at the chapel door as they went to preach a sermon about the “good Samaritan”.

The problem is that these kind of examples can cloud the basic issue. The whole point of the this parable is that the street person is important in and of himself or herself; the person in need is beloved of God for their own personhood, nothing more or less than we ourselves are. It’s not “what if that person in need is Christ”, it is “Our faith calls us to serve those in need”.

What is key in all of these is that the biblical story, even though it is thousands of years old, is about our lives and our needs and our response to the gospel. Many things have changed, to be sure, but while there is still human need there is the call to reach out in love.

It’s not about being saved by our deeds, it’s about being transformed by the love of God in Christ so that our deeds reflect the love than has transformed us and made us whole.

So perhaps the message of today’s gospel is simply that we are called to reach out, in love. As we have been welcomed in love so we are called to welcome others. No exceptions. No loopholes.