Tag Archive for: Kingdom

Hope for the Hopeless

Advent 3B-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

The sun rose at 7:13 this morning and will set at 4:20. It will feel like midnight by about 7:15. The winter solstice comes at 9:27 pm this Thursday and I’m looking forward to the upward swing of lengthening days. In our world of wars in Sudan, Ukraine, and Israel, it’s easy to be seduced by despair. Doubt and despair can feel especially authentic with the added weight of 15 hours of night. Doubt and despair become a sort of false idol, and we begin to feel that we are the first and only people to struggle against an uncertain future.

But Advent comes to meet us here, in our deepest dread fears and doubts, with ancient words of the prophet Isaiah who testifies about a God who “comforts those who mourn.” The Psalmist proclaims, “God has done great things for me, and will do the same for you.” And who can forget Mary’s song, the Magnificat, with dreams of a world more just than ours where gross inequities of wealth and power are overthrown. Here, on the cusp of Christmas, Advent preaches hope amidst despair and gives testimony about a light that shines in the darkness of our confusion — Immanuel, God is with us. Here comes Advent to rekindle our hope and to re-light the fires of our faith.  It all begins with hope.

Tom Long tells the story of Rabbi Hugo Grynn who was in Auschwitz as a little boy.  In the camp, amid much death and horror, many Jews held onto whatever shred of religious observance they could without provoking the wrath of the guards.  One winter’s night, Hugo’s father gathered others in the barracks.  It was the first night of Chanukah, the Feast of Lights. He remembered watching in horror as his father took their last pad of butter and made a makeshift candle using a string torn from his prison clothes.  He struck a match and lit the candle. “Father, No!” Hugo cried, “that butter is our last bit of food! How can we survive?”  His father said, “We can live for many days without food. We cannot live for a single minute without hope.”

You and I are not the first person to feel alone and overwhelmed by life and the challenges we face in an uncertain future. Here comes Advent to say you and I are not alone.  God fights with us to toward the dawning of a new and better day.  John the Baptist cried out from the wilderness, ‘make straight the way of the Lord’ (John 1:23). John’s words were a sharp rebuke to the religious authorities of his day. To rekindle our hope today, we too must be ready to clear away the clutter accumulated over a thousand years by patriarchy which has persistently obscured the biblical witness to the character of God.

American poet John Hollander tells the story of his childhood impressions of one of the most familiar, best loved psalms –psalm 23.  As a child, he misheard the final verse. As you know that verse goes like this: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long (Psalm 23:6).  But in his mishearing, he instead heard: “Surely the good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.” Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible, edited by David Rosenberg (1987) (John Hollander, “Psalms”, pp. 293-312)

Bible scholar, Walter Brueggemann, affirms Hollander’s childhood image of ‘Good Mrs. Murphy’ attending to children like a beneficent nurse resonates deeply with our scripture and helps us to recover from the dominant Western theological tradition mesmerized by masculine and muscular adjectives of sovereignty—omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. We overlook other more neighborly sets of divine characteristics in scripture, namely, “goodness and mercy, righteousness, justice, steadfast love, and mercy. For example, El Shaddai, which is frequently translated in our English version of our bible, as ‘the lord God Almighty,’ refers to God in the original Hebrew as the ‘many breasted one.’

Brueggemann writes, “It turns out that the deliverer of Israel is quite like the good Mrs. Murphy in her capacity for the wellbeing, security, and dignity of all the children in the neighborhood of creation… These maternal markings of God matter in the world, as they mattered to Jesus who did the mothering work of feeding, healing, and forgiving. Beyond that, these maternal markings bespeak another way to be the people of God in the world, a way of vulnerable self-giving, after the church has had a long-running season of Constantinian domination.” (WALTER BRUEGGEMANN, Church Anew, “The Goodly Company of ‘the Good Mrs. Murphy’” 12/13/23.)

Mary sings praise to God, “You have cast the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52). Being different in the world requires an embrace of mothering among those who frequently “feel like a motherless child.” Here comes the good Mrs. Murphy to rekindle our hope and faith, and courage.

The proclamation of the Good Mrs. Murphy finds an echo in the preaching of John the Baptist and in the witness of the Hebrew prophets shouted in the streets today: No justice, no peace. The coming Messiah proclaimed by angel choirs and attended by simple shepherds is synonymous with the advent of fairness and dignity for all.  John would have us get ready for Jesus.  Hurry, “Bind up the broken hearted, bring good news to the oppressed, proclaim liberty to the captives, release the prisoners, proclaim the year of Jubilee’ (Isaiah 61:1).

All four gospels tell us people went out to John in droves.  His was not merely a message of judgment and condemnation.  His message sparked the light of hope and restoration.  John offered a new rite called baptism that opened the way of salvation to bunches of people otherwise categorically excluded from accessing grace at the temple in Jerusalem. God who called Israel out of Egypt and led it across the Jordan River would create a new people in the waters of that same river, regardless of race, religion, class, occupation, or past transgression.

Dressed in the simple, uncomfortable clothing of a prophet, subsisting on a diet of grasshoppers and wild honey, living in the desert beyond the Jordan—unauthorized, unsanctioned, and not ordained—John is clearly operating outside the religious authority in Jerusalem.  Nobody ever heard of a baptism for the forgiveness of sins before.  This message did not fit the teaching of that time about how God works in the world.

The religious authorities demand to know who John is. He tells them mostly what he is not.  He is not the Messiah; not Elijah; not the prophet, but a voice calling out in the wilderness. Perhaps we, also, should begin where John begins by being clear about who we are not.  We are not Jesus.  We are not Saviors.  We are not infallible.  We are not omniscient.

“One of the costliest mistakes the historic Church has made is to claim identities, powers, and privileges that don’t actually belong to us.  When we Christians adopt messianic ambitions for ourselves — either personally or corporately — we hurt ourselves, we hurt others, and we hurt the cause of Christ.  When we make promises we can’t keep — promises of prosperity, promises of immunity, promises of consumer-based “peace” and “blessing” — we become stumbling blocks to those who seek consolation in Jesus.” (Debi Thomas, “Who Are You?”, Journey with Jesus, 12/06/20)

In contrast, John begins his ministry from a place of humility. Like John, all we can do is point to Jesus. Clear away the clutter. Make his pathway straight.  Make room as the innkeeper did for Mary and Joseph. “If in your heart you make a manger for his birth, then God will once again become a child on earth” (Angelus Silesius, Polish priest and poet, 1624 – 1667). By tradition, Jesus birthday became connected to the winter solstice as a kind of poetic metaphor pointing to the new dawn of hope for humanity in the lengthening of days. See! Here comes Christ, our morning star, who shines on God’s future and scatters the night till shades of fear are gone and our hope is restored.

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Get Comfortable

Advent 2B-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says our God” (Isaiah 40:1).  I wonder, where do you find comfort? If you’re like me, perhaps there are certain comfort foods like mashed potatoes and gravy that always satisfy and stir warm memories. Or maybe, music you play again and again lifts your spirits and fills your head and heart with the vibration of beauty and joy—like late night jazz.  Maybe it’s a walk along the lake front, the forest preserve, or the Botanical Garden.  Or maybe your very best most comfortable comfort place is your bed.

So, I find it a little shocking that, apparently, for the people of Israel, the promise of comfort came not with food, or music, or at the park, or in their beds –but in the wilderness.  “A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isaiah 40:3).

Today’s gospel comes from the very first words of Mark’s gospel, chapter one, verse one.  Mark was the first to write the story of Jesus.  He is the inventor of the gospel. Mark became the principal source for both Matthew and Luke. Mark wrote: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

Mark doesn’t begin with the birth of Jesus, or with stories about him as a little boy.  There are no angels, no shepherds, no wise men –not Zechariah, not Elizabeth—not even Mary and Joseph. Instead, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” begins with John the Baptist shouting in the wilderness, “repent!”  Mark announces good news by weaving together lines from Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3. “In the wilderness” John the water-baptizer announces the coming of one who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (verse 8)

Mark begins with ancient words written 500 years before Jesus’ birth. “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God…In the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his pathway straight.” (Isaiah 40: 1 & 3) Mark begins with words of the prophet Isaiah written in the aftermath of conquest and slavery. Virtually the whole population of Israel at that time was carted off.  The story of a people gathered by God into the Promised Land had ended in war and devastation.  Once, their ancestors had been freed from slavery in Egypt; now they were again held captive, imprisoned by a foreign king, and separated from their home by another cruel and harsh desert.  Into this bleak reality words from Isaiah 40 broke like water in a dry land.

Comfort, O comfort my people. Build them a highway from Babylon to Palestine. Lift up every valley. Make every mountain low.  Make the uneven ground level and the rough places into a plain.  Remove every barrier that separates my people from their home.

The proclamation of John the Baptist, according to Mark, is the promise of freedom. It is a promise of safety.  It is a promise that included everyone, young and old alike. It is a promise of streets to live in, and places to love and to be loved. Comfort is no comfort without human dignity. Comfort is small comfort if it is only about what we do privately and alone. True comfort flourishes in community where all God’s people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But we can’t get there from here. Our second Exodus is impossible.  We cannot cross into the promised land today any more than our ancestors could cross the cruel desert by themselves to return to Jerusalem from Babylon. We cannot get there, that is, without a big dose of gospel medicine John the Baptist called repentance. The advent of our God is powerful medicine administered like a giant horse-sized pill by John the Baptist who breaks the door to our sick room shouting the word, ‘repent!’  Mark’s gospel begins with some tough love. We are met in the wilderness of our soul by God’s love and judgment (which it turns out, are the same thing).

John the Baptist offers the gift of repentance, so we may hear again God’s invitation to be joined again in the undying life of the Trinity.  Repentance –or metanoia—literally means, “to change one’s mind,” or “to turn around.”  It is to change, not for just a moment, but through a complete turnaround or transformation of thought and action.  True comfort, John the Baptist promises, comes through the death of our old self, and the beginning of our new life in Christ.  Comfort comes in the waters of baptism and at the table. It comes in the living Word proclaimed in scripture and lived out among our siblings here and now.

 Barbara Brown Taylor writes in Gospel Medicine that God’s “Judgment is above all about being known…all the way down.  It is about being seen through, seen into, and known for who we really are.  It is about the total failure of our defenses and the abject poverty of our pretensions.  It is about stepping into the light, or having the light turned upon us, so that every nook and cranny of our being is illuminated for examination.  It is about standing before God without our armor, our masks, our possessions, and our excuses, with nothing but our beating hearts and the slim volume of our life histories to commend us, waiting to hear God’s true word about ourselves.”  (Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995, p. 130)

Mashed potatoes and gravy can take us only so far.  True comfort comes to our bed when we have good reasons to get up and get out again each morning. The beginning of the good news God’s loves. Despite your faults and your big bag of transgressions, God declares peace be upon you.  Just breath. Now go into that desert of yours and help free your siblings who are still lost in their fears and imprisoned by the culture and economy of death. The power and presence of grace, incarnate in the world and in our lives, stands ready to break us open and turn us outward.  Through repentance, we are set free from thinking only about ourselves.

Mark announces God’s surprising message from the prophet Isaiah—our story with God is not at an end but beginning again. There will be a second Exodus. The story of our ancestors has become our story. It is the story of our personal exodus into freedom through baptism into Christ Jesus. It is a story told by John the Baptist –a gift wrapped in camel’s hair, mixed with locusts and wild honey.  The advent of the good news of Jesus Christ comes unexpectedly. Here the peace that passes understanding again to mend our hearts and renew our spirit even as the world around us remains locked in fear and darkness. The healing light of grace and forgiveness comes like the new dawn.

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Wait in Messed-Upedness

Advent 1B-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

A new year in our worship calendar starts today on this first Sunday of Advent. It begins, not with the pop of a champagne cork, but with lament at the hiddenness of God. ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, Isaiah pleads (Isaiah 64:1). The psalmist cries, “Restore us, O Lord of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved” (Psalm 80:3). Jesus warns the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken on the day of the Lord,’ (Mark 13:24). Hope and dread are interwoven. Advent teaches to us look for God’s light even when we are covered in darkness.  When I seem hidden know that I am near, says the Lord.  Remember, creation itself began in the dark.

 “In the beginning…darkness covered the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:1-2). God poured out love and brought all things into being… Creation is God’s work done in Holy Darkness… Later, Jacob wrestled all night with God and was changed forever… The beginning of the many nations and peoples of the Lord is the work of God’s beautiful darkness… At midnight, the Lord passed over Egypt and set the people free…  Samuel heard a small voice calling to him in the dark and became a mighty prophet… The disciples gathered with Jesus for the Holy Supper as the day turned to night… When Jesus died on the cross, the day went black from noon to three…  Creation began in holy darkness, and our new lives as free people in Christ began in the darkness of the sky that day…  God saved all creation, and it was the work of God’s beautiful, good, and holy darkness” (Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick, “God’s Holy Darkness,” Beaming Books, 2022).

As much as we want each day to be happy and filled with sunshine, the season of Advent helpfully equips us to withstand the bewildering pain of loss, self-doubt, and longing.  It may feel better to string a bunch of Christmas lights, or to set out electric candles on our windowsills.  I understand the temptation to rush through times tinged with blue; or to find electricity-fueled distractions to hold back the dark. It’s easy to be impatient with Advent.  But if we rush through this season, jumping from Thanksgiving to Christmas like nearly everyone else does, we miss learning its lessons. Each of us is a flicker of a larger flame. The darkness is luminous, full of wisdom and insight.  It is holy ground to rekindle hope and enter the presence of God. It offers grace to conquer even our darkest dread fears.

The first gift of Advent, then, is permission to tell the truth, even if that truth is laced with sorrow.  We become better able to see life as it is rather than life as we wish it to be. Advent declares, in stark terms that our world is not okay. Repairing the world is not a quick fix. Advent is honest about the mistakes we have made both personally and corporately.  Advent acknowledges we are surrounded by evil and suffering, and we’re not sure our faith can endure what our eyes reluctantly witness each day.

The second gift and discipline of Advent is learning to wait.  Advent instructs us how to live with quiet anticipation in the “not yet.” We stop rushing and learn to call sacred what is yet in-process and unformed just as God does. As we heard St. Paul say to the church in Corinth, we “wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:7).

In her book, Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris writes that “In worship, we let loose with music, and the words of hymns, the psalms, canticles, and prayers.  We cast the Word of God out into the world, into each human heart, where, to paraphrase the prophet Isaiah, it needs to go to fulfill God’s purpose.  Isaiah uses the metaphor of rain to convey this –rain that disappears into the ground for a time, so that we can’t see it working.  And then, it bears abundantly.”  We are witnesses to this.  The Kingdom will come, yes.  But it is also coming.

In these dark days of December, after the leaves have fallen and the flowers have dried up, it may seem most improbable to keep watch for signs of new life, yet we who serve the God of steadfast love can be confident they are there. Advent faith isn’t valued in the modern world, which applauds arrivals, finish lines, shortcuts, and end products, far more than it does the meandering journey or odd way station. If the secular world speeds past darkness to the safe certainty of light, then Advent reminds us that the most necessary things — things worth waiting for — are wrapped in darkness. We can’t get more counter-cultural than that.  The seeds of spring flowers break open in dark winter soil. God’s Spirit hovers over dark water, preparing to create worlds. The child we yearn for grows in the deep darkness of the womb. “Our food is expectation,” writes Nora Gallagher about Advent. In this season, we strive to find, “not perfection, but possibility.”(Debie Thomas, The Journey with Jesus, 11/24/14) Wait for God amid the world’s messed-upedness.  Learn again what motivates our yearning for Messiah.

We call him Messiah and Lord, but Jesus most often called himself the “Son of Man.” We read this odd title thirty times in Matthew, fourteen in Mark; and twenty-five times in Luke. Jesus’ self-proclaimed title comes from the Book of Daniel, 7:13. Jesus declared himself to represent the coming of God’s way to reign in the world, a way that is truly human, a way that God the Creator designed for us from the beginning. Jesus is the new Adam. The first born of a new humanity. We also have been again as God’s children by baptism into Christ. Jesus’ mission was his prayer, that God’s kingdom come, and God’s will be done on earth as in heaven.

When we feel God is absent, I wonder, is it because God is truly hidden, or does God appear so because we are looking for the wrong God? We are looking for God in the wrong places, from the wrong perspectives, from the darkness of our minds and hearts. The Advent of the new Human Being in us begins by walking the way of Jesus and his cross. This is the path of resurrection and new life.

If we are waiting for a Second Coming of Christ who will wage violence, exact revenge, and liberate us from our enemies, and snatch us from this world, then, yes, that God is absent. But if by faith we keep watch and wait for the God who shows up among victims, then that God has been with us all the time; one simply must look in the right place. (Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary.net, Notes on Advent 1B)

Author and Nazi camp survivor, Elie Wiesel, captured this hard-won insight in his famous memoir, simply called, Night. He writes, “A child hangs from an SS gallows and the question goes up, ‘Where is God?’” God would seem utterly absent in such tragic injustice.  But Wiesel notices something different. He writes: “And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is . . . He is hanging here on this gallows.’” (Night, Bantam Books, 1982, pp. 61-62.)  Jesus wasn’t wrong about a Second Coming. “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (Mark 13:30). Nations that don’t follow King Jesus on God’s path to peace walk themselves into destruction.  Here comes the nonviolent Son of Man again to rescue us human beings from our own violence. As our eyes slowly adjust to God’s luminous darkness, we are called into serving Christ by welcoming one another as Christ. Christ coming again and again is the advent worth waiting for, preparing for, watching for. Let the stars begin to fall and the earth tremble.

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Supremely Natural Sovereign

Christ the King Sunday

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

I want to begin today, as I sometimes do for Christ the King Sunday, with a children’s story by Minnesota naturalist and author, Douglas Wood.  Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called Old Turtle.

The story begins in a far-away land that “is somehow not so far away,” when, one night, a truth fell from the stars. And as it fell, it broke into two pieces—one piece blazed off through the sky and the other fell straight to the ground.

One day a man stumbled upon the truth that fell to earth and read the words carved on its the surface, “You are loved,” it said. It made him feel good, so he kept it, and shared it with the people of his tribe. The thing sparkles and makes the people who have it feel warm and happy. It became their most prized possession, and they called it “The Truth.”

But soon, those who had “the truth” became afraid of those who didn’t have it, who were different than they were. And those who didn’t have it desired it. Soon people fought wars over the small truth, trying to capture it for themselves.

A little girl, endangered by the growing violence, greed, and destruction in her once peaceful world fled her home and went on a journey—through the Mountains of Imagining, the River of Wondering Why, and the Forest of Finding Out—and there she spoke with Old Turtle, the wise counselor. Old Turtle was truly old. He told her that the Truth was broken and missing a piece—the piece that shot off in the night sky long ago. Together they searched for it, and when they found it, the little girl put the jagged piece in her pocket and returned to her people.

She tried to explain, but no one would listen or understand. Finally, a raven flew the broken truth to the top of a tower where the other piece was locked up for safety. The pieces were rejoined and shone out with their full message: “You are loved / and so are they.” And the people began to comprehend. And the earth began to heal.  (Old Turtle and the Broken Truth, Douglas Wood, illustrations by Jon J. Muth)

 Wood’s beautiful children’s story opens a way to understanding what today’s theme is about. Christ the King Sunday was not a thing anybody knew or celebrated until Pope Pius XI instituted it in 1925. He hoped it would help heal the world ravaged by nationalism following World War I. He hoped Jesus’s humble kingship would be powerful gospel medicine to end the fever dream of empire, nationalism, and consumerism. “You are loved / and so are they.” Yet if we neglect that second part, ‘and so are they,’ we fall again into triumphalism, colonialism, and Christian nationalism.

In today’s gospel, Jesus announced, lived, and inaugurated a new social order. He called it the Reign or Kingdom of God. It was the guiding image of his entire ministry. It is the subject of Jesus’ inaugural address in Mark 1:15, Matthew 4:17, and Luke 4:14–30. It is the theme of his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), and most of his parables.  In God’s kingdom “You are loved / and so are they.”

This truth matters. We suffer from knowing only part of the truth. A partial truth can be as misleading as a lie. The truth, the whole truth, will set us free. Jesus offers strong gospel medicine. Yet, as Pope Pius XI observed, somehow, we mostly avoid taking the medicine that could heal us.

In today’s parable, like an old-fashioned vaccine, Jesus uses a bit of the poison that afflicts us for healing. Binary thinking, either-or, this-and-that, is like a narcotic to which we are addicted like the people in the fable of Old Turtle. The antidote is both-and. “We are one, just as the Father and I are one” (John 17:21), Jesus said. “You are loved / and so are they.”

The recipe for Jesus’ remedy includes a bit of the hair of the dog that bites us again and again. Some of you are sheep and others of you are goats, Jesus says. Yes! Yes!  We are quick to take the bait. Some of us are winners and others are losers.

Life’s losers are easy to spot. Jesus wrote out a list.  Losers are the people who are hungry or thirsty now.  Losers are the people among you who are strangers. Losers are the ones without proper clothing. They’re people who are sick or in prison. Goats all. Like a sugary treat, we are quick to take and eat this part of the story.

But Jesus interjects the second part of the gospel of grace into this parable. Take, eat, Jesus says, this is my body. It hits our blood stream like a vaccine. This gospel medicine frees us from binary thinking. You are loved – yes. I am always with you – yes. Look for and find me among life’s losers – wait what? Yes, Jesus says, the good sheep will love and serve life’s goats just as I do. In fact, “Whatever you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). In the penetrating light of the gospel, we discover we are all goats, yet God has loved us into being sheep. Let the people comprehend, and the earth begin to heal.

I want to suggest that the ‘they’ God loves includes the natural world. St. Bonaventure said we are linked together in a great chain of being with all of creation.  Today, we recognize the web of life extends in every direction, joining our health and well-being to the flourishing of every creature from the largest mammals to the merely microscopic. We used to think of God, our sovereign, as a supernatural being, acting outside and apart from nature.  But now, more and more, modern science points back to the wisdom of the ancients resonating throughout scripture: God is not supernatural, but rather a supremely natural sovereign, working in, with, and under all things.

 “Jesus gets awfully specific in telling us where we can find him. Each of the habitations he lists [in today’s gospel] is marked by lack: lack of food, lack of water, lack of hospitality, lack of clothing, lack of health, lack of freedom. Christ chooses these places, inhabits these spaces, [then] waits for us to show up. Waits, too, for us to recognize those places in ourselves. [Jesus] knows that if we haven’t recognized the poverty within our own souls, and how he dwells there, it’s hard to see him and serve him in others without being patronizing. (Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayerbook)

When we feel lost, the gospel of Jesus points like a compass to show us the way. You are loved, and so are they.  Love God. Love your neighbor.  Love your neighbor as a way of loving God. The real winners look like life’s losers, Jesus said, because they’re the ones that refuse to play the game.  It is the spirit of Christ active in love for your neighbor that will carry us out of the fog of world wars, out of the destructive power of nationalism, out of the natural disaster of economic and ecological ruin.  Whether you respond to human and non-human need, or fail to respond, you are in fact responding, or failing to respond to Christ. You are loved, and so are they. Here is gospel medicine for our time.  Let the people comprehend. Let the earth begin to heal.

The counter-kingdom of God sets rules to live by and be judged by.  And what does the Lord require of you, O mortal – but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with the Lord your God? (Micah 6:8).

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Yes and No

Proper 28A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Oops.  Wrong answer-right?  Anyone who attended Sunday school knows you don’t hide your talent under a bushel basket or bury it in the ground! You’ve gotta let your little light shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.

At first blush, this would appear to be the lesson of Jesus’ parable. But notice, Jesus isn’t talking, here, about our special abilities and spiritual gifts. He’s talking about a very, very large sum of money. One talent was between 80 -130 pounds of precious silver or gold, equal to fifteen to twenty years of a daily laborer’s wage. You are fabulously gifted by grace. It’s true. But this parable is not about some sort of spiritual talent show, neither is it a lesson about wise investing. That just wasn’t any part of the world view shared by Jesus’ audience.

Hear then, Jesus parable of the talents: “A member of the wealthy 1% gives three of his most trusted workers a jackpot to play with. They know the rules — the more they make for the boss, the more they’ll get to keep for themselves. The name of the game is exploitation — no questions asked — and the only rule is: turn a profit. Turn as huge a profit as possible” (Debi Thomas, “The Good Kind of Worthless,” Journey with Jesus 11/8/20).

“Two of the slaves do exactly as they’re told. They take their talents out into the world and double them on the backs of the poor. Who knows how many fields they seize, how many farmers they impoverish, how many families they destroy? It doesn’t matter: they fulfill the bottom line. They make a profit. When the master returns and sees what they’ve accomplished on his behalf, he’s thrilled. He invites the two enterprising slaves to enter into his “joy” — the joy of further wealth, further profit, further exploitation.” (Thomas)

Perhaps our first clue to think again about the meaning of this parable should have been the third slave’s description of his master. ‘Master,’ he said, “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’ (Matthew 25:24, 25a). Unfortunately, maybe this too sounds like the God we learned about in Sunday School—but whatever we might think, the God we encounter in the bible is not harsh, demanding, or threatening.

People listening to Jesus would have understood just the opposite. The God of Israel brought them out of slavery into a land flowing with milk and honey, to drink from cisterns they did not dig and to reap harvests that they did not plant. In fact, God instructed them to harvest badly, that is, to leave some of the wheat and sheaves behind for the hungry to glean.  God told them not to strip the vines completely bare of grapes, nor to shake all the olives from the trees so there would be some leftover for those with nothing to feed themselves and their families. Those listening to Jesus did not look kindly on wealth generated by reaping where they did not sow or by gathering where they did not scatter seed i.e., who profited from dishonest labor.

The ancient Mediterranean attitude toward wealth was very different from ours. The concept of an honest rich man was a first-century oxymoron (Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh (Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels). Jesus’ consistent priority is for the poor and outcast.

The first two slaves did their master’s bidding. They went out and lent money to the farming poor at exorbitant interest, and systematically stripped those debtors of their land. But the third slave? The third slave opted out. The third slave “is more than a quiet hero; he is a whistleblower. Jesus’ audience would have given a thumbs-up to the actions of the third servant, because he is the one who said no.  I will not participate, I will not cooperate, I refuse to be part of your system.  At great cost to himself, he names the exploitation — the same exploitation he colluded in and benefited from for years. He relinquishes his claim on wealth and comfort, calls out the master’s greed and [predatory rapaciousness.] He told the truth. He’s cast out. He lost everything” (Thomas).

Despite of what we learned in Sunday school, the ‘master’ in Jesus’ parable is not God but a stand in for all the corrupt worldly powers of empire that hold sway over us. The heroes aren’t the slaves who turned a profit but the one who let his little light shine by saying “no” to the ways of the world, the ways of Empire, and dog-eat-dog capitalism, and so, was cast out just as Jesus was. The way of Jesus leads to the cross.

What we encounter today is a counter-narrative to all our dystopian novels. Woven through the texts for this Sunday is the topic of fear: fear of punishment and ruin, of mortality and wrath, of communal uncertainty and individual failure. These lessons have special resonance for us today. The search for God and the search for our deepest selves ends up being the same search. As Teresa of Ávila famously said, ‘one finds God in oneself, and one finds oneself in God.’ This is the spiritual food that empowered our ancestors to courageously confront the values of empire and begin to replace them with hospitality, justice, and mercy. This is the story of hope that enables us now to live boldly, body and soul, in the promises of a God who treasures us.

Jesus turns our world upside down. Jesus upends even what we may have learned in Sunday School. Highest praise is reserved for those who make of themselves a gift to others. God is not a tyrant but a steady source of undeserved and abundant love. Transformed by the way of the cross, this love turns our hearts and hand outward toward the outcast and the poor. Jesus said, “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).

The so-called lazy slave said “no” to his master and said “yes” to God.  We too, say “yes” in our baptism.  We have vowed to renounce the devil, the powers of this world, and the ways of sin that draw us from God.  We have vowed to live among God’s faithful people, to serve all people following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth. This is not a burden, but the source of our joy and thanksgiving.

So, let there be some thanksgiving in our Thanksgiving.  Let us work not for the betterment only of ourselves—but of our grandchildren and our grandchildren’s grandchildren –so future generations may live and thrive and not make the same mistakes we have made. Even now the kingdom of God breaks in all around us, with us, in us, through us, and among us.   Thanks be to God.

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