Curly, Young People, and the Parable of the Talents

                                                                Proper 28A 2014

                                 Judges 4:1-7;Ps 123; 1 Thess. 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

Father Adam Trambley

November 16, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

This morning’s gospel is Jesus’ parable of talents.  The word talent here means a huge chunk of ancient Roman money – usually about a seventy pound piece of silver or gold.  One scholar said it would be approximately equivalent to what one person would earn over their entire life. 

The story is familiar to us.  The wealthy master calls in three slaves to take care of portions of his huge fortune while he goes away on a trip.  One slave gets five talents, another two and a third one.  The first two slaves work with the money and both of them double it.  The third one buries it in the ground, which might have evoked a chuckle among the farmers in Jesus’ audience who knew how to grow things and knew you couldn’t plant silver and make a silver tree come up.  When the master comes back, he commends the first two slaves, saying, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave,” or, in the older translations, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  Then he promises them that they will be in charge of many more things and they should enter into the joy of their master.  The “joy of their master” is another metaphor for eternal life or life in the Kingdom of God.  We’ll talk about the many things they might end up in charge of in a few minutes.

Then the third slave, who for simplicity’s sake we’ll call “Curly,” comes forward and says some harsh things about the master, who upbraids him for not at least giving the money to the bankers for a little bit of interest, and then casts him into the outer darkness.  This rather unsympathetic interaction with the master and Curly raises a few questions.  We might hope that Curly would at least get credit for not losing the money.  He returns what was given him.  There were no FDIC insured bank accounts in those days, and the people who offered interest on borrowed money were generally money-changers, shop keepers who were buying inventory now in hopes of selling it for a better price later, or the kind of charlatans, con-men and other scoundrels that make great villains in Western movies.  Curly could have been commended for avoiding them and keeping his money intact.  But instead he is punished, and not just because Moe and Larry made better investments in matzo futures.

The key to understanding this parable comes as we translate the master’s highly-valued money into what is actually of value to our Divine Master in real life.  If the increase is all about buying power and we are just talking about greedy acquisition, then this story should bother us.  But if Jesus’ point is about using everything we have to invest in the Kingdom of God and to get good returns, then Curly’s lack of initiative is appalling.  Given the state of the world, we can’t justify sitting on our hands and keeping safely to ourselves.  We have to invest whatever we have and use it to obtain the best return possible.  Moe and Larry both get a good return, and God rewards them for going out, taking risks, and finding a way to increase the wealth of his Kingdom, a wealth that for us means helping people turn their lives around and live into the Kingdom of God.

Now given the framework of the parable, I have what may be some bad news for us here at St. John’s.  We have been given a lot of talents.  We have beautiful buildings that many people, including many of you, have kept up over the years.  We have held onto to a liturgical heritage that still touches lives in a sanctuary that has been filled with years of prayers.  We have financial resources and community connections and clergy with strong seminary training and a tradition of doing things well for large groups of people and perhaps a millennium’s worth of combined experience in this sanctuary with prayer and outreach and sharing our faith.  We are at least the five-talent servants of the Lord.  What we are called to do is what we have been trying to do: throw everything we can into any investment we can find that could increase our yield for the Kingdom of God. 

We are directing our investments in the avenues described by our strategic directions: creative, passionate and beautiful worship; building loving relationships; strengthening youth and families; meeting people’s basic needs; and participating in the revitalization of our wider communities.  St. John’s collectively is using many different resources including building space, our time and our expertise for a variety of initiatives, and as individuals we are also committing much of what we have to offer.  I would take a minute here, though, just to highlight a few resources that I think we are always tempted to bury and protect rather than to invest expecting a return. 

One of our often underutilized talents is our family, and especially our children.  What I mean here is that I think we often view our young people as fragile, vulnerable entities who need to have church stuff poured into them until they grow up.  Yet our children are some of the best ministers we have.  Children’s compassion, energy, acceptance and love can be huge gifts to other children and to adults.  Our young people are actually on the front lines of ministry with their peers, many of whom are facing unbelievable struggles.  They are proficient with new technology that connects them and the world in new ways, they are looking for a purpose worthy of their lives, and they have the energy to create new life-changing ministries.  Our job is to lift them up and send them out to do the work God gives them to do.  We are called to recognize the importance of their unique ministries, coach, encourage, equip, and support them, and find a valuable place for their work within our church community.  What I’m talking about is more than just a youth group or Sunday school, or even getting youth together to do something, as important as some of those activities are to lay a foundation for them.  We also need to expect them to bring light into all parts of their lives in creative, dynamic and loving ways, especially in those parts of their lives that seem to have little to do with church.  This is not the way we have always done things, but it is likely the way we will need to help our children and youth in the future.  And to you young people listening, I am serious.  You have an important work to do for God right now, with the people you know and spend your time with.  Be a friend.  Get your buddies together and make a difference.  Change the world.  Ask God for the guidance and courage to do what he is calling you do to, and let us know how we can help.

Another underutilized resource is prayer.  So many people and so many places receive much less prayer than they need. Our time and attention and desires and imagination are all pieces that we can either dedicate to prayer or allow to run amok along avenues of fear, gossip and hysteria.  The more we pray that troubling situations are turned into beachheads for the coming Kingdom of God, the more we will see our invested talents reap significant returns.  I can’t think of a single thing we have accomplished here over the past five years that did not happen after focused and often sustained prayer.  We can learn to develop habits of prayer for ourselves so that whenever we feel anxious or afraid or hear about depressing or bad news, we lift it up to God.  By asking for God’s peace and love in the midst of a difficult situation, by thinking about God’s presence descending and God’s light shining where it hasn’t been realized previously, we begin already to make a difference and open the path for other practical forms of problem-solving and assistance.

I’m sure all of us can think of many other contemporary correspondences to the talents of the parable.  Whatever our resources, the important point is to deploy them for the growth of the Kingdom.

Then our master says to us, “Well done good and faithful servant.  You have been faithful with little, so I will put you in charge of much.  Enter into the joy of your master.”  On one level, the increased responsibilities and rewards can be immediate in this life.  Once we know how to help a few people in some way, we can teach and oversee others to help many more people in the same way.  We also can know the joy of being used by God for fruitful ministry and see the Kingdom of God expanding.  But on another level, this reward is also part of the eternal reward of the Kingdom of God in ways we may not usually think about.

A number of people were talking about this idea in the lounge last week after church, so I think it is worth mentioning.  Before the fall in the Garden of Eden, human beings were placed in the Garden to till the soil.  Our natural state is to be productive, working on worthwhile things.  We are to engage in good work that helps us build community, that includes proper time for Sabbath, and links us more closely with God and one another.  We might almost think of it as playing in the garden, but the fruit of the labor does indeed matter.  Since we were working before the fall, there is no reason to think that after the resurrection we won’t also have work to do.  Again, that work will be good work, work that doesn’t hurt our backs or dull our senses or alienate us from our labor.  But the Kingdom of God is not described as an eternal golf game or lying around on cloud pillows watching reruns of “Touched by an Angel.”  The new, eternal Jerusalem is described as a heavenly city about the size of half the continental United States with a vibrant, dynamic life.  When we die there may be a time of peaceful rest, but the eternal resurrected life will be much more creative and fun and fruitful in all the best ways.  If God says that we will be put in charge of much, we can probably expect our post-resurrection life to be engaging and amazing indeed.  We can’t really say much more specifically, but don’t expect the good work we are doing now to end because we die.  Instead, it is likely to get much better, with increasing returns on the talents we invest.

So invest your talents well on behalf of the Kingdom of God.  May all of us someday hear, “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.”

It is too light a thing...

                                                           Diocesan Convention 2014

                                       Isaiah 49:5-13; Ps 67; Eph. 3:1-12; Matt 28:16-20

Father Adam Trambley

November 7, 2014, St.John’s Sharon
(Sermon text is below the 12-minute video.)

Today’s readings are taken from the propers for the Mission of the Church.  These lessons are meant to be inspirational texts for auspicious occasions like this one, when we talk about going out to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.  But things are never quite that rosy.  While the eleven disciples are on the mountain with their resurrected Lord Jesus, some doubted.  Paul’s letters, filled with soaring theology and missionary zeal, always seem to come in the midst of some heinous church conflict or other.  If the guy ever just sent his churches some feel-good Valentine’s Day cards -- you know, Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Jesus loves you, I do too, and here's some candy -- we don’t have them.  And when we come to today’s Isaiah reading, we pick it up on the upswing of a conversation already in progress.

In the previous chapter of Isaiah, God has called the people of Israel back from their exile.  They are to leave Babylon shouting for joy. Then at the beginning of chapter 49, the Lord calls his servant, who is presumably the one who would have been leading the people home, proclaiming the word of the Lord to them and glorifying God with them.  But somewhere along the line, it didn’t quite work out that way.  In verse four, right before our reading tonight begins, the prophet cries,

“I have labored in vain,

I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;”

And then, “yet..my reward [is] with my God.”

Sounds like he’s already waiting for his final reward.

Maybe somebody here tonight feels the same way God’s prophet did.  Maybe somebody felt a call to proclaim God’s good news and change lives and make a difference, and now sees fewer and fewer people in the pews and feels like they’ve spent their strength.  Maybe somebody worked tirelessly for their congregation, a congregation that now can’t keep the building up and doesn’t have any children in Sunday school, and now feels like they have labored in vain.  Maybe somebody gave sacrificially for years and wore out the kneeler in their pew, and now looks around at where things are and thinks it was all for nothing.   Maybe somebody here tonight feels just the like prophet did when he says, “my reward [is] with my God” -- that you’ve fought the good fight, finished as much of the race as you are going to get to, and just hope for that “well done good and faithful servant” after a nice funeral from the Book of Common Prayer.

The prophet knew how you feel.  He didn’t feel like he had succeeded in bringing Jacob back to God or gathering Israel together before the Lord.  The people weren’t showing up for Sabbath Worship, the buildings hadn’t been maintained since they were taken into exile seventy years ago, and the kids were all too busy playing on their iPapyrus game systems to memorize the Ten Commandments.  So he complains to God and says he gives up.

God listens and responds.  The Almighty says,

“It is too light a thing

that you should be my servant

To raise up the tribes of Jacob

And to restore the survivors of Israel;

I will give you as a light to the nations,

That my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Say, what?  The man just said he can’t handle the job with Israel, so God said you’re going to light up the world.  Sometimes people refer to that as “kicking a problem upstairs,” and it doesn’t generally work.  Jesus may never have had an MBA, but surely the God of all wisdom would know better.  Well, God knows better.  God knows that we never succeed in anything important if our vision is too small.  God knows that we can never lift people up unless we are lifting them up for something beyond themselves.  And God knows that we can never restore anyone to anything unless we give them enough light to shine onto others.  God knows it is too light a thing to raise up Jacob and restore Israel when the real work is to give light to the nations and let salvation reach to the ends of the earth.

God’s answer is the same to us when we are tired and worn down and giving up because somehow our congregational life isn’t all that it used to be or what we want it to be or what we believe it should to be.  It is too light a thing merely to raise up our Sunday morning tribe and restore those who used to be there.  I will give you as a light to the nations, says the Lord, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. 

   

This commission may seem overwhelming, but the churches in this diocese are living into it, even in the midst of all the challenges we face.

Because it is too light a thing just to serve our members’ children, some of our churches have started pre-schools for the community.  Others give books at the holidays, or work with tutoring programs, or pack boxes of needed supplies to young’ins in other countries.

Because it is too light a thing just to bless the water we mix with the Eucharistic wine, some of our churches have drilled wells in arid lands so that people have enough to drink.  Others have provided food or animals or other basic necessities to those in need in far away places.

Because it is too light a thing just to have fellowship with one another at coffee hour, some of our churches sponsor community dinners where people sit down for a meal together and share stories and get to know each other and pray for one another.

Because it is too light a thing just to turn the basement keys over to a twelve-step group leader, one congregation has started a weekly Service of Evening Prayer and a Bible study for addicts and another congregation is helping those from a local half-way house find jobs and housing.

Because it is too light a thing just to pray for those we know, some of our congregations sponsor healing services for the community, others have prayer groups, Daughters of the King chapters, or intercessory teams, and many individuals go to their closets and pray fervently in secret for the needs of the church and the world, including for those who are not yet Christian.

Because it is too light a thing just to worry about the church in this corner of the Kingdom, this Diocese has a history of sending people out who have preached the gospel to different nations, tribes and tongues, and we have to commit to it once again.  After serving St. John’s in 1866, Deacon Hayward went to the Seneca Indians and got the Bible translated into their language.  After building the first Cathedral structure, John Franklin Spalding became missionary bishop of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico in 1873, and his son Franklin Spencer Spalding followed his footsteps, becoming the mission bishop of Utah in 1904.   In the late 1930’s Miss Sarah True of Erie worked as a missionary in Liberia and died of malaria there while spreading the gospel.    

We can still bring light to the world, even today, from our homes in Northwestern Pennsylvania.  A local missionary from Hermitage has worked in Mexico for years, and is now raising up Mexican pastors and missionaries to go out to parts of the world where they can be more effective than tall, blond Americans.  A pastor from north of Pittsburgh started prayer-walking in unchurched areas and now has prayer centers and orphanages and medical facilities throughout Southeast Asia.  Of course they are evangelical charismatics, but there is no reason we can’t once again take the good news to the nations as Episcopalians from the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania.  This call to go out to the nations is, after all, the Great Commission, and we delude ourselves if we think our congregations can hope to be lifted up and restored without seriously engaging evangelism to the nations.  We can struggle mightily to rebuild our own churches, but God’s answer remains that it is too light a thing just to restore your own enterprise.  God says, I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

This evening, our service is about the Mission of the Church, that awesome call to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.  Our Diocese has a particular, God-ordained role to play in that mission, and so does every congregation and every person here tonight.  Anything less would just be too light a thing.   

For more information about what happened at our 2014 Diocesan Convention go to http://dionwpa.org/#/news-events/diocesan-convention-2014 .  

Moses, the Servant of the Lord, Died

                                                                Proper 25A 2014

                         Deut 34:1-12; Psalm 90;1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46

Father Adam Trambley

Oct 26, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

From this morning’s lesson from Deuteronomy: Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD’s command.

The Book of Common Prayer actually instructs Episcopal priests to talk about the practical aspects of dying and end of life planning at least once a year, and this reading about Moses’ death is, I think, an excellent model for how we temporally prepare for our own deaths, as well as deal with the deaths of those we love.

The first point to make is, of course, that Moses died.  Moses, the man who got the Ten Commandments, whom God used to perform powerful works in Egypt and in the desert, and who saw God face-to-face, this man Moses died.  Scripture tries to explain why in different ways – that Moses did something that displeased God, that the Israelites sinned so much that their leader was indirectly punished, or, as it says here rather straightforwardly, at the LORD’s command.  We should hesitate to assign specific reasons or causes to any particular death, as if we were some metaphysical coroner.  On the grandest human scale, death comes as a result of collective human sin, but any particular death is taken most straightforwardly as just something coming at God’s command.  We do best dealing with death as something that happened, not something we can figure out or claim to understand.

When Moses died, he saw the Promised Land, but he could not enter it.  All of us die in the midst of our work, or at least we do if we have imagined the scope of our work appropriately.  No one has ever spent all the time they want to with their grandchildren, or ensured the success of their business for the next hundred years, or eliminated hunger, or saved the environment, or completed the perfect work of art, or evangelized the Shenango Valley, or even finally cut the grass so that it doesn’t get out of control again in two weeks.  If we have an imagination and vision, we can see where our godly passions are taking us, but we won’t finally get there.  And that’s OK.  Moses didn’t get there either, although he spent forty years struggling for it.  As the Talmud, a book of Jewish teachings states, “We are not required to complete our work, but we are not at liberty to quit.”

Then Deuteronomy tells us that Moses was buried, but no one knows where he is buried, and that the people mourned for him until the mourning period was ended.  Here scripture is talking to us about letting go appropriately of those who have died.  God didn’t want anyone to know where Moses was buried because they would have kept coming back and building shrines, and some folks would have stayed to form the Moses Memorial Society and make a living selling tchotchkes to tourists.  That is not what God wanted.  Nor was it what Moses would have wanted.   Moses wanted people to follow God’s commands and live their lives in the Promised Land, and they couldn’t do that if they kept looking backwards.  Certainly Moses is still remembered and honored three thousand years later.  But he is honored by remembering what God did for him and living into the blessings God provided through him.  We move forward in the direction God pointed through Moses instead of being tied to where he physically stopped.

This moving on could happen because people actually stopped and mourned.  They sat with the hole in their lives where Moses had been.  They stared into it.  They watered it with their tears as their laments and their songs and their stories and their anger bounced around in that void.  Then, when the mourning period was over, they had made friends with that emptiness.  They still didn’t like it.  The loss may still have often been painful.  But they were ready to move on and allow the hole in their lives to exist until God filled parts of it in new ways.

Too often today, we stay stuck after a death because we don’t actually mourn.  We don’t make space and time at a death to become comfortable with the new empty space in our lives.  Instead we keep running back to the proverbial grave.  Rather than allowing ourselves to move into the Promised Land our loved ones were striving for, we refuse to go forward and live our lives without them.

I wish I were making this up.

The line between appropriate remembrance and being tied to the past is always difficult to navigate, but a few things have become common that seem unhelpful.  One trend is tattooing the names of deceased loved ones on our bodies.  The Old Testament actually forbids this.  Our bodies are meant for God’s future work, not as a plaque for the deceased.  These tattoos are almost always done out of love, but they can still interfere with the spiritual work of moving forward.  Another increasing trend is for people to keep the ashes of someone who has been cremated with them in their house, or even in jewelry they wear, or, perhaps most grotesquely, in stuffed animals with special compartments for the cremains.  We are meant to bury or inter the bodies or ashes of the deceased with honor.  Holding onto remains in places not consecrated for that purpose both keeps us from the work we have to do in the future and dishonors the remains of the deceased.

Of course, Moses has done his part in helping the people move on by preparing them.  Once the mourning period is over, the people are ready to follow Joshua, son of Nun.  The people are ready to follow Joshua for two reasons.  First, Moses has made his wishes clear that Joshua is to take his place by publicly laying his hands on Joshua.  Second, Moses has prepared Joshua for the job. 

Now we may not go around laying hands on people or pouring oil on their heads as we are preparing to die, but we have ways in our culture of making our wishes clear for how our legacy is to be carried on.  We may not have leadership of a people to pass on, but we may have money or property or the care of minor children or health care decisions when we are no longer able to make them or any number of other responsibilities and blessings to bestow.  Making our wishes on all of these matters clear before we die is essential if we want to help those after us move on cleanly.  Now this can be difficult.  Who knows how many people were in the back of the crowd when Moses laid his hand on Joshua, muttering, “I should have been the next guy not this stupid Joshua dude.”  Our duty is to make sure everyone is clear about what we want, and then to write it down in the appropriate legal documents.  We should write documents like wills and health care durable powers of attorney and living wills and whatever else the lawyers recommend.  If we don’t, we may place an unconscionable burden on our heirs.  But once we have written them, we also need to share them, so that there are no surprises or fights after the fact.  Let someone make peace with the fact that they aren’t getting the house before mom dies, so they don’t have to deal with both issues at the same time.  Make sure that no one in the family is surprised at a conference table with the doctor and other family members during a health care crisis.  We need to lay our proverbial hands on the people we want to make the decisions when we won’t be able to, and we need to tell them what decisions we want made, and hopefully those decisions are what we feel the Lord is calling us to do, just like the commands Moses gave to Joshua. 

I want to take a small detour here and just remind folks that it is entirely appropriate to include the church in any estate planning or will you might be doing.   Allen Hall would not have been built, and our operating budget would not be sustainable except for the generosity of people who have left a portion of their estates, large or small, to St. John’s.  Some people leave whatever they can, some people choose to leave 10 percent of their estate as a final tithe, and some people decide to endow their pledge in perpetuity, multiplying their pledge by twenty so that every year the church can use five percent of their bequest to have support in perpetuity.  If you have any questions about how to include St. John’s in your wills, including how to make gifts of stock or real estate, please let me know and I can answer those questions.  This concludes the word from this morning’s sponsor.

The last point I want to make about Moses and Joshua is that Moses prepared Joshua to carry on his work.  Moses gave Joshua important jobs, like scouting out the land of Canaan.  He took him along on important trips, like up the mountain when he received the Ten Commandments.  Granted, Joshua could only go part of the way up, but it still was leadership training.  Moses spent time with Joshua and ensured he was ready. 

We do our own training in different ways, but if we do it right, we are ready to pass on our mission and purpose.  Maybe we let our children host holiday dinners that we used to do so that they are ready for the next generation of family gatherings.  Maybe we mentor someone professionally so our trade is passed on.  Maybe we share the gospel with someone or invite someone to church or to a ministry so that the work we think is important continues.  Maybe we just make sure that those who will make decisions once we are gone are prepared to make the right decisions.  Also worth noting here is that Moses passed on his leadership to someone who wasn’t his own child.  Some things we might anoint a family member to do, but some things, especially our work outside our families, may go to those outside the family, and that is OK.

You may remember that the last speech Martin Luther King, Jr., gave before he died talked about this passage from Deuteronomy.  Dr. King said he has seen the Promised Land, and that he wasn’t going to get there but that others would.  He laid out his vision, he prepared others to do the work once he was gone, and we all now live in a society that is much more color-blind than when Brother Martin was alive.    

Moses, the servant of the LORD, died.  Someday, unless Jesus comes back real soon, we will all die, too.  Our deaths will come before we’ve gotten to our own promised land, but if we prepare properly, our deaths can help those who come after us get where they need to go.  They can leave us and move closer to the Promised Land in this life, while we leave them for a time and enter the Promised Land of eternal life.