Lay Homily
Debra-L Sequeira
26 Sunday after Pentecost
11/13/05
Are you like me? The one who keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop? It can happen when everything in life is going remarkably well and you actually feel contentment, even happiness. Then you stop in your tracks because something is bound to go wrong. Earlier this year, Mother Melissa reminded us of the cliché of bad news coming in threes, only to quickly dispel the notion with thoughts of the Holy Trinity. In my case, good news can come in threes or fours. It’s just that good news, like good things, can’t last forever. There’s always the other shoe, about to drop.
Consider the parables we’ve heard in Matthew over the last few months. In September we heard the parable of the vineyard workers who all received one denarius no matter how long they worked. Today, the landowner in the parable would be sued. I’ll bet many of you identified with the workers who toiled all day only to receive the same wage as the one who clocked in an hour before quitting time. Me? I was thinking about the laborer who worked just the one hour, who would be wondering, “When is the shoe going to drop? Can this guy be for real? When is he going to realize that I didn’t deserve the full wage?”
Then in October we heard the parable of the wedding feast where the invited guests did not come and the servants had to hit the highways and byways to try and gather anyone--good or bad--to come to the feast. One of these last-minute guests shows up without a wedding garment only to be bound and cast out--many are called, few are chosen. With whom do you think I identified? Yes, the one with the wrong clothes at the wedding. And so, the other shoe drops. Sometimes, Lord, I feel I’m crashing the party without a coat of many colors, a religious imposter.
If we hadn’t celebrated All Saint’s Day last Sunday you would have heard the parable in Matthew 25:1-13 about the five wise and the five foolish bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom. The wise bridesmaids planned ahead and had enough oil for their lamps to greet the bridegroom at the crucial moment. As for the foolish bridesmaids, the other shoe drops. I can relate to those who forgot to go to the store to get more lamp oil.
So here we are this Sunday with the parable of the talents. It would be very easy for me, especially in this stewardship season, to dwell on a simple message that we all have gifts and talents and need to discover what they are and use them to the glory of God. More specifically, we need to use them for St. Paul’s. All true, of course, but there’s more here. I suppose someone could use this parable to promote the so-called prosperity gospel. You know, God wants us all to have good things and that includes wealth, so make lots of money and give lots more to St. Paul’s! I certainly want us all to prayerfully consider increasing our giving to St. Paul’s, especially if we are not regular givers yet or haven’t changed the amount we give for many years. Do be generous with your gifts and your resources. Because once again, I suspect the servant who was in trouble in this parable, the one who buried his talent, had the same fear that I sometimes have--just bury it! Fifteen or twenty years of earnings--that’s the value of one talent--can disappear in a volatile stock market and who knows when the master will come back and collect? As you can see my vulnerabilities have increased with each parable.
Once I spent more time with these readings and did some research, I put my fears aside and gained several insights. We are looking at parables here--brief stories told in the secular language of Jesus’ time. They involve familiar extended metaphors--wedding feasts, vineyards, foolish and wise bridesmaids, laborers and masters, sowers and reapers--familiar to the hearers, yes, but they are parables that also say something about the unfamiliar--the kingdom of God. The more I read, the more I learned I could not grasp the kingdom of God.
According to Models of God, by theologian Sallie McFague, “a parable is an assault on the accepted conventions, including the social, economic, and mythic structures that people build for their own comfort and security” (p.50). Parables “invert and subvert” (p.50) our way of doing things and make it clear that our ways are not God’s ways; the kingdom of God does not follow the way of the world. The lesson for me here is not to be so safe, so scared; so fearful of risk; the parables challenge me not to hold on to either shoe.
Certainly, it’s disorienting for us to hear and read the parables because they do undermine our efforts to maintain our conventional security. The unworthy become more worthy; the poor emerge better off than the rich; late workers receive the same wage as those who have labored all day; using your talents and trading your talents is better than protecting and burying them. What these parables have in common beyond their use of hyperbole (Remember: Fifteen or twenty years wages equals one talent!), is their demand for creativity and decisiveness. In an uncertain world we need both. We must be creative and decisive when considering the things of the Spirit for the Son of man is coming at an hour you(we) do not expect (Mt 24:44). We cannot respond the way the world responds, seeking security--anything to reduce our uncertainty. In fact, we are called to a complete transformation of our personal, professional, and political lives. For someone with moments of spiritual vulnerability, I am not comforted to hear, that if you want life, you must be prepared to lose it; that if you want Christ, you must take up the cross; that the more you receive, the more you should give; that the uninvited should be invited; that the last will be first. But if I take these parables in Matthew seriously, I cannot escape the message that what is rewarded and esteemed by people in this life is not highly prized in the kingdom of God.
In today’s parable, the master entrusts each servant with a huge amount of money: five talents, two talents, one. The significance of the sum reminds us of the valuable gifts that God has entrusted to our care--each given us according to our ability. The first and second servants who worked with what they had, who took decisive action, reaped more than they were given. The third servant rationalizes his failure to do anything with the {one} talent entrusted to him by blaming the master (Hare, p. 287). He sees his master as a harsh and rapacious business man; instead of feeling honored by the gift of a talent--fifteen years wages--he sees it as a terrifying responsibility (Hare, p. 287). In fear there is no love. In fear we are not interested in service; we’re interested in security. In fear we are neither creative with our gifts, nor decisive in how we use those gifts in service for others. No where in the parable does it say the master wanted his money back; the talents seemed to be gifts for the servants to keep. The first two servants “got it” and so were free to take risks and used the sum given them creatively (Byrne, p. 190). The kingdom of God comes to us here and now when we decisively step out in faith and use our talents, our gifts, creatively.
McFague also sees in Jesus’ parables expressions of what she calls the “destabilizing, inclusive, nonhierarchical vision of God’s relationship to the world” (p.48), and she connects the parables to a common practice. The parables are acted out in our lives when we come to the table in fellowship and to the cross, because both the table and the cross express a radical identification with others. Old categories and tightly held sensibilities are turned upside down. Those of us who have occasional bouts of spiritual anxiety--those of us who live in fear, who keep waiting for the other shoe to drop--and we know who we are, need to repent of our bad theology every time, every time, and then rejoice and join in the feast because we do have the correct garments, because we do have enough oil for the lamps, because we can offer our talents monetarily and otherwise to St. Paul’s. We can give to all the charitable causes that help those less fortunate than ourselves because we are all expected to contribute, because we all have been invited to the feast. We are all called, like the servants in today’s parable, to be both creative and decisive.
We at St. Paul’s have learned something about creativity and decisiveness, have we not? Didn’t we witness creativity and decisiveness during the interim awaiting our new rector? We started in our normal ways of doing things until Father Ridge, our interim rector, introduced creativity in our lives--the possibility of the extreme, of “out of the box” thinking, of radical changes. As John Hill reminded us in his homily, we could dream big, we could raise money, we could create a garden, even when the safe response was a parking lot. (It should not surprise you that I wanted more parking.) When in fear, some of us resort to the comfortable, the predictable. But Father Ridge taught us to be creative in our thinking and dreaming. He also helped us to be decisive and we had some painful decisions to make. We walked in faith then and we can walk in faith now.
There is more to do, of course. God is not finished with us yet! Ultimately, the excuses of the past and the present cannot hold up when we take the parables in Matthew seriously. Through prayer and fellowship with spiritual mentors I am learning to put my “waiting for the other shoe to drop” anxieties aside. To no longer be like the third servant in today’s gospel with the bad theology and the need to do what’s safe. It’s easier to resist those saboteurs who thwart our efforts to grow in Christ than to resist the resisters in ourselves, but I’m learning. As Eugene Peterson tells us in his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction:
All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us (p. 90).
Being theologically or spiritually sound is not magic; it’s not a formula. It’s a relationship; it’s about connection. I used to balk at my evangelical colleagues who would say ever so confidently, “Let go and let God.” I recoiled every time I heard it. Now, it’s becoming my mantra of creative decisiveness--who knew? I am letting go of the need for spiritual perfection and letting God doggedly pursue me in the face of all my imperfections. What else can I do but give in to God’s outrageously radical, highly creative, clearly decisive, indiscriminate love for me?
What else can you do? AMEN.
Works Consulted and Cited
Brendan Byrne, Lifting the Burden: Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Church Today
Douglas R.A. Hare, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary
Sallie McFague, Models of God.
Eugene H. Peterson, A long obedience in the same direction: Discipleship in an instant society.
