Sermon for November 15, 2020 - The Second Sunday of Advent - Year A - The Ven Pat Zifcak
Jesus has been teaching through parables in the Gospel of Matthew for weeks now. As we hear today’s Gospel reading, we should remember that from now on Jesus will move toward his Passion with his friends and disciples close and the crowds at a distance. He has been teaching about the Kingdom: the Kingdom of Heaven is like….As we continue to listen we will notice the coming chapters are preparing the disciples for their work after Jesus’ death. Parables, as one commentary suggests, teach us about justice and grace. Some are stories of direct cause and effect like the parable of the ten maidens and today’s story of the talents; others are stories of grace like the tax collector who is justified, the prodigal who receives a welcome home party or the laborers who receive a full day’s pay for an hour’s work.
Jesus, like every good teacher, teaches from what is known to what is new. Those he walks with and those who gather to hear him in every town are laborers, professionals, leaders of local government and religious leaders. They know the laws that govern them and the local lore as well. The parables that Jesus tells begin with stories of the familiar and Matthew takes what is their experience and understanding and adds a spiritual dimension, a spiritual truth. This is how you will be judged on the last day.
As we listen to the parables in Matthew it is important to remember that those whom Matthew is addressing expected Christ’s imminent return. As time passed and their expected Saviour did not return, their resolve to live in Christian community diminished and questions about the time and the way Christ might return became critical. We can hear in Thessalonians an assurance that when is not the question but how.
Keep awake, be sober. You are children of the light. Put on the breastplate of faith and love. Be ready, be watchful for you do not know the time or the place. The newly established and isolated Christian communities are beginning to question if what they have been told about the return of Christ and the importance of their example of life in Christian community to Christ’s return has any truth to it. We may pray for Christ’s return, we may pray for justice and peace, we may live in hope for a new day but few if any of us wake up every morning or go to bed every night expecting that this is the hour that God will usher in God’s Kingdom here on earth. Perhaps that is what is necessary- to make our common prayer, Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
We have all heard the Parable of the Talents many times. I still hear it and immediately remind myself that I would be the servant who thought he was being a good steward of the wealth entrusted to him and ended up cast into the outer darkness. I am not really a risk taker and risk is the point of this parable. What are we willing to risk?
A talent was no small amount of money. One source describes it as the amount one would receive for fifteen years of hard work! A very significant sum to risk. The parable, on its surface, is the story of a financial transaction. We remember though that Matthew inserts the question of spiritual truth. His language in the telling moves us to the risks of living out our faith in the everyday encounters of our lives.
Living our faith is a high risk activity. The first two servants doubled the money entrusted to them but at great risk of losing the initial investment. Their reward was the praise of their master and his trust in them. The third servant was motivated by fear. He knew the risk of losing the investment entrusted to him. His fear of failure, fear of punishment, paralyzed him. The wonder of parables is that we can enter the story as any one of the characters at any point in the story and we can come and go differently at every reading. Today I know who I am. And today my overwhelming desire is to take risks for my faith. My breastplate is secure. Today I am willing to seek justice for God’s sake. Today I am ready to live into the demands of my faith to care for others, to give generously of my time and talent, to witness to God’s love to those who have not yet been found by God or who are ready to see God face to face, to trust God in all that comes my way today, and to live in hope that God’s desires for me today will find a home in my heart.
What will tomorrow bring? No one knows. But tomorrow I can enter the parable again and it will teach me something new and affirm my faith for another day. It is our Christian responsibility today as it was centuries ago to encourage one another in our faith, to build up the body of Christ as a light to the world, as hope in the darkness of these days, to live in the expectation of God’s reign on earth and Christ’s return. When is not the question for us but how. Let us love the question and live into the answer.