A very good return

A Sermon preached on November 16th (Pentecost XXIII) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30

And so for the second week in succession – and it won’t be the last – we hear dire warnings about the Day of the Lord and about the consequences of our falling short in our preparation. Zephaniah prophesies a full, a terrible end for the whole world. Paul threatens sudden destruction and no escape, and in Matthew’s Gospel the poor third slave is thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Where’s the Good News then?

The first thing to remember is that as Christians we are not actually waiting for the Day of the Lord. That Day has come. It was the day of Jesus’ resurrection as the completion of his life and mission and ministry including his death for us. For Paul that means that God has already “destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us.” (1 Thess.5:) In his letter to the Thessalonians Paul contrasts two ages: an old age of darkness, sin and death the night - and a new age of light, life, and hope – the day. The Day has already dawned and Christians are the children of the day time, of light, even in the middle of the world’s night. Later in the service we will be praying for peace and hope in the Middle East where things currently seem very dark indeed - a place where the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation are very necessary.

Our role as children of the day is not intended to be a passive or just a waiting one. Paul wants us to “stay awake” for a reason. His metaphorical armor of faith, love, and hope are not just for protection and solace. They are to be visible, they are a call to action to spread these qualities and to bring more people into the light. That’s the best, the only real preparation for our Lord’s return. And Paul knows what he is talking about, he practiced what he preaches: he came to Thessalonica after being thrown out of Philippi and was then thrown out of Thessalonica too. In Matthew’s parable he would definitely get a role as one of the good and faithful servants.  

Let’s turn now to that parable. There are people who use this parable is a justification for modern capitalism. After all the master praises the 2 entrepreneurs who took risks and made a tidy profit while doing so. And clearly the other servant deserved what he got: “To all those who have, more will be given … but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” (Matthew 25:29) Well no. This parable has as much to do with capitalism as the parable of the Good Samaritan has to do with tourism! When it was first told it will have even seemed very counter-cultural: the listeners will have been amazed by the behavior of the two servants who risked their master’s money. Keeping it safe would've been considered the usual option.

Jesus’ listeners will have heard it as a parable about God and Israel. They will have identified the lazy or wicked servant with Israel’s religious leaders for having ignored their calling to be a light to the gentiles. Instead they had tried to hide the light they had been given, the Law, and to keep it for themselves. They were selfish. The good servants on the other hand are those who are willing to spread the Good News, not to hide it under a bushel (Matthew 5:15) but to make it a beacon for the world.

Matthew’s readers in the early Church will have heard it as a parable about the unexpectedly long waiting period until Jesus’ return with instructions for the appropriate lifestyle during this interim period until the judgment to come. I know that both the idea of judgment and of the Second Coming have gone a bit out of fashion, but this is still the message for us today. So what lifestyle is expected? When would we receive praise as good and faithful servants? And when might we be accused of being wicked and lazy?

We are called to live faithfully, to be a light to the world, and to invest our lives in the work of the kingdom, and in particular in bringing more people into that kingdom. The characters in the parables we have been hearing over the past weeks, whether stewards, servants, or bridesmaids have all been given some kind of responsibility. They have been trusted with money or some other gift in the expectation that this trust be returned. In the parable of the talents, which originally just meant an extraordinary amount of money and only later took on the meaning of gift or ability, the increase of the talents is a metaphor for the Good News of God’s love in Christ that is multiplied by passing it on. News is not meant to be kept a secret! Spreading the Good News is not a task restricted to a few specialists. Admittedly our canons define the specialized role of Evangelist:

“An Evangelist is a lay person who presents the good news of Jesus Christ in such a way that people are led to receive Christ as Savior and follow Christ as Lord in the fellowship of the Church. An Evangelist assists with the community's ministry of evangelism.” (Canon III.4.9)

Let me know if you’re interested by the way! But even in this job description our church defines evangelism as the “community's ministry.” Every Christian is to be Evangelist.

That may sound quite a challenge. There will be no entry into the master’s joy, no way into God’s kingdom unless I bring friends with me? No, it’s not success that counts, but faithfulness. The good servants are being praised primarily for trying, for trusting, and for sharing. What would have happened if they had put the money at risk and come back empty handed? Would they have been punished? And what will happen if evangelize in word and deed and never win a single person over? Would they and will we end up in the outer darkness and have to wail and gnash our teeth? Certainly not. In the parable the master commends not the profit the servants had made, but their faithfulness. “Well done, good and trustworthy slave.” (5:21) Nor does he commend the servant who produced five talents more than the one who produced two. Each one receives the same commendation and each one receives the same invitation: “You have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” (5:23) In responding to the third servant, the master makes it very clear that he would have accepted anything – even the lowest savings-account interest rate – that was motivated by faith rather than fear. The freedom that puts that treasure at risk – and may even result in its loss – that is an act of faith. “The Parable of the Talents” is not about money or abilities. It’s a story about trust.

The same goes for our task of evangelism. It’s not success that counts and it would not be our success anyway, but God’s. As I learned recently at a talk on Evangelism in the series “Qur’an meets the Bible,” Islam has the same idea. In Surah 5:99 God says that “the sole duty of the messenger is to deliver the message” and in Surah 10:99 we read: “Had your Lord willed, all the people on earth would have believed. Do you want to force the people to become believers?” Clearly and sadly this is part of the Qur’an that the so-called IS does not read very often. In Isaiah (55:11) – one of the canticles we use at Morning Prayer God tells the prophet: “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” So there is no reason to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of God's task or afraid of God’s judgment.

God’s judgment must always be put in the context of God’s grace and love and patience. God longs for us to use our gifts and God has only given us tasks that we are able to do, with God’s help. The Day of the Lord has already come. We already have the promise of new life through Jesus’ own death and resurrection. We have nothing to fear and much to promise and investing our lives in God’s kingdom is guaranteed to bring us a very good return indeed!

Amen