Taking a Chance on Love

“Taking a Chance on Love”

Sermon for Celebration MCC (Naples, FL)

November 13, 2011; 10:00am

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Good morning Celebration MCC! I love that name, “Celebration Metropolitan Community Church.” Really, what is more at the heart of the Gospel than celebrating life, celebrating the abundant blessings that we’re so fortunate to have and share. Amen? Coincidentally, that is what today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew is about.

When you first hear this parable, if you’re like me, you may hear the voice of financial adviser Suze Orman rather than Jesus. I can hear her now: “Hello Dearies. On today’s show you will learn what to do with that extra cash you have lying around. I have three words for you: Diversify your investments! Don’t sit on that money. It takes money to make money and if you have it, you must use it to prepare for retirement!” This parable is traditionally called the “parable of the talents” and without knowing that a talent was a denomination of money in the ancient world, we may think it concerns our spiritual gifts and talents. In fact this parable is where the English word talents comes from as we use it today. But viewing the talents as talents is not the only spiritual truth that we can take home today. Let’s break down this scripture bite-by-bite.

First, we read that there is a ruler who will be going away for a time and trusts his servants to take care of his money while he is gone. We don’t hear any specific instructions on how the ruler expects the money to be used or multiplied. All we hear is that different amounts are given to three different servants: five coins, two coins, and one coin. Each coin is said to be worth 15 years’ wages for a day laborer. So this is no small deal. This means servant one holds 75 years worth of wages, servant two holds 30 years worth of wages, and servant three holds 15 years worth of wages. (Sounds kind of like Wall Street…) I don’t know that these numbers have any particular significance, but they put into perspective the importance Matthew’s Jesus puts on the kind of trust given to these servants.

The story continues by telling us that servants one and two who were given more money invested it and multiplied it. Upon returning, the ruler was very happy with these results. However, servant three, with much shame, brings only the amount back that had been given him. (He didn’t listen to Suze!) And because of that, he is cast out where he will weep and gnash his teeth. (Isn’t that lovely!) What a treatment to give someone who was just being cautious! If indeed we are supposed to read this parable with God as the ruler, then I’m not so sure I like the way Matthew portrays God. Especially since two parables before in chapter 24, the ruler returns and cuts the bad servant into pieces because he misused the property. (This sounds less like God and more like Sweeny Todd!) And in Luke’s version of the parable of the talents, the ruler calls for all the people who didn’t want him to be king to be brought to him to be killed in his presence. This certainly is not the God I know as Mercy, Grace, Justice, Peace, and Unconditional Love.

That is why today I choose to focus less on the fearful fate of being banished into darkness for being cautious, and more on what Matthew might be saying subversively behind the text. Let’s first remember the context the Gospels were written in. The Jewish people were living fearfully under the harsh rule of the Roman Empire. Jesus surfaces in the midst of this reality as a traveling prophet who speaks of a different reality, a better Way. He preaches repentance, which literally just means a “change of mind.” Jesus is telling people to change their mind about their mindless obedience to a dehumanizing and oppressive empire. In contrast to this empire, he proclaims a counter-empire, a counter-kingdom that he calls the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. We also call it the Reign or Dominion of God. Its message is simple: if God reigns, Caesar does not. God’s ways of justice and peace are greater than Empire’s ways of fear and economic disparity. Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke, “The Realm of God does not come in such a way as to be seen. No one will say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ because the Realm of God is within you.” Jesus was willing to risk dying to help people awaken to this truth and ultimately, we know he did.

So in light of our knowledge of what the Realm of God is all about, looking at today’s parable, who does the ruler seem more like, God or Caesar? The third servant describes the ruler as a harsh man who stole other’s crops. (That makes me wonder if that’s why he was wealthy enough to have 120 years worth of wages. But of course this doesn’t apply to us since nobody in today’s world makes millions by dishonest means… ) Also in the parable, the ruler leaves and then returns. Does God ever leave us? The Psalmist tells us that God will never leave us or forsake us and the apostle Paul tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. So the ruler’s character doesn’t seem to match God’s to me.

Some read the parable as Jesus calling himself the ruler, which many read as such because he is said to leave after the resurrection and will come again. But even if Matthew meant the text to be read this way, that doesn’t mean we need to take it literally. Within their context, we can understand the intense oppression that first century Christians endured. Under those circumstances where thousands of Christians were being martyred, the community could not afford to hoard resources but was rather urged to share whatever was available to build the counter-Kingdom Jesus talked about.

We know all too well what harm reading scripture literally can do to marginalized peoples. There is nothing loving about a leader or deity that intentionally instills fear in people. Fear of Hell or any other punishment never led anyone to love authentically. Paul tells us that perfect of casts out fear and A Course in Miracles says, “The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.” (Meaning that since God is omnipresent and God is Love, fear cannot exist and is but an illusion in our minds). It goes on to say, “Fear arises from a lack of love,” and also, “No one who lives in fear is really alive.”

I have sympathy for the third servant in this parable. He was paralyzed by fear of his master’s punishment. His self-talk would sound something like this, “If I lose his money, surely he’ll punish me or even kill me. Who am I to be given such a responsibility anyway? I better hide the money before it gets lost.” Would the God of Love really scream at one of her children, calling him wicked and lazy just for being fearful? I think not. Fear is meant to be healed, not punished.

So now that I have sufficiently spoiled a traditional reading of the parable, let’s see how we might redeem it. Recently, I have been led to read the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. To summarize, Job is said to have been a faithful man of God, living according to the Jewish Law. He was a good man and he was also wealthy. Job was living happily with his wife and children when most of what he had was taken away from him: his children, his live stalk, his land, and his health. A good portion of the book of Job is a discourse about injustice in the world and God’s role in it. Job laments, “Why let people go on living in misery? They wait for death, but it never comes; they prefer a grave to any treasure.”

Job’s lament points to the reality of our world. We do not live in a just world. The most moral people are not the wealthiest and the most unjust people are not poorest. Third world countries are not the poorest because the people are sinful. AIDS did not ravage the gay community because God disapproves of our lives. Some preachers say so, but our experience and the Spirit within tell us otherwise. A proverb from our scriptures affirms this in saying, “The rain falls and the just and the unjust alike.” The modern equivalent may be “Shit happens.” …

However, we do believe in a God of justice, a God who Jesus taught favored the poor and the oppressed. Our difficulties in life are NOT punishments for what we have done or have failed to do. We sometimes experience the consequences of being foolish, but that is not a punishment. Hear me again. I know someone needs to hear this today. Our difficulties in life are NOT punishments for what we have done or have failed to do. Like the third servant in the parable, we kind find ourselves weeping in the darkness of depression and despair because we made a mistake or simply because life has difficulties. We face illnesses, our loved ones pass away, our pets pass away. We face our world’s realities of war, hunger, and disease. It is not difficult to find cause for sadness.

But as I mentioned in the beginning of my message, celebration is at the heart of the Gospel. Even as every week we remember at the communion table the sadness of Jesus parting with his family of choice before his death, we still call it “celebrating” communion. We celebrate because our experience of God, our experience of community, and even our experience of hardship in the world have made us the people we are today. Rev. Dr Penny Nixon suggests that in today’s parable the talents- or the money given to each servant- are actually our wounds. Difficulties are responsibilities, and so is money. (Though I would personally take the money if given the choice J). We are each dealt a hand in life that we didn’t ask for and probably didn’t expect. And after the cancer, after the HIV diagnosis, after the home loss, after the family loss, we are left to ask, “What am I going to do with what I have left? What am I going to do with the life that I am still blessed with?”

In this interpretation of the text, we can praise the first and second servants. They took their lot in life and made the best of it. They were called “good” and “faithful” because of it. But the third servant chooses to take his painful lot in life and be defeated by it. He takes his pain and buries it, thinking it will do less harm than if its in plain view. Don’t we burry our pain sometimes? It’s too much to bear, so we dig a deep hole in our hearts and bury it where we think it will never be found again. But then we find ourselves in that total darkness again, weeping.

You may wonder why I’m talking so much about suffering when celebration is at the heart of the Gospel. I don’t want you going to brunch today saying, “That guest preacher was such a downer!” What I want you to take with you today is that the joy of celebration does not mean anything without remembering where you have been. Your experience, your journey is a thing of deep power and wisdom that gives you the ability to not only guide your own path for the rest of your days but to guide the world in building up the Realm of God.

I am going to leave you with a reading from Lebanese Christian poet Kahlil Gibran (that’s Lebanese, not Lesbian- though I love my Lesbian Christian poets too!). As I read this, I want you to remember what First John tells us about God, that God is Love. Gibran writes, “When love beckons you, follow her, though her ways are hard and steep. And when her wings enfold you yield to her, though the sword hidden among her pinions may wound you. And when she speaks to you, believe in her, though her voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. ... Even as she is for your growth so is she for your pruning. … All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart. But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”

Friends, we have a choice to make today. Do we dare take a chance on the God of Love and the Way of Christ that stand in stark opposition to greed, fear, and inequity, risking another wound in the process, or do we stay safe on the well-beaten, predictable path where life is not really… alive? There’s still time. I pray a blessing on your choice. Amen.