Risk-taking in; prudence out

Proper 28 A; Nov. 16, 2008

St. Paul’s

Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

Times are bad.

Times are bad in ancient Israel. The people are living in the Promised Land, delivered there by Moses and Joshua, brought there by God, but the people are not living up to the promise. They can’t get it together. Enemies are attacking. Leaders falter and fail. The people live in hardship and difficulty.

Sound familiar? Times are bad these days, too, even for us living in our own nation blessed with abundant resources – our own “Promised Land.” With mortgages failing, banks closing, jobs ending, drug deals and shootings outside our homes – times are bad. We have elected leaders, who we hope will get us out of this morass – I was thrilled to hear the cheer go up in the dining room the day after the election. By all measures, everyone who comes to eat at St. Paul’s Table is at the bottom of society, working hard in a difficult world just to make ends meet, and for the cheer to erupt there – terrific! That is a sign of real hope.

But you know what? Times are still bad. When will they ever end? What is the way out?

I’m going to let you in on a secret: God has other ideas about how the world is supposed to work. That is a secret, because it gets so covered up by so much other stuff: by greed, violence, power, exploitation, lies, jealousy, selfishness. Deep down in yourself, you know this secret, and you know what covers it up in your life, too. You know what darkness prevents you from seeing what God intends for you and for our world.

Paul does not have to remind the people in Thessalonica that times are bad. “You do not need to have anything written to you,” he writes. The people in Thessalonica know the precariousness of existence, how they delude themselves that they live in peace and security, when the all too real fear is of sudden destruction, of a thief in the night, of no escape. The people of Thessalonica know that the world they live in is dark indeed.

So what do we make of this parable from the 25th chapter of Matthew? This strange and difficult parable where God seems to be playing the part of a cruel and dictatorial tyrant, seemingly as unforgiving of poor financial management as any banker coming down hard on someone who cannot pay her mortgage?

As we try to make sense of this complicated and weird story, let us remember that the gospels, although accounts of the life of Jesus, were written down by people some time after Jesus’ death and resurrection. They were written down by people living in the joy and knowledge and reality of Easter – they are people of the resurrection, for sure. But they were living in bad times. The community who put together the Gospel of Matthew were city dwellers, probably from Antioch, a densely populated city, full of poor people; a cosmopolitan and diverse city, full of people from across the world – people of different cultures and languages, people crowded into a city where there is not enough good housing, not enough work to keep enough food on the table. The current reality of the world does NOT work for them. Why, then, do they still believe in Jesus? In the resurrection? In the Good News? Why do the people Paul writes to in Thessalonica, whom he rightly describes as knowing they have darkness all around them, believe him when he calls them children of the light, children of the day, people who are encouraged and hopeful and alert?

The Bible is written by and for people for whom times are as bad as can be imagined; why, then, are they people of hope?

The Bible is written by and for people who know that if they play the game by the rules the world sets down, they will lose, big time. That’s what this strange parable is about. The slaves do the bidding of the master, and they invest his money by the ways of the world. Some of the slaves are better investors than others; one is extraordinarily prudent, and just buries the money, keeps it just safe enough to return it to the master in tact. This cautious slave even has the courage to confront the master, to call this cruel system for the harsh and fear-mongering system it is. Yet the prudent slave, the one we think did safe thing with the master’s money, the one who took no risks, is called worthless and thrown into the outer darkness. What did the prudent slave forget? What did the prudent slave do wrong?

The prudent slave believed the world. The prudent slave believed he had to hide the money, to hoard it in darkness. The prudent slave believed there was no risk worth taking, that the best he could do was come out even. The prudent slave got caught up in the status quo; the prudent slave followed the rules of the world of scarcity and fear. The prudent slave forgot that God was the God of abundance. Like the bridesmaids in last week’s reading, who forgot to get the oil from the overflowing, never-ending source, the prudent slave thought there was only so much and no more. The prudent slave didn’t get the memo. Wake up. Come out of the darkness. Be alert.

This church, this tiny community, is a place of light. Just by being here we resist the darkness around us, protected, like St. Paul says, by the breastplate of faith and love. We wear our helmet of hope proudly. God has given us a treasure that we are investing boldly, in contrast to the rest of the world that tells us we should move. We should not be here, they say. We should forget the corner of Warren and Pleasant. We should have a church where the nice people live in a nice neighborhood.

But no: like the people who first heard the Gospel of Matthew, here we are, in the only place where that Gospel makes sense. It is only when we risk all that we have, when we invest all that we have, when we become who God truly wants us to be, that we know God’s abundance. This place, which the “powers that be” have abandoned and buried and forgotten, is where God’s light shines. Well done, God says, to us; well done. Now, do more.