Sermon for the 19th of November - Second Sunday before Advent
Lectionary Readings for the Second Sunday Before Advent
Psalm 90
Lord, you have been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn us back to dust, and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’ For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you. So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands— O prosper the work of our hands!
1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, ‘There is peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
Matthew 25: 14-30
‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, “Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” But his master replied, “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Sermon for the Second Sunday before Advent
Last weekend a group of eighteen of us made our way to Launde Abbey, as we have each year for four years now. It was a retreat weekend---a teaching weekend. It was lovely to get out of the city, to be in the beautiful Leicestershire countryside, to be part of a small group that had time to read and reflect together. We took one long muddy Saturday afternoon walk together. The mud reminded us of the mud of the trenches in the First World War, when we spent some time reading poems of that war together on Sunday morning. Because it was Remembrance Sunday weekend, and our theme was not only memory, but time itself. How do we, as Christians, inhabit time? How do Christians inhabit time?
How did the incarnation of Jesus the Christ, that event that interrupted history, broke it apart and re-created it as before and after---how does this time-changing event change us?
We read the first of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Burnt Norton---this line: At the still point of the turning world. The incarnation. Where past and future are gathered, Eliot says. Where the dance is. It is difficult, if not impossible, to contemplate the incarnation, as we will do this Christmas, fully conscious of what it was, and what it changed. But we can try!
Christians believe that the fact of the incarnation, completed in the Resurrection, set us free from the bonds of time. Some people live out their lives in a resigned-seeming slog towards death. But for Christians, the life-changing love of Christ has set us free to live life in a radically different way---in time, but not captive to time. We unfold our true selves---the selves God intends us to be---within the constraints of human time, in human time, but always attentive to God's time.
As Eliot's lines so beautifully express: But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered. We don't repudiate time--rebel against it, try to look ever-younger, conceal our true age, become obsessed with articles about how to enhance our appearance and retard the mark of years....We regard time in a distinctively different way. As we journey on, Christians know that this precious gift of life is entrusted to us as an unbounded gift. And so we are able to accept time, our human time. We won't live forever, thank God! But with each day's dawning we can awaken with gladness as we grasp what a gift, indeed, it is, and we can take hold of it with both hands, in faith, hope, and love. Because, as Paul says, we are children of light and children of the day.
The writer Marilynne Robinson, whose Pulitzer-prize winning novel Gilead is one of my favourite novels of all time (and I am a great novel-reader!), Robinson wrote this about the way we are to live: fear is not a Christian habit of mind.
She knew the famous passage from the first letter of John: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. If this is true (and Christians believe this) what about these concluding lines of the parable Matthew gives us this morning?
As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness---wait a minute! What is this all about?
Surely this is about fear, the fear of punishment, of what will happen to us after we die if we fall short--if we don't use the talents we have been given. The passage we are given today in Matthew is one of the many parables of the kingdom that Jesus used in his teaching. Jesus spent a lot of time talking about what the Kingdom of God is all about. Not in a place called heaven, but in a place called earth. Jesus was born in a particular moment in time, when the nation of Israel had lost sight of its great gift, the inheritance God had entrusted it with: the faith, hope and love that in the Israelites' practice every day were to be the marks of God's covenant and God's kingdom.
And so he talked about God's judgement---this fact, that both Jews and Christians believe, that we will all be held accountable by God for the gifts we have been given---the gift of human time and the gift of the talents we have been entrusted with, and how we have used them.
We are not to be fearful, but we are to be mindful. We are to remain awake! We are children of the day, walking in the light, shining forth God's love and Christ's truth to all whom we meet on this journey. Our destiny is to live into the fully realised human being God created us to be.
On the retreat we talked about an insight from James K. A. Smith, a Canadian- American who teaches philosophy and theology at Calvin College in Michigan, that I am what I am called to be.... Instead of being defined by waiting, my active life is shaped by what I hope for. I am acting now on the basis of the future. I receive myself from the future. He called this moment in history in which we, now, live, as a parenthesis that is bounded by God's incarnation in history and the full arrival of the kingdom.
So the great burning question for Christians is: not when will that final day of judgement come, but how shall we live in this present moment, so that we shall be ready for that moment of death when we are gathered in to God's own embrace? And, as Christians believe, so that we shall be ready for that great final consummation of time, when all human history will cease and God's kingdom will fully come?
This is our question: how shall we live now, in light of our hope-filled expectation? How will our future shape our present? Here are two thoughts that might help as we ponder this question. Both are, again, from James Smith; we drew these thoughts from his book, on the retreat:
Here is the first thought: (Let us) encourage hope, (because it is) a way of labouring toward a future that arrives as a gift. This is rooted in a profound trust in a God who is a giver all the way down, a Creator whose creation is the first grace. To not panic is to live in the confidence that God's first and last word is love, no matter when we (are living).
This is the second thought: Leisure is an eschatological discipline of stilling hubris and resting in the God who has raised Jesus as the first fruits of what is to come, 'Having enough time' is an act of hope. Building margins into a life so you can respond to opportunities to muse, play, talk, and pray is its own defiant act of trust and expectation.
So I offer this understanding of Jesus's parable in Matthew: Keep awake! Be mindful of God's time. Use your talents, not in fear of judgement, but in the practice of love. I would like to end with a quotation from the great American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote about our destiny as human beings: Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness. Amen