Category: Minister

https://youtu.be/g1DZl3rskMQ

Hespeler, 6 December 2020 © Scott McAndless – Communion
Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13, 2 Peter 3:8-15, Mark 1:1-8 (Click to read)

Good morning. It is Monday, November 9, 2020, and we take you now live to the headquarters of international drug companies, Pfizer and BioNTech for an announcement that that world has been waiting for:

Good morning, Scott, I am standing outside of the building where a stunning announcement has been made. The chief executive officers of Pfizer and BioNTech just came out to announce, and I quote, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says the corporation. “Speak tenderly to the world, and cry to it that it has served its term, that its penalty is paid, that it has already received from the deadly coronavirus a double portion of suffering.

“For unto us, a vaccine has been born and an inoculation has been given. And behold, it’s efficacy shall be established at 90%.”

That is the announcement, Scott, though I would note that there is a little bit of fine print. There are a few steps yet to be accomplished. The vaccine will have to receive final approval and, of course it will have to be manufactured in significant quantities. But that’s not even the most complicated part. The companies say that, in its original form, the vaccine will have to be stored at -80 degrees Celsius, which will definitely complicate distribution. There is also the thorny necessity of convincing the vast majority of a population that, over the last little while, has discovered that it has some reasons to be wary of political authorities and medical experts, to actually take a vaccine that might make them feel sick for a short time.

And so, between now and the time when a sufficient portion of the population can be vaccinated and herd immunity be attained, there is a whole lot of work to be done. Basically, to get from here to there, we’re going to have to build a distribution highway. And you know how you build a highway: “Every valley shall be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; The uneven ground shall become level, And the rough places a plain.” And I know that that sounds like a lot of work and that it’s going to take a lot of time, but, my friends, this really is still good news. Our salvation has arrived! Take comfort, O my people.

I have said it many times during this difficult year of 2020. Again and again as I open the scriptures during this year, I read familiar passages that I thought I understood and I see them in an entirely different light. And that is true yet again on this second Sunday in Advent. Every year around this time, the church traditionally reads from the fortieth chapter of the Book of Isaiah. We not only read it, but we also sing it or hear it sung as one of the most favorite arias of Handel’s Messiah. The passage is so powerful that you would think that it could not more deeply affect me this year than it has in the past, but it has.

This part of the Book of Isaiah was originally written to people facing a very difficult historical struggle. It is addressed to the people of Israel who have, for far too long, been living in exile in the land of Babylon. Forcibly taken from homes, they have been made to live in a strange land surrounded by strange gods and strange customs. It has been extremely hard for them. But, in this passage, the prophet comes to them with some exciting, good news.

Babylon has fallen (or maybe it’s just clear that it’s about to fall) and the Persian Empire is about to take over its territories. And that might not seem like a big deal, I mean, who cares if you exchange one overlord for another, but actually it is. The thing that makes that good news is that Cyrus, the king of the Persians, has a different policy about exiles. As far as he is concerned, if they want to go back home, they can. Yes, the good news of the moment is that the people of Israel can finally go back home.

And it is in that context that the prophet says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” He is announcing that the exile is over by saying that God has decided that the people have suffered enough.

But, like I say, I really found those words sounded very different to me this year after we have seen our society struggling with an extended period of suffering caused by a pandemic. And when that announcement of a vaccine came, it certainly seemed like the very same kind of announcement of comfort to a people.

So, the words of the prophet certainly hit me on a different emotional level this year, but there was also something else that really struck me, something that I hadn’t seen before. When these words of comfort appear, it’s like a sudden announcement that everything is going to change for the better. The announcement of the vaccine sounded like that too. But, after that initial euphoria, there comes a let’s-get-down-to-earth moment when we realize that there is still a long way to go before we get there, that the road is going to be difficult and that it might even get worse before it gets better. I think we’ve all been feeling that as well.

Well, the same thing happens in this prophecy from the Book of Isaiah. Because, you see, no sooner did the prophet announce this incredible, wonderful news that the exile was over, than the people had to deal with a huge realization. The people were in Babylon, and Babylon was a long, long way from Jerusalem. I mean, not only was it about a thousand kilometers in an age where most people travelled on foot, but it was a thousand kilometers across the biggest, most uncrossable terrain in the entire world – a vast desert.

So, immediately after announcing this enormous comfort, the prophet goes on to announce a gigantic work project: “A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” It was a highway for the people to return home and a very difficult highway to build: “Every valley shall be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; The uneven ground shall become level, And the rough places a plain.” That’s right, we need to bring in the bulldozers and level the whole terrain, and that’s all before you can even start to lay down the asphalt!

Now, to be clear here, this passage is not describing the construction of an actual highway to take the people home. This is poetry – a poetic way of saying that it’s going to be a long and difficult process that takes a lot of work to get the people home. But it is still a stunning change of tone from the original promise – we go from supernatural comfort to a major public works project that has to be completed before the promise is fulfilled.

But that is how life often goes. We are told that we get to go home, but then we have to build the highway to get there; the vaccine gets announced but there is all this other work to be done before its promise is realized. This is the kind of thing that keeps on happening and so this passage is forever new – forever speaking to the hopes and the frustrations of delays that people have to live with.

Which is, of course, why, when the author of the Gospel of Mark was trying to capture the mood in Galilee just before Jesus appeared on the scene, he turned to this very same passage in the Book of Isaiah. He describes John the Baptizer as, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

Now, on the surface, it might seem that what has happened here is that Mark has just misunderstood the original meaning of the Book of Isaiah. The original prophecy said, “A voice cries, ‘Prepare the way in the wilderness.’” And Mark has changed that to “A voice in the wilderness cries, “Prepare the way.” That is pretty close, but it is not exactly the same thing and Mark makes that change because Mark does see John himself as the voice that is crying in the wilderness because John preached out in the wilderness.

But I do not think that this is simply a mistaken interpretation on the part of the gospel writer. It is rather his way of saying that the ministry of John the Baptizer was a fulfillment of what had been anticipated in the prophecy in Isaiah, not literally in the sense that John was building a highway out there, but certainly in the sense that John’s call had so much in common with that of the ancient prophet.

In fact, I think we should greet the message of John the Baptizer today in almost exactly the same way that the ancient exiles in Babylon greeted the ancient prophet’s message – which is to say, much like how we received the news of the successful vaccine trials.

When John announces, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals,” how should we react? We should greet that news – the news that God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ to show us the power of God’s love and salvation – with joy because that means that the end of the story is written. God will bring us home. Because of Jesus we can know for sure that God’s purposes will not be thwarted and that our destiny and indeed the destiny of the whole world is safe in God’s hands.

And yet at the same time we cannot help but recognize that there is still some highway building to do before we get from here to there. And now especially, during this season of Advent, we are living in that tension between the promise of the coming of Christ, a promise that is sure and certain, and the simple reality that we are not quite there yet.

Because of Jesus because of his incarnation, because of his extraordinary teaching and example, because of his death and his resurrection, God has accomplished it all. The world is reconciled to God in Christ. The kingdom of God is established in the face of all the powers, principalities and rulers of this world. And we are forgiven, renewed and reconciled to God. That work is all done. As Jesus said on the cross at the very last, “It is finished,” which could also be translated as, “It has all been accomplished.”

And yet we are still in that waiting place. That is, by the way, what the season of Advent is all about; it is about life in the waiting place. Because, while everything is in place for all of that salvation to play out, we are still stuck here preparing for it all to be rolled out, for the highway to be built through the desert, for the vaccine to be approved and manufactured and safely distributed. That salvation is there, we can almost taste it, it is in the sights in the smells of this season of wonder, but there is still that sense of not quite yet.

And as Christians we are called to live into that promise. We are called to offer hope to people, to let them know that God has done the work and it is completed. And we are also called to live as if it were already so, and, in so doing we will make it so. That is our job. That is how we build the highway through the desert.

Here's Scott's daily devotion.

Here's Scott's daily devotion.

https://youtu.be/H-5OVQFQ-zM

Hespeler, 29 November 2020 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:14-37 (click to read)

I’m going to ask you to use your imaginations here for a little bit. I want you to imagine a year, an entire year, that just went really badly. A year during which just about everything you could possibly think of to go wrong went wrong and a bunch of other things that you would never think of in a million years also went wrong. Say that that year began with terrible, almost apocalyptic bushfires in the far distant continent of Australia killing or displacing an unimaginable number of animals, something like 3 billion. And then say that, only weeks later, a terrible pandemic began to sweep across the globe shutting down ordinary life and leading, ultimately, to tens of millions of cases and well over a million deaths.

And then throw a few other things into this imaginary year – cases of what clearly appear to be racially motivated police violence leading to massive protests and in some cases rioting and violence. Throw in a sharply divisive election and a transition of power wrought with confusion and fear. Hey, while you’re at it, why not throw in a few murder hornets? You know just a wildly unrealistic awful, horrible, no good, very bad year.

And imagine that you were coming to the close of that year with some hope, of course, that maybe the next year would be a lot better but, at the same time, a fair bit of worry that it might just be a whole lot worse. So, say it was around the end of November of that year. What do you suppose the mood of people would be? And given that mood, that I suspect you can probably imagine, what do you suppose that somebody might write that could actually reach people, catch their attention and speak to them exactly where they were?

I ask that question today because it is the First Sunday of Advent which the church counts as the beginning of the year. And, as it is the beginning of the year, we turn, on this Sunday to a new part of the Sunday lectionary. Last year, our gospel readings were mostly taken from the Gospel according to Matthew. Starting today, we are going to turn to a new gospel: the Gospel of Mark.

And what an introduction to the Gospel of Mark we have in our reading this morning: the sun darkened, the moon dimmed and the stars falling from heaven and, indeed, heaven and earth entirely passing away. Now, I know that this passage in the Gospel of Mark is not necessarily everybody’s favourite, but I think that it is actually a very good thing that this very passage is actually our introduction to the entire book in our readings for this year.

Most scholars today believe that of all the gospels in the Bible, the Gospel of Mark is the oldest; it was the first one written. Now the reasons why scholars believe this are rather complicated and I’d be happy to get into the details at some other time, but for the moment, let’s just say that sometime around 70 AD, that is about four decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus, somebody first came up with the idea of writing down the story of Jesus’ life and death, and this gospel was the result.

That immediately raises some questions – questions like, why then? Why, at that moment in the history of church, did someone finally feel compelled (or inspired by the Spirit) to write down the story of Jesus? Did it have something to do with the fact that the first generation of believers was, at that point, passing away and they felt a certain urgency to collect and write down their witness? That may have been part of it, but I am not sure that it was the main part.

No, I suspect that it had more to do with what was going on in the world at that moment in time. Because, as I said, the consensus is that Gospel of Mark was written sometime around 70 AD. And 70 AD was an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year. What’s more, 70 AD was only one in the midst of a number of awful, horrible, no good, very bad years from about 66 to 74 AD. So it actually doesn’t matter what exact year the Gospel of Mark was written, we can be pretty sure that it was written during an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year.

Let me just give you some sense of all the horrible things that happened during that period of time. It started in Judea when somebody made fun of the local Roman governor but, when the governor tried to find the people who’d made fun of him, they’d gone missing and so he just grabbed a whole bunch of people at random and crucified them which led to a bloody general uprising. During this period of time, the reign of the worst Roman Emperor ever, Nero, finally came to an end, but it led to the worst and most violent succession crisis that you can possibly imagine. Does that sound familiar?

During that crisis, one prominent Jew looked at one of the people fighting to be the next emperor (who happened to be in Judea killing Judeans at the time) and said, “Look, there is the messiah!” Now, can you imagine that? A powerful political leader hailed as the true messiah? Well, it happened.

And then, the whole countryside of Judea and Galilee blew up an open revolt against Rome which was brutally defeated by the son of the new emperor at the cost of thousands of lives and the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem.

During one of these horrible years, it is said the Christian church that was in Jerusalem was so alarmed by the whole situation that they up and ran, leaving everything behind them to escape the city – an episode that is likely referred to in our reading when Jesus says, “When you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter.”

That is the kind of thing that was going on while this gospel was being written. And again, I ask you the question, why, at that kind of moment, did someone decide to write this book. Do you suppose that it might have been because somebody decided that just such a book as this was exactly what was needed at such a moment as that? I suspect that this is exactly what happened. The Gospel of Mark was not written merely to record what happened to Jesus during his life, though it certainly did that, but it was also written to give comfort and guidance to some people who had just lived through an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year.

I think that is true of the entire Gospel of Mark, but it is maybe especially true of the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel which we read from today because it most directly references some of the very things that were going on when this book was written. So what was the message that the writer of the Gospel of Mark was trying to give to people who were living through such times?

Well, one thing is especially clear in this chapter. He wrote it to tell people that this had all been foreseen. In this chapter, he particularly highlights the very things that Jesus predicted would happen and that were now coming to pass. Jesus did predict the destruction of the temple and much of the strife that surrounded it. And so Mark underlines that prediction and, I suspect, doesn’t hesitate to add a few details from the things that he and his fellow Christians have recently lived through.

Now, what would be the point in doing that? How is that supposed to help people deal with all they are going through? Well one thing it tells people is that nothing that has happened is as random as it might seem – that it has all been foreseen.

Now, I don’t think that that is the same thing as saying that every bad thing that happens is a direct result of the will of God. I personally do not believe that God wills that bad or tragic things happen to anyone. But tragedy is an inevitable part of life in this world and our loving God is never far removed from the struggles that people are living through. And, yes, I do think that this was exactly the kind of message that people needed to hear when this book was written.

Think of that in terms of some of the things we’ve been living through. Does the mere fact that a lot of what we have been living through was actually predicted seem like a comforting thought to you? Because it is largely true. We have been warned very clearly for a number of years now that a devastating global pandemic was bound to come sooner or later. We have been clearly warned that the effects of global warming would lead to worse and worse hurricane seasons and worse and worse forest fire seasons and we have just lived through the worst of all recorded times in both cases. Certainly, the post-election strife in the United States that we are living through right now has been predicted over and over again over the last four years.

It has all been predicted, but does that make us feel any better about any of it? Not necessarily. But maybe it does give us an imperative to listen to those who make such predictions next time and to do what we can to prepare a whole lot better. It may not give us comfort but it gives us a sense of agency, of something we can do, and that is maybe the kind of thing we need right now. I think the Gospel of Mark provided something like that for its audience.

And, if there was a comfort to be found, it was to be found in the knowledge that somewhere above and beyond the troubles of an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year, there was someone who had a plan that looked beyond the troubles of the moment to something bigger, to the redemption of a troubled world and its ultimate healing. That also was a comfort to them and I think it can also be for us.

I suspect that there is a reason why God is leading us, through the Revised Common Lectionary, towards reflecting on the Gospel of Mark as an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year comes to a close and a new year begins. I suspect this gospel has some really important things to say to us exactly where we are right now.

I pray that, in the year to come, this gospel might give us some perspective on the difficult things that we have had to live through this year and that might linger in the year to come. Like I say, I don’t believe that it is God’s desire that bad things happen to us, but that does not change the fact that we have a God who oversees the events of this world, who cares and who is determined to bring some good out of the most troubling developments.

Of course, the other thing that the Gospel of Mark gives us is a picture of Jesus. As the first Gospel written (or at least the first one written that was not lost), Mark shows us who Jesus is in the midst of the struggles of this life. And the picture we get is of the Son of God but also of one who is not removed from the struggles of this world, who entered into them willingly and freely, who knows our difficulties and comforts us in them. Because, you see, Mark was determined to present the kind of saviour that people who have lived through an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year really need to meet.

Here's Scott's daily devotion

Here's our daily devotion.

Here's our daily devotion

https://youtu.be/N4fvQO5LYEU

Hespeler, 22 November 2020 © Scott McAndless
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Psalm 95:1-7a, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46

Salvation is by grace through faith. That is perhaps the most central teaching of protestant Christianity. And, in many ways, every sermon I preach, every study I lead is ultimately trying to explain what that teaching really means. The bottom line seems to be this: none of us are going to be able to earn God’s favour by being good enough. God is rather looking for us to place our trust in God and in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And that makes the parable that we read this morning from the Gospel of Matthew a bit of minefield for a good old-fashioned Protestant preacher. I have privately heard Christian preachers and teachers suggest that they really don’t like this parable and that they kind of wish that Jesus never told it because, of course, this parable depicts the final judgment. And when the people are divided and judged as to whether they have pleased God, there seems to be only one criterion that matters: those who have behaved in the right way are blessed and those who have behaved in the wrong way are condemned. It seems to be a textbook example of salvation by works and not by faith.

And, yes, the actions that are celebrated in this parable are all really good. I would absolutely love to see people welcoming strangers, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting those who need it. And obviously those are precisely the kinds of actions that do please God. But, at the same time, I do not believe that we, as people, can become more pleasing to God by our frequency or quality of such actions. So, what am I to do with this parable? How am I supposed to relate it to some of my central theological convictions?

Let me first say something about the whole notion of salvation. In the minds of modern Christians, we often make an easy connection between the notion of salvation and the whole question of who gets into heaven. For too many Christians, that is all that salvation means, a ticket to heaven someday after we die. But I just feel I need to say that this parable is not actually about who gets into heaven or into the afterlife and who doesn’t. It is a parable about who is already in the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven, in the Gospel of Matthew, is very clearly more about a present reality that people can live in right now than it is about what happens to people after they die. The key point is that those who do the things described in the parable are already in the reality of the kingdom of heaven and those who don’t aren’t. That is not to say that the kingdom of heaven does not have a reality or fulfilment beyond this present world. And I do believe that, in this world, we are meant to prepare for that ultimate reality, but the focus of this parable is on this present world.

So, that is one thing I always keep in mind as I read this parable. But there is also a second assumption about this parable that we easily make that I think needs to be challenged. On the surface, yes, this parable seems to be all about works, about what we do. The word faith is not mentioned. But I would like to suggest that, actually, this parable is all about faith.

Here is what I noticed on this time reading it through. When the Son of Man comes, and all his holy angels with him, and he separates the sheep from the goats, he addresses both groups in terms of what they have done. “I was this, and you did that” or “I was this and you failed to do that.” And there seems to be no discussion when it comes to what the sheep and the goats have done. The sheep do not push back against the Son of Man and say, “Wait, we didn’t do that kind of thing.” Nor do the goats push back and say, “Oh yes we did.”

No, the pushback all seems to be over one particular question and that question has to do with seeing. Both the sheep and the goats respond by asking, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison. . .” But here’s the thing: the Son of Man never asked them if they saw him. He only spoke of what they had done for him. He was not concerned at all about sight or recognition. And this is a significant point because the Bible has a lot to say about the relationship between faith and sight.

For example, in 2 Corinthians, Paul writes, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” (5:7) And the eleventh chapter of Hebrews begins like this: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Clearly, seeing is not necessary to faith. It even sometimes seems to get in the way of faith. And yet these sheep and goats seem to be fixated only on what they can or cannot see, as we all often are.

So why does this parable shift from the Son of Man’s focus on doing the right thing to the sheep and goats’ focus on seeing? Because this story is actually more about faith than we realize.

What is the real difference between the sheep and the goats in this parable? The two groups actually have far more in common than we usually realize. You see, apparently, according to this story, Jesus is constantly present in this world. He is particularly present in the poorest of the poor, in the hungry, in the sick, the forgotten and the prisoners.

Now, the heart of God has always been with such people. Throughout the scripture we see God prioritizing reaching out and taking care of the most marginalized people in society. But apparently something new and something unique has happened because of Jesus, because of the incarnation.

Because somehow, in Jesus of Nazareth, God entered into the human experience not just in some kind of sympathetic understanding but actually in the form of a human body that could understand human suffering, there is a sense in which Jesus remains uniquely present in this world in the persons of those who struggle or suffer the most. I can’t explain that. I can’t even really claim to understand it, but I know that it is the truth.

But here is what we see in this parable, though Jesus continues to be bodily present in this world, nobody can see it. The sheep, those who intentionally set out to take care of those who live on the margins, confess that they did not see it. And the goats, those who did nothing, did not see it either. So both the sheep and the goats have their blindness to this reality in common. And the Bible tells us that, when there is not sight, that is when there is a great opportunity for faith. And it is in what these two groups do with this opportunity that we see their paths diverge.

And let’s focus in on the goats for a moment. What do they do with their opportunity for faith? They do not see the reality that Christ is present in the marginalized, but what do they do with that? They continue to insist upon relying on their flawed sight. They look at the people who are living on the margins of their society, and what do they see? They see, first of all, people who are not like them. They may belong to other racial or ethnic groups. They may not talk like them or dress like them, and so they conclude that they have less value.

Or perhaps they look at them and can only see the short term. They see how costly in the short term it is to provide income support or addiction rehabilitation or health care or shelter for them. They see all of that and they conclude that such a high cost cannot be justified.

And, of course, they completely fail to see that, over the long term, there are costs that are even greater. They do not see the cost of lost potential and how people who are given a little bit of support now can contribute enormously to the society down the road. They do not see how entrapping people into conditions where they feel they have no hope and no prospects for the future is bound to create even more costly problems down the road. None of that is particularly visible and they do not see it.

They, not seeing the truth that Christ is somehow alive and present in this world, become caught up only in what they can see. And so they have no faith whatsoever. They have completely missed the incredible gift that has been given by Christ, his presence with them in this world.

The sheep, on the other hand, also have failed to perceive the presence of Christ in those that they have encountered. The only difference is that for them, this failure to see the truth has not mattered. Whether they have seen it or not, they continue to act as if every person that crosses their path, every person for whom they can make a difference for the good, is an opportunity to serve the Lord that they love. They, lacking sight, have continued to walk forward in faith and in so doing they have embraced the reality of the kingdom of heaven because they are living in the reality of it.

Salvation is by grace through faith. What that means is that God saves us. God saves us from whatever we need saving from. Salvation comes in the form of healing, of hope, of redemption and forgiveness and, yes, it also comes in the form of defeating death which is the ultimate enemy. God gives all such salvation as a free gift with absolutely no strings attached. That’s what grace is. But we access that through faith. And faith, in that context, does not mean that we have to believe a bunch of things about God or about Jesus. Faith is not about intellectually accepting certain tenants of belief. It is about trusting in God’s grace and salvation and it is about especially exercising that trust even though we cannot see it.

And so, if you want to experience God’s salvation now, you need to start living in the reality of the kingdom of heaven. You need to start living in that reality even if you cannot see it and even if you cannot feel it. It is hard for us to do that, I know, because we are so dependent on our senses. But God’s reality is God’s reality and the only way we can learn to trust that is by exercising our faith. We live as if it is so, and in time we will begin to experience it. That is what those sheep were doing, they were living in the reality of the kingdom of heaven even though they could not see it.

And, yes, there is an ultimate reality of the kingdom that comes on the other side of death. I cannot pretend to be able to describe that reality or what we will experience there. And I do believe that our entrance into that reality is in the loving and gracious hands of God alone – the God who has opened our way to that reality in Jesus Christ. My personal belief is that God is willing to accept any level of trust to grant us access to that reality.

But I believe that this parable, the parable of the sheep and the goats, is about how we live in that reality as much as we possibly can in this present world. And the bottom line is that we live in that reality and we experience the real presence of Jesus Christ with us here and now when we live our lives like those sheep, depending not on what we can see but on the promises of God who has so graciously extended salvation to all of God’s children.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/ew62R5RBabw

Hespeler, 15 November 2020 © Scott McAndless
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Psalm 90, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30

I have a simple question to ask you today. What is a talent? When you read that passage that we read this morning, Jesus’ famous Parable of the Talents, and you read about the master giving to his servants a number of talents, what are you thinking about? I suspect that, a lot of the time, what people do think about is talents – I mean, the English word talents.

That’s understandable, of course. We are reading the Bible in an English translation and we come across a word that is an obvious English word that we use all the time, the word talents, and of course that is what we think of. So, I suspect in many of our imaginations, we are seeing this master go up to one of his slaves and saying, “Here you go, I am going to give to you five talents. Here is a talent for playing the guitar. Here is a talent for break dancing, a talent for baking cakes, for doing tricks with a yoyo and for doing this really weird thing with your eyes. There you go, five talents.” And then, in the same way the master gives two talents to do things to someone else, and one to another.

I think it’s kind of inevitable that we, as English speakers, are going to read that kind of thing into the story. And so you will often get people interpreting and applying this parable to the whole matter of how we use whatever talents, skills and gifts we have as we go through life and maybe especially in the life of the church. We lament people who have talent and waste it. And sometimes I’ve even heard people use this parable to shame people into volunteering to do work or serve on committees in our churches.

And if that is what that word means, that would pretty much have to be exactly how we would read and apply this parable. But here is the thing, the word that appears in the Gospel of Matthew in this parable does not mean that. There is absolutely no sense in which, when Jesus said talent, he was referring to what we would call a talent. That word, talent, in the gospel is simply a Greek word that has been transliterated as talent in English. It is actually a huge coincidence that the ancient word that Jesus used sounded exactly like our modern English word talent.

A talent, in the ancient world, was simply a unit of money. Nothing more and nothing less. Just like we have dimes and quarters and loonies, they had shekels and drachma and talents. So the very first thing we need to realize as we read this parable, is that Jesus is talking about money. Now, that does not mean that the way we often read this parable as applying to the question of how we make use of our talents, skills and abilities is totally illegitimate. I do believe that we will see that it can also apply to that. But any interpretation that we make of this parable really ought to take into account that it has to do with money.

But just knowing that a talent is money is really only the beginning of what you need to understand about this parable. You also need to know just how much money a talent was. If you were to read the footnote in your Bible, you will find a very helpful note. The footnote tells you that a talent was, in that world at that time, about the amount of money that an average worker could expect to earn over a period of 15 years. That is an enormous amount of money. Statistics Canada tells me that the average annual income for Canadians in 2019 was about $54,000. Some earned more, some earned less, but if you average it out it works out to about that.

So, if an average Canadian worker took all of their pay for 15 years, gross pay before taxes, how much money would they have? Just over $800,000. So basically, in this parable, Jesus was telling a story about a man who gave out solid metal coins to a bunch of his servants and each one was worth about $800,000.

And to one of his servants, apparently, this man gave five talents. How much money in today’s terms would that be? Just about $4 million. Now, let me ask you, when was the last time you had somebody come up to you and hand you a check for $4 million and say to you, “Take this money and do something with it?” I don’t know about you, but that has never happened to me.

And that also raises the question, who has that kind of money to throw around, to give to other people and tell them to do something with it? The man in this parable clearly represents the very upper crust of people in that society, the kind of people that the people listening to Jesus tell the story would probably never even meet. And, what’s more, I’m not even sure that it’s the kind of person that you would want to meet because look how one of his servants describes him: “Master,” he says, “I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” This is not a nice person!

He is obviously filthy rich, but how did he get rich? Is he one of those people that we often like to admire? Is he a self-made millionaire, someone who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, who worked hard and so, in some sense, seems very deserving of having such wealth? Clearly not. No, he got where he was by taking advantage of whoever he could as much as he possibly could. This is not even your John D. Rockefeller or Jeff Bezos kind of millionaire who, even if he is kind of greedy, at least is creating something that people in the community value. No, he is more of a Pablo Escobar, a man who is ruthlessly exploiting other people for the sole purpose of becoming obscenely wealthy.

So, once you understand what a talent is, you have to come to terms with the story that Jesus actually told. He told the story of an extremely wealthy and not very likable man – maybe a drug lord or a crime kingpin – who gives to his minions extraordinary amounts of money and expects them, without even bothering to pay them, to use that money and double it for the sole purpose of pleasing and enriching the boss.

And the punchline of the parable, the point that Jesus goes out of his way to underline, is this: “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.” Which is to say, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class disappears, which is basically a commentary on the way that the economy works when everything is run by the Pablo Escobars and the Jeff Bezoses of this world.

That is the story that Jesus told and the kind of amazing thing is that he seems to have told it with the expectation that by reflecting on that story we would somehow find in it the meaning of the kingdom of heaven.

I’ll tell you where I don’t think the kingdom of heaven is found in this parable. I don’t think it is found in the figure of the cruel and exploitative master. I know that people have often assumed that that master is supposed to represent God, but I’m sorry, the God that I have come to know through Jesus Christ, is the very opposite of “a harsh man, reaping where [he] did not sow, and gathering where [he] did not scatter seed.”

Nor do I think that the kingdom of heaven is to be found in a system where “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.” That’s not the kingdom of heaven, that’s simply how this world generally works with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

So, if we can’t find the kingdom of heaven in those things, where can it be found? The only answer that I can suggest these days is to say that it is found in how we choose to live in this flawed world with its exploitative systems. A talent may be a unit of money but the story isn’t really about how to get more money. The Prophet Zephaniah says, “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath.” Money, in the ultimate reckoning, has no value, so I think it’s safe to assume that the parable is not really about how to make more money.

Jesus has this strange habit of looking at how people – even bad people or foolish people – behave within the flawed systems of this world and finding even in them something that can teach us about the kingdom of heaven and I think that that is exactly what he is doing in this parable.

With that understood, I believe that the thing that sets the slave who receives the single talent apart from those who receive more has to do with fear. He, knowing that the world is unpredictable, knowing that powerful people (like his master) are only out to exploit him, knowing that “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,” he responds out of fear. He can only think of holding onto and hiding whatever he has and not taking any risks with it.

There is a place for careful saving. There is a place for acting prudently and not taking unnecessary risks. He is, in my estimation, not condemned for any of those things but for simply being overtaken and acting solely out of fear.

The other servants took a chance. Yes, they did run the risk of losing everything, but at least they were willing to try something. They had just as much reason to be afraid as the servant with the one talent, maybe even more because they had more to lose. And make no mistake, their master would have punished them severely for that! But, whatever else they may have done wrong, they had at least not allowed fear to be their master.

And that is the lesson that I think we should all take from this parable. Yes, there is a place for prudence and safety, but if all our actions are controlled by fear, we will never discover the true power of the kingdom of heaven. That is a lesson that I would like all of us to seek to apply in this week that we begin together.

We all encounter fear as we go through life. And yes, there are some situations that we will wisely avoid because we are afraid. For example, when your fear tells you not to jump out of the airplane with a chute that doesn’t work, a wise person listens. But fear should be more of a wise and faithful counsellor than a master. You need to have power over it so that it does not control you.

The kingdom of heaven is not built here on earth by those who always play it safe and never step out of their comfort zone. It will be built by those who take thoughtful risks. So this week, step out of that comfort zone of yours in some small way. Speak up in a situation where your fear tells you to keep silent. Make a contact that feels a bit risky to you. Put something on the line for the sake of something that really matters to you. And, yes, if you have a talent that God has given you that you have not used because you have been afraid of how people might react, by all means use that talent! We need to be willing to do those kinds of things both individually and as a church together. That is, I believe, how we will find the signs of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus was trying to show us by telling this parable.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/SgaDSPC3vqk

Hespeler, 8 November, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Amos 5:18-24, Psalm 70, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13

Do you remember the last time you got invited to a wedding? I realize, of course, that it’s been a while now since things like weddings have been celebrated in a normal way so you may have to cast your memory a long way back, but surely you remember.

And do you remember the part of the wedding when there were a bunch of virgins (I know that the word that is used in the New Revised Standard Version is “bridesmaids,” but the Gospel text actually only says virgins in the original language) – a bunch of virgins whose job it was to wait around at the bridegroom’s house for him to bring his new bride home and, well, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, you know what I mean? And they were supposed to greet the couple with bright lamps and happy smiles.

And do you know how it sometimes used to happen that the bride and the groom got delayed for hours with all the feasting and drinking and well-wishing and some of the virgins who hadn’t planned ahead and brought some extra oil for their lamps would run out and how funny it would be when they had to leave and go buy some more oil and they weren’t there when the couple actually arrived and ended up missing the whole party? Oh, remember how we used to laugh when that happened? Oh, foolish, foolish virgins!

What, you don’t remember that? Oh man, I’m glad. I thought I was losing it! I thought that this pandemic had been going on so long that I’d completely forgotten what a normal wedding looked like. So I am not the only one who is really struggling to make sense of that parable from the Gospel of Matthew about the ten virgins at the wedding? I mean, obviously Jesus was trying to make a point by telling that parable. But the wedding customs that he referred to – customs that all of the people in the crowd who heard him tell that parable could understand without thinking about it – are just plain weird to us.

So it seems to me that I have two options if I want to help people understand this parable of Jesus. I could spend a lot of time explaining ancient wedding customs so we could get the point. The only problem with that is that I can’t really say that I understand what the customs were. I’m not sure anybody can because the wedding customs of ancient peasants are not generally the kind of thing that get written down in ancient sources.

So I’m going to take another option. I’m going to try and see if I can retell Jesus’ parable within a system and some customs that we already understand.

It was election night and the ten voters settled down in front of their television to watch the election results. They were, all of them, first time voters. They had never voted in an election before but, in each case, something had made them resolve to actually participate in the process this year. So I guess that you might call them ten political virgins.

And five of these political virgins were completely naïve about the whole election process. They figured that this whole process of counting the ballots and declaring the winners couldn’t possibly take much time at all. If the local polling place closed at 9:00 p.m., then surely everything would be settled by, what, 9:05? Surely 9:30 or 10:00 on the outside! So these foolish voters didn’t exactly plan for a long night. A bag of chips and one can of coke was all they brought to get them through the night.

And, of course, they had brought their phones with which they expected to live tweet all of their reactions to the fast-breaking developments as they happened. And, just to make sure, they had charged their phones all the way up until the batteries were almost like three quarters full.

But the other five voters, even if it was their first time, were at least well versed in election processes and informed about how things were supposed to work. They knew about the intricacies of the electoral college. They had informed themselves and knew that a lot of people had voted differently this year and that it would likely take longer to count all of the mail in and the absentee ballots and even, in some places, the early votes.

They also knew that, though it might soon be very clear who had won the popular vote, that actually didn’t matter at all. So, having been warned that things might be close in some places and that it might take a very long time for anyone to know who actually won, they were ready to be in it for the long haul.

So what did they bring? What didn’t they bring? They had chips and cheezies and popcorn of all flavours. There were coffee and energy drinks to keep them going through the slow times. They had also brought some special drinks that they were going to use for a drinking game they had designed. You know, “Every time somebody mentions voter fraud, take a drink. Every time somebody mentions voter intimidation take another. Another for every lawsuit and so on.” And that, really, was only just the beginning. These people had brought so many supplies and such a wealth of snacks and comfort food that it was piled high upon the coffee table.

And as for their cell phones, they had not only charged them all the way to the top, they had brought dozens and dozens of power banks ready to plug in as needed. Oh, they had so much that it was almost ridiculous. And, yes, the foolish virgins did indeed laugh at these wise ones who had brought so much to sustain them. But the wise ones smiled and shrugged and said, “Let’s just wait and see who looks foolish when all is said and done.”

Now, I don’t mean to get into talking about how, exactly, these ten virgins chose to vote. That is their business. They had not all voted the same way. Let’s just say that about four and a half of them voted one way and five and a half the other. And let’s say that there were wise and foolish who voted both ways, for they voted for their own reasons and according to their own understanding. But let us also note that they all, in their virgin political innocence, believed in the importance of what they had participated in. They believed, in fact, that the future of their country, of democracy and perhaps of civilization itself was riding on the results that they were now waiting to hear. So they were understandably impatient to hear what the results would be.

And so they waited and watched. It was a long evening which was then followed by what seemed to be an even longer night and then a day that was simply interminable. And even then – after many a moment of hope followed by a new depth of despair, peppered with many bursts of anger and frustration – after all of that, it seemed that nothing was really resolved.

Eventually, the five foolish voters looked up. Their one bag of chips lay empty on the floor and their can of coke, long drained had been crumpled in disgust by someone who had been completed scandalized by something that some talking head had said on a panel. They had twitted and tweeted until their thumbs were blistered, but now their phones were languishing at 3% charge. They were hungry, exhausted and strung out. They were done.

And so the five foolish voters went to the five wise voters and said, “You guys have so much. You have snacks and drinks and you still have lots of full power banks. Maybe if you would just share a little bit from all of this bounty that you have, maybe we will be able to hold on until we learn the news that will save us all.” But the wise virgins said no. They said that if they were to give what they had prudently brought to carry themselves through until the results were known, there would not be enough for everybody.

Now this angered the foolish virgin voters more than anything that had happened yet. And they stood up and said, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore. Let’s just put an end to this right now. If we were just to stop counting the votes, this never-ending nightmare could be over.” And so they went out and went to the Supreme Court and argued with them saying, “It doesn’t matter if they haven’t finished counting the votes of people who voted in certain ways, we just can’t stand waiting anymore. Make it all stop and give us an answer now.” And so they argued and argued and argued and time continued to pass.

Meanwhile, back in front of the television, the wise virgin voters continued to wait for something to happen – something that would indicate to them that there was some reason to hope that their lives could mean more than a mere scramble to survive in a covid infected, largely dysfunctional world.

And then, at some point, while those foolish virgins were off making their arguments, it happened. What happened? Well, there were some developments towards identifying a winner, but it was not really that. There were some close races that began to resolve, but it was not that. No, it was rather that, as these things were going on, the wise voters began to realize that if the kingdom of heaven was going to come, it was going to have to come in them. And they went into an inner room and shut the door. They began to plan, whether or not they had the support of this party or that party, this leader or that one, they would see that kingdom come.

And while they were there in that inner room with the doors locked, the foolish voters who thought that the only thing that mattered was who won and who lost, returned. And they cried out to the wise virgins locked in the inner room and they asked to be part of what they were doing, but those in the inner room cried out and said, “Go away for you would not understand the commitment we have made.” And so the foolish voters remained in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and everyone is perpetually condemned to wait and think that maybe, in the next election, there will finally be salvation.

Jesus’ Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins is one of many he seems to have told to encourage people to wait and to be prepared. He says that, by reflecting on this story, we should be able to find out what the kingdom of heaven is. I love these parables, but I struggle to understand exactly what it is that we are supposed to be waiting for and what it actually means to be prepared.

It is hard enough, of course, when you have a parable like this one that makes cultural assumptions that we really know nothing about. But, in recent American political events, we saw a situation unroll where there was a great need for patience and anticipatory waiting in which we could perhaps finally understand how hard waiting can be.

So, my question is this. I think we have just lived through some events that do well illustrate the kind of waiting that Jesus was talking about in this parable. So where, in what we just lived through, is the kingdom of heaven? My personal opinion is that it is not to be found in this candidate or that one, in this party or that. But I still believe that there is a bridegroom and that, if we remain prepared in the right ways, he will come. And, as for time, it will take what it takes.