22 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 28, November 13, 2011
Judges 4:1-7 Psalm 1231 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-13
God be in our heads and in
our understanding; God be in our eyes and in our looking; God be in my mouth
and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our thinking; God be at our end
and at our departing. Amen.
Each day we are given an update on what is
now just reduced to three letters: OWS, or occupy Wall Street. In the complexity of our postmodern world, we
are not really sure about cause and effect of a general resentment growing
amongst diverse populations of people around the world. One can note what is called the Arab Spring
in the Middle East. There have been worldwide
movements against governmental and economic elites sometimes called kleptocracies,
or social orders established that results in the few to be able to steal from the
many. We’ve seen kleptocrats fall in
Algeria, Egypt and Libya. And now with
the rising influence of lobbyists in our political process, it could be that
the so-call developed Western World is now experiencing their own varieties of
kleptocracy. Or at least that is how lots
of people are beginning to characterize the situation.
Now why would I as a preacher and not an
economist want to wade into this volatile topic at all? Well there is certain biblical permission
given to a preacher, even in the lessons for today. The people of the Bible were not strangers to
oppression. Deborah the famous judge
came to prominence in a time of oppression.
This hopelessness of economic oppression is expressed in the Psalm for
today: “Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy, for we have had more than
enough of contempt. Too much of the
scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud.” O God, too many people have been losing for
much too long; please deliver us.
But then we arrive at the Gospel of the day,
and this wisdom teacher Jesus who we know to use nature metaphors, fishing
metaphors, and agricultural metaphors in his parables, also uses a sort of Wall
Street metaphor of investment. And his parable
does not seem to be very favorable for the timid investor. There is a phobia called Plutophobia, the
unhealthy fear of wealth. (I think my wife and children believe that I’ve had this
phobia for years). A related fear is
Chrometophobia or the fear of money. And
so the poor soul who took his one measly talent and buried it in ground ends up
having his talent taken away from him and given to the adventurous and successful
investor. And he did so because of his
fear. But was his fear, a fear of money
or the fear of his master? One might say
that he suffered from tyrannophobia, an unhealthy fear that his master was a tyrant.
Can we take from this parable that Jesus
would be on the side of the hedge fund managers of Wall Street? After all, they are successful
investors. When we read this parable
with the predominance of the words of Jesus on behalf of the poor, it seems
that there is another meaning in this investment parable. Remember Jesus said it was hard for the rich
to inherit the kingdom of heaven. He
also said that one could not serve God and Wealth. In various places he encourages people to
give away their possessions to those who need them. He also taught us to build up treasures for ourselves
in heaven and not on earth.
So what are we to make of this parable? Does the parable make transparent the cruel
dynamic of life known as the principle of atrophy? Use it or lose it? Natural and spiritual gifts are distributed
in various forms to everyone and each person has the choice to go the path of
development or atrophy. Each community
has the choice to go the path of development or atrophy. In parish communities one often hears about
the 80/20 rule. And what this means is
that 80 percent of time, talent and treasure are given and performed by 20
percent of the people. This means those
who do not exercise their time, talent and treasure lose their portion of grace
to minister. The ministry ends being done by those who are willing to fully invest
their time, talent and treasure. That is
often the how the investment dynamics happens within a community.
We might want to look for the source of
motivation in the development of our spiritual gifts. In the parable we are told that the man who
hid his talent did so because he feared his master. That might point us to the ambiguous use of the
word “fear” in the Bible. In short there
is good fear and bad fear; there is a paralyzing phobia fear or forms of anxiety
that inhibit positive actions. When it
is written in the Bible, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,”
this kind of fear is a reverential awe based upon a deep respect of God. In the development of our gifts, we need to
convert our negative fears of life in order to take the risks needed to develop
our gifts. When religion promotes a
fearful image of God that inhibits development then religion is misrepresenting
God. The opposite of fear is faith;
faith is that attitude in living when we know that God is a loving investor in
humanity. If we can believe that God is
a loving investor in us, we can with faith develop our gifts to their full
capacity.
I do not think this parable give carte
blanche to those who use tyranny or laws to preside over kleptocracies to
concentrate the majority of wealth into the hands of the few. The gifts or talents are the heavenly
treasures that we are given to develop so that we can bring things from the inner
kingdom of love into our outer world. If
we are growing in love, joy, peace, faith, self-control and kindness, surely at
the very minimum it means providing a fair access for everyone to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness in the basic forms of happiness that includes food,
clothing, shelter, safety, health care and human dignity. The rising of resentment around our nation
presents us with the further challenge of Americanizing capitalism to further
fulfill our own basic American ideals; but beyond that we are to develop our spiritual
gifts to Christianize our economic system to be expressive of love, faith and
kindness. If we perform the free market
system as an amoral survival-of-the-fittest system where only the strong are allowed to survive; this is not the
Christianity of Jesus Christ. A system
that has misanthropic effects ultimately plants the seeds of its own demise.
Let us in our worship and faith know God as a
loving God who has invested in the likes of you and me and who asks us to
invest in each other for our common good.
Let us use the signs of our current public discontent to be the opportunity
for us to become more Christ-like in the development of all of the gifts that
God has given to us and to the people of our world. Amen.
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