Judges 4:1-7 Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Matthew 25:14-30
These are good sermon ideas, I've worn them out many times but for today, I'd like to presents some insights that this parable provides for people who have no choice but to live in time, and what does time mean? It means continuous change. I would like for us to understand this parable as wisdom insights regarding the stewardship of time and change.
In life people are dealt different situations in life, and some of what we are dealt are gifts which can be invested and developed. Some have five talent occasions, some two talent occasions and others one talent occasions.
The five talent guy took his five and not only retained his original five, he added five more. The two talent guy, did the same. He kept his two and added two.
But what about the one talent guy? The parable says that he acted in fear and buried his talent in the ground so that he would not lose it. No matter what happened, he thought he would always have the same.
Let us consider the one talent guy with this illustration. We all know what freeze-frame is when it comes to videos; we can stop a video and have it frozen so we can cherish the moment. We can turn a moment in the movie into a single photo.
We suddenly want to preserve the movie by stopping it permanently at a favorite moment. This might be like what the one talent man did.
Burying what is a gift or trying to freeze-frame what we once enjoyed is the act of conserving, of being a conservative. We think that we can freeze-frame conserve and we do this out of anxiety and fear of loss. And what happens? We can lose all because we fail to realize that the gift and blessing of this moment are not meant to be the end all of life; they are to be a gift for us to invest in the present and in the future for better outcomes.
One might think, "I love this gifted moment; I want to stay here. I want time to stop because if I bury it and keep it same, I will not lose it and I am fearful about loss."
Let us apply this for a moment at many who hold literal biblical views. We like the Bible as our holy book. And we may want to be very literal about a biblical view, and so we try to freeze-frame the Bible to preserve or keep what we think is valuable. And indeed we can find great value. But look what we see in a biblical freeze-frame of the Bible. We see slaves, we see subjugated women whose abilities are not developed or cherished, we a perceptual flat earth and many other cultural details which cannot be validly woven into our current lives.
What if we did the same as American Constitutional Originalists: We freeze-frame the primitive American Constitution situation. We see grand ideas of law and justice, but when we look closer we see Washington and Jefferson as slave-holders, we see that women and non-landowners unable to vote and many other practices that are out-dated with enlightened justice. So why should we "freeze-frame, bury or completely conserve" a good time, when it still is a time with much unfinished business?
The church can be selectively "Amish" in many of our practices who decided that it was god-like to stop the advance of technology 150 years ago. A much different kind of life has gone on and developed outside of Amish cloistered life. The attempt to freeze-frame may have the romance of the simple life; but is it realistic to time and change?
The good stewardship of time and change means that we conserve the good in dynamic engaging investment in the now and in the future, but what else do we do? We expand our investment beyond the good that was which with a closer look may have been surrounded by too many bad actors who did not live up to the ideals of love and justice for all.
What if we were to freeze frame our church now; what do we see? We see many young people uninterested in our liturgies and practices. They seem to be like those who are not interested in taking up Amish buggies when it comes to some of our practices. But if we look closer we will also see some wonderful good. We are trying to open our doors of full participation to more people, in the way in which St. Paul saw the message of Jesus expand beyond the boundaries of Judaism to the Gentiles. We see the inclusion women in the full ministry of the church, we seek the full sacramental participation of gay and lesbian persons in the life of the church, we seek to be both religious mystical poets and brute fact scientists. And do it without contradictions as we find faith to be a force for graceful mediations of all of the facets of the ways in which we can be fully human. And we do this on the quest to more a perfect embodiment of love and justice.
The parable of Jesus invites us to move from the sense of anxiety and fear of the good that we think we might lose, and move into the dynamic investment in the now and in the future. Why? Because the faith of Jesus Christ is the call to surpass ourselves in a future state. The magnet of God's power bends us in an arc aimed at more perfect love and justice.
Dear friends, we are invited to the dynamic investment of time today. Let us not in fear, freeze-frame what we might revere as the "good 'ol days;" let us be investors in real time, continuous time. By doing so we conserve the good of the past into the present and future, even as we continue to work on what is yet unfinished in reaching the wonderful love and justice of Jesus Christ for all. Amen.
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