The Rev. Jennifer L. Adams- November 19, 2018 – Proper 28, Year A: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

You know how sometimes stories that are told in an effort to help us not be afraid, actually have the effect of making us more afraid?  Or at least they make us more confused than we were before we heard the story?  Well, I think that this parable might be an example of that phenomenon.   I hear it and I struggle with its message.  I wonder how is this at all in sinc with what I believe to be at the heart of the gospel?  And dang it, what about that poor guy who gets thrown into the outer darkness?

Which makes it two in a row from the gospel of Matthew (not that I’m counting.)  But remember that last week we heard the parable about the bridesmaids and their lamps and some had oil and some didn’t?  Well as you know if you were here last week, that whole thing left me with mixed feelings.  And here we are again!

Here’s what we’ve got:  Two of the people in this story did very, very well.  They took all that they had been given – one had been given five talents (which translates to approximately 2.5 million dollars in case you’re wondering), and the other was given two talents (1 million dollars) – and with all of those talents, they each made more, much more.  These two guys “traded” all they had, each invested wisely, and doubled what they had been given.

But the third guy, in an effort to not lose anything, hung on to the one talent he’d been given (half a million dollars to save you the math) and he did nothing with it, other than to protect it. Which to his credit (or not) he actually saw as doing something.  He didn’t want to suffer the consequences of having traded or invested and lost.  And so when the master came back, this third guy hadn’t doubled or earned anything, but neither had he lost anything.  He still had that one talent. And the first guy had ten.  And the second guy had four.

And the master praised the guys who doubled what they had been given.  “Well done, good and trustworthy slaves;” the master told them, “You have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’  But the poor guy who started the story and ended the story with one talent was thrown into the outer darkness.  And now maybe I’m still a little disappointed that the bridesmaids from a few verses back didn’t share their oil with each other, but again, I’m left thinking, “Matthew, what are you doing?”

But here’s the thing.  First of all, this isn’t really a parable about money. Or, better, it’s not only about money.  It’s a parable about all of us having been given gifts from the giver whom, for the sake of reminding us our context, we’ll call, “God.”

This isn’t really a parable about what we’ve “earned” or can “earn” but I don’t think parables ever are. Just notice that both the guys who doubled their talents– notice that all they did was “trade” or “invest” in something beyond themselves.  They didn’t necessarily work harder than the guy who had been given one talent. In fact the guy who protected his one talent might have been working very, very hard to do just that. I see him walking out to that pile of dirt everyday just to be sure the talent went untouched! And that in itself is work.  It’s just not productive, or creative or life giving work.  And really, one of the important truths about what the two “good and trustworthy” guys did was that as they invested, they let go of control of the outcome.   They had NO idea how this story was going to end.

And so I think there’s something at work here that has absolutely nothing to do with any of them.  And that’s part of the point of the parable too.  This isn’t about how money works in the world where there is risk and some do well and some don’t.  You know that this isn’t a story about how money works in the world when EVERYONE who invests doubles their investment.  Right?  This is a story about how gifts work in the grand scheme that is God’s.  And that grand scheme has been set up by the one who gives the gifts. When you read this parable about ten times (if you’re me and it takes you that many times) you see that the only real risk here is not investing the gifts at all.  In fact holding them tightly or burying them might actually be like living in outer darkness.  You alienate yourself when you do that.  You shut yourself off and end up spending your time and energy visiting the things you’ve buried.

Investing your gifts, on the other hand, sharing, trading your gifts (read: ‘yourself’) in something of meaning and potential is part of what it means to be alive.  And the key here is that you can’t lose. EVERYONE who invested, traded which is sort of how it goes – you need my gifts, I need yours – EVERYONE who traded doubled what they invested.  So hear this parable as a message of how when gifts are traded, invested, shared, in the scheme that is God’s, there is a guaranteed return. The gifts multiply.  For everyone.

In her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead, Brene Brown (who happens to be an Episcopalian and I like that) explains that the title ‘Daring Greatly’ comes from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt called “Citizenship in a Republic”, a speech he delivered in France in April of 1910.  Now I could have simply quoted the speech, but Brown’s book is a good one and her writing speaks to this challenge and so I want you to know it’s out there.  From Theodore Roosevelt, Brown quotes:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,

Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

At the heart of this parable there is a challenge and the challenge is simply to enter the arena with all that you have been given.  And to enter the arena with open hands – offering, investing, trading, sharing. We never know the outcome, but we always know the outcome.  As hard as I made it to get to this point (life hazard of mine) the grace in this parable is truly astounding. If your gifts of which each of us has so many, are invested, offered, traded, you can’t lose – in fact you, we are guaranteed to receive back 100% on top of what we gave.

Now it won’t feel like that every day, but this isn’t a parable about every day.  In fact the parable actually says that the master came back after “a long time.”  This is a parable about our whole lives, and probably even longer!  So don’t count by the minute, or the day or the week or the month.  This doesn’t work like the world – even in terms of scheduling.  This is a parable about something bigger to which we all contribute, something which we all build, and expand, and share simply by our participating in it, by our “daring greatly.”  This is a parable about the kingdom of God.  And it works differently than a lot of what we experience. The good news is that this does work differently than a lot of what we experience!

So what are you doing with the gifts that you’ve been given whatever they happen to be?  We all have them, lots of them!  And some of them are buried. And you know who you are and what they are – because odds are good, those buried gifts eat at you.  They long for the light because that’s where they’re meant to live.  So, if they’re buried, dig’m up!  Outer darkness is not the hope nor the desire of God for you, or anyone, or any part of anyone. “You are all children of light and children of the day,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “We are not of the night or of darkness.”

And if you don’t know what your gifts are, talk to people who can help you discern them. We are some of those people and often others can see your talents better than you can.  And if you feel like you’ve run out, because sometimes it feels that way, you haven’t; we can see them.  And so part of what we can do is name what we see, name what it is that we experience in each other.

We’ve all been given talents that together total in the gazillions; there is in the words of the master “an abundance” to be enjoyed.  So have no fear!  Or if you have it, keep going.  Don’t let it stop you.  Give with all that you have; give all that you have. And ultimately, allow yourself to trust.  To trust that the one who created all of this is still intimately, lovingly, creatively involved with the grand scheme.  And so you and everyone who offers themselves can prepare to receive more than you could possible ask for or even imagine.

Amen

The Rev. Jennifer Adams – Sermon preached on Sunday, October 1, 1017

Proper 16, Year A:  Exodus 17:1-7, Philippians 2:1-13, Matthew 21:23-32

In some ways this morning, we’re getting more of the same.  “Another Sunday, another parable,” you might be thinking.  And not only that but another parable about a field or a vineyard.  And not only another parable about a vineyard but about working in that vineyard. Remember last week’s parable where people were hired at all different times to go work in the field and then in a surprise ending that made many outraged, Jesus said that the owner paid them all the same wage no matter how many hours they’d put in. Because that that was how the kingdom worked.  Well now today, the parables itself is a little more obvious in terms of the ending, but the impact was actually the same – outrage.  And so before we go into the story, I want us to explore the setting a bit.

First of all there was really kind of a funny beginning to this gospel passage. Did you catch that?  Before we got to the point of the parable, Jesus entered the Temple, and as he entered, he was teaching people, which all seemed sort of unremarkable at first.  But before Jesus could even settle in, the chief priests and elders came to him and immediately asked him a somewhat accusatory question. And then Jesus immediately asked them a question back.  And then while Jesus stood waiting, the chief priests and elders huddled together, debated how to answer Jesus and finally decided that “We don’t know” was the best they could do. To which Jesus said something like, “Well if you’re not going to answer me then I’m not going to answer you.” And then he told them the parable.

So what was that all about?  There’s so much that doesn’t seem quite right in that. Where were the greeters when Jesus entered the Temple?  Where was the handshake?  The “good morning” or “good afternoon,” or the “nice to see you?”  What a rude welcome to a place of worship.  Before Jesus could even get his foot in the door they were confronting him.  And then while we’re at it, why was Jesus so indirect and sort of evasive in his response to their questioning of him?  It doesn’t exactly seem like the respectful dialogue or even reflective listening that one would expect from the Savior of the world.  It just seemed to go downhill so quickly on everyone’s part which is not particularly impressive if you ask me, considering that the players involved were religious leaders and the Christ himself.

It just doesn’t make sense. So let’s take another step back and see how we got here.

If we back up a few verses in Matthew, it helps a bit.  Because it turns out that the setting was already a hard one, harder than we’d know from just pulling this passage out by itself and reading its few verses.  Just a day or so before this interaction in the temple Jesus had entered into Jerusalem to shouts of “Hosanna!”  “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” Followers of Jesus had shouted as they waved branches of palm in the air.  Jesus was being hailed as king and the tensions around him had risen just about to the breaking point in Jerusalem so this parable’s actually told during the peak of the whole gospel story, the point at which Jesus had a large and significant following and when tensions were at their absolute highest.  And so the questions from religious leaders that day reflected those tensions which is why they were coming at him with such intensity and even a bit of a threat.

It also helps to know that the first thing that Jesus had done when he entered Jerusalem, the day before the one we heard about in today’s gospel, the first thing he’d done was to visit the temple. So today’s story is actually his second visit there. And so on that first visit, he might have been greeted, offered a handshake but then Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers while shouting quotes from Jeremiah who prophesied about the temple’s destruction. So it’s no surprise really that the greeters had run for cover when Jesus came back this time.  And it’s no surprise that the temple authorities didn’t roll out the red carpet in welcome.

And then to top it off the tensions that is (as if they needed topping) all of this took place around the Passover – so the city and the temple were packed – the Roman authorities were on high alert and the religious leaders were looking to put their best face forward. The religious leaders were prepared to serve their people but they were also trying very, very hard to make all appearances of being a calm and peaceful people so that they wouldn’t suffer at the hands of the secular authorities that ruled over them.

And so one of the things at the heart of this story is that the Temple leaders believed that they could not afford the kind of unrest that accompanied Jesus. The last thing they needed was someone who was being heralded as King turning over tables and stirring up the passions of the people, because the secular king who ruled over them would only react to that with force.  And so, the Temple leaders in all likelihood believed that they were in their actions, actually protecting their people.

So this moment in the gospel wasn’t Jesus sitting on a peaceful hillside telling a story.  And this wasn’t just a random day of worship on which a guest walked through the doors of the sanctuary. The stakes and tensions were very high before this passage even opened and so, the question that the priests and elders asked came in that context, “Just who do you think you are?”  There was a lot of pressure on these leaders so they wanted to know who had given this guy the right to come in and completely disrupt the temple scene during what was in their minds anyway, and for the sake of their people, the worst possible time for something like that to happen.

And so they asked Jesus, “By whose authority are you doing all of this?” and then Jesus did what Jesus had been doing all along; and (just for the record) he had learned this method from the chief priests and elders themselves.  He responded to their question with more questions.

And when the leaders responded, “Well, we don’t know.” Jesus told them a story:

A man had two sons and he went to both of them and told them to go work in the fields.  And the first son said he wouldn’t go, but then later he changed his mind and did go and work.  The second son, however, told his father that he would go into the fields but he never did.  “So which of these two sons,” Jesus asked them, “did the will of their father?”

And unlike some parables, this one had an easy answer. “The first one,” they said. Which is obvious, right?  It wasn’t what each son said that had mattered it was each son eventually did that mattered. And thank goodness they answered that way, because maybe for a moment or two there was some relief on the scene.  And maybe this rebellious, so-called Messiah would key it down for a while and at least let them get through the week.

But Jesus wasn’t done yet, because his role wasn’t just to relieve tensions, it was to bring about a larger scale transformation and that’s a huge part of this story.   Jesus pressed on with the already uncomfortable conversation and he did it with a direct hit  –  he told the chief priests and elders that they were actually the second brother in the story.  They were the brother who “was not helping things,” the one whom nobody wanted to be.  Right to their faces, Jesus told the chief priests and elders that they were the ones who said the right things, but weren’t actually doing the work that God was asking them to do.

And then Jesus added one final piece – he said that the tax collectors and prostitutes – the most outcast of the outcast – the most despised and least religious among them –  would go into heaven ahead of them (not instead of them, catch that – but ahead of them which was bad enough.)  And it was enough to send the chief priests and elders completely over the edge. And this whole exchange was probably enough – given everything else that was happening – to send Jesus to the cross.

And so this story is about a lot of things but I think primarily this is a story about how sometimes the Body of Christ needs to be that presence that agitates, that looks into the heart of a system that means well and pushes it over the edge, because the edges aren’t in the right places or they being used for the right purposes and are actually doing more harm than good.  The painful irony here is that the leaders of the Temple were so intent on protecting their people by saying and doing the “right things,” that they themselves had essentially become barriers to God’s grace. And so my heart breaks for them in this story too.

And if you haven’t yet made connections to today’s world, I can help with that.  Here’s just one example because there are so very many right now. It’s a parable for our day for sure.

The NFL of all organizations, led by many of its players and as of last week, some of its owners too has in some ways been turning over some tables in the temples of our society.  Tensions are, as you might have noticed, high.  Accusations and questions are being flung back and forth – in articles, on ESPN, in coffee houses, on twitter. . .

And “By what authority?” seems to be the question that rises to the top of the current shouting pile. By whose authority? The authority of the First Amendment?  The authority of the flag? What does that even mean? The authority of individual conscience, of a professional league, of the President?  And so then we have to ask what happens when very genuine, and (to give at least a majority of people involved the benefit of the doubt here,) what happens when very genuine, well-meaning responses to those questions clash and take us into the even deeper divides that we’re creating for ourselves?

Well either we continue to dig into those divides, or perhaps, we simply change the questions.  Which is what Jesus did in this passage.  Maybe the most productive (productive that is if we keep our eyes on the endgame of loving our neighbor) perhaps the most productive questions aren’t along the lines of “What time did you arrive in the field?” or “Who here has done more work or earned more rights?” Maybe the best questions aren’t along the lines that lead us only into shouting that my authority is bigger, stronger, faster – more holy, more right than yours is.

And so we need to shift.  And the shift itself is a doozy but helping that happen is a part of the calling to which we have been called. Just for the sake of another approach, let’s try some of these:  Why are you hurting? Why am I?  What are you afraid of? What scares me?  What is so meaningful to you that you risk your job, your life, the well-being of your family and take a knee in this very public arena?  What is so meaningful to you that you risk your job, your life, the well-being of your family by taking on a call to serve this country?  Why are we pretending the flag is the issue here?

My guess is that the answers to those kinds of questions if we answer them honestly don’t clash at all, nor do they divide us, just the opposite in fact. They might silence us temporarily because the answers to those kinds of questions come from a different and deeper place.  And just like in this gospel story, we like Jesus, have to die a certain kind of death in order to be willing to ask them, let alone to engage one another in listening to ourselves and others respond.  The answers themselves will change us.

And so for now like in this gospel story, we are living through days in which tables are being turned over, and some of them need to be.  We are struggling to engage in a context in which tensions are high and accusatory questions flung at every turn.  The good news is that while this is all so very hard, it’s not the worst thing that could happen to our temples.  Sometimes our role as people of faith is to allow the agitations that need to surface, to surface.  To name the barriers that hurt us and to name the ways in which we ourselves contribute systems that hurt others.

May we go into the vineyard today and in all the days that follow to do this work we have been given to do.

Amen.

The Rev. Jennifer Adams – Sermon preached on Sunday, August 27, 1017 – Proper 16, Year A:  Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28

Well it’s good to be back after almost three weeks away.  I am so very grateful to return to a place and a people whom I love and with whom I get to do the ministry that is my, that is our work.  So thank you – I come back refreshed, more focused and I’m excited about the beginning of a new program year here at Grace.  I’m also very much looking forward to the next steps in all of the various projects – from organ to parking to program to properties to people, we are sort of a project too – through which life and grace are unfolding here.

But before we move forward, I want to reflect a bit with you on the past few weeks, most of which I spent in Scotland and some of which I spent wrestling with what it means to be a person of Christian faith in this time and in this place that I call home.  And the first look back is a distant one.

As you approach the Abbey on the Isle of Iona you walk a path that has been walked by Christians since the 500’s.  That’s five-zero-zero meaning over 1500 years ago.  The Abbey was founded by St Columba who left Ireland during a time of immense religious struggles.  A time in which Christians were fighting among themselves (so note – this is not a new phenomenon.) Columba came to Iona because he was working out his role as learned and wise abbot and missionary, but he was also working out some personal stuff.  Columba was openly repentant and not proud that he himself had been a leader in a local battle over a book of psalms.  (You smile but it’s amazing what historically we have managed to fight over.)  This battle had actually left hundreds dead and that whole experience (to make a long story into an obvious understatement) left St Columba feeling as if faith had to be lived out different than that.

And so Columba left for Scotland with twelve other monks (a nice symbolic number there.)  And they settled on the island of Iona off Scotland’s west coast where they founded an Abbey and a community of faith.  And that Abbey has attracted pilgrims for centuries.  Since Columba’s day Iona has been a place that has birthed creative and at times mildly edgy expressions of faith – the Lindisfarne gospels were written/drawn on Iona and in their day were groundbreaking in their artistic expressions. The huge stone crosses that integrate Celtic design and animals (again pushing the edges) mark the landscape around the Abbey. Columba and his monks traveled throughout Scotland offering new expressions and new hope.  And through this whole experience, Columba himself became known not only as missionary but also as a diplomat.  Columba was absolutely committed to finding ways to remain rooted in Christian faith, and given his experience, to also being a voice and a presence for reconciliation in this world.

And so Iona has become known worldwide as a community through which people of faith are fed to work for justice and peace in this world.  The community there writes prayers and music and they offer daily services of morning and evening prayer.

Columba landed on Iona to step away and essentially to work out his place in an imperfect world, in an imperfect Church where the temptations toward violence were many, and the places where power met faith met politics met hope were tangled in sometimes truly grievous ways.  Columba landed on Iona having had an honest and first-hand experience of what it means to live in this world as a person of faith acknowledging that none of us can escape, nor are we necessarily meant to escape the tangle.  Christians from all different times and all different places have walked that path laid down by Columba and his friends.  From that Abbey and throughout the British Isles, and the world, Iona’s community has become known for their honest, prayerful, and compassionate approach to being faithful in the midst of very human struggles engaging the world in ways that have led and can lead to creative and compassionate expressions of what it means to be Christian in this time and in this place (whatever the time and place happen to be.)

“Who do you say that I am?” we heard Jesus ask today’s gospel passage.  And if we were to make a list of the top five Christian identity-shaping questions in all of Scripture this would be near the top, if not on the top of that short list.

And so while I was away, there were demonstrations by white supremacists and the covers of domestic, and I assure you, foreign newspapers pictured young men marching with torches in Virginia chanting horrendous threats of, “Jews will not replace us,” many of them claiming their Christian faith as their motivation and justification for their actions.  While I was away, the home of the Director of the LGBT Community Center in Jackson, Michigan was burned down in an act of arson.  That Director, named Nikki had recently led the passionate yet peaceful process of that City adopting a fair and humane non-discrimination ordinance. The arsonist is reported to have claimed his Christian faith as motivation and justification for his actions. And shortly after that, again bringing it closer to home, nooses were hung in a neighborhood in Muskegon making direct threats against the African Americans who call that place home. The group who was reported responsible, claim Christian faith as motivation and justification for such actions.

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked in the gospel today. It is as imperative as it ever was that we answer that question because the world, far away and very near by needs voices of compassion to speak out.  The path to Grace, Holland has “only” been tread for about one hundred and fifty years, but we stand with a long and deep community of faithful Christians for whom reconciliation, justice, creativity and compassion serve as a means by which we can answer Jesus’ question with love, love of self, love of neighbor, love of stranger, and love of enemy too.

Who do you say that I am?  Here are some thoughts for a response to the Christ:

You are the one who named the poor, the meek, the persecuted and the peacemakers as those who are blessed. You, Jesus, are the one who raised light not as threat, but as a hope, as a way, a merciful means by which darkness would be overcome, not spread.

You, Jesus, are the one who ate with outcasts and sinners, Jews and gentiles.  You yourself were a faithful Jewish man.

You are the one who pushed the religious edges of your day, healing on the Sabbath when religious law was inhibiting wholeness rather than providing it; you were the one who welcomed those who were ritually “unclean” because experiencing the presence and gifts of “the other” were and are a critical dimension of experiencing the kingdom you bring.

You are the one who invited all who were weary and heavy laden to come for rest.  The one who gave sight to the blind, helped the lame to walk, and set the prisoners free.

The one whose supremacy was inherently bound to the action of giving one’s life for a friend, giving one’s life for a stranger, and an enemy too.  The one who stood in the midst of the hatred and violence, abuses, inequalities, divisions of this world and by offering love, created holy ground for all.

Like Columba and so many others in our tradition, we can answer the question in today’s gospel in ways that breath hope and compassion and mercy into a world so very desperately in need of such grace.   Because of the way God set this whole thing up the coming of the kingdom is a participatory experience, meaning that we have a role to play in laying the path of faith in our time and in our place. And how we answer today’s question will determine the kinds of stones we lay. As we move forward, grace unfolding around and through us may our paths be strewn with compassion, mercy, justice, peace and among all things, love.

A prayer attributed to Columba:

O Lord, grant us that love which can never die… May we receive unquenchable light from you so that our darkness will be illuminated and the darkness of the world will be made less. Amen.