Proper 28 (A) + Invitation to dance + 11.16.14

"Behold the Joy of Jesus" by Lindena Robb
(http://pastorblog.cumcdebary.org/?p=1087)

M. Campbell-Langdell+

All Santos, Oxnard

(Judges 4:1-7, Ps. 123, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30)

If you didn’t already know, today’s parable will tell you one thing—Jesus would make a rotten money manager! I’m kidding of course, but look at the parable. Despite the fact that bankers are mentioned and thus there are obviously professionals who handle money around, this Lord divides huge amounts of money between his slaves or workers. One talent is fifteen years’ wages, so this is crazy money. And these are people who have no other official title which would lead you to believe that they can handle money. It’s kind of like leaving your life savings to your minor children to manage. What!? It’s actually kind of amazing how well two out of three of them do!
So if this parable isn’t really advice about managing money, what on earth is it about?

I would venture to say that one theme may be:

How well do you know God, really? Or is your image of God more likely one that you made up?

To a certain extent this is an impossible question to answer, but I think it is worth exploring.
In an email to the area clergy this week, Bishop Mary Glasspool shared the following:

“Last weekend, at the Awakening Soul Conference I attended at Lutheridge in Arden, North Carolina, Barbara Brown Taylor shared with us that she asked some of her friends of other faiths for their definition of spirituality. A Muslim woman, without hesitation, answered Barbara's request in this way: Spirituality is the active pursuit of the God you didn't make up. I love this definition and have been thinking about it ever since! [Continued Bishop Mary, saying:] so often and without meaning to, we create God in our own image … But God is God, and ultimately we don't get to say Who God is.”[1]

If Jesus is working on an over-arching theme here in this chapter of Matthew 25, one might say that the element in common between last week’s Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, this week’s parable of the Talents, and the following parable, the Judgment of the Nations, might be “knowing God.” At the end of the parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, the Bridegroom states that he “does not know” the foolish bridesmaids, who, note, acted out of fear by running off to fill their oil rather than trusting in the Bridegroom’s mercy. In today’s Parable of the Talents, the first slaves have a fairly straight-forward interaction with the master, saying, “Here’s what you gave me, and here’s what I did with it,” but the last one professes to “know” his master to be harsh, and hence does nothing. And lo and behold, his master does treat him harshly, after the others are warmly congratulated. And in the parable of the Judgment of the Nations the King says that a certain group clothed him and fed him and cared for him when sick and visited him in prison, and both groups ask when they saw him and cared for him in these ways, and he answers “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

So the theme of “knowing” God is very apparent in this part of Matthew. And there is another theme, at least in today’s parable and the judgment parable, wherein we see that God responds well to human mercy and to creativity and pro-activity.

Bishop Mary Glasspool went on in her letter to point out that many folks take the readings about the end-times, such as today’s reading from 1^st Thessalonians, to be a source of fear.[2] Sometimes we are so afraid of God’s judgment that we get paralyzed with fear. We might not show love as we ought, or we might hide the gifts that God has given us and entrusted us with out of fear of “getting it wrong.”
But this may be based on a false idea of God. I think that this gospel passage tells us that we can be co-creators with God when we let go of fear and just try to do kingdom work. If we hold on to mean-ness or fear, we will be too limited to grow. And I don’t know if God will punish us, I trust that God is actually bigger than that. But I think that our own actions will lead to us not thriving until we align our wills with God and trust in God.

Bishop Mary suggests that instead of being fearful, which leads us to passive inaction, we must be creative. And I see that in today’s gospel – the slaves who are given five and two talents are able to produce abundance with what they are given. I think this goes beyond just “using the gifts God has given you” as we might traditionally read this parable. I also think it means that we endeavor to live, not in fear, but in the joy of the Lord.

You might ask me what you gain in giving up your fear—I acknowledge this is a risky prospect—moving forward with the life God gave you and not hiding inside. But based on what I have learned in recent weeks when I have seen how depression can twist inside a person, and can make you feel alienated from God, I would say that the bigger risk is to hold on to your fear.  God is always there when we reach out to God. But fear makes you feel so distant from God and others that you can only feel it and not God’s love. Fear can even end up being self-destructive. Whereas when you reach out to others and to God for help in releasing the fear, you begin the process of co-creating with God, you build a better world for everyone.

In Anthony Duncan’s mystical book, entitled The Lord of the Dance: an Essay in Mysticism (Sun Chalice Books, 1996), one of the closing chapters suggests that God feels that we take ourselves too seriously. God wants to invite us into a dance. God does not wish to punish us but to be co-dancers, co-creators with us and with the whole earth, so that we can all be in perfect harmony with God.

At first, reading this, the work of a modern mystic and not a scriptural piece, I wondered. Is this true? How does it match up with the fearful images we have that we have taken from scripture about Jesus’ return and God’s judgment? Those of you who have been reading the Daily Office readings lately as a part of your private devotion have probably noticed that we just completed a slew of judgment passages in the book of Revelation. What to do with the image of a God who might judge harshly? Who might do violence?

And then a wise person pointed out to me that I must notice a theme in the book of Revelation, which is that the book moves from fear and violence to worship. An oppressed people dreams first in the violence they are already experiencing as persecuted Christians (because that’s what the life of the early church was) and then, as they begin to grow closer to a true image of God, it all becomes worship.

It all becomes worship. It all becomes dance. Let us lift our hearts in worship and raise our voices in praise of the God we didn’t make up, of the Almighty and Loving Creator who invites us to cast off forever our fears; our pre-conceptions about who “He” is, and step into the dance!

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[1] “Volume IV, Number 20: An Unofficial Letter from Bishop Suffragan Mary D. Glasspool” (November 14, 2014).

[2] Ibid.