23rd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 28A

The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 28A November 16, 2014 Someone once said to me that we become like the God we adore. That statement springs to mind in contemplating this latest in the challenging parables of Jesus brought to us by Matthew’s gospel. Jesus tells the story of a master who is preparing to go away on a journey, but before he goes he entrusts a total of 8 talents to three of his slaves. To the first slave, he gives 5 talents, to the second 2 and to the third one. Then he goes away for a long time, and the first two slaves are hard at work to make more money for their master, but the third slave takes his one talent and buries it in the ground. When the master returns, he is very happy with the first two slaves and very angry with the third slave. What first strikes me in this parable is that the first two slaves and the third slave have different expectations/understanding of the master. The first two believe in a master that would empower them and appreciate them for going out and getting a good return on his money. The third slave expects the master to be “a harsh man, reaping where [he] did not sow, and gathering where [he] did not scatter seed” and the slave acts, accordingly, out of fear and buries his talent. Interestingly enough, there is little evidence in the parable that the master is really this way, although he does live into the slave’s expectations in the end. In fact, the evidence we have up to that point is that the master is, in fact, crazy generous with his money. 1 talent in that time is worth over 15 years of earnings for the average day laborer. So at the beginning of the parable, we see the master entrusting the three slaves with a total of 120 years worth of earnings. What we expect of a given situation, event, person, and even God very much determines our experience. “For some God is loving and kind like a benevolent grandparent. For others God is stern and judgmental. For some God is protective, for others God is always on the verge of anger. For some God is patient and long-suffering, while for others God is impatient and dour. These pictures shape not just how we think about God but how we actually experience so many events in our day to day life that we connect—often unconsciously—to God and our life of faith.” So, I invite you to take a few moments now (and this may be a process that you continue in the coming week) to reflect upon/pray about the question What God do you see? What God do you expect? Think about both your own positive and negative images of God. This week, I read a blog post by the Quaker writer Parker Palmer, who is one of my favorite spiritual writers of our day. In this blog post, Palmer writes about how he has been doing discernment work with a Quaker clearness committee. He has been reflecting on age and vocation, being mindful of how at 75 he is no longer able to do as much of it as quickly as he has done in the past. So he went to the clearness committee with the question, “What do I want to let go of and what do I want to hang onto?” (This seems to be the essential difference between the success of the first two slaves and the failure of the third in today’s parable. The first two let go of the master’s money to make more, and the third hangs onto it to keep it safe. The first way is an open-handed, trust and hope-filled way of being in the world. The second is a fearful, grasping way of being in the world.) But to continue Parker Palmer’s story, after he meets with the clearness committee, Palmer did not come out with an answer to the question, “What do I want to let go of and what do I want to hang onto?”. Instead, he came out with a slightly different and better question that made all the difference for him. “What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?” He writes, “I now see that ‘hanging on’ is a fearful, needy, and clingy way to be in the world. But looking for what I want to give myself to transforms everything. It’s taking me to a place where I find energy, abundance, trust, and new life.” So the second question I invite you to reflect upon today and in the coming week is “What in your life, in your faith, do you want to let go of, and what do you want to give yourself to?” i.David Lose at www.workingpreacher.org ii.http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-choice-of-hanging-on-or-giving-to/7029