24th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28A

24th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28A November 19, 2017 Back when I worked at the Stewpot Soup kitchen just prior to going to seminary, we had an annual event of handing out food for Thanksgiving dinners for people who were not able to provide it on their own. They would sign up ahead of time, so we would know how much food we needed to have on hand, and it was not uncommon for us to have over 100 families signed up. The lady who was over all the food services at Stewpot, a lady named Nancy Dennis, would usually start ringing her hands a week or so before the give out day, and she would go to the Executive Director (who was an Episcopal priest named Luther Ott), and she’d say to him, “Luther, we’re not going to have enough turkeys to give one to every family. There’s just no way. We’re going to have to do something different.” And Luther would say to her, “Now, Nancy, just wait. God gives us what God knows that we need in God’s time.” And Nancy would go away, still anxiously wondering what we were going to do. I watched this play out, year after year, in the three years, I worked at Stewpot. And it even became so regular that Luther began referring to it as “Nancy’s turkey dance.” And the amazing thing that happened year after year after year, is that usually just a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and unexpected pick-up truck or even 18 wheeler would pull into Stewpot’s driveway just in the nick of time delivering the number of turkeys that we needed. God gives us what God knows that we need in God’s time. In our parable for today, Jesus says that the Kingdom of heaven is like a man who prepares to go on a journey by giving his slaves varying degrees of wealth. To one slave, he gives 5 talents, to another he gives 3 talents, and to the third slave he gives one talent. Now remember that one talent is the equivalent of 15 years worth of wages for the average day laborer. So just take a moment and let the sheer abundance of what the man has given the slaves sink in. The first two take the money and multiply it accordingly, while the third takes his and buries his in the ground. When confronted by the man, the slave confesses: “I was afraid, so I went and hid it in the ground.” How much of our lives do we spend doing that? Doing the turkey dance? Being afraid that we are going to lose something valuable, so instead of using it, we hide it away where it is “safe.” (I can count on one hand the number of times I have used my “fine china” in the 13 years we have been married.) I think that, perhaps, there may be a better way to approach this conundrum. A few years ago, I read a blog post by Parker Palmer, who is a Quaker educator and writer. Palmer writes about a time of discernment in his life; around the time when he was 75, he began recognizing that he couldn’t do everything that he used to do and he couldn’t do things as fast as he used to. So he formulated a question that he wanted help in discernment with: “What do I want to let go of and what do I want to hang onto?” Palmer took this question to a Quaker Clearness Committee, whose role is to help an individual in listening and discernment by asking questions. And when Palmer came out of that committee meeting, he had a new realization. It was that he had been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking: ““What do I want to let go of and what do I want to hang onto?” he should be asking: ““What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?” He explains the difference saying, “I now see that ‘hanging on’ is a fearful, needy, and clinging 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.”i My invitation to you this week is this. Take some time listening to your life. Identify what are the areas in which you find yourself anxious or afraid? Remind yourself of the refrain from Nancy’s turkey dance: God gives you what God knows that you need in God’s time. And then consider: “What in your life, in your faith, do you want to let go of, and what do you want to give yourself to?” https://onbeing.org/blog/the-choice-of-hanging-on-or-giving-to/7029/