EXTREME CHRISTIANITY
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30
[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken.]
Before I begin this morning, I want to share with you a confession. I'm sick and tired of talking about money. I'm sick and tired of hearing about money. It seems to be all that is spoken about in the news media these days, and I wonder if perhaps you, also, are sick and tired of hearing about money. Maybe I say that because itís also the end, or almost the end (I donít know if Ann--our Stewardship Chair--would agree with me) of our stewardship process, when we as a community...as a family of faith...encourage each other to think about generosity and giving. It's also the time that our leaders think about how we're going to use our resources next year.
Some people, I think, feel like we talk too much about money in church. One of the most tragic stories that comes to me from time to time...not very often, maybe once or twice a story has come to my ear about somebody in the church who says, "I'm not coming. They talk too much about money there, and I can't give." I hate that story. I hate that story. It's a hard job--to talk about money. You need to pray for your leaders, because it's tough to figure out the right balance between inviting each other to a life of generosity and making people feel guilty. Because the fact is that of all the words recorded in the New Testament that are attributed to Jesus, a third of those have to do with the proper use of resources and money. So, you know, I don't like talking about money, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't
But today we're not going to talk about money...after that long preamble. We're not going to talk about money, despite this story that we have to deal with this morning: the parable of the talents. The lectionary, which is the set of assigned Bible passages to be read in worship on any given Sunday--this story seems like a tee shot for preachers, in the middle of stewardship season. We've finished our stewardship process, but most congregations are right in the middle of it. Because this story seems to be about money.
Also, second confession I want to make, about this text, at the risk of being a bit flip or maybe even slightly sacrilegious...I'm sick of this story, too. We're going to get it all out on the table this morning, right? I just want to be real with you. I mean, how many times have you heard this story? There may be some who are new to faith or new to the church and haven't heard this story, but most of us have heard it a gajillion times. It's old hat, and you know, one of the reasons I struggle with it is because there's the familiar interpretations of it--it's about money! And I think that there's also the temptation to interpret it in a somewhat abusive manner. For example, to say that this is a story that justifies Capitalism--and it's maybe a hard time to justify our capitalist system right now. Maybe we need the Bible to justify it....Maybe it's justifying the rich, justifying the notion that they deserve their riches, and the poor deserve to be poor. "Those who have little, whatever they have will be taken away." What's that about? It seems in a way a very cruel story if interpreted that way. It's a tricky story. And we do well not to treat it as too familiar, and apply obvious interpretations to it.
Another tricky thing about this story (and it may escape our first reading of it): the main character in this story--the man, the master, the rich guy--is a rather ambiguous character, if you haven't noticed. And the obvious interpretation of this parable holds that the main character, the master, is God, and we are the people to whom that master has entrusted valuable things--talents. One talent in those days was actually worth 15 years of an average laborer's wage. Fifteen years worth! But it escapes us if we don't look closely at this story, just how strange a character this is. We hear that the third slave in this story is afraid, he says, because, "I knew...."(he says this to the master...he says), "I knew you were a man who reaps where you did not sow, and gathers where you did not plant." That language implies that this is a person who gained his wealth--quite a lot of wealth--by somewhat unscrupulous means. So we might get the picture of a person, the main character of this story who is wearing a fancy Italian suit, and might have the breathy voice of Don Vito Corleone, calling in those first two servants and cupping his hand around their ear and saying (I can't do the voice, but you can imagine) "Well done." Well done. You done good. And so we can imagine why the third servant is so afraid of this guy. He was entrusted 15 years worth of wages. There is the prospect of a pair of cement shoes if they don't get it right, apparently.
And so we get a picture of a very extreme God, if this character stands in for God, who has unrealistically high expectations and will use any means necessary to get the job done. Is that God?
There are some interpreters of this parable who insist that the obvious meaning is wrong. Ched Meyers, who I actually admire a great deal--a Biblical scholar, interpreter of the book of Mark, wonderful guy, I actually met him several times--says that we're reading it all wrong, and that we cannot see this main character as God. And he says that the hero in this story is actually the one who buried the money in the ground as a protest against what would have been seen by the audience of Jesus, peasants and farmers mainly, as a rapacious system of capitalism and banking...his heroism was a thumbing of one's nose at that system. That's his interpretation of the parable. Now I happen to find that to be a bit of a stretch, preferring to go with the reformation guideline in interpreting Scripture, by going with the plain meaning of the text.
And so going with that way of interpreting the parable, here's what I think that itís saying to us. I think this story is not about money. I think it's what money stands for--that's what this story is about. I think it's a story about what it means to live a spiritual life, according to Jesus--what it means to be a follower of Christ. And that, if we are living that life, the basis for such a life is not security; rather, it consists of the necessity to take a profound risk with your life. We're given something, something incredibly valuable, which if weíre to use it properly, requires us to risk everything. It's about living the religious life...which is an inherently risky proposition.
So now what does that mean? Let's take a look at that, just for a moment. Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was a theologian in the 19th Century, was the first theologian of what we might call the school of liberal theology...we could say that Schleiermacher defined religion this way. He said, basically, that we have to define religion using the subject as the locus of religion. The locus of religion is within the human subject. And the essence of religion is a feeling. He says that, "Religion is a feeling of absolute dependence." Now I lift up Brother Friedrich because I'm not big on liberal theology. You may be surprised to hear that. Don't get me wrong, he has a lot of very good things to say--and is very much worth reading. But I'm not a fan of Schleiermacher because I think that that definition of religion seems too much like the taming of the religion of Jesus. Too much like the taming of religion for human purposes, by boiling it down to a feeling.
I guess you could say that I am a Kierkegaard man--some of you are not surprised to hear that. I think Kierkegaard had it right. Because you know what Kierkegaard says about religion? Religion is a preparation for jumping off a cliff. That would be a fair characterization of Kierkegaard. Did you know that that's why youíre here today? We're all preparing to take a leap of faith--a leap that takes us beyond human reason and requires us to take a profound risk with our life. Too much of religion--and Kierkegaard certainly saw this in his own time, he saw religion as a lap dog of culture. Too much of religion is a taming of the Sermon on the Mount--the radical message of Jesus Christ.
It reminds me of those lines written by Annie Dillard that are so often quoted in sermons, and I know I've quoted them before, too, but I'm going to share them again with you. This is what Annie Dillard writes about Christianity. She says, "Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke on Sunday mornings? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The church is our children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' hats, and straw hats, and velvet hats to church. We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. They should lash us to our pews." That's the religion of Jesus. It's not a feeling--it's a leap. Christian faith is about risking everything, even your own life. So we need to read this story with those words we heard earlier in the gospel echoing in our ears: "Those who would try to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life, for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it."
You know, as I get older, I have to begin admitting that I'm no longer part of youth culture. I may look like Doogie Howser, but I'm getting up there, and I feel like, you know, I'm becoming an old fogie. But I think that there's a lot that I can learn, and we can all learn, from the culture of young people, especially Generation X, and Y, and the Millennium Generation coming up. Interestingly, if you study a bit about that culture, and I think I'm right about this, especially about Generation X and Y...it's a culture that has somehow discovered how risk can make human beings come alive. It's interesting that youth culture refuses the security that is so often the obsession of their elders. You know, older folks are obsessed with security, I mean...look at our economic situation and see where that's gotten us, but that's another story.
Young people today seem to be into extreme things, and by extreme we mean things that bring them to the edge--things that are dangerous, and that enable them to deal with, and court, their own fear. Skiing, and surfing, and extreme skydiving. You've heard of the X-Games on ESPN. Itís playing with what you fear. And in a sense, coming alive by dealing with what we fear, and living on the edge. So my question this morning for us is: What would it mean to practice Extreme Christianity? What would it mean to be part of an extreme church?
One thing I'm sure that means is a refusal to live in fear. You'll notice that what's going on for this third servant, what is corrosive of his spiritual life--if this story is illustrative of the spiritual life--what's corrosive for him is his fear. "I was afraid." That, interestingly, I think, seems to be what is poisoning our economy today: people not trusting each other. Banks afraid to lend to other banks, institutions afraid to lend to other institutions, and itís freezing up our entire economic system. The words of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, are also echoing in our ears today...when he said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He said that in his first inaugural address, in 1933, about the economy. I re-read it this week. It's eerily applicable to our own time.
So, being part of an extreme church means refusing to live out of our fear, and a willingness to risk everything. That's the kind of Christianity that I want to be a part of. Did you know that you are part of a church, as reformed Christians, whose very essence we lose if we are motivated by self-preservation? If it seeks to preserve itself, it loses itself. In the words that you're going to be saying in a moment, from our own Book of Order, the church exists for mission. And in doing its mission, it's called even to place its own life on the line. It's called to risk its own life in order to achieve its mission. And if we don't do that, we cease to be the church.
I think of that as I also think about the questions that our leaders, the leaders of this church, face as we determine how to allocate resources next year. We had a fantastic stewardship year. But even the best one would mean that we're not going to have as many resources as we did even last year. So the question is, what are our values...what values will guide how we allocate resources? Are we going to allocate resources according to our own, institutional need for preservation, the need to preserve ourselves? Are we going to be like many families, who have decided to hunker down, only spend money on themselves, and forget about the needs of the world? Are we going to be a family that crosses our own giving to others off the list first thing? Is that who we are? Or are we going to preference those people who need our resources most, the poor--the people who are hungry in this community, the people most vulnerable in this community? Is that who we are? And I ask that you would pray for them--for our leaders--for us, as we make those decisions. But there I am, talking about money, when I said this story's not about money.
Here's a little twist here at the end. Because this is what I think the story is about. I think this is what Matthew has in mind as he writes this story for the community of Christians he's a part of. I think that the talents that those servants have been given--I think what they stand for...is faith...is faith in Christ. I think that Matthew means for us to understand that that is the most important thing, and the most valuable thing that anyone can possess--faith. Faith in Jesus Christ. And it's a very risky thing to possess. Sort of like the Don giving you a couple million bucks, and telling you not to disappoint him. That's what's at stake here. Something dangerous, and risky, and also the most valuable thing we can imagine being given.
And the risk that we're asked to take is sharing that faith, risking its investment in others. That would indeed have would have been a great risk for the people in Matthew's community. Many of them lost their lives by sharing their faith. But it's because they risked, because they spoke despite their fear, that faith multiplied.
It was risky for the earliest Christians. But even so, I think for this community it's in a way more difficult. Because it's easy to write a check. It's easy to think this story's about money. It's a lot harder to talk about our faith. How many of you talk about Jesus with other people? You know, you talk about Jesus, somebody wants to say, "OK. Iíll see you later! I've got a lunch appointment...." For many of us, that's quite an edgy thing--to talk about the E-word. Evangelism. To really talk about our faith. To risk someone thinking that youíre kind of foolish for it.
I'm going to end with a story that I got from one of the members of this congregation. I asked him in advance if I could share his name--Tom Gates. I was hanging out with Tom, and he told me this story about a year or so ago. He said, "Every year, I hang out with a bunch of friends from college, and we go skiing. It's a kind of annual ritual. And one year we were done with a hard day of skiing--it was a really good day, everyone was sort of tired, we had imbibed a bit, a few cocktails, everyone was feeling good at the dinner table...." And, as he told the story...at one point he hesitated before eating his food, before starting in on his food. And his friend, in a joking way, said, "For a minute there, I thought you were going to pray." And Tom said, "Well, what if I were? What if I were going to pray?" And they prayed together. I think you said that you even held hands. Wow. Guys holding hands. And it was an occasion to talk about faith, and what's real. Real life--and what matters most.
Matthew means to say to us that that--our faith--is the most valuable thing that we're given. This gospel. This gospel that demands everything from us. This dicey, tricky, risky gospel. And in receiving that, we're challenged not to bury it, not to relegate it to a feeling, but to share it, to invest it, to risk it, so that it can multiply.
May it be so.
Amen.
November 16 , 2008
The Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos
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