Sermon preached on the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, November 15, 2020 St. James Church, Florence, Italy

24th Sunday after Pentecost, November 15, 2020 

St. James Church, Florence, Italy

Proper 28, Year A + 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 + Psalm 123 + Matthew 25:14-30

The Ven. Walter Baer, preacher

"The Rich Man and His Three Slaves"

There is a story, you may have heard, about the revivalist preacher who happened to choose as his text one of those, not unlike the one for today, in which the fate of the wicked is described.  In his text the well-known "gnashing of teeth" was mentioned.  As he described in great detail this picture of the eternal agony, of the worm that never dies, the fire which is never quenched, and the gnashing of teeth, an old woman in the back of the church chirped up, "But preacher, I have no teeth".  The preacher's reply was "Teeth will be provided" .
 
Each year in the last Sundays of the Church year and the first Sundays of Advent, we encounter images of the end time, images of crisis, of choice.
 
These end-times images have been the ground for fruitful and fruitless speculation since before the time of Jesus, first in Jewish apocalyptic, and since the time of the early church in Christian apocalyptic speculation. 
 
Our Epistle reading from 1 Thessalonians is a part of a series of readings from that earliest of New Testament writings, dealing with the return of Christ. Some texts from this Epistle have come to be used to create such ideas of the “rapture”, which is a concept foreign to Holy Scripture. In the 19th century the Anglo-Irish preacher A.N. Darby created a schema known as dispensationalism, which claims to plot out the end-times with world events, such as the rise of a new Roman empire, the reestablishment of Israel,  the rapture, and other ideas that have gained immense popularity in English-speaking evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. 
 
Many, many revivalist sermons deal with these themes, including the gnashing of teeth.
 
The historic church in its wisdom has always been very modest in its handling of this sensitive topic and restricted itself in the creeds to a few short phrases, such as we say in the Nicene Creed: 
 
“He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. “
and,
“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. “
 
This year in the last Sundays of the church year, we are provided with three parables of Jesus which deal with his return. Last Sunday we heard the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, today we hear the parable of the talents, next week we hear parable of the separation of the sheep and the goats.
 
Today’s parable is about a wealthy man, who divided his immense wealth among his three slaves. A “talent” is an ancient middle-eastern  unit of money. It represented what an average laborer might earn over the course of entire lifetime.
 
The English word “talent,” meaning a skill or natural ability, is actually derived from this parable and has made its way into various European languages. The idea is that the master distributes innate skills in differing amounts to different people, and that they are judged by how they used these God-given talents. This interpretation is but one, and perhaps not the best interpretation of this parable.
 
Another interpretation, which in fact was very popular among Puritan preachers at the time of the rise of Capitalism, was that God judges us by how we use our money and how we invest our money. Misuse of money, misuse of investment opportunities, are to be severely judged by society. Poverty became a stigma of individual human failing, and eternal punishment a just reward. This notion is foreign to Jesus and to Jewish or Christian understanding of the use of money. The mode of accruing wealth as depicted in the parable is contrary to Jewish and early Christian understandings, where increases in wealth were always about casting many others into poverty, and the paying of interest or usury were prohibited by both Jews and Christians.
 
However, a close reading of the parable reveals some interesting things. First of all, a parable is not an allegory. There is rarely a one-to-one correspondence of things in the parable to a particular teaching. Rather a parable opens up a different reality to us. Jesus uses parables to reveal the kingdom of God and kingdom values to us.
 
In this parable, there are some things that are sometimes missed. The rich man is incredibly generous. He has entrusted his entire wealth to his slaves. Each receives a vast sum of property / money.
 
Yes, the rich man takes the abilities of his slaves into account. He is portrayed as wise and generous. 
 
The first two slaves get this, and in that security of the master’s trust, double the money initially provided. The third slave has a different image of the master, which causes him to not work with what the master has entrusted to him. The master’s anger with the third slave upon his return has mainly to do with the false image that the slave has created of the master.
 
The parable, in this reading, is about the generosity of God. This is often missed. God entrusts everything to us. And God does so with a loving and generous spirit. Some accept this, such as the first two servants. Others reject this and prefer to see God as harsh and miserly; such was the case with the third servant. His projection of this harshness is rewarded with a harsh end. 
 
When it comes to apocalyptic schemes, and end-time speculation, much like the three servants, the question is who is this God, with whom we are dealing? Is this a God of love and immense generosity, or a miserly God of judgmentalism and pettiness?
 
Thanks be to God, that Jesus reveals the God of Love, the God of immense generosity, the God who gives all to us.
 
Will we accept this? Do accept this God of Love, or do we substitute a lesser god, who dominates, who is petty, who is unjust. This is the question that is ever before us.
 
I believe the old revivalist preacher was right in his own way.  The agony of sin, the suffering for being dominated by other gods is indeed most horrendous.  Yes, there is much suffering there to be endured.  It is all true.  But thanks be to God that teeth will be provided to praise the God who delivers us evil, for his is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.