33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle A 22-23

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31 | 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6 | Matthew 25:14-30

Grant us, we pray, oh, Lord our God, the constant gladness of being devoted to you, for it is full and lasting happiness to serve with constancy the author of all that is good. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

As I’ve mentioned often to you, we’re at the very end of a church year. In other words, we’re finishing up a whole reflection on this beautiful gospel of Matthew, and as we get closer to the end, we’re focusing on what should be the impact of this work, what should be happening within us. If we paid attention, if we’ve opened our hearts to the mystery of what this man, Matthew, is trying to share with us, we’ll come to understanding something, and the understanding we’re looking for, it seems to me clearly, from this set of readings, is we’re looking carefully at who are we. Who are we as a people? Who are you? Who am I? What’s our essence?

And if I look at these set of readings, it’s interesting. You’ll see that the first one gives us an image, first of all, that there is this way that God speaks about who we are, when he says, “I want to marry you. I want to be with you. I want you to have a relationship of me of intimacy.” So what we know somehow is that we are children of our Father, and that Father wants a union with us that he compares to marriage, which means it goes well beyond parent to child but more person-to-person, God to us as an adult. So we are a people who are connected to God, married to him. Listen to the images that are in that first reading. We see a man who is married, and the man is married to a woman, and she is a great joy to him. She is the image of who we are to become, and so what does she do? She has two things that she does for her husband. She makes material. She creates warmth, comfort for him, and then also she reaches out to the poor and the needy. And so her praises, her song is not that it’s her body, her beauty, but it’s her actions, her motives, her intentions. She gives warmth, and she gives some kind of wonderful care, nurturing, a beautiful image of who God — when God marries us, what he’s expecting to see happen to us because of our union with him is we become more like him. We are children of our Father. We are made to be like him, and marriage is a beautiful image of the way in which he’d like us to imagine we have a relationship with him, one of intimacy. And out of that image comes a quality of warmth and service.

Then in the next reading, we see Paul talking about who we are also, and he’s talking about we’re not people of darkness. We’re not people of depression and darkness and sin. That’s not our nature. No, what we’re made for is light. We are made to be enlightened. So we have an image of we are basically children of our Father, but we’re called to be like Christ. Christ is the anointed one. What was he anointed with? A human being in one sense, filled so much with this anointing, enlightenment that he saw so much and understood so much as a human being, because he had within himself this incredible talent, this incredible gift that was that he could see his relationship with God, understand it and know that God was living inside of him. And everything that Jesus was able to do, he made clear, was not he alone who did it. It was his Father within him enabling him to do it, and so we see the other image is that we are children of the Father, but we’re also called to be like the Son. And the Son is this amazing figure that is filled with this capacity to heal and to bring life to people. And what is it based in? It’s based in the fact that God has promised to live within this figure Jesus to such an extent that Jesus is God. For us, it is like that but not the same. We don’t become God. We become like Jesus, anointed with what? Mysterious talent of bringing life to another person.

So then we go to the gospel, such a fascinating parable. One of the things I love about parables is how they are so filled with multiple layers of meaning. I can go back to a parable year after year after year and still come out with something I never saw before, but there’s something really beautiful about this particular parable about this relationship that we have with God that empowers us to be a source of life for the people around us. And that gift of indwelling presence is given to people in different levels and different ways. So let’s just imagine that there are three groups. Some groups of people are given all kinds of amazing gifts, and they realize it, and they have a lot of talent. And what do you think of — talent in this image is money. It’s a form of money. So what that might mean is — if I think about what is money, what does money give you? What does it do? Prestige, importance somewhat, but the real thing that money is, is energy. If you have unlimited funds and you want to do something, having that kind of energy is a resource that will achieve all kinds of things. So let’s just say talents, in the form of money, is energy. So this parable is about God sharing his presence, his energy in another human being, and to some, he gives them amazing talent. But the clear image is that this God figure in this parable is the owner who leaves his servants in charge of something, and the thing that he gives them is the energy to fulfill the obligation, and their obligation is to make it work for others. And so the one who receives a great deal of talent goes off and makes a great deal more. So let’s just say that he took the gifts that he had. He shares them with people, and as he shares them, they became even more. He became more gifted, more enlightened, and then the next one was similar. He has, let’s say, an average amount of talent. He has two talents. He does the same thing. He takes those two talents. He believes he has them. He knows he has them. They give him confidence, and he goes out and makes two more. Living the life that God has called him to be, he becomes more what that is — that very thing that he is intended to be. The more you have, the more is given to you, but then we get to the real issue of this parable. The real focus is this last person, who isn’t that talented. He didn’t get that much. I think it’s just fascinating. I never thought of it before, but it would be probably harder for this last person to believe that the talent was enough to be really successful, so he was really worried about whether or not he would be able to do whatever he was called to do to make this grow and become, which would be living it out, doing the things that God called him to do, saying the things that he was given as an insight to share. He didn’t believe in it. He didn’t believe they were that good perhaps, and he worried about something else. He worried about the way in which it might work, the way it might go, and what if he fails? So he was a fearful person. He thought, “Well, what if I get in trouble?” All of us that have gifts from God often worry about, if we have an insight that seems new and different, we’re afraid to speak it, because we’re liable to be looked at as some kind of crazy person or something, and we don’t have confidence in what’s just been given. So we sort of bury it. We just open — we don’t open our mouth when we aren’t invited to by God with an insight that is given to us to give to others. And so he buries it, and that’s the point. What happens, when you believe that God dwells in you, that you are his child, that you have been given this gift, and this gift is given to you to be given to other people, and when it comes to you to be given, you’ve doubted, because you’re afraid you’ll be ridiculed, or maybe you’ll be looked at as stupid or whatever?

I know that feeling. I think most of us know that feeling, a lack of confidence in the reality of who we are, who God has made us to be, who he has intended us to be, who he has empowered us to be. We doubt it. We don’t believe in it enough, and if you don’t believe in the gifts that you’ve been given, you lose them. That’s what the whole parable is really trying to say. Those who have been given something, and they believe that they’ve been given it, and they share it, they are the ones that are fulfilling the role that they’ve been given in this kingdom. But those who don’t, who doubt it, who are afraid, they bury it, and they don’t say anything. They keep all their insights, all their sense of things to themselves. So what are we learning? Well, one thing is clear, that this image of this man, who is a man who’d you first say, “Well, he’s afraid. He’s a fearful guy.” But at the same time, when God talks to — well, in the story, when the master calls him, he doesn’t call him fearful. He calls him lazy — lazy. “You lazy, worthless, wicked servant.” Lazy means you didn’t do your work. So what didn’t he do? Well, you say he didn’t share what he received, but the real work would have been receiving it. The work would have been, “How do I believe in the things that God has given me? How do I trust in those things? Where do I get my confidence?” And it’s in this deep, demanding question that we all have. Who am I, and what am I here for? That’s the big issue in this parable.

Do you really believe in what God has revealed in scripture, that we are these incredibly gifted people filled with God’s grace and power to be instruments of his healing and his enlightenment that he gives to other people? Do you really believe that? Because I don't know what you think about when you think about, “Who am I?” But some of us think about, well, it’s our feelings. That’s what makes us who we are, or our thoughts, that’s what makes us who we are, or our possessions or our bodies or our gender or the color of our skin or our possessions. All those things, is that who I am? No, not really. No, the work is asking the hardest, most profound question, and it goes back to something more than just who am I, but when you look at the world, you have to say, “What am I living in? A temporary place of examination and testing and finding out whether I’m worthy to be rewarded with the next place, or is it something much more subtle and much more exciting? Is it about being a part of the evolution, the enlightenment of myself, my circle of friends, the whole world?” That’s what I’m engaged in, and God has given everybody, depending on their destiny, a whole lot of power, a little bit of power, a little bit of insight. It doesn’t matter, but the point is, unless you believe that you’ve been given this gift, it evaporates. So the image at first doesn’t sound fair. If you’ve been given a lot, you’ll get more. If you weren’t given much, you won’t have anything. Well, it’s not the giving. It’s the receiving end of that that’s so important. If you don’t believe that you’re a gifted, life-giving figure in your circle of friends, you’re going to not be able to be, in the moment, confident enough to express things or just feel things for them. And we think we communicate primarily by words, but it’s so much more complicated. Our intention, when we’re with friends, our intention for whether we want — we’re competing with them or whether we’re wanting to empower them, those are things that are powerful communicators, and all God is saying is, “You’ve got that in you, but that’s not really you. Who you really are is who I created, and what you’re here for is what I gave you a destiny for, and believe in that and trust that.” When you do, then you’re filled, whether you are the most insightful person and wrote 50 books or whether you said something in a moment that changed someone’s life, it doesn’t matter. What matters is you understand it. You believe in it, and you’re living it. It’s a challenge that is probably at the heart of why we’re here, and it takes work, real homework to exam almost everything, especially yourself.

Father, your gifts are so abundant, and we often feel that we are in a relationship with you where you are judging us and wanting us to be more and more.And your desire is that we just be who we are meant to be.It’s a natural state, and we have to learn.We have to learn to be familiar with that incredibly wonderful experience of being a source of light for others.So bless us with this gift.It’s hard for us to grasp.We are fearful, and we are afraid of making mistakes.If we just trust more, we’d be fine.So give us that great gift of trust, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.