Urgency

23rd Sunday after Pentecost
November 16, 2014

¹⁴For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them;  ¹⁵to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ¹⁶The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents.  ¹⁷In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.  ¹⁸But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.  ¹⁹After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.  ²⁰Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’  ²¹His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’  ²²And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’  ²³His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’  ²⁴Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; ²⁵so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’  ²⁶But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?  ²⁷Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.  ²⁸So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.  ²⁹For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  ³⁰As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ – Matthew 25:14-30

In the first half of the 20^th century there was a well-known radio newscaster by the name of Walter Winchell.* He was known for the sense of urgency he brought to his radio broadcasts, beginning each broadcast with the sound of a radio telegraph sounding furiously followed by his rapid-fire staccato reports, reportedly delivering up to 200 words per minute at his fastest. According to some reports, Winchell achieved a sense of urgency in his voice by drinking multiple glassfuls of water prior to each live broadcast. In case the content wasn’t enough to develop the urgency he wanted to come across, his, well, need to use the facilities would motivate him to speak quickly creating the urgent tone he was looking for. He didn’t want to raise anxiety or create fear and panic, but he wanted people to get a sense of the great importance and timeliness of what he had to say. With his behind-the-scenes trick he was able to communicate the utmost importance and urgency of the news he had to share.

At the heart of it, that level of urgency is behind today’s parable. I think Jesus tells this story to have the same effect as Winchell’s water drinking – to instill a sense of urgency about the kingdom of God.

Now the problem for us is that we usually hear the parable not from a place of urgency, but from a place of fear. We hear the parable as if we are the third servant, afraid of a capricious and frankly outright criminal master who reaps where he does not sow. We hear the threat of outer darkness and the weeping and gnashing of teeth as a threat of eternal punishment. We read the parable through the lens we have internalized from our culture and history whether we believe it or not, that the world was created perfect, we messed it up, and Jesus is either going to pull us out of it or we’ll end up with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But that reading instills fear, not urgency. To illustrate the difference we can look at the current Ebola outbreak. Urgency calls us to research cures and support aid work through organizations like Lutheran World Relief. But what we’ve seen a lot of instead is fear – irrational reactions to unscientific fears.We respond out of fear about big things that sound scary and beyond our control. And the fact of the matter is that like the kingdom of God some things are big and scary and out of our control. And yet, some things that are much more likely to affect us or even to kill us and over which we potentially have some control like heart disease or climate change, fail to create the level of urgency they deserve. Fear tends to cripple us or cause us to make destructive choices, whereas urgency might push us to engage in constructive work.

It seems to me that the parable illustrates for us the destructive nature of fear. We don’t know whether the third servant’s assessment of the master is accurate. But it doesn’t really matter, because he acts not in response to the master but in response to his own fear. And it cripples him. He can think of nothing to do in response except to bury this extremely large sum, thousands if not tens of thousands of today’s dollars..

How often do we respond to our lives with the same level of fear? By most accounts, the church today is facing a decline. And there’s a lot of fear out there about what the future will be. It motivates a lot of church growth literature, arguments about how best to save the church, or how best to attract new people. The problem is that is that we tend to respond out of fear. We’re afraid the institutions we’ve created won’t be there in the next generation. We’re afraid of the changes that might take place as the place and role of the church changes. We’re afraid perhaps because it parallels the ongoing changes that happen in our personal lives that leave us sometimes confused and fearful. And the problem is that fear ends up creating the opposite of constructive urgency.

So what is our alternative? I think the point of this parable is urgency, not fear. If we read it through the lens of our having broken a perfect world and doing our best to prove ourselves worthy of salvation rather than damnation then we end up stuck in a cycle of fear right along with the third servant. But what if we reorient ourselves to a different deeply Biblical lens in which God is breaking in on a broken and imperfect world to liberate, create, and establish a reign of justice and mercy?** And what if God cares so deeply about this broken world that nothing will get in the way. Jesus tells a story designed to instill in us the same urgency about the kingdom that grows out of a deep and self-sacrificial love for the world. This is not about our proving anything to the master but about the incredible importance of God’s transformational work to which we are invited to participate.

As we look at the story through this other lens, perhaps we see in the reaction of the first two slaves a joyful participation in the generosity of the master. Whether they share the same negative opinion of the third servant or not, they react to a generous opportunity to participate in what the master is doing. They take risks and double the investment. If they had some fear about what would happen, they have found a way to overcome it. The generosity of the gift creates in them an urgency to engage the work of the master.

So maybe the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth isn’t so much about finding ourselves thrown out of the kingdom, and more a way for Jesus to say that this inbreaking of God’s creation, liberation, and reign of justice and mercy is seriously important. Jesus’ way of saying, “Look, I know it’s hard but the work to which you are called, the use of your incredible abundance, is urgent. This work cannot wait! There are people still living in that outer darkness yet to be transformed by the inbreaking of the kingdom.” As we will hear next week in the parable that immediately follows this one, there are sick, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned people out there now who need to know the power and generosity of the kingdom. There is no time for fear.

So we as the church are called to step out boldly. And here’s the thing – none of the servants in the parable lost money, but risk, real risk, means we might. We might step out as the church and the institution as we know it might crumble. But the urgency of the reign of God calls us to that risk trusting that God’s work continues beyond our best institutions. We might take a risk as individuals and find that we fall flat on our face, but the urgency that comes from the sheer amazement at the generosity of the one who has blessed with abundance drives us forward. Jesus’ call to us is clear that our baptism instills in us that same deep sense of urgency and that same deep love for the world that calls Jesus to the cross and us to follow.

So this parable calls us to take a cue from Walter Winchell, drinking deeply of the waters of baptism, water which creates in us that urgency for the reign of God: an urgency that powers over our fear, an urgency that calls us to move boldly and quickly, an urgency that sweeps us up in the grand transformation of this world into the reign of God for us and for all who still wait in darkness.

*Thanks to the New England Synod Rostered Leaders text study for telling me about this wonderful story.
**The wording for this reorientation is drawn from a lecture by Brian McLaren at the New England Synod Bishop’s Convocation referencing his latest book, We Make the Road by Walking.

-Pastor Steven Wilco