“Take the talent
from him, and give it to the one with ten talents. For 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.” The last time that I had
heard this passage read was a little over a year ago. I was working as a summer camp for the Diocese of Dallas out in
Gilmer, Texas. There was a youth in my
cabin by the name of Brian. Brian was
thirteen years old and stood six-foot-four.
One of his favorite pastimes was walking up to me and staring down at
the top of my head, usually when I was trying to get the cabin quiet for lights
out. He could be a little
intimidating. On Wednesday of that
summer camp, we were having Communion at the camp chapel, which was a cement
slab with brick supports for a roof, so you could get a nice cross breeze
through for when it was nearly one hundred degrees out.
At
that Communion service we read Matthew 25:14-29, just like we did here today,
and as we got to those lines about taking away from the poor and giving it to
the wealthy, Brian stood up. Brian
stood up, in the middle of worship, in the back of that cement chapel, towering
over his teenage colleagues. Brian
said, “You know, that doesn’t sound very Christian.”
“Not
very Christian? Of course it’s Christian!
Deacon Pam read it right out of the Bible! How much more Christian do you get than the Bible?” Brian’s speaking out like that started a
conversation between the campers and the priests and as they started to discuss
Brian’s take on this reading, and I started to wonder, “Is this really the
saying of the same Jesus that tells us, ‘Just as I have loved you, you also
should love one another (John 13:34)?’ and ‘Give to everyone who begs from you,
and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you (Matthew 5)?’” Something just doesn’t seem right here.
But,
I don’t think that in our passage today Jesus is giving us a mission statement
for outreach ministry. “From those who
have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” This isn’t an instruction on how to run the
soup kitchen or how to help with Interfaith Ministries of Hope. So just what is Jesus trying to get at
here? Well, if we take the shock of the
end of the passage and look over the beginning, we can start to see where this
is coming from. This parable is about a
master giving “talents” to his slaves while the master is away on a journey.
And some of the slaves engaged in profitable work with. And for them, when the Master returned, he
commanded them: “Enter into the joy.”
But there was that one slave who did no work. When the Master returned, the slave was judged, and was found
empty-handed, and had even the little he had taken from him. What’s worse is the verse that comes at the
very end of this section, which was left out of today’s reading, verse 30: “As
for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Jesus’
teaching seems clear: God, our Master, gives us talents so that we can carry
out God’s will, we can further the Master’s work, the kingdom of God. When the Master returns, our works will be
judged and we will be rewarded and punished based on how we live up to the
Master’s expectations.
The return of the Master is the same issue that Zephaniah wrote about, six hundred years before Jesus taught about it. Zephaniah, remember him? We don’t hear a whole lot from Zephaniah, but his book is only three chapters long, so we can get a good grip on his message within just this sermon without taking all day.
Let’s
look back at the beginning of his prophecy from today’s reading. He begins, “Be silent before the Lord
God!” The Hebrew word for “be silent”
is Has it sounds a lot like “hush,”
so we might read this verse as “Hussh! The day of the Lord is at hand!” “Ssh!
Pay attention! Something
important is about to happen!” And what
happens? Going on to verse 12,
Zephaniah writes, with a lot of poetic and metaphorical language: “At that time
I will search our Jerusalem with lamps,” but not just Jerusalem, the city
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea, but Jerusalem, the whole
collection of all God’s people, you and me, as a group and as individuals. On the Lord’s day, God will search us with
lamps. And not just “lamps,” like a
sixty watt bulb on the end-table, but like the lamp described in Psalm 119:105:
“Thy Word is like a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path.” On that day, God will examine Jerusalem,
that is, you and me, with lamps, that is according to God’s Word.
But
Zephaniah has more to say. Like Jesus
told us in the Gospel reading, the Master punished the servant who did nothing
with the Master’s gifts. Zephaniah has
the same assessment: God “will punish the people who rest complacently on their
dregs, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he
do harm.’” For those who knew God, but
would not act on it, God will give punishment—Just like the “lazy slave” in
Matthew. I think this goes for us
too. Jesus and Zephaniah tell us that
there is much danger in knowing the good news of God’s action in the world,
which we hear in the Bible lessons every Sunday, participate in by taking
Communion, and share in the miracles of daily life, and not showing forth any change
in ourselves or in the world, among our neighbors. Zephaniah is condemning a “functional atheism,” where someone
complacently acknowledges the existence of God, but does not act as though they
really believe in that God. Our faith
has strong implications on our relationships with those around us, and there is
danger in not following through on those implications.
And that danger
is a very real and very vivid one to Zephaniah. The rest of our reading from him tells us all about the
destruction that is to come on the Lord’s Day.
“The fire of God’s passion” he says will consume “the whole earth” in an
event so dramatic Hollywood producers have struggled to come up with something
more spectacular. One this day, “a
full, a terrible end God will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.” In his book titled Long Ago God Spoke,
William Holladay points out that this very passage has inspired a few hymns in
the history of the Christianity. One of
them is a medieval Roman Catholic hymn called Dies irae, and its words are this:
Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets’
warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes
burning!
O what fear man’s bosom rendeth
When from heav’n the Judge
descendeth,
On whose sentence all dependeth!
So what should I do? Both of these readings from Matthew and
Zephaniah tell us that the Lord will return someday, and I might be found
wanting! Well, I told you that since Zephaniah
is only three chapters long, that I would take you through the rest of the
book. So, let’s move on to chapter
two. Most of the chapter Zephaniah
spends condemning every place and people nearby: the Philistines, the Moabites,
the Ammonites, the Assyrians, everyone is a sinner deserving God’s wrath, but I
want to take a look at verse 3:
Seek
the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commandments;
Seek
righteousness, see humility;
Perhaps
you may be hidden on the day of the Lord’s wrath;
So it seems that
there’s a way out of the destruction prophesied on the Lord’s day. What can we
do? We can seek. We can seek righteousness and humility. Seek righteousness, to be in a right
relationship with God, to be in good standing.
Seek humility, to know who you are before God, as a creature standing
before the almighty Creator. Go. Seek.
This is just like the beginning of John
Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress. In his story, the main character, named
Christian, has left his family and home back in a city named Destruction. He tries to escape from Destruction, his
native home, and Christian meets a man named Evangelist. Christian tells Evangelist that he has been
reading a book that tells him to “Fly from the wrath to come,” and Christian
wants to know where he should fly
to. So, he asks Evangelist, “Whither
must I fly?” Evangelist, always being
the type to give Good directions, points across a very long distance and says,
“Do you see yonder Wicket-gate?”
Christian squints and strains to see, but says “No, I can’t see
it.” Well, Evangelist, still trying to
help, asks, “Do you see yonder shining light?”
Ah, Christian can see a light in the distance. Christian’s goal, as Evangelist tells him, is to follow the light
and to arrive at the gate. And that’s
Zephaniah’s message here, too. God will
search us out with lamps, the light of God’s Word. And we know God’s Word and,
if we seek, as Christian sought, by following the light, we will certainly “be
hidden on the Lord’s day” and arrive safely at the gates of Heaven.
So, let us seek God. Let us seek humility and righteousness. Let us realize the terrible reality of the
day of the Master’s return, and hope that our works will merit reward, and let
us hope that God will say to us “Enter into the joy of your master,” and hope
that God will not find our work like that of the lazy slave and say to us “As
for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Amen.
Now wait a
minute. “You know, that doesn’t sound
very Christian!”
That’s
right. This doesn’t seem Christian at
all! In fact, it’s not Jewish
either! God doesn’t want us to live in
terror and horror for the day of the Master’s return! We aren’t supposed to hope and hope that we’ve done enough to
work our way into heaven, so that “perhaps you may be hidden on day of the
Lord’s wrath.” That doesn’t sound like
Gospel. That doesn’t sound like “good
news” at all. In fact, this idea of
‘earning’ our way to heaven is called “justification by works,” or
“Pelagianism,” or, simply, heresy.
OK.
So I promised you that I would show you all of the book of Zephaniah but we’ve only seen two of the three
chapters. What’s left that I’ve been
hiding from you?
Chapter 3 verse
8 says:
“Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, for
the day when I arise as a witness.”
Hm.. I thought
God was going to arise as our judge, but here, God’s plan is not to take the
judge’s seat, but the witness stand.
And, God says:
“My decision is to gather the nations, to
assemble the kingdoms”
Hm. All of the nations. To the mind of the Old Testament writer, the
nations, in Hebrew the goyim, means
everyone who isn’t Jewish—everyone who is not part of “God’s chosen
people.” The whole world—everyone—will
be gathered on the day of the Lord, and what will happen?
Going on to verse nine, “at that time I
will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them (the
whole world) may call on the name of the Lord and serve God with one
accord.” God changes us. Going on,
“from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, my suppliants, my scattered ones, shall
bring my offering.” Beyond the rivers
of Ethiopia? Again, for someone living
at the same time as Zephaniah, Ethiopia is about as far as you can get
geographically from Jerusalem, as far away from God’s presence on earth. There’s Jerusalem, Sinai, Egypt, and then
Ethiopia. It’s a long, long way for the
ancient world. But, all the world, even
those who are far as you can think of from God, can come to God and can be
changed by God. But this isn’t a work,
this isn’t a thing we can do. This is a
thing that God does for us. God gathers
us together. God changes us. It’s not our own effort.
So, let’s finish up the book of Zephaniah,
moving on to chapter three, verse 11: “On that day [that is, the day of the
Lord] you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have
rebelled against me.” And then verse
13, God changes the people: “they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor
shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. Then they will make pasture and lie down, and no one shall make
them afraid.” And “the Lord has taken
away the judgments against you. You shall fear disaster no more.” No matter what, no matter if we are close to
God in Jerusalem or in a far off land, God promises that judgment against us
will be taken away. The whole rest of
the book, just a few more verses, has to do with destruction being taken from
us, with forgiveness for the wrong which we have done and the right which we have
not done. No matter what, no matter how
far off we are from God or how far off we feel we are from God, God will draw
us in. Away from shame and into
forgiveness. Away from judgment, and
into praise. That sounds like Good
News. That sounds like Gospel. That
sounds very Christian.
Let’s finish Zephaniah’s short book. The last verse, chapter 3, verse 20, God
says: “At that time, I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for
I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I
restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.” Draw near.
Draw near to God. Draw near to
the altar. Draw near to home.
“For,” as Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians, “for God has destined us not
for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died
for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.” Because of the death and resurrection of
Jesus, we can live with God on that day when our Master comes again. So what should we do until then? Draw near in faith, and take the bread and
the cup of the Lord’s Supper. Take it
as Eucharist. What I mean is, take it
as thanksgiving (in Greek eucharisia) for the gifts God has given
us in the cross. Let us remember and
give thanks for it.