Sermon on Matthew 25:14-30

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’re in the process of reading through some of Jesus’ teachings to his disciples during Holy Week.

He was preparing them for his death, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew recorded these teachings to help early Jesus followers endure the violence and persecutions by the Roman Empire in the decades after his death, and we can learn from them as we wait for Jesus’ return at the end of time.

Today’s parable is part of a series that has to do with what people were doing while the person in charge was away: whether it was how they treated their coworkers, whether they prepared sufficiently for a delayed arrival, or whether they used the resources entrusted to them wisely.

Jesus was preparing the Church for how to wait for his return. Though the parables can get uncomfortable and even scary, they’re important, because we need to learn how to wait. Despite some things Jesus said that made it sound like he was going to return right away, it’s been two thousand years, and we’re still waiting.

However, today’s parable is tough and scary. What are we supposed to learn about waiting from this story?

The rich man sounds more like a mob boss than God. The description of the rich man—"a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed”—does not sound like someone I would want to work for, let alone a God I would want to worship.

And the punishment the rich man inflicted on the fearful third enslaved man was out of proportion, vindictive, and cruel.

So, why would Jesus tell a parable like this?

It sounds rather modern: you’re working for some less than ethical rich guy who wants you to create a ridiculous amount of value to appease him. Your worth only exists insofar as you earn money for the company. If you take the safe route instead of risking everything and getting lucky, then you’re fired.

But if the punishment for the third enslaved person sounded harsh, can you imagine what the rich man would have done if one of the workers had taken what he had given them and lost it all in bad investments?

Because this boss was all about results, not the humanity of his employees.

Though there are some legal protections in place for workers today, thankfully, people’s humanity is still all too often ignored for the sake of productivity.

That’s tough enough to survive at work—surely God isn’t like that boss?

No, the point of this parable is not that God is like the rich man. Far from it. God’s not an enslaver—God made us all free, and anything else dishonors God’s image in us.

God isn’t vindictive or cruel—God isn’t a petulant, entitled deity who throws tantrums when disobeyed. God is loving and merciful and just and patient.

Instead of making this parable into an allegory where the rich man is God, it might be helpful think of this parable more in the vein of Jesus’ teachings that say things like:

“Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?

Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11).

So, this parable would be something like, ‘if even this cruel, greedy enslaver can lavish resources and rewards, how much more will God?’

And “lavish” is the right word. The talents the rich man doled out are each worth about 15 years’ wages. In today’s currency, we’re talking millions of U.S. dollars! That’s more than most of us are ever likely to see at one time, let alone be entrusted with increasing.

If the rich man entrusted others with that much money, how much more will God entrust followers of Jesus with what is needed to help the Beloved Community flourish?

God isn’t like the rich man. God created and sustains you in love. You are safe in God’s love, because Jesus was willing to die for you out of love. It’s already done. There’s nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less.

So, you’re free to use what God has entrusted you with to love and serve your neighbor.

Money, yes, of course. Money makes the world go round, as they say. We can’t get very far in our society without some access to money. Money pays for the food Caring Hands feeds our neighbors with. Money keeps this beautiful historic building in good repair, with lights and heating and air conditioning—a space set aside for sacred gathering and hospitality. Money pays for a pastor (thank you!), an amazing pantry director and office manager, an incredibly talented pianist, and now support staff for our technology.

But God has entrusted us with a lot more than money.

Our modern understanding of the word “talent” comes from today’s parable. It shifted meaning from an amount of money to an ability or skill. God asks us to use our talents to bless the world around us.

And our God who created time asks us to use ours for our neighbor’s sake. Jesus was using these parables to prepare his disciples and future followers to wait well for his return. And that involves a lot of time. We still don’t know when he’ll return, but with God, chronos time (what we measure as chronological time in minutes, hours, and days) can become kairos time, or God time.

Kairos time operates differently. A week spent helping a friend recover from surgery can pass in an instant, lost in the love and care offered. Or a hug shared between people grieving the loss of a loved one can hold eternity. Sharing our time doesn’t have to involve a clock. It can be measured by the amount of God’s love demonstrated.

Waiting well for Jesus’ return doesn’t mean we have to fear that our cruel boss will find us lacking. It means that we can offer gratitude for what God has done for us (and it’s a lot) by embodying God’s love for the world through our time (chronos and kairos), talents, and treasure.

We have so much to be thankful for. Let’s share God’s abundance with the world.

Sermon on Matthew 25:1-13

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

A lot seems off about today’s parable. Despite labeling some bridesmaids as “wise” and some as “foolish,” their behavior wasn’t that different. All of them brought full lamps that would be sufficient if the groom arrived when expected. And all of them fell asleep while they waited—not very vigilant of them.

And when their moment arrived, some of them had thought to bring extra oil in case the groom was delayed, but others hadn’t. Those who were prepared refuse to share, which doesn’t seem to go along with many of Jesus’ other teachings. What happened to “love your neighbor as yourself”? Or “do to others as you would have them do to you”?

And then, the tardy groom not only refused to let in those bridesmaids whose only mistake was not having enough oil to last until the groom’s late arrival—he didn’t even acknowledge that he knew them! If this parable is alluding to the wedding feast of the Lamb, what happened to the images of abundance, grace, and hospitality that go with God’s table right before us?

This parable just seems so unfair!It’s a tough story that reeks of selfishness, judgment, and exclusion.

But let’s remind ourselves of another image of the Reign of God that we heard in the first reading last Sunday. These are selections from Revelation chapter 7:

9After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. ….

17for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
  and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
 and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

This is a picture of the abundance, inclusion, mercy, and joy that’s coming at the end of time. It’s by God’s grace that we participate in the wedding feast of the Lamb—now and in the future. It’s not anything we do that earns us our place—it’s what God does.

It’s hard not to fixate on the ending of our parable when some of the bridesmaids got locked out. But if you read the end of this parable and think to yourself, “what if that’s me?” remember this: God knows you and loves you.

In baptism, God made you part of God’s family forever. In communion, we’re united with the family of faith from all times and places. God’s table now and forever is open and abundant. There’s a place set for you. Do not fear.

So, when we release our fear, what can we receive from this parable?

There’s a common thread between this parable and the parables that bookend it. All three have to do with what people were doing while the person in charge was away: whether it was how they treated their coworkers, whether they prepared sufficiently for a delayed arrival, or whether they used the resources entrusted to them wisely.

Jesus was preparing his followers for a long wait. It’s been 2000 years, and he hasn’t come back yet. That’s a long time to wait. There’s a variety of possibilities for how to approach that waiting.

One wayis to try to expect Jesus to arrive at any moment. There are good things about this approach: there’s an urgency and a sense of hope. You can’t let yourself get complacent because he could come back any time. It’s taking seriously the commands to “keep awake.”

But there are some drawbacks. If you’re expecting Jesus to return next week, you’re probably not thinking about making lasting change in the world. A lot of the good Christians have done over the centuries has involved infrastructure and systems, as unglamorous as that sounds. If Jesus is coming back tomorrow, there’s no point in building hospitals or schools or creating programs that empower people to get out of poverty. With this approach, it can be possible to forget that there’s long-term work to be done while we wait.

The other end of that spectrum is getting complacent and acting like Jesus will never return. It does lend itself to long-term work, because if this is all there is, it’s up to us to make it better. But it’s hard to maintain momentum and urgency with this approach. Plus, it ignores large swathes of scripture and disregards the hope of the Reign of God being made complete.

In this parable, Jesus seems to be addressing the whole spectrum. On the one hand, his followers were going to need to bring extra oil. They were going to need to be prepared for the long haul.

On the other hand, he knew we would fall asleep—it’s hard to keep up momentum when what you were preparing for is delayed. So, he warned us to stay awake, to be prepared, that the moment of his return could be any time.

It’s good to be watchful, but what this parable emphasizes is how you prepare.

It’s not necessarily wrong to let our guard down sometimes. None of us can be prepared all the time, no matter what we tell ourselves.

So, we have to depend on each other. Have you ever sung in a choir or played a wind instrument in a group? To sustain a note longer than any one person could, you stagger breathe. One person takes a breath while everyone else holds the note. Then, the next person breathes. And the next, and the next. And the note continues. The work continues, even as we help each other take the rest we need.

2,000 years is far too long for anyone person to keep the work of the Reign of God going. But we keep the body of Christ going by supporting each other, encouraging each other, continuing on when someone needs a break.

If one or two bridesmaids had run out to the market to get more oil while the others rested, instead of them all falling asleep at once, perhaps they could have greeted the bridegroom together. The celebration could have been complete.

So, being prepared for Jesus’ return means loving our neighbors now—both in immediate acts of mercy and long-term systemic ways—and also resting so that we can continue this work for however long it takes for the Beloved Community to be made complete.

One ancestor in faith whoembodied this was Dorothy Day, and it’s her birthday today. She cofounded the Catholic Worker Movement, which has done immeasurable acts of mercy and justice in the world.

Here’s the postscript from her autobiography, The Long Loneliness. It illustrates so beautifully the way God inspired the movement with one small act of love after another, fueled by community.

“We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in.

We were just sitting there talking when lines of people began to form,
saying, ‘We need bread.’ We could not say, ‘Go, be thou filled.’ If there were six small loavesand a few fishes, we had to divide them.
There was always bread.

We were just sitting there talking and people moved in on us.
Let those who can take it, take it. Some moved out and that made room for more. And somehow the walls expanded.

We were just sitting there talking and someone said, ‘Let’s all go live on a farm.’It was as casual as all that, I often think. It just came about. It just happened…

It is not always easy to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of delight.

The most significant thing about The Catholic Worker is poverty, some say.The most significant thing is community, others say.
We are not alone anymore.

But the final word is love.
At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.

We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know him in the breaking of bread,
and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet
and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.”

God can work that way with us, too, if we let one small act of mercy follow another small act of compassion, feeding our neighbors, supporting each other’s rest so that God’s love is acted out through history.

Let God’s love fuel your lamp as we love our neighbors together in big and small ways until the Beloved Community is complete.

Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

All Saints Day is a mixed bag when it comes to church holy days.

Most holy days are celebratory: Christmas, Easter, Pentecost. We belted out “A Mighty Fortress” last week for Reformation. Some churches do a blessing of the animals to mark St. Francis Day. Even quieter festivals like Holy Trinity and Baptism of our Lord evoke a hopeful reverence.

And though Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are solemn, at least they’re decidedly so. There’s no question that they’resomber, weighty holy days.

But All Saints Day is, at the same time,joyful as we remember the great cloud of witnesses cheering us on and sad as we grieve those who are no longer with us physically. It’s a bittersweet holy day when we hold grief and hope together.

It comes right after the significant secular holiday Halloween. Amid the costumes and candy, there’s also an undercurrent of discomfort. It’s as much as the dominant culture in the US is willing toacknowledge death.

As we’ve moved tonursing our sick at the hospital instead of at home and having our deceased loved ones at funeral parlors instead of in our houses’parlors, our society has become increasingly uncomfortable with the realities of mortality.

There are good reasons why we outsource these parts of our lives and deaths, but now we can ignore the inevitable until the last possible moment, which makes it harder to process and accept.

We glorify youth, reject any sign of aging, and hide away sickness and death. At best, we dress up as zombies and ghouls once a year, making truth into make-believe.

But All Saints confronts us with the reality that we will all dieand we are never fully parted from our loved ones and all our ancestors in faith.

Those are challenging truths to confront at the same time.

The Beatitudes also are comprised of difficult truths to hold at the same time.

Based on how the world generally works—now and back then—we would expect Jesus’ blessings to go to rich people, powerful people, lucky people, ruthless people who are willing to take decisive action at others’ expense, and warriors who show strength through violence.

But that’s not what Jesus said. After Jesus had been going around curing people of all kinds of illnesses and pains and freeing them from demons, he felt compassion for those who were following him, and he sat down on a mountain to teach.

And instead of describing the hierarchy of society the way they understood it, he turned everything on its head, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are those who mourn…blessed are the meek…” and so on.

These are, of course, the types of people who were following Jesus around. People who were rich, powerful, fortunate, and ruthless aren’t as likely to feel the need for healing.

But the least, the last, and the lost? Those left behind by society—marginalized, stigmatized, ostracized? That’s exactly who felt compelled by Jesus’ message. That’s who Jesus was collecting—the nobodies.

But why would Jesus want to collect people like that?

He couldn’t become influential among the religious leaders with followers like that. He couldn’t gain political power with followers like that. He couldn’t build an army with followers like that.

But that’s exactly who he collected throughout his ministry. He got criticized for eating with tax collectors and sex workers and sinners—the nobodies of the first century.

He didn’t seek the favor of the influential or the charismatic or the well-resourced. He sought out the hurting, the heart-broken, the oppressed, and the down-trodden.

He didn’t make grand promises that they would get rich by following his investment plan or that they could manifest a better life by paying for his twelve-week course or that they could win friends and influence people if they read his book.

He welcomed people as they were and named them as blessed.

He did warn them, though, that if they followed him, they might be treated even worse by those in power. They might be persecuted, reviled, and spoken about negatively and untruthfully.

But, so were the prophets—ancestors in faith who God chose to speak difficult truths to God’s people, inviting them back into the way of life God gave them after freeing them from Egypt.

God doesn’t abide by the hierarchies we humanshonor. Instead, God turns them on their heads. After all, the “first will be last, and the last will be first.”

And those least, last, and lost people make up the great cloud of witnesses the writer of Hebrews talks about.

We celebrate All Saints Day today, and the word “saints” can evoke the “great” people of faith, the biblical heroes like Abraham and Moses and David and Mary and Mary Magdalene and Peter and Paul.

It can evoke the people the Roman Catholic Church has actually named  as saints,like St. Francis, St. Patrick, St. Oscar Romero, St. Joan of Arc, St. Theresa of Avila, and St. Teresa of Calcutta.

Or even non-official saints who we might view as personal heroes who accomplished great things or suffered unjust untimely deaths: Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Oskar Schindler, Matthew Shepard, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many others.

And those are great people to look up to and learn about and be inspired by.But the great cloud of witnesses is mostly comprised of the least, the last, and the lost—the nobodies of every age—the flawed and human people like us—those who feel poor in spirit, who are meek, who, on this All Saints Day, mourn.

Grief is another thing our culture doesn’t make much room for. We’re expected to get on with our lives, to move on, even after the most significant people in our lives die. It’s not fair. It’s not realistic. It’s not compassionate or kind. It’s downright inhumane and inhuman not to make space for grief, as uncomfortable as it can be.

On this mixed bag of a holy day, we’re allowed to mourn, and we’re blessed for it. We’re encouraged to remember also that our loved ones and all our ancestors in faith—the greats and the nobodies—are cheering us on as the cloud of witnesses.

I’d like to close with a reminder from one of those who have gone before us: Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish author who died in Auschwitz, who left us this beautiful reminder about grief and its capacity to heal:

“Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate.

“But if you do instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge — from which new sorrows will be born for others — then sorrow will never cease in this world. And if you have given sorrow the space it demands, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich.”

Today and always, may you be encouraged by the great cloud of blessed nobodiesas they cheer us on until we join them.