Acts 16:6-12 "Listen"

         Let me begin by saying that I am not one who believes that God opens up a parking space for me on a crowded street when I am in a hurry, nor do I believe that God dictates my every move. You see, I like to think that God has more important things to worry about than whether I am late for my dentist appointment or if I take the high road or the low road on any given day.  I also believe that God has more important things to worry about even than that the Yankees are five games ahead of Boston, in spite of the fervent prayers of die-heard Red Sox fans.

I am definitely a believer in free will – and good pitching.  However, I also believe that God is still speaking in these crazy times we live in.  Moreover, I believe that God takes a deep and profound interest in the church that seeks to realize God’s dream for a world built on compassion and grounded in forgiveness, whose people have a soft spot in their hearts for the poor and the outcasts on the fringes of society. I likewise believe that, in ways I will never fully understand, the Spirit still nudges me – and the church – along the path, albeit circuitous at times, that will lead to the fulfillment of God’s dream – if only we will be open to its nudging as we muddle our way through life. 

The journey that led me here 13+ years ago to be your pastor is an example of what I mean.  Looking back on it, it was certainly a journey that came to its conclusion in a very roundabout way.  

You see, I was always a bit envious of many of my classmates when I was in seminary – the ones who were so directed and who had known that they had been called to ministry years before arriving at Yale Divinity School. It was as if they had been born with a cross and a clerical collar around their necks.  

I, on the other hand, came into this ministry business through the back door.  It all began when I traveled to New Haven, Connecticut, to visit a college roommate – arriving on Friday as an innocent guest and leaving on Sunday an enthusiastic prospective student.  And, no, I was not struck by a bolt of lightning there in the seminary quadrangle at the top of Prospect Street.  

However, I was struck by the fact that being at Yale would surely be far more exciting and fun than living at home in New Jersey, working as a secretary in the music department of the local college during the week and as a Howard Johnson’s waitress on the weekends – especially after spilling that large glass of soda down the front of one embarrassed teenage boy who had been trying so hard to impress his date.

Of course, I had no idea what I wanted to do at Yale Divinity School.  In fact, I nearly left after two years with a Master of Arts in religion degree, figuring that I could at least teach in a prep school.  

You see, to stay a third year and graduate with a Master of Divinity degree would require my working as a hospital chaplain for a while, which terrified me, as well as taking a preaching course – which terrified me even more.

I was not sure why at the time, but I stayed for that third year. It was one full of surprises for me. I ended up doing more hospital chaplaincy work than was called for - and enjoyed it - and I discovered that preaching was not as terrifying as I thought it would be.  

I became ordained and spent the next two years as the Protestant Chaplain at the University of Vermont before getting up the nerve to seek a church of my own.  That was when I found out that, even though I had been told for three years at Yale that being a woman in ministry was the greatest thing since sliced bread, that word had not reached most congregations yet.  

Back in those days, most women clergy were relegated to small rural churches that could not afford to call a man or multi-staffed churches that sought the appearance of political correctness before that was even a buzzword, but really envisioned their female assistant pastor as the one to run the Sunday School and preach on the lowest of the low Sundays - those directly following Christmas and Easter.

I could not do it.  No - I just could not do it, and so I returned to school for another master’s degree at the University of Minnesota, this one at the business school, in human resources where I concentrated in compensation and benefits.  After a year and a half, I was a veritable whizz at salary surveys.  

It was in Minneapolis that I met Joe again after seven years apart, got married, moved to Washington, DC, and worked first at a bank and later at a business that was the precursor to BJ’s and Sam’s Club.  That was also around the time that Heather was born – and Padraic not far behind – and we moved to Maine – and then came Tim – and then Joe and I were inevitably trying to figure out how to juggle home and work life.  

So I founded a preschool, so I could be with our kids more – and started doing guest preaching because I still enjoyed leading worship – and then I began doing interim ministry – and then chaplaincy work with senior citizens – and then finally I met with one search committee here that was disbanded and then a second one before that marvelous day in July when I led worship for all of you and waited downstairs with Joe in the Vestry until Rolf appeared to tell me that you had voted to call me as your pastor and teacher. 

And so here we are – together – and I cannot help marveling how God works in mysterious ways and how the Spirit guides us to people and places that were certainly not part of our best laid plans – if only we will listen and let ourselves be led.

So it was with the Apostle Paul in the passage we just heard.  Paul was gearing up for his second extended missionary trip.  Previously, around 46 CE, he and his sidekick Barnabas had traveled from Antioch to Cyprus, Perga, Paphos, Lystra, Iconium, and Derbe.  All along the way, this "bald-headed, bowlegged, strongly built man who was small in size, with meeting eyebrows, with a rather large nose" (at least that is how one non-Biblical narrative described him), all along the way Paulpreached the Good News of Jesus Christ, healed some sick folk, performed a miracle or two, got into a bunch of arguments, and was once nearly stoned to death.

On this second missionary journey, Paul’s intent was to take his team and re-visit the places he had been before.  “Let’s go back and visit all our friends in each of the towns where we preached the Word of God. Let’s see how they’re doing,” Paul had said to Barnabas.

 The Apostle’s plan was to re-engage the population with some of his first-rate passionate preaching and to shore up, if necessary, and, in general, strengthen the churches he had established the first time around.  And so Paul and Silas this time left Jerusalem and headed north.  

They traveled through Damascus to Antioch and then around to Tarsus.  From there they revisited Derbe and Lystra as planned.  They seemed to be doing a bang up job too.  We read in the Book of Acts that “day after day the congregations became stronger in faith and larger in size.”  

         Who could have asked for more?  One would have thought that God would be tickled pink! But apparently not!  I mean, Paul kept running into roadblocks as he attempted to push further into Asia where he was sure he was supposed to be going. After all, anywhere else would have been infiltrating strongholds of pagans and non-Jews.  

Eventually (and not according to plan) he ended up in Troas, a coastal city located on the Aegean Sea near the northern tip of Turkey's western coast.  It was the port where one would set sail for Greece and Philippi and therefore was a bridge of sorts between Asia and Europe.  It was the link between two cultures -  Jewish and Gentile.

It was there in Troas that something unexpected happened to Paul and his carefully laid out itinerary really went awry.  One night, as the Apostle was going over the next day’s schedule and route, he had a vision.  We do not know exactly what that vision entailed except that Paul remembered seeing a man on the far shore of the Aegean Sea, waving his arms as if to personally flag him down, and shouting loud enough that Paul could hear him above the wind and the waves and in spite of the distance, begging him to “Come over to Macedonia, and help us.”

Because of what had happened once to him on the road outside Damascus when he was struck temporarily blind and heard the voice of Jesus himself, Paul had reason to take visions seriously.  Immediately he switched gears and found himself with Silas on a boat that would take them from Troas to the island of Samothrace, and once refueled, onward to the city of Neapolis.  And from there they traveled to Philippi, which was a principal city in Macedonia. And in crossing over to Macedonia, the Good News of Jesus Christ was preached in Europe for the first time.  In the biggest surprise of all, Paul successfully announced the Gospel to the Gentiles.

 As Anglican pastor Tim Chesterton noted, “What on earth was Paul doing? As a young Jewish man he had gone to Jerusalem to be tutored by the famous rabbi Gamaliel, and he had learned a deep devotion to the law of Israel and the traditions of the Pharisees. 

According to those traditions, the Jews were to stay away from Gentiles, who were not God’s chosen people. But now Paul (found) himself in a city in the province of Macedonia, in what is now northern Greece – a city that was a Roman colony, a city where there were so few Jews that there wasn’t even a synagogue where they could gather for prayer. I wonder if he asked himself, ‘What am I doing here?’” 

Sometimes, you know, you do not get to do what you think you want to do.  Sometimes life disappoints you – or at least surprises you.  Paul thought he was called to preach to the Jews in Asia about Jesus the Christ but instead he ended up preaching to the non-Jews, the Gentiles, in Europe. 

 As a result, Christianity became more than a cult within Judaism.  Sometimes a new direction comes from what you thought was a dead end.  Sometimes when you thought everything had gone wrong, it really had not gone wrong at all.

As Presbyterian pastor John Lentz noted, what “a marvelous, holy thought to believe that the obstacle may be a blessing, that the job lay off may be a call to something new, the broken relationship may be just what you need…..Disappointment is a call to take stock and change direction. Next time you are awake in the dead of night, wondering what the next step is going to be – remember this story, new visions don’t come easily, they arise in the crucible of tension, of anxiety, of grief – choices mean doing “this” and not “that,” going “here” and not “there.”

Of course, you and I may not have visions like Paul.  Our lives may never be quite that dramatic.  However, do not ever think that the Spirit has passed us by.  You have hopes around which the Spirit swirls. You have dreams that the Spirit churns up inside of you.  You wrestle as Paul did with what you are supposed to be doing.  You too seek clarity in your life.  

It is the same with our church.  As a congregation, we have hopes for this place.  We have our dreams.  We should never think that the Spirit has passed us by. No - it is swirling and churning in these four walls as we discern where we are supposed to go and what we are supposed to be in the 21^stcentury, as we seek clarity about our mission as the Body of Christ here in Raymond. 

 Are you disappointed in our church?  Are you discouraged that more people do not seek us out on Sunday mornings? Is it a bummer for you that we did not have a burgeoning Sunday School this year? 

Remember what John Lentz wrote, “Disappointment is a call to take stock and change direction.” If you are disappointed, discouraged, feeling bummed out about our church, then it is time – not to turn away but rather to intentionally listen to the Spirit around here – and change direction.  It is the time to open our eyes and hears and heart to see and hear and discern where God is calling us as a congregation.  

Are we to be more involved in outreach and service?  Are we to share this space – this sanctuary even - more and more with the community? Are we to promote the spirituality of music and the arts?  Are we to be a safe place for young families – or a spiritual home for retirees? 

Intentional listening to the Spirit is the key – and that is not easy. As Lutheran pastor Janet Hunt pointed out, “We are all too busy. There are a thousand ways we can spend our days, our energies, our efforts. Choices abound. However, in this abundance of choices, what would it mean if we simply wondered how God is speaking in the midst of all of this?

·               Indeed, might we then find ourselves, like Paul, called to "Macedonia," (to new ministries that may seem unimaginable now)? 

·               What do you suppose would happen if we then simply 'set sail' and went, (committing ourselves to trying new things)? 

·               And what sorts of surprises might be waiting for us (if we do)? 

Someone said to me recently that she needed more guidance and concrete direction about new ministries for our church. Oh – if I were only the font of such wisdom and new ideas! Unfortunately, even as your pastor, I cannot be the only one listening for the Spirit. 

Actually, most particularly as your pastor, I cannot be the only one listening.  Ministries that will stick are better off coming from you than from me.  However, I can support you  - and I will - in not only coming up with new idea for ministry, but also in pursuing them. 

If you think the Spirit is nudging you, take a chance and listen. It may amount to nothing.  After all, some of our good ideas have not worked. The Gathering Space for seniors we tried a couple of years ago never gained traction.  Youth Group movies worked for a while, but certainly not long term.  We sense that a traditional weekly Sunday School may be outdated.  The thing is, however, that we will never know about a particular idea – or notion – or what we think may be a nudge of the Spirit - unless we try it. 

 I can tell you though that, as with Paul, new ideas frequently come about in the most surprising ways. Often they are first nurtured by a few brave advocates out of sight, under the radar. Frequently, they finally blossom out of necessity or out of someone’s interests and passions.  

Take our diverse music program.  Because our choir members are not able to make a weekly commitment (which could have been seen as such a negative), we have been able to host wonderful musicians who have enriched our ideas of what church music can be – from oboe to ukulele, violin to mandolin, vocalists to jazz guitar.  And Patrick has been able to focus our choir on a few big offerings – like Palm Sunday and Easter and our All Things Silent Night Advent vespers service. As a result, we are a stronger and more exciting place to be on Sunday mornings for those who want to be in church. 

And our free community friendship meals?  They grew out of an interest of Deborah and Arthur Lafond.  On a wing and a prayer, we hosted that first turkey dinner, never dreaming that over 50 people would attend – and volunteers would cheerfully step up to make it happen.  

I am convinced that is how God works – full of surprises and new directions and perfect paths forward gone awry.  It is like the old saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your best laid plans.” 

So - let’s be open to change. Let’s be open to trying something new. Let’s even be open to failure.  Let’s be open to listening to what the Spirit might be trying to tell us.  

As worship consultant Marcia McFee noted, “At a certain point in the creative process, we may rely too much on our preconceived ideas about how it will all turn out. Our egos get in the way of seeing the possibilities we could not have seen before. We have only a partial vision, but God is seeing all the parts. Paul’s listening to the “what’s next” for his journey led him to an unlikely (place and unimaginable ministry). Can we look and listen long enough to see differently?” 

         And so my challenge to you this morning is, when you leave this place, do not leave just thinking about your to do list for this afternoon.  Do not leave and put worship and God and ministry and this church away until next Sunday:  Out of sight, out of mind.  

Rather, as you make your way home and in the days ahead this week, take the time to wonder about what God has been saying to you in this hour of worship. What is it that you are supposed to take from this? What are you meant to learn?  In what new direction might you take our church?

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Exodus 20:8-11 "Rest"

         PLAY COLBERT INTERVIEW

         OK – we may not be able to recite all of the Ten Commandments either – though I suspect that most of us would do somewhat better than Congressman Westmoreland did in that interview.  However, regardless of how many of them we can spout off, we do know that they are essential to our faith and critical to our understanding of who God is and what is important to God.  

Of course, in practice, though we take most of the Ten as sacred commands, there are a few that – face it – we often rationalize as simply good upstanding suggestions.  I mean, you can hardly go through a day without hearing God’s name used inappropriately. Likewise, it is a rare person who has not at one time or another said in anger (if only under his or her breath), what my very young children used to refer to as “bad words”.  And coveting?  Well, in some ways, coveting keeps the economy humming along.  After all, if we lived our lives simply, what would happen to the GDP?

 Keeping the Sabbath – the number 4 commandment – is another one that is observed in the breach – if at all.  Soccer games, t-ball, voice lessons, grocery shopping: We have so many reasons to not make Sabbath-keeping a priority.  

Of course, it was not always so.  As early as the fourth century, when the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity as the imperial Roman religion, a law against working on Sunday was enacted. By the ninth century, Sunday was called the “Lord’s Day,” a sort of specifically Christian Sabbath. 

The Westminster Confession of 1648, read, “This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up THE WHOLE TIME in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.” Think Puritans.  Yikes!  

Much more recently, there were “blue laws”.  I remember when we first moved to Maine, most stores were closed on Sunday.  Not many years later, grocery stores were open, but the liquor aisle was literally roped off.  

And did you know that only in1985 did it become legal to sell housewares such as pots, pans, and washing machines on Sunday in Texas?  And only a handful of states still prohibit the selling or trading of automobiles on Sunday?

Over time, most of the trappings of Sabbath-keeping have dwindled to next to nothing. And so, for many of us today:  Soccer games, t-ball, voice lessons, grocery shopping. We have many reasons to notmake Sabbath-keeping a priority.  

Evangelical pastor Dean Courtier said it well:  “Perhaps you are thinking ‘I would love to rest but there is so much that needs to be done.’ Sometimes we are so busy we simply do not find the time to slow down, pause, or stop long enough to rest and listen to God. Yet, since time began, God has offered us all the opportunity to rest.” 

As Courtier pointed out, this Sabbath-keeping business goes back further than the blue laws, than the Westminster Confession, than Roman law, than even Moses lugging those two heavy stone tablets down from Mt. Sinai.  Sabbath-keeping goes all the way back to creation itself.

Remember the story in the Biblical book of Genesis? On the seventh day, God stepped back after expending all that creative energy used to bring the worlds into being. 

The author of Genesis makes a big point of telling us that God simply rested in the glory and beauty of it all – with the expectation that we who are made in the image of the Holy One would do the same. When you think of it that way, we really are hard-wired for Sabbath-keeping. 

You would hardly know it today though because we have twisted the meaning of Sabbath-keeping and shorted out those hard-wired circuits.  Sabbath-keeping has become an old-fashioned concept held on to by quaintly out-of-touch Baptists, Pentecostals, and other miscellaneous conservative Christian folk. Debates about Sabbath-keeping center around moralistic laws and discussions about whether or not a true Christian man or woman should be able to play cards or buy a bottle of liquor on Sundays.  

However, true Sabbath-keeping – Sabbath-honoring really - goes much deeper than that.  I agree with Biblical scholar and author Walter Brueggemann who writes that the Sabbath is not simply about keeping rules.  It is about wholeness and restoration.  It is about becoming a whole person and restoring not only your own soul, but that of the entire society.  

Brueggemann ties our difficulty with Sabbath-keeping to the consumerist culture in which we endure.  He points out that we live in a 24/7 society. We are encouraged in a million little ways to want more, own more, use more, eat more, and drink more – but, of course, are given no more time to make those dubious aims realizable.  

That being said, however, we have become amazingly good at living that way, much to our detriment. While researching her book entitled, “The Five Top Regrets of the Dying”, palliative care nurse Bonnie Ware interviewed hundreds of terminally and chronically ill people.  Here is what she reported:

• #1 regret of the dying: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me, my driven life, driven by others;
• the #2 regret of the dying: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard, which got in the way of my most important relationships and in my enjoying life.

How sad!  We can so easily keep our minds preoccupied with work, so that the listening to and caring for those we love is often done on autopilot.  We can keep our schedules so full with meetings and shopping and entertaining that – even in retirement, or maybe even more so in retirement – downtime is practically non-existent.  

We can keep our kids so occupied with so many activities that they need a day planner in elementary school. I remember when our son Paddy was in fifth grade. One Spring I asked him if he wanted to sign up for track or soccer or some other activity. I presumed that all children were just like his older sister, Heather, who wanted to be involved in everything.  However, Paddy looked me straight in the eye and said, “Mom, I just want to play after school.”  

That was a real wake up call for me as a parent! And so that Spring, Paddy and his friend Chris spent lazy afternoons with fishing gear and nets at the golf course in Cumberland, seeing what they could dredge up from the water hole – in addition to golf balls.

Brueggemann concludes, “Thus I have come to think that the fourth commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses … along with anxiety and violence.”

 In our go to, driven world, we tend to think of Sabbath-keeping as doing nothing, and doing nothing seems like such a wasteful – or at the least inefficient - way to use our precious time.  However, that could not be further from the truth. 

One blogger I read this week wrote, “Sabbath keeping is actually an active process of ceasing, resting, embracing God, and feasting on or celebrating the gifts that God has given us.  By keeping Sabbath, whether that be on Sundays, or other times during the week, we discover a new, but ancient way of honoring God and experiencing renewal.”  

Sabbath-keeping has nothing to do with doing nothing and everything to do with living fully and deeply.  As Brueggemann concluded, sabbath-keeping is intentionally resisting the 24/7, more, more, more culture in which we exist.  Instead, it is intentionally putting into place an alternative, an alternative that gives us permission, as God did at the very beginning, to rest in the glory and beauty and reverence of life itself. It is recognizing – and embracing - that we are hard-wired for Sabbath-keeping.  

         Yet, when we fail to rest, when we fail to keep the Sabbath on Sunday or even on some other day of the week, we do far more than burn ourselves out trying to keep up with our demanding, chattering lifestyle.  In the end, we misunderstand the God who calls us to rest, who calls us to be unhurried in our relationship with the Divine.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel reminds us of the Biblical understanding of Sabbath.  God did not rest because God was tired after all that creating. Sabbath is not the anti-climax of creation.  Itis the goal, the ending; it is the purpose of creation.  Sabbath is the climax of God’s work, not the point where God wandered off to snooze under one the of the big olives trees the Holy One had created.  No - Sabbath is an integral part of creation itself.  In fact, it is creation’s crowning glory.  

Sabbath is not for recovering, so you can go back and work or volunteer or schedule activities for your kids some more. Sabbath is for the sake of life itself. It is not an interlude but rather the apex of living.  As Herschel reminds us, “Sabbath is “the last day in God’s creation; the first day in God’s intention.” 

In the end, keeping the sabbath is a commandment that comes from our God of restoration. Restoring our relationship with God, with one another, with our own creative selves requires time to reconnect, time to celebrate and play, time to rest. 

As worship consultant Marcia McFee notes, “Not to do this sends a signal that what is on the to-do list right now is more important than our relationship (with God and one another, more important than creating) a sustainable rhythm for the long-haul of justice work.  (Not to keep Sabbath) will eventually rob us of the ability to engage in this creative process itself. (Sabbath) rest leads to dreaming and the cycle of creativity renews.”

Easy to say, right?  We all know that we would be kidding ourselves if we really thought that we could go from seven days filled with activities, pressure, stress, and more, more, more to one day – 24 hours - that we set aside for the purpose of reconnecting with God and renewing our creative energy for the work that Jesus calls us to – compassion, reconciliation, radical welcome and inclusion.  

But what if we set aside even just a few minutes?  What might that look like to you? What might it feel like?  But let’s not just speculate.  Let’s take those few minutes right now and keep the Sabbath – honor the Sabbath.  

 To do so, I invite you to simply listen to Christian author Frederick Buechner thoughts about the Sabbath.  Listen with your eyes closed if you are comfortable doing so because after this reading we are going to conclude this sermon time with several moments of silence to simply be, to simply experience keeping the Sabbath…..

“For Jews the Sabbath is the seventh day, Saturday, and for most Christians it is the first day, Sunday. In either case, it is a day set aside from the other six as the day God himself blessed and hallowed, ‘because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation’ (Genesis 2:3).

Banks and post offices are closed, and most businesses shut down. In some states you can't buy a drink, and the regular weekday newscasters are replaced by substitutes. Religiously inclined people may go to church. Otherwise life goes on much as always. The shopping malls are usually just as crowded as on any other day, many of the roads are even more so, and newspapers swell to grotesque proportions. Insofar as it is still treated as a day of rest, the rest is apt to consist of people knocking themselves out on tennis courts, golf courses, and hiking trails or doing things like mowing the lawn, painting the back porch, paying bills, or taking a long afternoon nap.

You think of God resting after the creation was finally all created. You think of the deep hush of it, like the hush between breakers at the beach. You think of the new creation itself resting—the gray squirrel ceasing to twitch and chatter, the kingfisher settling down on the branch by the pond, the man and the woman standing still in the garden. You think of God blessing this one day of the seven and hallowing it, making it holy.

The room is quiet. You're not feeling tired enough to sleep or energetic enough to go out. For the moment there is nowhere else you'd rather go, no one else you'd rather be. You feel at home in your body. You feel at peace in your mind. For no particular reason, you let the palms of your hands come together and close your eyes. Sometimes it is only when you happen to taste a crumb of it that you dimly realize what it is that you're so hungry for you can hardly bear it.

For a couple of moments now, keep and honor the Sabbath – simply be, with yourself and with God.

SILENCE…… Amen and Amen.

Matthew 25:24-30 "Risk"

         Theologian and Christian author Frederick Buechner defined a parable as “a little story with a big point.” He went on to say that “if you have to have it explained, don’t bother.”  That somewhat cynical explanation of those quick graphic stories Jesus told throughout his ministry may pertain to some of the parables, but the one we just read, “The Parable of the Talents”, well, I am not so sure it applies to that one.  

After all, preachers can raise up so many different perspectives for their congregations to reflect upon.  I mean, we could focus on what this vignette tells us about the kingdom of God. After all, most Biblical scholars agree that Jesus’ parables all elucidate some aspect of God’s realm, God’s dream for the world – be it the overwhelming need for compassion, the role of grace, the value of forgiveness and reconciliation, or how we treat the outcasts, the marginalized, and those whom society has chewed up and spat out.   

We could talk about scarcity and abundance – and whether we have chosen to approach life with our cup half-full or half-empty.  Or we could zero in on the significance of equality in this story – or the lack thereof.  After all, each of the three servants was given – seemingly randomly - differing amounts of money to guard and watch over.  

Then again, we could make pronouncements on the pros and cons of investing – and go headlong down the rabbit hole of speculating about the wisdom of having anything to do with the stock market these days, what with our unsettled and somewhat volatile economy.  Who will blink first – President Trump or Xi (Shee) Jin Ping?  Was Uber’s much anticipated IPO a success, a failure, or something in between?

Or - we could disregard the financial markets completely and discuss the development of our own personal gifts and talents for the glory of God – naively presuming that the English meaning of the word “talent” is identical to that in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke – which is untrue, by the way, but can so easily send us headlong down another rabbit hole, the one leading us to speculate just how much a monetary talent would be worth in today’s economy. 

Would it be the equivalent of a year’s salary for a day laborer in first century Palestine? And how much exactly would that be? Could a flat $5000. do it?  Were these talents that Jesus referred to in his story gold or silver? Is a talent just a shekel?  And so on and so on.  But, that’s right, we were going to disregard stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and compound interest.

OK then:  We could debate the final outcome for the servant who buried the money allotted to him and argue whether or not the master’s decision to toss him into eternal darkness was really all that fair – given the circumstances.  After all, the misguided servant did not squander it on the newest iphone or binge on gourmet dinners and expensive wine or hightail it to the mall for an all-night Black Friday shopping spree.  He just put it in an envelope and kept it safe under his mattress. What is not to like about that?

We cannot be completely sure what single point Jesus wanted to make when he told this story to the assembled crowd hanging on his every word.  All we really know is that an unnamed master was going on a long journey and decided to leave his property and belongings with three trustworthy servants.  

One servant got a lot of money – five talents.  One got a fair amount of money – two talents. One got just enough to get by – one talent.  The five talent and two talent fellows thumbed their noses at the unpredictable rises and dips on the New York Stock Exchange and figured that you have to spend money to make money – and they both doubled their assets by the time the master returned.  He was tickled pink at their success.  

The one talent guy took a different approach. He was more conservative and safely slept on his talent every night that the master was gone – and checked each morning to see that it was still there – because he was afraid that he might someday find it missing.   

I suspect that this one talent guy presumed the master would be pleased that he had neither unwisely spent a dime nor lost a penny.  How surprised he must have been then when he received not kudos but a real haranguing! The master called him all sorts of nasty names – bad, lazy, short-sighted, fearful.  

Not only that, but his fate was sealed.  He was kicked out into the darkness, the Gospel writer tells us, there to pass presumably all of eternity helplessly crying and gnashing or grinding his teeth!  Yikes – and we thought that controlled, conventional, middle-of-the-road, don’t rock the boat, thoughtful management of our resources was a plus!  After all, as Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote, “What’s so wrong with being cautious? Discretion and deliberateness are virtues, not vices.” 

And maybe they are a plus in the stock market.  You know what they say:  “The rule is to buy low, sell high,” “Let it ride …”, You need to be in it for the long haul…”,

“It’s not timing the market that matters, but time in the market.” At least, that last one was what it was written on the white board in our financial planner’s office for a long time.

However, Brueggemann goes on to say,  “But with (the) third servant virtues become vices. Prudence and wariness easily become self-protectiveness and restraint. Inhibition turns to fear, and the servant ends up refusing the risk of trading in the marketplace.”  

Breuggemann is stating pretty emphatically that the same controlled, conventional, middle-of-the-road, don’t rock the boat, thoughtful management of our resourcesis far from a truism when it comes to being a Christian – or being the Christian church.  Being a follower of Jesus – or being part of the Body of Christ - calls fora wildly speculative attitude and perspective.   

Being the church in the 21^stcentury calls for living dangerously. Just as God went out on a limb and, in the beginning, created something out of nothing, so we too as a church are challenged to co-create with God in the same way – co-create new ministries that reflect changing needs, follow the Spirit on the sacred course Jesus sets out for us - even if we do not know exactly where it is leading us.  

In a word, we are challenged to risk – ourselves, our time, our possessions, the way we have always done things here in church.  We are called to risk – in our worship, in our music, in our programs, in our mission and outreach, even in how we use and share our building – or if we continue to have a building at all.  

I heard a story about a young man who was eager to become a paratrooper. He went to the local recruiting office and asked the enlisting officer what he could expect in the Airborne Division’s jump school. The recruiter, a former paratrooper himself, said the initial part of the training would take three weeks.

“The first week, we separate the men from the boys,” the recruiter soberly told the young man. The young man nodded eagerly.

The recruiter continued on the same serious note. “The second week, we separate the men from the fools.”  He then paused dramatically.

With great excitement the young man asked, “Sir, what happens in the third week?’

“The third week,” the recruiter explained with a smile, “”we teach the fools how to jump out of an airplane.”

And so it is for us as Christians, for us as the church.  The Apostle Paul even used those same words:  “We are fools for Christ’s sake.” In short, we are called to risk  - to be what others will call foolish – so that we can co-create a transformed world with God.

Worship consultant Marcia McFee put it this way, “God is involved in risk with us. With little evidence to the contrary, God keeps inviting humanity to strive for good, to help co-create a better world... even as we seem bent on doing the opposite,” on not rocking the boat, on being conventional, on continuing the way we have always done things.

You know, there are two ways we can live out our days in this church. We can waste them.  Heavens know there are a ton of things we can waste them on – outdated programs, burning out the same volunteers, cutting expenses over and over again.  You know the drill…. 

However, that is what T.S. Eliot in his play “Murder in the Cathedral”  labelled “partly living.”  "Throughout the years (the chorus sang) we have gone on living, living and partly living." It is a corollary of the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over with exactly the same result. 

 The alternative to wasting our days here in the church is risking them – risking them on our passions and on the things we really believe in, risking them on co-creating a better world with God, risking them on all that Jesus stood for – compassion, reconciliation, radical inclusion, a soft spot for the poor and the down-and-out.

As Biblical scholar John Buchanan noted when he interpreted this Parable of the Talents, “The point here is not really about doubling your money and accumulating wealth. It is about living….It is about taking risks. . . The greatest risk of all, it turns out, (he writes) is not to risk anything, not to care deeply and profoundly enough about anything to invest deeply, to give your heart away and in the process risk everything. The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is to play it safe, to live cautiously and prudently.”

Therein lies the tragedy of this parable for the one talent guy.  Here he was thinking that not risking, not taking chances, not rocking the boat was the way life should be!

Do you remember during Advent when we read about the angel who came to Mary and said to her, “Don’t be afraid.”  When it comes to why we choose – or choose not - to risk - that phrase is key.  In fact, it is really the foundational call in all of Scripture – from beginning to end.  “Fear not,” we hear over and over again.  Fear not; have faith instead!  

It is what God expected of Noah when the Holy One told him to build an ark and shelter the earth’s animals from the rain.  It is what God expected of Abraham when God told him both to leave home and, by the way, expect a that long-hoped for child would be born - even when he and Sarah were ready to trundle off to the retirement home. 

It is what God expected of Paul when he was blinded on the Road to Damascus, and his life was never the same.  And it is what God continues to expect of us – to live faithfully rather than fearfully, to risk rather than hide away.

That is the difference between the five and two talents guys and the one talent fellow in the parable.  The first two were willing to give faith a try.  The other one gave in to fear.

All of us – even today in a world of uncertainty where we are pressured from all sides to withdraw, to insulate ourselves, to build walls and protect our borders, to carry guns in case someone opens fire at Walmart, to take all that we can because someday there may not be enough – all of us – even today – here in the church – in spite of all the scary unpredictability that enshrouds us – we are called to be not people of fear but people of faith. God expects us to risk for the sake of God’s dream.

Marcia Mcfee put it this way, “Jump out and give things a try, break through the fear with steps toward a goal of creating a change. Think of the talents as grace... if we clutch too tightly to God’s abundant grace, believing it is scarce, we will constantly see lack all around instead of possibility and we will live with that fear and the fear will stymy us.” 

As we move forward as a church, knowing that change is inevitable if we are to survive, knowing that risk is a given, as we move forward, following where the Spirit leads, carving out a ministry that reflects the world’s needs and mirrors all that Jesus stood for, let’s hold tightly in our hearts these words written by a blogger I read this week:

Care more than others think is wise

Expect more than others think is possible.
Dream more than others think is practical.
Risk more than others think is safe.

         If we do those things – I trust that we will both survive and eventually thrive – as a

church community here in Raymond.