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Sermon: The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 13th November 2011
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30 am
Readings: Judges 4:1-10 Psalm 123 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Matthew 25:14-30
The Gospel readings at this time of the year come from Matthew’s section dealing with the coming of the Kingdom and judgement.
Today we have the parable of the talents. A talent is a large sum of money, equal to the wages of a day labourer for fifteen years. Precisely because of the wide circulation of this story, “talent” came into the English language in the Middle Ages as a term for God-given abilities, “gifts and graces”. The talents in this story refer to money.
Matthew interprets the parable as an allegory of the end times, rewrites it to serve that purpose and he inserts it into this context. Matthew uses the story to fill in the content of the nature of the Christian life as “waiting” for the end times. The meaning of being “good and faithful” is not mere correctness, passive waiting or strict obedience to clear instructions, but active responsibility that takes on initiative and risk. In the story, the master gives no instructions as to what is to be done with the money, so faithfulness is not merely obedience to directions. Each servant must decide how to use his time during the master’s absence. The teaching applies equally to us today as well, particularly as we consider our weekly contribution.
What Matthew presents is judgment and warnings on Christian discipleship to focus our attention toward the final victory of the kingdom of God.
No one picture can do justice to the reality to which the parable points. There are two types of pictures. In the first of these, the risen Christ is present with us throughout our pilgrimage and mission.
In a second picture, the living Christ is pictured in a different way that had already become traditional in early Christianity, that of the departure of Christ at the resurrection/ascension and his return at the end times. In the first picture, Christ continues to be present. In the second, Christ is absent from this world during the period between ascension and end times. Only this second picture can speak of a “return” of Christ. Only the first can speak of Christ’s “presence. Matthew supported both.
The tension between these two pictures must not be reduced to neat, manageable concepts, such that, Christ is now present “spiritually” but will return “physically”. Thus the inconsistent pictures are a theological advantage, pointing beyond each way of conceiving the lordship of Christ to the reality itself that cannot by one picture be represented. Matthew takes each way of talking about Christ’s lordship with utmost seriousness. To him Christ is both already present and Christ will come again. The Son of Man who comes in glory at the end is already present, not only in the high moments of church community life, but especially as the one who is met in the encounter with the poor and needy.
Did Matthew expect the end times to occur soon? Matthew repeats as his own conviction the message of the first Christian generation that the end would come in their own time. As the first century ended, Matthew’s view meant that the time of the end was closer than ever. Matthew states that the end is even nearer than previously thought.
The repeated references to “delay” represent the contrary view. Matthew’s point is that he and his community already lived in the time of the final tribulation. The days have been shortened, so the end will come soon and may come at any time.
Matthew’s conviction about the nearness of the end times is a pastoral concern for he wants Christians to be ready by using the intervening time responsibly to widen the boundaries of the Kingdom of God.
Matthew’s pictures, what do they say to us? S uch pictures can be understood as a confirmation of Jesus’ and Matthew’s radical beliefs encouraging us to live our own lives in faith in the one God whose kingdom is presently often hidden, but will ultimately prevail.
Matthew warns us that the end of the age has begun. To confess that the Christ has come and that he is Jesus of Nazareth is to say that there will be no further revelation until this same God who is revealed in the meekness and suffering love of Jesus is revealed at the end as the One and only God. Matthew was correct to link his pictures with his confession of Jesus as the Christ. Matthew’s pictures of the threat of false messiahs as the end approaches should not be heard in our time as specific predictions of deceitful figures to arise, but such pictures need not be discarded as outmoded apocalyptic baggage either. They can still speak to us of the urgent danger of accepting other values as ultimate and other means of redeeming our lives and the world than the way revealed in Jesus the Messiah .
As we live out our lives in these end times, we must take seriously how we live, how we use what talents we have been given so that when Jesus returns to receive our accounts, he will be able to say to each one of us;
“Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things … enter into the joy of your master.”
What has God entrusted to you and how is it being used for the kingdom of God, especially in this community?
This sermon composed using The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol VIII, Abingdon Press, Nashville. 1995