When we focus our hearts on Christ, we serve each other daily and bring forth the reign of Christ—and we do it together.

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Reign of Christ, Lectionary 34 A 
Texts: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Matthew 25:31-46; Ephesians 1:15-23

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Have we done enough?

This is the question that many of us might ask after we read this parable from Matthew’s Gospel.

But what if this is the wrong question for us to ask today.

If this parable is meant to warn us of divisive judgment, shame and guilt us for what we did not do, or create an us vs. them mentality about who did enough and who didn’t do enough, I don’t want anything to do with it.

If we turn our focus towards debating what is enough in the eyes of Christ, we begin walking down a very unstable path filled with judgement, fear, and hypocrisy.

Asking the question, “have we done enough?”  is not a question that comes from Christ. It is a question rooted in the oppressive “pull yourself up from your boot straps” language that we know too well.

When Christ gathers the nations together, Christ isn’t asking us to bring our laundry list of good works to prove that we have done enough. Christ is gathering us together to remind us where the Triune God will be found.

This year has been a hard year. There is no way around that. We are tired and weary. We have found ourselves dropping to our knees and asking, “God, are you with us or not?”

This is the question we ask God today and the question we have been asking God for months.

Today and every day, we celebrate the reign of Christ as we proclaim that the Triune God is leading us and working through us. That the reign of Christ is more powerful than any human institution that we have created. That everything that divides us becomes secondary to the fact that we are all God’s beloved children and redeemed by the one who lived and served among us. God, who in the form of Christ died on the cross and was resurrected into eternal life so that we may hope in a future of reconciliation. And hope that the reign of Christ will break into our midst so we can be the community that God calls us to be. 

A community that keeps watch and stays awake for the reign of Christ. A community that uses the gift that we have been given through Christ to serve our neighbor.

There were times in this past year that we saw a deeper need and could only extend our hand so far. Times we wanted to gather as a community, to join our voices in song and protest. Times we questioned if bridging the divide and building a beloved community is even possible. 

Out of our exhaustion, it can feel like we don’t know what our part is or what we should do next. We find ourself wondering with the first followers of Jesus:

Christ, when did we see you hungry? When did we see you thirsty? When did we see you see you as a stranger? Or naked? Or sick? Or in prison? And when did we provide for you?

To our surprise, we hear Christ saying to us, truly I tell you…

…just as you fed people in the parking lot and provided the essentials for a dignified life, you did it to me.

…just as you physically distanced and moved your worship into your homes to protect your neighbors, you did it to me.

…just as you provided financial assistance for rent and utilities and provided one man within one day all that he needed to transition into his home, you did it to me.

…just as you called to check in on a friend, brighten another person’s day with your kindness and compassion, you did it to me.

…just as you began the journey to become anti-racist and acted to learn how to remake a world in which all God’s beloved children can breathe safely and freely, you did it to me.

…just as you lamented and wept because of injustice and illness, oppression and suffering, you did it with me.

…just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.  And you did it with me.

When we remember our Creator has entrusted us to care for the whole creation, everything we do is in service to Christ. When we root our bodies in the love of Jesus, everything we do is in service to Christ. When our hearts are filled with the fire of Spirit, everything we do is in service to Christ. And when we live into the truth that all God’s children are created in the image of the Triune God, everything we do is in service to Christ.

God is telling us that when our hearts break open from seeing the injustice and oppression that surrounds us, that is exactly where God will be. Because God has been with us and guiding us along our entire journey.  

God, through the prophet Ezekiel, tells us that God will take the lead. God says: 

I myself will search for you. I will seek you. I will rescue you, bring you together, feed you, and provide you rest.

I myself will be the shepherd. I will seek the lost, bring back the strayed, heal the injured and strengthen the weak.

I myself will gather you, I will find you again and again, and I will keep you.

The message in today’s parable of Christ showing up at the margins of society is not new for us. We know where to find Christ, we know that Christ is going to show up in unexpected places and at unexpected times.

Today marks the end of the church calendar, a bookmark of our year together while apart. Tomorrow, we enter into this new year, where we open up scriptures again and we hear the story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ. We see it with new eyes and hear it with new hears because in the past year we have been transformed.

Transformed to value community in new ways, to live with great resiliency, to confront our world views, and to love without measure.

We have been transformed despite being apart. We are missing each other deeply and we need to encourage each other to keep looking for oil to keep our lamps burning.

We still need to be apart for now, but even in our separation we are together.

Together through our action, our words, and our prayers. Through the way we loved each other, the way we loved God, the way we served.

Together, side by side while still six feet apart, we bring forth Christ’s reign. And we get to do that again tomorrow, and again the next day, and the day after that.

Christ’s reign is happening around us all the time.  It is happening when we vote and advocate, when we collect our resources and see that glimmer of abundance, when we offer our hand to work alongside our neighbor, when we house the unhoused, when our faith is embodied in our lives. We do it together. Again and again.

Before we grow weary again and turn back to the age-old question asking God, “are you with us or not,” we must not forget that our work now becomes to listen. Because in the next few weeks, we are going to hear about how Christ breaks into our world as an infant and promises to turn the world around. 

There is always going to be work to do, but for today I echo Paul’s words to the Ephesians:

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.

Amen.

You are given God’s abundant gifts, according to your ability, and invited to use them free of fear, because the Son of God has taken all punishment into the life of the Trinity and changed it to blessing and life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 33 A
Texts: Matthew 25:14-30; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

The crisis in this parable is fear.

The third servant fears his master’s retribution and buries what was given him to use. He believes his master is harsh, taking what others work for.

But look: the master hands over his own property to three trusted servants – and Jesus uses extravagant, enormous numbers in this story – and then goes away. Nearly 2 million dollars in our money is given to them, divided according to their ability, with no restrictions or stipulations. This master seems generous and trusting.

And yet, when the master returns, he certainly does treat the third servant harshly. His portion is handed to another, and he is thrown “into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This punishment for just being afraid makes this parable frightening to us, too. But worse, Jesus adds this tag: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have in abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” That sounds horribly wrong to us, on top of our fear.

But you can’t forget this: the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ is the center of your hope for life now and life to come.

We claim the Scriptures say that God took on our human flesh, lived among us, and allowed us to put God-with-us to death, to love us even in the worst of our evil. As Paul says in Romans, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s forgiving love is freely poured out for all, for you, at the cross. This is our only hope now and always.

Whatever is happening in this parable, it cannot, cannot override what God does at the cross. God’s deepest revelation of love, the drawing of the creation into the Triune God’s life in the cross and empty tomb, is God’s final word, always. You can’t trust the cross sometimes and abandon it at others.

So, you have to understand how this parable fits underneath and within the truth of God’s love at the cross.

Your path to that understanding opens up in Gethsemane.

It’s possible that Jesus, nearing his death, and in righteous, divine anger, was considering punishing God’s people who rejected God in their midst. All his Holy Week parables reveal that judging intensity. Therefore, Gethsemane was a real struggle, a true crisis for Jesus, not a pre-determined outcome. He really had to make a decision. Would he take God’s path of self-giving, sacrificial love, or bring down God’s wrath, as his late stories suggest?

And Jesus decided not to avenge his rejection by God’s people, not to give the vineyard to worthier tenants, not to slam the door or throw into darkness, but to enter himself into the evil and pain of this world freely. To offer, out of love, God’s life to the creation.

In Gethsemane, Jesus fixes this parable, changes the ending. Instead of the one with abundance getting even more, while those with nothing lose all, Jesus chooses the opposite. The One who has it all – divine power and glory, life within the Trinity – gives it all up, loses everything so that those who were lost, who had nothing, no faith or trust in him, who even rejected him, might receive all.

So what’s left of this parable?

Well, now it makes sense, start to finish. The owner gives the servants all the owner’s property, millions of dollars in the story, just as God gives us, God’s children, the whole creation in extravagant trust.

And you and I are asked to use what we’ve been given, to care for God’s property. Talents, in the parable, are money. So, using our wealth to serve our master is the invitation here. But talents in English are gifts – spiritual, physical, intellectual – so using our God-given talents to serve our master is also the invitation here. Use your gifts, don’t bury them. That’s all that’s asked.

And there’s no need to fear anything. The master entered the outer darkness himself, the Son of God has drawn all punishment and death into God’s life and destroyed their power.

From start to finish, because of the cross and empty tomb, this is a parable of grace and gift and invitation.

“Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as you indeed are doing,” Paul says today.

For two weeks in a row now Paul has given you a word of encouragement to share with your siblings in Christ, your neighbor, your world.

You belong to a God of abundance who gives to you and to all abundantly, according to ability. To use and care for and make a difference as best you can, knowing you are loved no matter what, so you can confidently serve, without fear, until the master returns for you.

Therefore, encourage one another and build up each other, as you indeed are doing.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen