33rd Sunday

Year A

33rd Sunday Year A

Homily 1 - 2005

Today’s gospel is one of a series of passages that address the general issue of preparing for our step into the adventure of eternal life. Today’s Gospel deals particularly with how we sense God; and our behaviour in the light of that.

One approach is spelt out clearly by the servant given only the one talent: he feared his master. I had heard that you were a hard man... so I was afraid. That fear compelled him to “play it safe”; it paralysed his creativity. The outcome of that attitude is plain: he missed out. Take the talent from him and give it to the man who has five talents.

The other two took risks. The story does not explicitly make clear their sense of their master; but it was certainly not fear. Their behaviour shows obviously enough that they saw him as a man interested in more, in growth, generous, ready to trust, prepared to face the possibility of failure. The outcome: Come and join in your master’s happiness.

How does it all relate to us as we live now, with one eye on eternity? Let’s check out our sense of God: when all is said and done, is our God a hard, inflexible God, obsessed with our toeing the line, our playing it safe, absorbed with commandments - a dangerous God? Or is our God a God who trusts us, gives us freedom, risks our making mistakes, wants us in his company - a God who loves us and is not afraid of life?

Let’s check out, too, our approach to morality. Have we allowed ourselves to grow to a mature level of moral development? Is our primary concern to become persons who love and reach out in compassion, and are big enough to forgive? Do we seek to get in touch with, and surrender to, our thirst for God, not obsessed with control - always wondering how we are going - but able to die to the protective self? Are we confident to think responsibly for ourselves and to refine our consciences, living, as we do, in the midst of a complex world of sometimes conflicting duties? Or, do we feel ourselves overburdened with commandments, obsessed particularly by the negative ones: don’t do this! don’t do that! too fearful to prioritise Jesus’ positive direction to love God, self and others (perhaps because it is not clear enough when compared with precise prohibitions), always needing someone to tell us what to do, scared to explore, develop and follow our own conscience and to stand on our own two feet?

In contrast to Matthew’s Pharisees and their preoccupations with minute regulations, is it the weightier matters of the Torah that attract us? As Jesus listed them in a recent Gospel: .. justice and mercy and faith?

In the story, the servant given the one talent didn’t do anything wrong, except to misread the heart of the his master, and (for the sake of the flow of the story and to make its moral clear) to compel his master, as it were, to act in line with his misreading. It was really a fateful mistake. Take the talent from him ... throw him out into the dark! In real life, the consequences of our choices are not so much rewarded or punished by God (that is the child’s-eye view), but they do have their own intrinsic logic: to live fearfully is to live a diminished life; to live trustfully and lovingly is to find life to the full.

We move now into Eucharist. We seek to align our hearts and minds with the heart and mind of Jesus as, on the cross, he committed his life trustingly to God. We allow his Spirit to draw us deeper... putting us in touch with our inmost self, and to live and to love from there in freedom. Perhaps we live in more dangerous times... but we refuse to focus obsessively on self-preservation. Rather we peacefully face our world, resolved to shape it ever more in line with Jesus’ values of justice and mercy and faith.

Homily 2 - 2008

Soviet Russia’s communist command economy broke down two decades ago. The Western World’s capitalist free-market economy seems to be going into meltdown. Communist China has tried to marry the two, and is making room in its communist economy for a degree of free-market. Judging from the G20 Summit, it looks as though the leaders of the Western World might try something similar, and make room in their free-market system for a degree of regulation. What dominates all four systems seems to be their desire to get bigger, to increase wealth, to produce more, to have more. It makes some sense, in a mindset dominated by death, to make the most of life while you can: “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.”

But what if … what if the death experience is like the birth experience? Birth put a definitive end to life in the womb; but opened out to a much more wonderful life beyond birth, in the world of time and space that we know – the world of consciousness, and freedom, of change and growth. What if death is like birth …? Death makes a definitive end of life in the world of time and space that we know, but what if it opens up to a much more wonderful life beyond death – to an experience beyond anything we can imagine, of consciousness and relationship to the mystery of Being and Love, (that now we can do no more than simply believe in and hope for.)

Jesus assures us that such is the case. What is more, he warns us that the gateway of death is such that we can’t bring with us what we have – our homes, our clothes, our possessions, our reputations. We bring with us only who we have become.

Those elements of life before death that continue on after death are essentially the truly human achievements of trust, of faith and hope, and of love. Which means that what matters in this phase of life between birth and death is not what we have but who we are becoming. And the process of who we are becoming is worked out as we relate across life to our world, to each other, and to the creating and sustaining mystery we call God.

Sadly, to spend our lives preoccupied with getting more can be at the expense of our becoming more. The two aren’t inevitably exclusive, but they don’t marry happily. Yet, it is risky to take seriously the process of becoming more. Choosing to love, (particularly those who don’t reciprocate and who have no intention of reciprocating), and choosing to trust the often untrustworthy, are not only risky… they can sometimes be downright dangerous. Jesus’ own life and death bear that out.

Today’s parable is a bit of a puzzle. Scholars don’t agree on what it means. It might be a somewhat cryptic appeal to take the risk. Just as, in the world scene supposed in the parable, it was the slaves who aimed high and who took the risks who did well; and the one who opted simply for safety who fared badly.

So, in the bigger picture of life leading into eternity, it is those who share God’s vision of the Kingdom, and who follow the way of Jesus, who will experience the Kingdom – those who run the risk of challenging the prevailing wisdom, who resolutely choose to stand free from the pervasive addiction always to have the latest and the best; and, in the process, opt to be different …

Homily 3 - 2011

It’s a tantalising story that Jesus tells us today. It’s a parable. He’s out to tease us, inviting us to wonder what on earth he is on about.

It helps us if we remember how Jesus started off his public ministry: The Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News. In inviting us to repent, Jesus was effectively saying something like: Stand on your head. Turn yourself inside out. See life differently, radically differently, [and find out that it’s Good News!]. Learn to come alive.

Parables provide a chance for “the penny to drop”. The “obvious” meaning will probably not be Jesus’ meaning. The obvious meaning usually takes us nowhere, leaves us bored. An obvious meaning drawn from today’s story is often: Use your talents. Try harder. Be a good boy. Be a good girl. That’s OK for boys and girls, but hardly for maturing adults in a complex world. That’s not the way to life. The path to true maturity is more of a paradox.

Let’s look more closely at today’s story. Who is the main character in the story? We can discount the first two slaves. They are there for dramatic effect - to highlight what’s coming. That leaves the third slave and the master. On which of these do we put the spotlight? It’s a toss-up. I would opt for the third slave.

If that is the case, what might be the point of the story? In contrast to the first two, the third slave was hesitant - scared; he played safe. But, in his case, “playing safe” did not pay off. Might that be Jesus’ point? - that playing safe, trying to keep some control in this chaotic, unfair, unpredictable world is not the way to life to the full? Certainly, elsewhere, Jesus had insisted that those who want to save their lives would lose them. It is those prepared to lose their lives who find life.

It’s paradox. It doesn’t sound right. But Jesus says - Yes! Death is the way to life! Our literal death is simply the transition to a life whose intensity and richness are beyond our capacity even to imagine. In Jesus’ own case, death was the prelude to resurrection. And that is the pattern for all life to the full. Those of you who have taken the risk know that it is true. The alternative: Play safe. Keep things under control and predictable. Meet society’s expectations. Be a good boy, a good girl…. It’s safe, but it is not what Jesus meant by “life to the full”.

True human growth is a factor of maturing in wisdom and love. Learning to love means surrendering control, sitting lightly with expectations, allowing ourselves and allowing the other to be and to become ourselves. Why don’t we readily do so? It’s because we are scared, scared of losing something – perhaps our identity, perhaps our comfort – God knows what. For us to grow, the Ego must die to allow the true Self to emerge. And that’s a risk. So we often hold back.

Falling in love with God, learning to trust God [and forgetting about trying to build up some spiritual bank-account – just to be sure], always feels a risk. Facing the risk takes an act of faith. To the extent that we manage it, we discover what life really is about. To the extent that we hold back, fearful, life remains perhaps bearable … but hardly exciting, hardly worth “writing home about”. We may even find our so-called life is not much better than darkness, and weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Here we are this morning, remembering, and celebrating, that Jesus’ death led to resurrection. We’re here to let ourselves be drawn into that mystery of “life through death”. We’re still learning - learning from each other, learning from life. And the Spirit of Jesus is here, always encouraging and strengthening us.

Homily 4 - 2014

Today’s Gospel – Good News? or Bad News? How we hear it reflects, I think, how much we have taken to heart Jesus’ invitation made right at the beginning of the Gospel, The Kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News! Jesus effectively was saying, “God is around. It is Good News. But to recognise that, you need to change, and to keep changing – beginning with the way you see God, how you value things, and how you choose to approach life!”

If Jesus’ God is Good News, then the wealthy slave-owner in today’s story is not a figure of God – absent most of the time, obviously greedy, capriciously generous one moment and ruthlessly violent the next. So what is the story about? The first disciples thought that the Son of Man would come in glory at any time, and that they would be in the box-seat. The clock ticked on, and nothing happened. By the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, two generations had passed since Jesus died and rose again. It slowly dawned on them that they were in for the long haul across history. What they made of this life would become very important, but would also be up to them.

The parable is essentially about life on this side of the grave – though what we make of ourselves during this life will determine how we shall experience life beyond death. The possibilities seem to be either a joy-filled life or, as the story colourfully describes it, out in the dark, weeping and gnashing our teeth, feeling we have missed out, bitterly resentful and hopelessly despairing. The poet TS Eliot wrote of people going into death “not with a bang but a whimper”!

What makes the difference? Matthew did his best to answer that in the body of his Gospel. He summed it up best in the Sermon on the Mount essentially as love, and teased it out further in the other signs and teachings of Jesus, climaxing it with Jesus’ love-inspired death and resurrection.

Why do we not enthusiastically sign on to the vision of Jesus? Do we not want our lives to be joy-filled? Since Jesus’ way is the way of love, why do we not give loving our best shot? Today’s story has a view on that. The master in the story put it down to the slave’s laziness – you wicked and lazy servant! The slave put it down to his fear, I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. Laziness. Fear.

What is it that stops us loving more? What is it that stops you loving more? For my part, I am sort-of stuck in my life-style. It is familiar. I feel comfortable enough. I do not want to change my attitudes to people, my opinions on issues. They almost make me who I feel I am. Even to think of changing means facing the possibility that I might be wrong – after all these years! What is the resistance? – laziness? fear? I think there is a bit of both.

Like a number of you moving into the senior bracket, I do not think I have the energy to reach out more by way of actively loving and serving. Improvement will not lie there. It is more a question now of letting go activity. But the quality of my loving, my readiness to accept, to listen, to gently share what I really feel and think leave plenty of room for growth, and hopefully, for deeper joy. Yet on these issues I think that I have gone as far as my good resolutions are likely to take me. As I see it, the task now is to accept my powerlessness, to surrender my need to control, and to entrust myself, just as I am, totally to God. I am not scared of dying. But I do also like the prospect of even deeper joy in whatever time lies ahead.

Homily 5 - 2017

Many long years ago I used to be chaplain at St Patrick’s College, Ballarat. I am pretty sure that, on some occasion during my time there, I would have used today’s parable to urge the boys to recognize their talents, whatever they were, and to use them. Today, while I think that the message had some merit, I believe it was not what today’s parable is about. For one thing, in Jesus’ day, the word talent did not mean, even figuratively, a person’s particular capacity. It indicated a certain large weight of money – nothing else. So, if not about talents as we understand them today, what is it about?

As in many good stories, and certainly in any good joke [though this is not a joke], the sting lies in the tail. The focus is on the interaction between servant number three and the master. The earlier detail serves only to create context and to build up interest. Servant number three did nothing, and explained that his reason was because he was “afraid”. Perhaps Jesus’ point was to highlight the dangers of fear. Fear can paralyse people. Jesus was right at the end of his public life and soon to be executed. He wanted his Church to continue his project, “Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature…” They would encounter problems, unimaginable problems. Jesus was insistent. Do not be afraid. Their biggest problem would be their own fear.

Fear causes us to withdraw. It concentrates our attention on our selves, our security. It freezes our readiness to take risks, to face the unknown and have a go, trusting in God. It puts us in defence mode. Instead of engaging with our world and cooperating with God’s Spirit in transforming it from within, we tend to attack our world, to criticize modern culture. We fail to look there for the presence and action of God, to engage with it and encourage people. Fear tempts us to conserve, to obsess about certainties. “I was afraid so I went off and dug a hole and buried the life you share with me in order to keep it safe!”

I want to make another point. As we listen to Jesus’ story, we can fall into another trap. We usually try to make too much sense of every detail of Jesus’ parables – too much “holy” sense! We can read today’s story as though Jesus intended the master of the servants to illustrate the mind and the behavior of God – and we get into all sorts of strife when we do. We get a God who sounds like an enthusiastic proponent of rampant capitalism, more worryingly one who throws the frightened servant “out into the dark where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth”, as well as one who proudly admits, “I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered”.

There is no violence in God. Jesus was not telling us about God in this parable – though he does in some others. We need to learn to turn off our over-pious, but deeply embedded, filters and be smart enough to distinguish. Because we don’t always do this, we can get some terrible images of God. We can finish up frightened, not only of the world we are sent out to engage with and to enliven, but frightened of God! By all means, let us be circumspect – but not frightened of God. True spiritual growth takes us beyond fear. Far too much religion is a somewhat frantic effort to control this unpredictable, potentially violent, God. The outcome is hardly joyful, hardly life to the full.

We would do much better, not by trying to manipulate and to get God on our side by being good, or whatever, but by taking the risk to get to really know God, to let God love us with all our imperfection, to trust God in whatever might happen to us and, perhaps, eventually to fall in love with the God who already loves us.

Homily 6 - 2020

I had never noticed before that the lectionary provided an abbreviated version of what is a longer parable. It has allowed me to notice points that previously were lost in the plethora of extra details of the fuller version.

The “wealthy master” who was about to “go abroad” “entrusted his property” to the slaves. He did not give it to them, but entrusted it. It wasn’t theirs, but he trusted them, expecting them to use it responsibly, according to their different “abilities” and opportunities.

Somewhat similarly, God, in this historical time between Jesus’ Ascension and eventual mysterious return, has entrusted my life to me. God has trusted me — to use my life according to the personal abilities entrusted to me at my birth and the particular opportunities that have come my way as my life has unfolded. My life has been life given in trust — to be accepted gratefully, respected, enjoyed, developed, and used responsibly. It has been my life, yet not only my life. It has belonged even more to God — to be lived in responsible relationship to God, as well as to the other persons who shared, share now, and will share moments on the journey of life with me.

I find it wonderful to look on my life this way. I haven’t been always responsible. God knows that — and trusted me accordingly, trusts us all accordingly. God’s love is an adult love, that sees forgiveness as a core dimension of all true love [and that accepts forgiveness as an inevitable part of the “job description” of being God].

As Jesus told the story, he had the wealthy slave master saying to the slave on his return from abroad, “Come and join in your master’s happiness.”

Happiness, after all, is another core dimension of all true love. Accordingly, it is also an inevitable element in the “job description” of God. God is a joyful God, a God who knows how, and is free enough, to enjoy. God enjoys forgiving. And our joyful God, always joyful God, invites us to enjoy life together: God and us, and with each other, too.

The only requirement on our part is to love, as best we can, God and each other. The joy is for now, and will climax in eternity.