Advent 1 - The Darkness of the Womb - Nov 24, 2020 - LTS Chapel

 Mark 13:24-37

So, I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, which means that as the hours of darkness increase, my brain tells me it’s time to sleep. Maybe I was a bear in a past life. Coincidentally, sleep is also what my brain tells me to do when my stress increases, when my emotional darkness increases, if you will. It’s how my brain protects me from being overwhelmed by all of the stresses and anxieties that exist, or that I can imagine. I’m guessing you can guess how desperately I constantly want to be sleeping these days. And you might understand how irritated I am by Jesus’ words to us that, in the middle of the night, in the midst of the darkness, we are supposed to “Keep awake.” I’m trying to pull the covers over my head and hide away from everything, not keep awake.

Although I may be alone in my need for so much sleep, I know I’m not alone in experiencing this time as one of increasing darkness and stress, and something that we want to get away from. I’ve stopped asking people I haven’t seen in a while “what’s new?” because I’m not sure I want to hear the answer. We are tired of hearing bad news, we are tired of hearing about death, we are deep-in-our-souls tired of whatever dreadfulness 2020 is going to throw at us next.

And our Gospel reading for today isn’t helping. It’s almost as if it’s written to generate fear and anxiety - from the sun and the moon and stars growing dim, to Jesus’ words “Beware!”, it doesn’t initially seem to be a very reassuring text. This is no lullaby. The light of the celestial objects going out isn’t meant to bring a comforting end to the day’s business, but to tell us that the world is becoming unglued. It’s not meant to bring that calming “hush” that descends on a summer evening as we enjoy a drink on the patio, but a gasp as the power cuts out in the middle of eating supper when it’s dark in November. I hear in Jesus’ words a foreboding darkness; a darkness that seems to me to presage death. A darkness and a death I would rather just sleep through.

And yet… I can’t help but wonder if the darkness is as dreadful and fearful as I make it out to be. The dimming of the sun and moon and stars in the Gospel of Mark was actually a good thing for Mark’s audience. These stellar objects represented Rome’s emperors from Caligula in 37 CE all the way through to the end of the Flavian dynasty in 96 CE. The emperors frequently utilized the image of the sun in the heavens to represent themselves, to lend themselves divine stature, and these were the same emperors who presided over the destruction of the Israelite people and their Temple in 70 CE. That their brightness and their power should dim was indeed a sign that the world was ending, but a world that had brought pain and suffering to Jesus’ people. The lights of the Roman Empire going out was not a time of fear for the Israelites, but a time for rejoicing. Who among the children of Israel would want to sleep through those lights being extinguished?

We Christians have our own moment of darkness that is meant not to be feared, but to be celebrated, and that is the darkness of Holy Saturday. After Jesus was crucified, after the sun grew dim, he was placed in the tomb and the stone rolled across the doorway blocking all light, engulfing his body in complete darkness, in the darkness of death. And yet I don’t think it would occur to any of us to want to sleep through Holy Saturday as it transitions into Resurrection Sunday. We welcome those sunrise services, we welcome the sun emerging from the darkness, we welcome the Son of God emerging from the tomb. We don’t want to sleep through the darkness of Holy Saturday, because we would entirely msiss the glorious dawn of Easter! No one among us wants to sleep through the birth of new life!

The most stirring articulation of this transformation in how we perceive the darkness that I have ever heard comes from Valerie Kaur. Kaur is from the Sikh religion, and is an activist in the States on issues of racism and gender inclusion, amongst other justice issues. Almost four years ago exactly, two months after Trump was elected, she delivered what I would call a sermon, at an interfaith New Year’s Eve service in New York City. She described how dark the world had become for her, particularly as she contemplated the world her children would live in. She talked about her fear about what the darkness seemed to be bringing, and then she paused and she said, “what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?” 

What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? As Christians, we get this. We know this. The tomb, the place of death on Holy Saturday, the dimming of the Roman Empire––yes, these were moments of death, of the tomb, but they were also moments of the womb, of the entrance into new life, into the light of the true Son, not to be slept through, but to be joyfully anticipated. To watch out for, to keep awake for, so that we don’t miss its arrival.

This emergence from the womb, this new birth is actually what we anticipate in the season of Advent. We’re not retroactively anticipating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago, we’re not going back in time. We are actually going forward, to Easter, to the resurrection of Christ, and anticipating that time when that resurrection will come to the whole world, when the kingdom of God, rather than the kingdoms of the current empires, will reign. We are waiting for this current suffering to end, for these current empires to grow dim, we are waiting for the One who gathers people from all the corners of the earth under his wings, as a hen gathers her brood, to come into the world again. This is what keeps us awake at night, not waiting through the darkness of the tomb, that would shut us into death forever, but waiting through the darkness of the womb, that will open to the light of God, bringing new life and new light to its darkest recesses. 

‘“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.’ It is like a woman going into labour, when she leaves the main room and puts her servants in charge, each with her works, and commands the midwife to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake––for you do not know when the baby of the house will be born, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else the new baby may find you asleep when they come suddenly. And what I say to you, I say to all: Keep awake.”

The powers of death are dimming; new life is coming. May the reminder that Advent brings not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb keep you awake in joyful anticipation. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Nov 10, LTS Chapel, Investing God’s Resources

 Matthew 25:14-30

“It is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them, ... then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.”

   

Well, I want to know who their financial advisers were because - wow - that’s a great return on investment! The investment return these days is so low that sometimes I think I would make more money if I buried my money in a hole in the ground! The market right now just seems way too risky to put anything in, and I can’t afford to lose anything.

Of course, it does raise the question, why is Jesus telling a parable about investing money? Shouldn’t he be telling a story about how the kingdom of heaven is as if a rich man went away and the slaves took all his money and gave it away to the poor? Wouldn’t that be more in keeping with Jesus’ basic principle that God is concerned for the poor and the oppressed? After all, it was in this very same Gospel where Jesus says to the rich young man, ”if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” So why, in this parable, is Jesus lifting up the first two slaves’ actions as models of what to do with a rich man’s money?

Well, it turns out that Jesus may have been alluding to how money was meant to be invested in the actual economy. You see, the Roman Empire at that time had this idea of what is called a “moral economy.” Now I know that today we might think of that as an oxymoron, but back then it was this idea that the circulation of money and resources was for the good of the whole community. People who were blessed by the gods with riches were morally obligated to put those riches into circulation: to take them to the market and spend them, to pay people for their labour, to have households, ekonomia to switch into Greek, where more than just the immediate family was taken care of. 

Of course, this wasn’t just a Roman idea. The books of Torah and the story of Ruth make reference to this same idea: a landowner who is wealthy enough to have fields of grain is commanded not to reap every last stalk, but to leave the edges and to leave the grain that gets missed for the needy in the community (Leviticus 19:9, 23:22; Ruth 2:15-16). There is this idea that the entire community is meant to be blessed by the wealth of the individual - that God has created the entire system so that, as a whole, with proper distribution, everybody really does have enough. Those who are born into positions of privilege are morally obligated to share with those who aren’t. If you happened to be blessed enough to have 1 talent, or 5, or 10, then you are expected to put that back into the community, back into the economy, so that everyone can benefit from it. Burying the riches you have, hoarding it, holding onto it means keeping it from others who would benefit from it, and defying God who has given it to you to share.

Of course, since this is a parable, we know that Jesus was talking about more than just money. His audience were his disciples, who were perhaps not blessed with money, but were blessed with his presence among them. They had been entrusted with the riches of Jesus. Not money, but his words of love, his words of wisdom, his acts of healing and forgiveness. They had been given Jesus’ own power to cast out unclean spirits, to cure disease and sickness, to show people that the world was more than what it appeared.

And Jesus, who knew that he was about to leave them, was telling them that they were to take that love and wisdom, to take those acts of healing and forgiveness, and to invest them in the world. Not to limit them to their inner circle, not to share them only amongst others who followed Jesus like they did, amongst those who would pay it back, so to speak, but to go out, into the public market, as it were, and to invest it.

Which is, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, Jesus’ message for us, too. This parable is Jesus’ word to us, his followers today, that while he is away, we are to take the love and forgiveness that he has extended to us, loaned to us, and to extend it and give it to others. We are to take the Gospel and go out, into the public market, and to invest it.

Which sounds good, that’s why we’re all here, but i have a slight problem with investing, I’m afraid. And that’s that it’s risky. There is no such thing as an actual guaranteed return on investment. Not with the “moral economy” of Jesus’ time, and not today. We can put our “money” out there, and it might disappear. I think that’s what that last slave was afraid of, actually. I think he was afraid that he would invest that one talent that his master had entrusted to him and that it would be lost. That he would come back empty-handed. He was afraid of losing his master’s money, and so he hid it.

And I think we, too, are more like that last slave than we like to admit. We become afraid of wasting the message of love and wisdom and healing and forgiveness that Jesus has given to us to share. Or, at least, I am. I am afraid that if I love my enemies, they will use it against me. I am afraid that if I share Jesus’ words of wisdom, I will be exposed as a naive fool. I am afraid that if I reach out in healing and forgiveness, and am rejected, too many times, that if I do it the “seventy times seventy” that Jesus commands, that I will end up burned out. I am afraid that, in the end, Jesus’ love and wisdom and healing and forgiveness is simply not enough to supply the needs of the entire world, and so I want to hide that love and forgiveness, to bury it, so that at least there’s enough for me and the others who really deserve it.

But where I and that last slave are so mistaken is in our thinking that the master has limited resources. That our master can’t afford to lose in the public market. That our master doesn’t want us to waste what we have been given on those who will just throw it away. Where we are mistaken is in forgetting that what we consider risky, our master does not.

This is the Good News for today, as we continue to wait for the Son of Man to return in glory, as we continue to wait for the kingdom of God to manifest in all of its fullness, as we continue to wait for the economy of God to fill the hearts and bellies of everyone: the Good News is that God has more than enough to go around. The Good News is that it is impossible for us to waste Christ’s message of love and forgiveness because there is no end to that love and forgiveness. We do not need to be careful, we do not need to be afraid of losing what has been given to us to share, because there is more of that where it came from. Christ is not going to be mad if you share his forgiveness with someone who just takes advantage of it. Christ is not going to accuse you of wasting your time and energy when you proclaim his love to someone who refuses to change. Christ is not going to shame you when you proclaim his wisdom and get taken for a fool.

Instead, regardless of the return on investment you receive, Christ welcomes you into his joy. No matter how effectively, or ineffectively, you invest Christ’s words into the world, Christ is joyful and wants you to share in that joy. His joy––your joy––does not come from seeing the return on investment of sharing the Gospel, which may or may not turn a profit, but simply from the act of sharing. The effectiveness, after all, is not up to us, and whenever we think it is, we are sure to be miserable and afraid. Instead, we are free to put Christ’s message of love out into the world, wherever we like, to share it with whomever we like, like Oprah Winfrey giving away cars––”You get Christ’s love, and you get Christ’s love, and you get Christ’s love!” And that, sisters and brothers, is a joy.

As you wait for the master to return, as you wait to report to him on what you have done with his resources, have no fear. Our Lord does not jealously guard his resources, but shares indiscriminately from his abundance, and entrusts and empowers you to do the same. So, since it’s not yours to begin with, share Christ’s love, invest it, waste it, with the joy and abandon of God. God can afford to lose it, praise be to God. Amen.