Christopher Thomas
Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Proper 28 – 11/15/2020 Judges 4:1-7
Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30
“For God alone my soul in silence waits; from God comes my salvation.” – Psalm 62:1
Time, and waiting, at least to my way of thinking, seem to be at such odds. I think that’s because, as I now rapidly approach the marking of 55 trips around the sun, I feel such a sense of urgency around the fleeting nature of this thing called Chronos, human time. It’s a gift; we’re only given so much, time. It’s the one commodity that we cannot manufacture more of, steal more of, beg, borrow, or plead more of. We are given, by God, what we are given, this lifetime, and that, as they say, is that.
And so, I am disquieted, anxiety-filled, even at times overwrought, by waiting. I think what bothers me most, what I fear, about waiting, is the perceived loss of control, of…
I think that may be one reason (at least one reason!) why I find women to be the amazing half of our human species, and feel that they, for the most part are responsible for the continuation of humanity as we know it. Why, waiting is built into their fiber, their very DNA. If not for the female ability to wait, we would cease to exist! Gestation takes 9 months. How a woman waits is every bit as important to her own well-being as it is to the well-being of proceeding human life. Every single thing that she does affects the outcome of that 9 months and beyond. It is most definitely a God-inspired co-creative process!
That women know what is coming (at least the second time), and choose willingly to enter into that covenant with God to co-create human life, and all that that entails, is awe-inspiring to me!
Because it involves a LOT of waiting. Uncomfortable, inconvenient, painful waiting. Waiting that finds in its penultimate chapter painful, groaning labor that most often, but with no guarantee, ends in joyful arrival of new life.
Is it then any wonder that pregnancy is one of the primary metaphors upon which the bible relies to relate waiting? At least the women will get it; the men (this one included) probably won’t, at least not we privileged ones who are used to getting our way on most everything!
Co-creation is a concept that women are just more used to, because of the way that they wait. They have to consider a life within, and yet beyond their own, even before they consider their own. There’s a necessary radical otherness inherent to the process.
Jesus told tales and stories and parables, illustrations designed to let his followers, us, know what this waiting thing was, is, and will continue to be like, this time between “the now and the not yet,” the liminal space between God’s in breaking into the reality of this world, and the eschatological hope of Christ’s return. What’re we supposed to do? Stand around and look busy, as Canon Logan would say!
In today’s parable, Jesus weaves a masterful tale of three servants entrusted with their master’s property for an undisclosed amount of time. They have no idea whether the owner will be gone nine days, or nine months, or nine years, quite literally, when the man will return. Each is gifted with what equates to lifetimes worth of wealth and generosity, and given the space to go live in the time between “the now and the not yet.”
“I’m here, I’m leaving, and I’ll be back sometime…”
(The $10 seminary word for that is Parousia – the second coming of Christ.)
That’s what the folks in Thessalonica and beyond were grappling with; quite frankly, all of us Christians ask the very same thing – when? “When are you coming, Jesus?” “I’d like to collapse the time between ‘the now and the not yet!’”
For God alone my soul in silence waits…
This co-creative, birth-pang filled process to which Paul refers should be no great surprise. How we manage that time, how we orient ourselves, has much to say and do with how that time between “the now and the not yet” collapses into one, God’s kin-dom.
This is where the women have it all over us men! You all have been doing this waiting co-creatively thing, focused on other life, since humanity began!
So, these three servants are bestowed generosity beyond their, and our, belief. The giver, the master, sets no rules, no parameters, no requirements, or even, quite frankly, that he demands repayment. The sky’s the limit. What can you co-create with what I have given you?
Two of the servants get busy. They get co-creative with the great gifts they have been given. From what it would seem, they are not stilted or stifled by the fear of loss, anger, and rejection. Their liminal time, their time between “the now and the not yet” is by all measures productive! They get some stuff done!
And then there is this third, who takes generosity and buries it in the ground, compelled by fear.
“Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, gathering where you did not scatter seed, so I was afraid, and went and hid your generosity in the ground!”
It would seem that fear skewed this person’s view of the master, the giver, and caused him or her to react from a much different place than the other two servants.
Fear of what? Of course, it’s only speculation, but it seems that the third’s fear is borne somehow in the harshness of time, when the master’s untimely return potentials some as-unknown harsh response. The fear of the collapse of time, the now into the not yet, and an unhappy giver motivates a feared, fearful response.
Maybe that is the proverbial fork in the road that we all face, as we stare into our own liminal spaces, the times of waiting that each of us is brought to, even now. No one would question or doubt that 2020 has been a long, hard road for each of us. We have waited, and longed, and prayed, and hoped for good news. There appear glimmers of hope on the horizon.
And yet, we face the wait of a potentially long winter. How will we choose to wait?
In that spirit of co-creativity, Paul beckons us to wait as those in steadfast hope, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the hope of salvation, turning our focused gaze outward, from self to others, living lives modeled as the first two servants, joy-filled in the many gifts of a generous God.
For God alone, my soul in silence waits;
from God comes my salvation.
Amen.
