By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner
Proper 28A/Ordinary 33A/Pentecost +22
Matthew 25:14-30
The Bible has been misused and taken out of context for a very long time. Jesus Himself often had to correct misunderstandings about Old Testament scriptures. Hopefully, it has been misused mostly out of ignorance and not from ill-intention. I certainly have made mistakes over the years in how I looked a particular passage and now view some things differently than I did when I first started preaching. However, some people intentionally and maliciously twist scripture to fit their own agendas.
This particular passage is one of the more commonly abused passages in the Gospels. It has become quite popular with preachers of the “prosperity Gospel.” You know, the tv preachers who say God wants all Christians to be millionaires, to inherent their “divine destiny,” “name-it-and-claim-it,” etc. Of course the path to achieving that success begins with a donation to their tv ministry and signing up for their audio message of the month club.
They like to use a text like this to prove that God wants us to be wealthy. The implication is that if you’re not, something is wrong with your faith. They want you to read this passage literally and take away from it that God wants us all to do well with our 401k’s and stock options. If that were the case, we don’t need pastors. We need financial planners and hedge fund managers. We don’t need sermons. We need seminars on how to manage your money.
Too many people see God as a divine slot machine. “If I put X in, pull the religious lever correctly, I will get Y out.” Many people see Christianity as one big transaction. “If I’m a good person, God will love me and take me to heaven when I die.”
Whenever Moses went up the mountain and stayed gone too long, the people took to their own devices and made it up as they went along. After Jesus ascended and left the Church behind, some people decided to follow the Israelites example. While we may not be worshipping golden calves these days, we have taken to worshipping personalities, power, and money, even in the church, especially in the church.
This is another parable in a series of those that Jesus told that talks about the kingdom of heaven. “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus is trying to prepare the Church for his physical absence from them. The Gospels were written decades after Jesus left by a faith community that had begun to question whether would Jesus return, when He would return, and how. Most of them were written even after A.D. 70 when the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. These were bleak times for this community, and they turned to the words of Jesus for comfort and hope.
When they heard the parable again after Jesus had left, they heard it differently. “Like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them… After a long time the master of those servants returned…” They knew who the Master was when they heard this parable retold in Jesus’ absence.
In the parable of the 10 virgins waiting for the bridegroom, we were told to be vigilant in watching and waiting for His return, even though He tarry. Keep on watching, keep on waiting. Be on watch for the kingdom to appear in every moment. In this parable we are told what we are to be about while we are waiting, what kind of business we should be engaged in. We are not to dig a hole and hide our treasure. We are not to find a safe little place to hide, hold hands, and sing kum-ba-ya till Jesus comes. We are supposed to be about our Father’s business, just like Jesus.
The real currency of life is not money. The real currency of our lives is time. We must be careful how we spend it. We must wisely spend our lives in our Father’s business, even though Christ tarry in His coming. We should not become lazy. We should not be fearful. We should live to please ourselves, but we should love God and love one another. Use everything we have: our time, our bodies, the strength of our hands, the skill of our minds… use them all for God’s glory.
Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our life.” It’s what we do in the little insignificant moments that matters, not just on those really big important moments where everyone is watching. What are you doing with the life God gave you? Are you just going to wring your hands in despair? Are you going to spend it on your own pleasures, going from one to another trying to find happiness? Are you going to use your life to glorify the God who gave it to you and to love the people God has placed in your life? That’s the real question.
Jesus is coming. Jesus is always coming and is always here. He comes to us each and everyday in big and small ways. Jesus comes in our acts of kindness and words of love. As we spend our lives on behalf of others, Christ comes to us and to those we love in those moments, and we get a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.
Contemplative Corner 