Sermon — December 24, 2023 (Christmas Eve)

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

There’s a certain kind of magic in a good Christmas gift.

You might think that the magic happens when you receive the thing you’ve been hoping and praying for—when you come tearing out of your bedroom at five o’clock in the morning and run out to the Christmas tree and see the new bike you wanted standing there, and think, Wow! I’ve been begging Mom and Dad for this for months. But how did Santa know? And then you realize, Oh, right, I’ve addressed a dozen letters to the North Pole over the last three weeks asking for this bike; I’m so glad one of them made it through the mail. And this is great. It’s a wonderful feeling to have the thing you’ve been yearning for more than anything else finally arrive.

But the true magic of the perfect gift comes when you receive a something you didn’t even know you wanted: when you open that box on Christmas Day and think, “What on earth is this?” I don’t even know what it does. And then you study the box and realize: Wait. Yes. I never would have thought of this—I didn’t even know they made these things—but you, my beloved, you know me better than I know my self, and you knew that the one thing that was missing from my life was a Bluetooth-connected portable eye massager offering five different modes of eye fatigue relief. Thank you so much. Now our home is finally complete.

You laugh, but it’s true. Well, maybe not for eye massagers. But I know that the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever given are the ones that someone mentioned once, six months ago, and are long since forgotten, or the ones they never even knew they needed. To buy someone the random book that they’d read a review of once and then forgotten is to show that you were listening when they said it sounded interesting, and you heard and remembered. Even better is the totally-un-asked-for gift, the one you knew would be perfect for them, because you knew them, and you cared, and here it is, the perfect token of your admiration and love—a melon baller wrapped up nicely with a bow on top.

It feels good, as ridiculous as the gift may be. Because it doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that you’ve been seen, and known, and loved.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;” Isaiah wrote more than 2500 years ago, “those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” (Isaiah 9:2) Isaiah’s people, living in dark times, were waiting for salvation, waiting for someone to help. While many things have changed, the world still seems dark these days. The boots of the warriors Isaiah described millennia ago continue to tramp across the world. The many imperfections of human society that Isaiah condemned continue to be imperfect. Our lives continue to be imperfect. Every one of us has tasted the bitterness of loss, or absence, or regret. Every one of us has sometimes fallen short. Every one of us is yearning for something this Christmas Eve, some change, some help, some salvation. Christmas is a perfect time for that, because Christmas is the holiday of prophecy fulfilled, of a Messiah long-awaited who finally arrives.

That’s we need this Christmas. A Messiah: someone who will come and set things right. We want world leaders who will bring us peace. We want politicians who will solve our nation’s problems. We want therapists or priests who will fix our marriages or our friendships, who will somehow break us out of the old patterns we’ve fallen into yet again. In the deepest, darkest days, we pray to God for light. We beg God to do something, to send someone to save us from this mess.

Christmas is the answer to that prayer. And yet: What we want for Christmas is a Messiah; what we get is a baby. What we want is a “Wonderful Counselor”; what we get is a babbling infant. What we want is a “Prince of Peace”; what we get is a carpenter’s son. What many of us want more than anything else, what we yearn for more intensely than any bicycle or melon baller is for some light to shine in the darkness, for God to finally come and make things right; what we get is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

It’s nowhere near enough to fix it all. And yet it’s the only thing that can.

What we want for Christmas is for God to fix it, whatever it is for us. God sees the darkness of our world. God hears our prayers for help. And God comes down to help, but not the way we expect—not as an avenging warrior, not as a mighty king, not as an adept politician or even a wise old friend, but as a newborn child, innocent and weak.

God looked at us. God looked deep into the heart of each one of us. God saw us, and God knew us, and God loved us, and God chose to come and be with us. Because God knew us more deeply than we knew ourselves, and God knew that the gift we needed was not the one we wanted.

What we want is for everything to be fixed, for the geopolitical calculus and the electoral politics to change, for our families and friends to finally just accept that we’re right and do what we want for once. But the problem isn’t out there. The problem is in here. We can set up Security Councils and we can pass legislation and we can set new boundaries in our relationships, but you and I know that we human beings can undermine those things in five seconds flat. We’re very good at that.

What we need is not for the problems in our lives to be fixed by some external force, for everything to be set right once and for all by a Messiah. What we need is for our hearts to be healed. What we need is not the receive the gift itself, whether the much-anticipated bicycle or the unexpected melon baller. What we need is to be seen and known and loved, as we really are, and to know that we have nothing to fear. To know that when we feel shame or regret or fear, when we lash out in anger because we’ve been wronged or withdraw into apathy because it seems like there’s nothing we can do, what God feels is not wrath or blame or judgment: What God feels is love, for you. What God wants is to come down to be with you, to live and to die as a human being just like you, because God loves you. And the only way to change your life, and the only way to change the world, is to know, to really know, that you are loved, no matter what, and to live as if that might really be true.

So maybe you’re stepping foot into this church for the first time tonight and you’ll never come again, or maybe you’re here more often than either of us would like. Maybe every gift is already wrapped and arranged precisely under the tree, or maybe you haven’t quite finished shopping yet. Maybe you’re headed home to an evening of warmth and joy, or maybe your heart is heavy tonight, because the ones you’ve loved are far away or long gone. But I say to you: “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people.” God sees you, and God knows you, and God loves you, and the proof of God’s love is right here, lying in a manger: “for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord… Glory to God in the highest!” (Luke 2:10, 14)

Amen.

Sermon — December 24, 2023

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

If you are like me, primarily a dweller of the city of Boston, there is a normal level of this kind of existential terror that happens when you move to Wyoming. And not just because of the hunting, fishing, cowboys, bears, or the ever-present wind. 

I moved to Wyoming to do the Episcopal Service Corps right after I graduated from college. I arrived on the last flight into Cody, Wyoming and the director of my program picked me up in the pitch blackness. I got vague glimpses of the asphalt as we wound through the roads of the Bighorn Basin, going to Walmart because I had forgotten some basic necessities, and then eventually pulling into the house at the retreat center I would live in around 9:30 pm. 

Over the course of the next few days I would steal glimpses out of windows, and see the landscape as it passed by as we drove around on various errands around Cody. I remember this feeling of terror, of anxiety, of wonder, and pure awe. For the first time the world was so big, the mountains so grand, the sky so looming, the desert basin so vast, and the glory of God reflected in such a way that I was wholly unaccustomed to. I had a number of conversations with people that confided that they had shared a similar experience upon moving there, it was a landscape that inspired awe and wonder and terror for the unaccustomed. 

At some point in October after I had moved I got used to it though, seeing for dozens of miles in every direction became expected, I grew accustomed to distances that were unfathomable to my Massachusetts mind, it became my normal life just like my life in Boston. The views settled in and became commonplace–the background image of my new life. Until they didn’t.

Every so often, I would suddenly see the landscape around my house as if it were the first time–the terror, the awe, the wonder renewed in my sight. I would look at Foretops’s Father (the mountain at the center of the Bighorn Basin) again and my heart would be strangely warmed, I would sit on the top of the hill out back of our house and see Teepee’s Doorway (the valley that leads into Yellowstone) and wipe tears from my eyes. There was no pattern to these moments, nothing that I could do that would definitively make these new moments of wonder unlock for me. Though I did have to make the first motion to actually look, and look again, and to keep looking. 

As we approach Advent this year, I am feeling like we have allowed a lot of our most profound and radical stories to settle into the landscapes of our lives. Though, I cannot deny that the familiar stories bring a level of comfort. The birth narratives of Jesus are what many Christian children cut their teeth on when they are being introduced to the faith, and at this time of year we easily settle back into them like a big comfy chair–particularly as Christmas becomes an ungrounding and stressful time. There is a nostalgia and a familiarity to the birth narratives such that they remain stalwart in people’s minds even if they do not remember much else about Christianity. 

And this makes sense, there are really cool angels who bring the glory of God to earth and talk to people, Jesus is born in humble (but usually depicted as quite cozy) beginnings, wise men come bearing strange gifts, in some apocryphal traditions a small boy comes to play the drums for the newborn Jesus and his family, and humble shepherds are invited to witness the newborn king. However, I have been attempting. comforting as I find these stories, to put myself out there into the stories again, to look again and again and hope for that same sort of radical transformation. 

Today’s story, the Annunciation, feels to me like it has settled into the territory of a bit nice and mystical. Mary just seems to have some cool stuff happen to her, the angel Gabriel comes, and the Annunciation seems to be the mystical stepping stone to the real hoo-rah that we are waiting for, the birth of Christ. 

However, if we look and look again, I think what we miss in this story is how brave Mary’s “yes” actually is. In my reading, the bravery of Mary’s action in this story is threefold. 

First, this angel greets her in a very strange way, and she is greatly troubled. Here we can note that an unrelated man and woman conversing in public would have been unusual and scary. And also that this man is an angel. Mary is truly greatly troubled to even find herself in this situation. 

Second, we can note what exactly the angel is saying to her. In the first bit of what the angel Gabriel is saying to her, the whole thing about kingdoms and her son, is a direct threat to the Roman occupation under which she lives. The region in which Mary lives is a powder keg of a place ready to explode at a moment’s notice. It had only recently come under full Roman occupation and dissent was brewing in major ways. At this tense moment an angel comes and tells her that her son will be the one to upend all of this. 

We see this idea most clearly in the Magnificat, one of our most ancient Christian hymns that we sang today. It promises that God will totally cast down the powerful–the kings, the emperor, the governors. It promises that the rich–the landowners, the merchants, the emperor–will be sent away empty-handed. It promises that the proud–the generals, the politicians, the scholars–will be scattered in the imagination of their hearts. All the normativity of the world under which she lives will be destroyed and upended, and she will be an accomplice to this.

Third, Mary is a young, unmarried woman who is told she is going to bear a child. I think there are a lot of apparent dangers here that we can understand. Being any one of these things in Mary’s society comes with a certain amount of danger, to be a young unmarried woman who is bearing a child puts Mary in significant danger. Many modern commentators note that Mary’s subsequent visit to Elizabeth–her cousin who lives kind of far away where nobody knows Mary and she can lay low for a bit–may well have been the result of the danger that she must live through in order to bear the Christ-child.

I hope I have sufficiently highlighted the bravery of Mary’s “yes” in this story, and maybe even shifted your view of this story to how earth-shaking this moment is. For this brief moment the fate of the world hinges on one young woman’s decision to make the brave choice to say yes to bearing the Christ-child. The birth of the Christ-child is predicated on Mary’s  heroic choice to step out of what would have been a normal life to step into danger. 

The good news is that Mary did say yes. Because of Mary’s bravery our savior in Jesus can join us in our humanity. Because of Mary’s daring decision, Jesus can be incarnated to be our salvation. The world has been profoundly changed because one woman decided that she would make the brave choice and say “yes” to what the Lord called her to do. We only get to revel in the joy of Christmas because of the danger Mary took upon herself, and she did so with great faithfulness and with rejoicing. 

So let us rejoice because of Mary’s yes, on account of Mary’s courage, and for the coming of the Christ-child to be with us this Christmas. 

Sermon — December 3, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Now, I don’t often stand up here and brag about my own accomplishments, but you should know: In addition to being loving father and a decent cook and a once-distinguished student of ancient languages, I happen to have been known, in the late-’90s Winchester youth sports scene, as one of Little League baseball’s worst-ever hitters.

Now, I know it’s hard to believe, but no matter how many hours my mom and I spent in “spring training” out in the front yard, no matter how many how many times I fantasized about being up to bat for the Sox in the bottom of the ninth, there I’d be, batting ninth—they’d have me batting tenth if they could—failing to connect with yet another pitch.

I had a brief renaissance during the first years of “kid pitch,” when the combination of my gangly frame and my peers’ complete inaccuracy led me to an on-base percentage driven by walks and being hit by pitches, but I swear my batting average was never above about fifty; and I do mean that like .050.

But my coaches were nice guys, so I was mostly on the receiving end of positive, affirming coachly shouts. “Good eye!” they’d say as the ball sailed past, four feet from the strike zone. “Keep your head in the game!” as I instinctively ducked to avoid a pitch we all wished I’d let hit me in the helmet. And my favorite piece of sports advice: “Look alive!” an expression they surely teach in Dad School.

“Look alive!” Now that’s one I can do. I cannot hit a baseball to save my life, but I can look alive, because I am alive, gosh darnit. And I can look the part!

Of course, that’s not what “look alive” means. It’s not “look alive,” but “look alive.” Pay attention, be alert, keep your eye on the proverbial or literal ball. If Jesus were your baseball coach—surely that’s the title of a country song, right?—if Jesus were your baseball coach, he’d say, as you stepped up to the plate, “Come on, now! Keep awake!”

“Look alive!” Advent is here.

“Keep awake,” Jesus says to his disciples. “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” (Mark 13:37, 33) We often spend these four weeks in December looking forward to Christmas Day, to God’s arrival in the world in the form of the baby Jesus, born in Bethlehem. But the church’s worship also looks forward to something else. When Jesus says “you do not know when the time will come,” he’s not talking about his own birth. That would be a little odd. He’s not talking about the “First Coming” of Christmas. He’s talking about what’s sometimes called the “Second Coming,” some future day when “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,” the stars will fall and the heavens will shake and “they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.” (Mark 13:24-26)

And this is why Jesus tells the disciples to “keep alert,” “keep awake,” because that day is coming, “but about that day or hour no one knows,” neither the angels, nor the Son, nor any preacher who tries to calculate the date—but only the Father. (Mark 13:32) So they should keep watch, Jesus says, lest it catch them unawares.

Now of course it’s hard to know just what this means. Jesus has to be exaggerating, somewhere. If the “Second Coming” is some actual day of earth-shaking darkness and divine judgment, which still hasn’t happened yet, then the urgency is exaggerated: surely the disciples do not need to stay awake for more than two thousand years. And if they really did need to keep awake, to keep alert, to “look alive”—if it’s really true that that first generation of disciples wouldn’t pass away before these things happened—then maybe he’s not actually talking about some literal day of darkness, some future day of the “Second Coming.” Maybe he’s talking about something else.

Advent, after all, isn’t just a season of vigilance. It’s a season of memory, and comfort, and hope. It’s a season in which, during what are literally the darkest days of the year, we are reminded of the great things that God has done, and the great things that God will do, and the great things that God is doing even now.

The prophet Isaiah looks back to the past, reminding God of the times “when you did awesome deeds that we did not expect.” (64:3) And Isaiah hopes for the future, Isaiah prays for God to do something—one of my favorite prayers, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (64:1) But Isaiah also acknowledges the ongoing work of God: “O Lord… we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (64:8) And my middle-school pottery-class skills were as poor as my elementary baseball skills, but even I know that a potter’s work is not one and done. There’s a shaping and a guidance that takes place, between a potter’s hands and a sad old lump of clay, and I love this as an image for human life, because you can’t look at any given pot at any given moment and know what the future has in store for it, any more than you can do with people. That one looks pretty rough now, but it’s still on the wheel. That one looks pristine, but maybe it’s about to crack in the kiln.

Paul does the same thing, balancing the future and the past with a healthy dose of the present. He begins his letter to the Corinthians by giving thanks for the grace that has been given them in Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:4) And he reinforces the promise that God will strengthen them, so that they can be found blameless at that Second Coming, “on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 13:8) But he’s more focused on the present: on the ways in which God is enriching them now, on the spiritual gifts God is giving them now, as they wait. He talks about what God is doing for people in the present, because he wants to talk about what the people are doing to each other in the present: after this positive and encouraging opening, he’ll go on to spend most of the letter trying to sort out the conflicts and disagreements that keep happening between the members of this very human church. Like Jesus, Paul also wants these Christian disciples to be vigilant—not for the ways in which God will one day come to them, but for the ways in which God is already now among them, working in them and through them, and in and through the people around them, people who sometimes really get on their nerves.

In the darkest days, in the midst of great suffering, when it seems like the whole world, the whole universe, is coming apart—in other words, most days—the Son of Man is coming, wrapped in clouds. But those clouds are apparently pretty thick. You’d think that when God does tear open the heavens and come down, it would be an obvious thing. And yet Jesus tells the disciples, over and over again, to look alive. Keep awake. Be alert. Because this awe-inspiring appearance of the Lord might otherwise go as unnoticed as his birth did, in the back of an inn, somewhere in Bethlehem.

How many awe-inspiring moments sail on by while we’re swinging at something else and missing? Not the baby’s first steps, or your first time at Niagara Falls. But the child’s 100^th drawing of a ninja or the blueness of the sky on a November morning. Not the few big moments in life, but the hundred thousand small ones. Not the one big life-changing experience, but the million little spiritual gifts that lie hidden for us, scattered throughout the stuff of daily life.

So keep awake, this Advent! Be alert! Keep watch for the ways God is appearing to you here and now; keep watch for the hand of the potter shaping you, and the people you love, and the people you don’t much like. Keep your head in the game, and eyes on the ball. And if that’s too much, during this chaotic season before Christmas—if it’s too much, amid the shopping and the cooking, the family visits and the final exams—then at the very least: Look alive! Because you are alive, thank God—and “I give thanks to my God always for you,” knowing that God loves you, and that “God is faithful” to you, and that by God you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sermon — November 26, 2023

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year, an armistice agreement took effect between the Allied Powers and Germany, which would lead to the end of the violence of the first world war. Trenches had been carved across landscapes, toxic gasses had clouded the air for months, new horrors and new forms of warfare emerged to claim hundreds of thousands of lives, and left hoards of veterans scared physically and mentally.  In the deep grief and turmoil after the war, new political movements and ideologies would arise from the shadows and ashes that were left behind. In Italy, Mussolini would seize power less than four years after the end of the war, giving rise to the first modern fascist government. This would be followed by other fascist and authoritarian movements, in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere around the world. I don’t presume to speak for every single person living in these countries in this period, but I imagine the sense of chaos, the unsettledness, and the uncertainty these changes in government would have brought. I imagine that no matter what political ideology they believed, this period still brought forward fear and uncertainty. 

The Pope at the time felt similarly. Three years after Mussolini’s rise to power, and as the reality of this new and dangerous government set in, Pope Pius instituted a new feast day. The Feast of Christ the King, this was a brave and defiant reminder to the faithful that no human government is the true ruler of people. In that new age of ultra-nationalism, of secularization, and authoritarianism, the new feast–the Reign of Christ–served as a reminder of God’s presence and providence even in the face of Mussolini’s regime. 

In the ensuing decades, many other global churches would adopt some form of this new feast. In the Episcopal Church we situate it at the end of our liturgical year, so I will also wish you all a happy new year. Liturgically, our year begins with Advent, a period marked by waiting. In Advent, we wait and anticipate the birth of Christ, a moving and exciting time. I love Advent, and do not mean to take away its shine. However, this Sunday serves as an important reminder that even as we go into this season of anticipation, Christ is already present with us. Not only that, but that Christ is already Ruler of the Universe. The Christ we anticipate every year is the same Christ that has already saved in the resurrection, that continues to save even today, and that will continue to save. Throughout all human history of war and peace, feast and famine, none overturns the Reign of Christ. 

In our own time, we are also less than a calendar year from the next election in our country. I make no comment on candidates or policy. But, in my own life, elections are a deeply troubling time, a divisive time, and a time where it feels like everything is crashing and burning. 

However, it seems that we do not even need to wait a year for the world to feel like it is crashing and burning. The Russo-Ukrainian war continues to claim lives in the service of God-knows-what, the current ceasefire in Gaza seems likely to expire and return to a state of violence, our agricultural zones have shifted because of a warming climate, the MBTA needs like a gazillion dollars to fix itself, and it just seems like everything’s coming up bad news. 

In tandem with all this bad news, today is a reminder that we as Christians put stock, above all else, in the saving work of Christ. When our governments are in disarray, when we feel powerless to stop violence, and everything is a mess. Christ is not only with us, but Christ will have the final word, not any human creation, not any human government. The Reign of Christ has happened, is happening, and is still unfolding. 

But what actually is the Reign of Christ. It is a tough question to answer, and so it actually has quite a few answers. We see answers in the very many parables we get in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We also see answers in the many descriptions we get in other scriptures, such as the Epistle this morning. The Reign of Christ has many aspects. 

Today, we get a parable that describes one aspect of the Reign of Christ, referred to in this parable as ‘the Kingdom’. Parables are interesting because they rely on analogy and metaphor to describe things that are hard to describe, and typically only describe one facet of the multi-faceted, hard to define kingdom. Today’s parable is no different. 

First though, it is tempting when we read this parable, and others like it, to see in it a stark and violent condemnation of a certain group of people. In this case those uncharitable people who pass by the “least of these” and do not offer any reprieve to those suffering. What strikes me in this are two things. The first being that I think everyone in this room actually fits into both camps, every one of us has definitely both passed by someone in need, and every one of us has almost certainly done something for those in need. The idea that we can be sorted in a binary way falls apart at that realization. The second being that, a literal reading of this ignores a host of other scriptures about grace, salvation, and forgiveness–though those are topics for a different sermon. 

So, if the Reign of Christ is not about sending bad goats into eternal punishment, what is it about? As we set aside a judicial reading of today’s gospel, we can see a more affirmational reading emerge from the story. What we see emerging is a description of an aspect of the kingdom that describes what kinds of behaviors are going to be held up and celebrated in the kingdom. The acts of feeding the hungry, providing water to the thirsty, visiting the prisoner, are actions that are indicative and will be held up in the Reign of Christ. Those things that divide us, that cause us to ignore the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoners; things like war, division, greed, and apathy will be washed away and unwelcome in the Reign of Christ. 

In the Ephesians reading today, Paul says something notable about what the Reign of Christ actually meant for the community of the Ephesians, and also fits into what it means for us today. I certainly think it beats me trying to parse out the complexities of eschatological theology for the next few minutes. Maybe you picked up on it already, but he says this really long sentence about hope and power. To paraphrase and shorten it a bit to make my point, he prays that the Ephesians will come to know the hope to which they are called to, according to the power of Christ, and that this same power is that which resurrected Christ, and seats Christ above all of creation in his reign. 

Today, I think we share in that same calling to the Ephesians that is also expressed in the feast day of the Reign of Christ. We are called to hope, just like the Ephesians were–as they dared to live and worship under an empire that would likely kill them if it discovered they were Christians.  We are called to hope just like those faithful that lived and suffered under fascist regimes around the world. And just like the many Christians who have come before us that lived through famines, wars, and persecutions. We are called to hope–and to trust in–the Reign of Christ. Which is not a reign of war, division, and strife among peoples, but as we see in the gospel it is a reign where nobody is left to suffer. It is a reign of caring, peace, and the full reconciliation of all creation to God and one another. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Sermon — November 19, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Like many of you, I sometimes wake up at night, troubled by important questions. Did I remember to reply to that email, or did I leave it as a draft? Should I buy a copy of Britney Spears’s new memoir, or should I just my name on the library waiting list? Is it possible that that the Revised Common Lectionary is past its prime? (You know. The big questions in life.)

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Revised Common Lectionary or RCL is the three-year cycle of readings that we follow on Sunday mornings. The lectionary was first created in the 1970s and 1980s and revised in the 1990s as a kind of inter-denominational project bringing together Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches to settle on a common way of reading the Bible. We believe different things and pray in different ways, but on Sunday mornings, you can walk into any church of any one of these denominations, and you’ll probably hear the same readings from this shared sacred text that you’d hear down the street.

And this is great! Not only is it a nice form of ecumenical cooperation between churches, but it prevents preachers from inflicting the same small set of favorite readings on their churches over and over, and exposes us all, over the course of three years, to a wide breadth of selections from the Bible.

Sometimes too wide a breadth. I worry sometimes that the lectionary assumes that we’re living in a very different era of the church: an era when weekly church attendance was much higher, and most people who were in church on any given Sunday are there four Sundays a month. And it sometimes selects readings that make sense if you already have a developed faith and understanding of Christian theology and the narrative arc of the Bible, but otherwise just seem weird. Let’s be honest: Many of you here are regulars. But if you just walked in off the street, hoping for a little spiritual uplift on a sunny fall morning, hoping to hear some compassion and love in an often unkind word, and you heard that reading from Zephaniah about the coming day of wrath, would you not simply write off Christianity as a lost cause?

So I sometimes worry that the RCL is past its prime. 

But then, of course, the lectionary providentially assigns the Parable of the Talents on the day that turns out to be our Stewardship Ingathering Sunday, when people will make their annual pledges of financial support to the church, and pairs it with the fearsome prophet Zephaniah, and you all hear that “neither [your] silver nor [your] gold will be able to save you!” (Zeph. 1:18) So hand in your pledge cards, for “in the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be consumed!”

Let’s see the NPR Pledge Drive top that.

Seriously, though, this Parable of the Talents has often been read as a parable of stewardship, and it is. Not in the narrow sense of “stewardship” as in “annual church fundraising campaign,” but in the broader, theological sense of stewardship. Stewards, after all, are people who care for property that is not their own, people who are entrusted with something that they will ultimately give back.

Each of the three slaves in the parable is entrusted with a vast sum of money. A “talent” is a unit of measurement, of weight; one talent is a quantity of silver worth about 20 years’ wages for a laborer, something like $600,000 at today’s minimum wage. One enslaved steward is given $3 million by the enslaver before he heads off on a journey; he invests it for a 100% return. The second is given about a million, invests it, and doubles it as well. But the third is either very wise or very foolish: this one, fearing the wrath of the master, doesn’t risk losing the one talent he’s given by putting it into a high-risk, high-reward business venture. He buries it in the dirt, and when his enslaver returns, he gives it back: Here. This was your property. You entrusted it to me. Take what’s yours.

The returning master is not impressed. These other two had great success, he says. Maybe you don’t have their business acumen—he had given to each one of them, after all, according to each one’s ability—but couldn’t you at least have put it in the bank to keep it safe, and earned a bit of interest on top? And the third slave is cast out into the outer darkness, to weep and gnash his teeth, without a dental plan.

In the traditional reading, this preaches well. Each one of us has been given many gifts by God. We live by grace alone; we haven’t earned our lives, and we could never pay God back for the price of every day we’ve woken up and drawn a breath. We’ve been given a certain of time, and a certain amount of money. And we’ve been given certain talents; and the modern English sense of the word “talent” as a natural or God-given ability comes directly from this metaphorical reading of the parable. Our “talents” are the things God has entrusted to us, and we ought to use them, and use them well, in the service of God and our neighbors.

Put a bow on it and send it to the printers, Amen.

But I have a problem with that. Because while that sermon might preach well, on this Stewardship Sunday, I think it skips over of the most troubling parts of this morning’s texts, as if the preacher could simply razzle-dazzle you into forgetting how you felt after that reading from Zephaniah.

The third steward is right. The master is a “harsh man.” He reaps where his slaves sowed, and gathers where they scattered seed. He punishes him in a way that’s way out of proportion to the loss he suffered, which was exactly nothing, or an “opportunity cost” at most. And he’s not just a harsh man; he’s a bad manager. He failed to communicate to this third steward that he cared more about the upside than the down; that he’d be angrier at him for doing nothing with the talent than he would for losing it.

The lectionary committee, in their great wisdom, assigned this reading from Zephaniah to be paired with the reading from the gospel, because the day of the Lord described in Zephaniah is like the day on which these three men’s enslaver returned: “a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom,” a day on which God will make “a terrible end…of all the inhabitants of the earth.” (Zeph. 1:15)

And here’s my problem: This doesn’t sound very much like the God I know. Or, to put it a different way: this doesn’t sound very much like the God who reveals himself in the life and death of Jesus Christ; a God who comes to earth, not to destroy us, but to be destroyed by us, and somehow, through that self-sacrifice, to save us.

The traditional reading assumes that the slaveowner is God, and the slaves are us, and there’s a whole other sermon in that. But Jesus doesn’t say that that’s how it is. Jesus sandwiches this parable between two others, without any explanation or interpretation, just the segue: “Likewise: a man was going on a journey…” We’re left wondering: is this a parable of how God behaves or a parable of how we behave? Is it God who punishes people for not making a sufficient profit, or is that us? I wonder how much the master in the story really tells us not about God, but about how we behave at our worst.

Jesus doesn’t answer: he just tells another parable, which is next week’s Gospel reading about how when you feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and visit those who are in prison, you’re feeding, and clothing, and caring for him; and how it’s our stewardship of the poor, and the naked, and the hungry that determines whether we’re exalted in the kingdom of heaven or not.

The day of the Lord may be a day of darkness for Zephaniah’s listeners, seven hundred years before Christ. But “you, beloved, are not in darkness,” Paul says. (1 Thess. 5:4) Because between that prophesied day and you, Jesus came, and the story didn’t unfold the way we expected. Jesus came, not with a sword in his hand, but with love in his heart. And he gave us spiritual armor, a “breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” (1 Thess. 5:8) He gave us the assurance that we are loved and that we are being saved, whether we use our talents well or not; because when Jesus came, he died for us, he died in our place, “so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.” (5:10)

So use your talents well! Be good stewards of what you have! Not because you’re afraid of being punished by God if you don’t. But because you aren’t afraid of anything. Because there is no risk. Because everything you have has been given to you by God, not as an investment, and not as a reward, but as a gift of love, given to you so that you might love as well. And when we our “seventy years” are passed—“perhaps in strength even eighty”—and we “fade away like the grass” (Ps. 90:10, 5), God will welcome us in, and say to us, talented and talentless alike, “come into the joy of your master.”