Second Sunday before Advent 2020

 Audio file

Lectionary readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 and Matthew 25:14-30

Our Gospel reading today is commonly referred to as the Parable of the Talents. It is, I think, a relatively well-known parable, and it is usually taken as a story to illustrate that God has given talents to each one of us, and expects a return on his investment. I do believe that God has given each one of us gifts with which to play our part in making the world more harmonious, or at least no more chaotic than we found it. And I do believe that God does, and will, hold us accountable, and that it will not do to say, “we never asked for such responsibility in the first place”. I believe these things based on all manner of stories that I read in the Bible, but not on the basis of this parable of a harsh and unjust ruler who sees people as fundamentally wicked, lazy and worthless unless he profits from them. I want to suggest, instead, that this is a parable of the darkness of the world into which God is about to act decisively. It is preceded by the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, in which the bridegroom is delayed and some of those awaiting his arrival find themselves unprepared; and followed by the parable of the sheep and the goats, a parable of judgement on the nations surrounding Israel for how they have treated God’s people, who are identified as the marginalised (though note that though the relationship between the symbol and the signified is not wholly arbitrary, they are not interchangeable: those who are marginalised are not, automatically, the people of God).

There is, in these three parables, a progression or development of idea: prolonged unfulfilled expectation, set against deepening darkness; the apparent rewards of pursuing wealth and power, or deeds done in the darkness; and a coming light that brings judgement to the deeds done in the darkness. The parable in the middle is a parable told to encourage those who are fearful—who are afraid of the dark—to hold on a little longer, because divine judgement and, crucially, their divine vindication, is now imminent.

This is the good news: that we are not forgotten, even when the powers of this world have written us off. As the story continues to unfold, we discover that God, who in Jesus will identify with the discarded, will, in this same Jesus, establish a reign of justice and mercy. But that is to jump ahead of ourselves. Here, with this parable, Jesus, the master storyteller, is building up the dramatic tension. As we pause at the end to catch our breath, we want to know what happens next: what will happen to the man removed for disloyalty? and who, if anyone, can outsmart the tyrant?

Advent is an annual season of preparing our lives for Christ’s return, to judge the living and the dead. Today is the Second Sunday before Advent: a moment for adjusting our eyes to see in the dark. Stand outside in the evenings at this time of year, in a place where there are no streetlights, and you will know that after some minutes what was pitch dark and disorienting becomes more recognisable and, with care, navigable.

In light of this reality, Paul writes to the saints in Thessalonica, ‘therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.’ Specifically, he speaks of putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of hope of salvation. Choosing to respond to the state of the world in faith and love protects our hearts, our choice-making. Choosing to hold out hope protects our minds, the thoughts and feelings that affect our choice-making.

In light of the story by which Jesus locates us, in which light Paul invites us to orientate and reorientate our lives, I shall end on this: what would it look like, to ‘encourage one another and build up each other’ today? Discuss.

 

All Saints' Day 2020

 

Lectionary readings: Revelation 7:9-17 and 1 John 3:1-3 and Matthew 5:1-12

By now I am sure that you will have heard the news that, as of one minute past midnight on Thursday, we will be going back into a lockdown. As in the first time around, it looks most likely that church services will be suspended, and we must prepare ourselves for that to happen.

This has been a hard year, and Lockdown 2 comes as a bitter, if not entirely unexpected, blow. If lockdown heading into summer was hard, lockdown heading into winter will be harder. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Based on her observations of people experiencing grief, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross identified five emotional stages. These have since been somewhat discredited, in that there is no empirical evidence that everyone goes through all of them, or in any particular order, or that we ever get beyond loss. Nonetheless, they are recognisable to us. Denial: don’t worry, things will have changed again by Thursday, it won’t happen. Anger: the students are to blame for this! Yet more incompetence from the government! Bargaining: we should be recognised as an essential service; perhaps there is a loophole we can exploit? Depression: we know mental ill health has risen this year, due to sustained uncertainty exacerbated by isolation. Acceptance: or at least resignation, though they are not the same. Perhaps you recognise some or all of these emotional states, in yourself or in those around you.

William Worden focused not on the emotional responses to grief but, rather, on the four tasks of grieving. These four tasks do not necessarily follow on one after the other, but they may give purpose to mourning. The first task is to accept the loss. Whether the death of a loved one, or being made redundant, or retirement, or the empty nest when children leave home, loss is an inevitable part of life, and something we need to wrestle with God through the night if we are to receive blessing.

The second task is to acknowledge the pain of the loss. All loss involves pain, even if little losses are less painful that major losses. The biblical template for acknowledging the pain of loss is lament. Our Scriptures are full of lament. There is no place for the English stiff-upper-lip holding back of tears. If the doors of our churches are to close, even for a month, even if they will then reopen, there is a pain to that, which it is right and proper to recognise.

The third task of grieving is to adjust to a new environment. What does it mean to be the church, when we cannot gather together in this place and share holy communion? The newspaper headlines are speculating that Christmas could be cancelled this year. Well, it won’t be. But, yes, we won’t be able to mark it the way we have become accustomed to. We will need to adjust to a new reality. Likewise, we won’t be able to mark Remembrance Sunday as we have become used to. We can expend energy on outrage, or, we can choose to remember; perhaps, get back to the heart of remembrance, which is to move towards reconciliation and peace.

The fourth task of grieving is to reinvest in the reality of a new life. And right now, to be honest, we might not have the energy to do so. One of my deepest regrets of 2020 is that earlier in the year our church buildings were only closed for three months. You see, across the country, we just buckled down to ride it out until we could return to business as usual. But there is no going back, only pressing onward.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. What does that look like? Well, in part, it looks like holding on to the hope that there will be a reckoning beyond this life, beyond what we see now, when God will wipe away every tear. But what about the present? For now, the Church is called to be a foretaste of that hope, a testimony to what—and who—we hope in. We are called to be those who comfort the mourning; and those who, in our own mourning, know ourselves to be blessed, to be the happy ones. What does it look like? It looks like participation in the tasks of grieving, the conspiracy between the circumstances of our lives and the God who loves us beyond measure to draw us ever deeper into the mystery of knowing life in its fullness, its richness.

If All Saints’ Day reminds us of anything, it is that we have a long history of doing this. This might be the first pandemic you and I have lived through, but it is not the first time that the Church has been here. As we look to the men, women, and children whose faithful lives inspire our own, we are challenged and invited to step up and do likewise.

So, our doors will shut, and what we will be won’t look like what it has done, on the outside. But now is a time to press into our identity as children of God, to purify ourselves, that just a glimpse of what we hope in might be seen by those around us. That, as we say in Durham Diocese, we might bless our communities, for the transformation of us all.