“Flipping the Script”

25th Sunday after Pentecost

November 19, 2023

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Matthew 25:14-30

Children’s Message:

“The Monster at the End of the Book”—Endings can be scary

One summer I went to camp, and the last day of camp, I became really grumpy. And a little angry. Because I didn’t want camp to end. I didn’t want to say goodbye to my new friends. I didn’t want to go home to my regular life. I wanted to stay on this adventure.

Have you ever experienced not wanting something to end? Sometimes it’s someone who has died, and we weren’t ready to say goodbye. Sometimes it’s a friend who moves away. Sometimes, it’s just the end of a really good book or movie. And endings can be scary and sad.

This book reminds us that even when we’re scared or sad, God is with us. We can rely on other people to help us through the ending. And often, an ending can also mean a new beginning—like starting a new school.

These past couple of weeks, we get Scriptures that talk about the end times—when everything ends, and Jesus comes and starts something new. And that’s both scary and exciting. But no matter what, we trust that Jesus is with us through it all.

Let’s pray. Dear God, thank you for helping us through scary and sad times. Help us trust you to show us the way through. Amen.

Message:

Welcome to another scary parable from Jesus as he nears his death. It follows last week’s parable as another dark and ominous story of being left out, kicked out, and left behind.

In this story, the master takes his own slaves—the people that he owns—and gives them money. One commentary equated a talent as a block of gold or silver weighing up to 50 lbs. Another suggested that 5 talents is equivalent to today’s $6.25 million. It’s a lot of money that he leaves in the hands of his slaves. He doesn’t give it to them for their own use. He gives it to them with the expectation that they will find ways to make him more money.

Now, I can’t imagine anyone making that much money without exploiting someone—or many someones. As the third slave suggests, this is a harsh master who takes what is not his. The master doesn’t argue the point. In fact, he lives up to the harshness by casting the poor slave out into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

We have this tendency to read every parable as if the master, the king, the landowner always corresponds to God. But this parable doesn’t match up with the God of the beatitudes—blessed are the meek, the hungry, the poor. This master doesn’t match up with the Jesus who suggests that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. It doesn’t match up with the idea that the first will be last and the last will be first. I do not think the master symbolizes God. So what if we flip the script on this parable?

For instance, what I hear in this story is a tyrant who invests people as if they are property. What I hear is a description of how Roman overlords operated. When the third slave told the master, “Here you have what is yours,” what I hear is, “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s.” When the master says, “To those who have much, more will be given; and to those who have nothing, what they have will be taken away,” I hear the systems of greed and power at play. Not God. Not Jesus, who breaks the rules for the lame, the downtrodden, and the hungry—to give, not to remove; to heal, not to hurt.

What I hear in this story is a sign of resisting empire by refusing to play the money game. When the first two slaves traded their talents, the only thing that might be able to double that kind of money would be gambling or high-risk investments. I wonder what would have happened to them had they lost. When the master suggested the third slave should have invested his money to get interest, that goes directly against Jewish law forbidding usury.

No, this is not a parable about God but about human sin—the kind of sin that sends God to the cross. Jesus flips the script, and challenges us all to do the same.

It certainly changes the tone of the parable. And rightly so. As Jesus prepares for his death, he shines a light on the corruption that eventually leads him to the cross—people who are never satisfied, people who fear losing their place in the world, people who desire certainty over love, people who think that serving such a master will somehow benefit them eventually. In challenging this system, Jesus opens himself up to death. He opens himself up to being thrown into outer darkness. He opens himself up to the evil and sinfulness of all humanity.

And why? Because he knows what he’ll find in the outer darkness. He’ll find all the others cast out, left out, thrown out. He’ll find all the ones who’ve been discarded. He’ll find all the ones who never measured up. And in that place, in the darkness of the tomb, his light will undo the greed, the corruption, the fear, the anger, the ugliness, the hurtfulness, the divisiveness—all the sin of humanity. And he will bring us back from death to life. All because he entered death to begin with. He flips the script from outcast to welcome.

When read at face value, this parable—and similar ones—feel off. They tell of a God made in our image. A God who rewards the privileged. A God who hates weakness. A God who is demoralizing and hurtful. A God who has been used to justify colonization, slavery, domestic abuse, sexism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, greed, lust, and hatred. This approach to Scripture is self-serving and harmful.

And yet, it is pervasive. As Christians, we are called to question Scripture. Ask about context. Challenge assumptions. And go deeper. Going deeper can be frightening because it might mean that our original understanding might change. It might shift. It might mean we’ve been wrong. I’ve been wrong. I’m probably still wrong. But I’m learning to read Scripture with an eye toward the God of grace and welcome. I study alongside commentaries and colleagues. We question and challenge. And hopefully, we come to the sermon with a message of hope, not hurt. Life, not shame.

I say all this because as most of you know, today we’ll be voting on becoming a congregation that is open to calling future pastors that may be LGBTQ+, persons of color, or Indigenous. We’ll vote on becoming a congregation that is willing to offer sacred space for same-sex weddings and blessings. We’ll vote on becoming a Reconciled in Christ congregation.

For many, this challenges how we’ve understood Scripture, tradition, and the teachings we have received our whole lives. It opens up wounds received by other Christians from both ends of the issue spectrum. And it signifies a shift in what many have expected from Christianity—both good and bad.

The question that gets posed is similar to how we approach this and other parables: does our understanding and interpretation of God’s message foster life and hope? Is the God we worship one that uses fear or grace to reach us? We’ve lived in a church that has fostered fear of the outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth for so long it can be difficult to imagine any other way. Perhaps this is the day we flip the script.

Pastor Tobi White

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE