November 16--The Only Thing We Have to Fear

"Master, I knew that you were a hard man. You harvest things you did not plant. You gather crops where you did not sow any seed. So I was afraid and went and hid your money in the ground." --Matthew 25: 24-25a.

(Lectionary focus: Matthew 25:14-30)

I've been reading the prophets lately, as they cycle their way through the daily lectionary. The harsh words of the LORD through the prophet Zephaniah have hounded me this week: "I will punish those who are satisfied with themselves," our God says to ancient Israel. "Their wealth will be stolen and their houses destroyed. They may build houses, but they will not live in them. They may plant vineyards, but they will not drink any wine from them. The LORD's day of judging is coming soon; it is near and coming fast" (Zephaniah 1:12-13).

No wonder the servant is scared! If the prophets are right, there’s not much that angers God more than the people of God mishandling our wealth.

The self-satisfied spending of elite biblical Israel, after all, led to a radical day of reckoning at the hands of a foreign empire, centuries before the time of Christ and his presentation of this parable. Investment in exotic luxury items at the expense of the most vulnerable rendered the whole people of God susceptible to foreign assault . . . and ultimately the victims of outright exile. It makes sense that the servant several hundred years later would see wealth as so dangerous. Better, indeed, to avoid it altogether. Better, indeed, to make sure it stayed safe.

And it’s not just an Old Testament sentiment, either. The entire Book of Revelation anticipates a cataclysmic economic collapse of the great Roman Empire as God’s righteous response to their incessant greed. The letter of James, too, warns the rich that their gold and silver “will eat your bellies like fire” (5:3). The First Epistle to Timothy reminds us that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (6:10).

So why would Jesus choose to describe the kingdom of heaven in terms of so much wealth? A talent, after all, could fund one worker for fifteen years. Two talents for thirty. Five talents for 75!

It’s not God’s abundance that’s the problem, Jesus suggests in this parable. It’s our gratitude for it . . . our acknowledgement of it . . . and our stewardship with it.

Because we still do have talent, both the monetary kind and the human ability kind. We have quite a lot of it, actually. Some of us have enough to fund thirty or even 75 years. Others of us have just a single dose, just enough for fifteen. But even one talent is a whole lot of money for a first-century worker dependent on his boss for his daily bread. And even one talent is a whole lot ability for the twenty-first century worker desperate for a job. And every talent, invested well, will double in return. This is the one certainty of God’s market economy.

It is natural to fear for our basic economic survival. It is natural to fear our mishandling of wealth. Even the euphoria of a dramatic presidential election emphasizes in its wake our deepest anxieties about money. Has our wealth been stolen--or will it be soon? Have our houses been destroyed--or will they be soon? Have our jobs been lost--or will they be soon? The economic agenda is the nation's agenda, the world's agenda. The parable of the talents could not be more relevant.

We can bury God’s gifts of talent and treasure and face a wrath even worse than that of the prophets. Or we can take what we have, invest it in the common good, and double our wealth in service to God. The choice is ours in the weeks and months ahead. May we make the choice of faith, acknowledging our fears before God, and trusting God’s everlasting abundance.
Amen.

Gusti Linnea Newquist

(additional lectionary texts for this week: Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11)

September 28--Hitting a Rock with a Stick

Text focus for this week:

Exodus 17:1-7 and Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

(Additional lectionary texts for this week:

Philippians 2:1-13 and Matthew 21:23-32)

My mother has a black and white photograph hanging in the hallway of a three year old girl holding a two foot long stick. The girl’s eyes are wide with anticipation as she prepares to whack the brightly decorated papier mache llama hanging just to her side. She has been told there is a special treasure inside that piñata and that if she just hits it hard enough with her stick, then streams of candy—butterscotch and peppermints and Hershey kisses—will flow down like river. She really wants that candy.

The three year old girl hits the piñata really hard, harder than she has ever hit anything in her life. She swings that long stick so hard, in fact, that she loses her balance and skids onto the concrete floor, scraping her hands and her knees.

No candy flows down from that pretty piñata. The only things she has to show for her valiant efforts are bruised up limbs and a deflated dream.

“There was never any candy in that stupid llama!” she screams at her parents in her distress. “You tricked me and now everyone is laughing at me. I wish I could just go home. I wish I had never come here at all!”

She stomps over to the corner and refuses to speak to anyone. Not to her mother, who tries to convince her there really is candy in that llama. Not to her father, who chastises her for acting like a baby. Not to her best friend, Susan, who brings her the stick and begs her to try again. This candy-loving, stick-whacking three year old has given up hope and refuses to pretend otherwise.


The ancient Israelite community we encounter in our text from Exodus this week has also given up hope, but on a much more spectacular scale than our piñata-challenged three year old. The ancient Israelites are literally wandering from one place to another in the wilderness between Egypt and the land of Canaan, never quite sure where they will end up next. They live “paycheck to paycheck,” which for them means gathering up frost-like flakes that fall on the ground each morning and a handful of quail each night. It is not much—not butterscotch or chocolate or even milk and honey—but it is enough to sustain them from one day to the next.

The industrious ones among them fear their luck may run out and want to save for the future. Maybe the manna won’t come the next morning! Maybe the quail won’t come the next night! But when they try to save the manna and the quail, it just turns to worms overnight. Day-to-day living is the only option in this barren desert.

The social climbers among them crave the stability of food and drink from their former lives in Egypt. Slavery is better, they say, than this uncertain existence. But the decision to leave has already been made, and they have no choice but to press ahead.

And so the ancient Israelites arrive at a new camp on a new day—sustained but worried, pushing forward but second-guessing—and realize there is no water for them to drink. And it starts all over again. “There never was any land of milk and honey calling us out of Egypt!” they lash out at Moses. “You tricked us and now we will die and our children and our farm animals with us. We wish we could just go back to Egypt. We wish we’d never come here at all!”


What do you do if you’re Moses, the reluctant leader of this rag-tag alliance? What do you do if you’re the parent of a three-year old who has never seen candy spill from a piñata? What do you do if you’re stuck in a day-to-day existence and don’t know how you’re going to pay next month’s rent?

“I will stand in front of you on a rock at Mount Sinai,” the Holy One offers to Moses. “I will stand with you in front of that papier mache llama,” says the parent to the small child. “I will stand with you as you go to that temp agency,” says our God to the laid-off social worker. “Hit that rock with the stick, and water will come out of it so that the people can drink.” Hit that rock with the stick and streams out of the rock will cause water to flow down like rivers.

Hit that rock with a stick, says our God to everyone who wonders how we’re going to survive in these uncertain times. Keep on hitting it, even though you’re blindfolded, even though others second-guess you, even though you second-guess yourself. I have led you out of your slavery, and I have given you manna and quail, and I will give you more than enough water, as if from the deep ocean. I have done it before, and I will do it again. And I will stand with you, even until the end of the age.

We don’t know when that papier mache piñata will finally break, we don’t know when that rent check will finally come, we don’t know when that stream will finally flow, but God is still with us, and we are still with God. May we trust it in plenty and in want, in certainty and in doubt. Amen.

P.S. Kelsey Rice Bogdan has graciously exited her role as MBS Blogger and passed on the duties to me! I'm Gusti Newquist, a June 2008 graduate of Harvard Divinity School and Presbyterian minister-to-be. I served as the MBS seminary intern from October 2005-May 2006 and am delighted to be back with MBS in this capacity.

September 21--How God Provides

Passages for this week:

Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

I have been thinking quite a lot lately about those hourly workers laboring in the vineyard who appear in Matthew’s gospel for this Sunday. I have been imagining what it might be like to begin a physically demanding job in the wee hours of the morning, to work hard all day, and then to watch other people who arrived many hours later receive the exact same payment that I did. I have been thinking that it makes perfect sense for people in this position to complain about the lack of fairness in the system, to feel cheated, to judge those who worked less than they did as slackers or cheats. Of course, if we are in this position and have been brought up to be good Christians, we might immediately reject this natural instinct of jealousy or self-righteousness as morally wrong . . . and instead adopt a paternalistic attitude toward “those less fortunate” who of course should be cared for, even though they didn’t really deserve it, and even though we would never be one of them.

At least this is what I imagine myself thinking about the story if I were still safely employed in a job I loved with more than adequate health insurance and a sizable pension plan with a matching 401 (k). Like many “hard working” Americans, I have been an overachieving workaholic all my life, easily falling into the trap of assuming I deserve to be compensated better than my colleagues . . . easily falling into the trap of believing I actually have earned everything I have achieved, rather than admit that at some level I simply may have happened to be in the right place at the right time when the landowner came around offering work at 6 in the morning. (Okay, maybe it's been closer to 9.)

I am no longer in that position, at least for now.

I have learned in this past week that it is an entirely different experience to read the parable of the workers in the vineyard from the perspective of someone seeking employment, swirling through a sea of uncertainty, scraping together temporary and part-time jobs, wondering when a more stable employer will stop by to pick me up . . . at 9am? . . . or noon? . . . or 3pm? . . . or—please God, at least let it be by 5!

From this new perspective, I have been imagining those workers waiting in the marketplace, alternating between confidence and doubt, knowing in one minute they have the skills and the desire to earn a decent living but watching the minutes and the hours tick by with nothing to show for it. Wondering if they would ever have anything to show for it.

From this new perspective, I have also been marveling at the generosity of an employer who would spend an entire day seeking out and then hiring everyone who wanted to work . . . and then providing all the workers with a wage that would support them through the next day, even if they did not technically “earn” it. And I've been thinking that perhaps if I could just know that 5pm would not pass me by empty-handed, I could rest and renew, rather than panic and fear. Perhaps if I could just believe that everyone in the marketplace would get hired eventually, I would faithfully discern the call of God, rather than descend into cut-throat competition with my equally gifted peers. Perhaps if I could just trust that I would receive what I needed when I needed it, regardless of when I started working again, I would actually be able to enjoy the marketplace in the meantime.


The kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells us in this parable, is like a person who owned some land and went out very early to hire some people to work in his vineyard. The kingdom of heaven is like trusting God’s eternal provision, whether we start working at 6am or 5pm or somewhere in between. The kingdom of heaven is like trusting a God who seeks us out, who pursues us from early morning and well into the evening, who dares us to shed jealousy and fear and pride and doubt in order that all may be fed and all may finally thrive. The kingdom of heaven is here with us now, as well as in the age to come.

And this is how God provides for us all. May we believe it, may we trust it, may we live it into reality in the days and weeks to come. In the name of Christ. Amen.