The Parable of the Ill-Advised Workplace Evaluation

Let me suggest that the proper title for the parable we hear this morning is not “The Parable of the Talents.”  No, if you ask me, this story should be renamed “The Parable of the Ill-Advised Workplace Evaluation.”  You know that workplace ritual, right?  It sounds like a wonderful, holistic experience oriented toward your personal growth, but in practice, it can feel like judgment day.

Now you may think it’s the third servant who is being evaluated this morning, but I think the real problem in this story is that the third servant elects to do an uninvited evaluation of his master. For some reason, though this servant is apparently timid when it comes to investing, he is strangely bold about critiquing others, so instead of just reporting that he has done nothing with the money, he decides to lead with some helpful feedback.  “You are a harsh man,” says the servant, defensively.  “You reap where you did not sow.” And, in case the critique wasn’t strong enough, the servant makes the final point in bottom-line terms: “You scare me so much that I’m not really able to do my job for fear of your thundering disapproval.  Please take back the money you gave me.”

Rule number one of a performance evaluation: wait to give feedback until your boss has asked the magic, “and what could I do better?”  Don’t get out there ahead on your own.

This is a flippant reading of the parable, obviously, and I don’t want to stay with it for too long, but I do think it’s worth considering that the third servant has some kind of perceptual problem, and that his master’s eventual hard-heartedness is in some way a reflection of the servant’s fear. It’s true that there is no way around the intensity of the master, but let’s explore what’s wrong with the third servant anyway, shall we? Because it seems like the greatest obstacle in this story is his intrusive belief that the master will condemn him.

I can’t shake the thought that the third servant is somehow misreading his own situation. This is, after all, a master who entrusts his slaves with his property.  Yes, the first two servants manage a miraculous hundred-percent return on their investments, but even so, the master’s words to them are surprisingly grace-filled: “Well done, good and trustworthy servant….Enter into the joy of your master.”  There are good reasons that so many of us hope to hear these beautiful words at the end of our lives.  We don’t hear them every day. In fact, in our own ruthlessly perfectionistic times we may find it remarkable that the master has no nitpicking critique to offer along with the recognition that the job was done well.  He doesn’t offer them advice about branding.  He doesn’t ask them whether they are already working on a second project.  No questions about where they see themselves in five years or whether they’ve done a feasibility study.  By the standards of the modern workplace, that is, this master is remarkably supportive at first.  He is impressed and grateful and he expresses delight.  “Enter into the joy of your master”: is it too much to call that a kind of friendship?  At very least it’s an offer of security that most bosses would be unable to offer in the workplace today: “I’ve got plenty of work for you for as long as you want it.”

But for some reason the third servant has no access to that picture of his master. He has managed to work for him for some time, I guess, without seeing what’s strange and rich and complex about this admittedly irascible figure.

And we too have made some pretty one-dimensional pictures of God that keep us from the work of the kingdom. We have made our own economy into a master that is harsher and more demanding than this biblical slave owner.  We’ve submitted to notions of reward and punishment that are far more draconian than the ones that offend us in this parable.  And we are certain that God is a lot like the worst boss ever, just waiting to tell us that we’ve done it all wrong.  Waiting to take everything from us. 

Maybe we are secretly thinking that God’s decision to put the kingdom of heaven in our hands—to make us co-workers with God’s own grace—is a capricious, overwhelming, unfair arrangement. A set-up.  A test we can’t pass. And our complaints about this vision of God, like the third servant’s complaints about his master, may come rushing into our awareness when we are confronted with the truth that God has entrusted something precious and urgent to us.

But make no mistake.  God is not the same as our economy.  God is not the same as our culture of blame and guilt and shame and relentless critique.  God is not like the worst image of authority in our heads.  God wants us to be free and loving. The parallel between this master and our God is not in his ruthlessness, it’s in his slightly crazy willingness to put himself into our hands.  Yes, God’s trust forces a moment of decision for us, but not because God is waiting for us to get it wrong.

And yes, friends, this is Commitment Sunday, this is the Sunday in which we ask for financial pledges for the coming year. Right now, you and I are being asked to do this work.  Something of God’s kingdom has been put into our hands, crazy as that may seem. Look around you: we are it.  If the kingdom of heaven is going to flourish in Philadelphia, some Philadelphians are going to have to be involved, and that means us.  Our financial commitment to this parish and to the work of God’s church is not optional, not something we can turn away from.  The work of God is urgent, and like it or not you have been entrusted with one of God’s real treasures: a flourishing, vital, beautiful, flawed community of believers who, in spite of all the odds, have gathered together here this morning to take joy in Christian stewardship. 

We are stewards of all of this: this building, this glorious music, this rich heritage of worship and belief.  We are stewards of the faith and hope and love that have been poured out here since the late nineteenth century, and in that we are stewards of God’s very work in this world. We are stewards of the needs of the broken who come here for relief, of the joy of those who come here to be married, of the seekers who turn to us for hope that God is still possible in 2017 and beyond. There is a shelter for souls on Locust Street in Philadelphia.  There is a living monument to the joy of walking with God right here in this city. It has been entrusted to us, by the grace of God.

And we have no reason to doubt the grace of God. We have no reason to doubt God’s forgiveness when we fail, because we fail here all the time and God stays with us patiently. We have no reason to doubt that what we do here can work, because it has been working.  We have no reason to fear that this parish can’t grow, because it has been growing.  Sure, we have to be prudent about our own circumstances, but we can let this parable challenge us.  In the parable, the third servant is presented with proof that his master enjoys the bold efforts of others.  He is presented with proof that the master wants his servants to enter into his joy.  He can see the abundance that his peers are experiencing. But what he imagines is danger and failure and judgment.  And you too, are presented with proof today that God’s kingdom can flourish on this earth. A joyful life of faith is possible.  We are doing it.  Take that in.

In our world, visions of malicious power can be found without any effort at all.  We don’t have to look hard to find a culture of condemnation.  It’s easy to find somebody who will want to cast us into outer darkness, or invite us to expel others from the circle of the elect.  Recrimination is everywhere, and we are haunted by images of failure: the failed state, the failed career, failed relationships, deserted towns, failed businesses.  Closed churches.  If you get it wrong in our world, it can be hard to locate the source of help and forgiveness and new life.

What a profound statement it is to be here this morning, then, ready to offer our best.  We are ready to offer some of our security, precious though it is, because by God’s grace we are not too preoccupied with thoughts of getting it wrong.  Because we know God.  God has met us here and God’s life is offering itself to us and to others, in abundance.  That joy is available to us.  We can enter into it.  We can be part of its power.  We can be part of the transformation of the world by God’s grace.  How could we fail?

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

19 November 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Waiting Well

So imagine that this morning, over your second cup of coffee and your first bowl of granola, you decided to take a look at the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times. And, after perusing an article about what Taylor Swift is wearing, and flipping through the proliferation of articles about holiday cooking, you turned the page to glance through the Weddings and Celebrations. And after reading a couple of descriptions of glorious parties attended by glamorous people in glitzy hotels, you stumbled upon this peculiar headline: Wedding, November 11/12, 2017, Bridegroom and ? Intrigued, you read on: "The Bridegroom and his bride were married sometime between 11:45pm Saturday night, November 11, and 2:00am November 12. The exact time of the wedding is unknown, as the reporter covering this particular wedding got stuck outside the door and didn’t see the actual vows. Not much is known about the couple’s romance or the proposal, although it is reported that they first met over a glass of a most excellent wine at a recent wedding in Cana of Galilee.

"Their wedding took place in the city of Jerusalem at the bridegroom’s home, where there was presumably a lavish banquet prepared, although this reporter did not herself see said banquet (please reference the previous paragraph on how she was rudely shut out of the reception). The ceremony was significantly delayed by the fact that the bridegroom arrived several hours after his expected time. There was no official reason given for this lateness, but it is rumored that he got into an argument with his future father-in-law about the exact number of goats he was due to acquire along with his beloved.

"It is difficult to describe what the groom wore because it was midnight by the time he arrived and pitch black outside. There were long robes, for sure, and some kind of wrap, but the overall palate of the ensemble was impossible to see in the dark. This reporter can comfortably say, though, that it seemed to be an entirely appropriate wedding garment. The bride was dressed in – well, now come to think of it, I’m not at all sure what the bride wore because I never actually saw her. Is that true? Did I never actually see the bride? I think that’s true, I never saw her and I never got her name. Mostly this is due to the fact that for some reason that was never adequately conveyed to me, the door was slammed in my face when I tried to go inside.

"The other interesting event during these nuptials was the procession of the ten bridesmaids that led the bridegroom and…I guess the bride? Was she there?...anyway, the procession that led the wedding party into the actual party. The night was dark (reference earlier paragraph about the groom’s tardiness, etc.), and the light from the bridesmaids’ lamps added just the right touch to make the moment particularly magical. The bridesmaids themselves, to be honest, were a little disheveled, because they had been waiting for hours and hours (earlier reference, groom was kinda obnoxiously late) and they looked like they had been asleep. Some of the more elaborate up-dos had started to become un-dos and one of the girls had a line across her face from where she’d fallen asleep on the hem of her garment. But the light from their lamps provided a warm, romantic glow…except that, wait a minute, there was that whole scandal with the oil. Apparently the groom’s entrance was so delayed (earlier reference, you get the point), and the girls’ lamps had been burning for so long, that some of them started running out of oil. Where the wedding planner was during all of this, I have no idea, but there was this fraught moment when the five, let’s call them flakier, girls asked if they could borrow some oil. And the other girls actually said no. Ha! Apparently, caring means sharing unless you’re competing to be the bridesmaid who looks the best by lamplight. So the flaky five had to leave, and by the time they got back, the procession had already gone inside, and the door was shut. And when they knocked on the door (this was unbelievable) the groom actually looked right at them and said he didn’t know them! And he slammed the stinkin’ door right in their faces, which all happened to be right next to my face, which was so unbelievably rude that I turned on my dusty heel, walked right to the all-night falafel place, and then went home and filed this article."

When you take a close look at this parable, a couple of things become abundantly clear. First of all, Jesus is not actually interested in describing proper wedding etiquette. I mean, surely the man who provided buckets of wine to bail out an ill-prepared sommelier would let a few ill-prepared bridesmaids come in the door a little late. Secondly, and I’m going to have to offer my apologies to Saint Matthew on this one, Jesus is not actually interested in coaching his followers on how to keep awake. I know, I know, the last line of the Gospel reading is “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour,” but I suspect this is just the doings of an overly-excited editor who was trying to make this parable fit a particular pattern. Because the bridesmaids do not, in fact, keep awake. They conk out – completely – and only wake up when the town crier starts bellowing that the bridegroom is on the way.                        

No, when you look closely, this parable seems to be about waiting. The bridesmaids are rewarded or punished for the way that they wait. The bridegroom is late, no word on his e.t.a., and some of the bridesmaids wait well, and some of them wait not so well. They all seem to understand that in the waiting, it is their job to keep their lamps lit. No question about that. We don’t hear any tales of bridesmaids who tried to conserve their oil by snuffing out the flame. And they all seem to understand that the waiting is just that…waiting. There’s no anxiety, no running around trying to figure out why the bridegroom is so late. They’re just present in their waiting, un-anxious and relaxed – so relaxed, in fact, that they actually fall asleep. The only difference between the wise and the foolish bridesmaids is that the wise women bring reserves. The wise women know that the delay might just last longer than they expect, and they bring along extra fuel just in case. These are the women who will turn into mothers who always have a pack of crackers in their purses. They know that there’s a chance they might be here for a long time, and they know what it looks like when they start to run on empty, and so they make sure they’ll have enough fuel for the long, dark night.

And if this parable is about the waiting, then it is a good parable for today. Because you and I have been waiting for a long time, for so many things. We have been waiting for healing or for clarity or for real love. We have been waiting for that long longed-for peace that passes our understanding. We have been waiting to see somebody do something about the proliferation of guns and the ease with which they can get into anyone’s hands – wise or foolish. We have been waiting for some truly good news for the poor and the addicted, for the incarcerated and the recently incarcerated, for people of color, for women, and for all of those who live or work in systems where they have little to no power. We have been waiting for the Church to step up and start living like this Jesus we follow actually meant what he said. We have been waiting a long time for justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream. We have been waiting and waiting and sometimes we feel like we cannot wait any more.

But hear Jesus’ words for us this day – we’re going to have to keep waiting. We’re not going to get peace and perfect righteousness today, somewhere between our second cup of coffee and the end of your Danish. We’re not going to get it all right now. We’re going to have to wait. But here’s the thing – we can wait well. We can wait like Christ wants us to wait, like we know he’s coming. We can wait without fear or anxiety. We can wait and do the job he has given us to do, to wait and let the light of our good works, of our good deeds, of our good lives shine before others. And most importantly, while we’re waiting, we can fill ourselves up. We know what we get like when we’re spiritually hangry, so we can head that off at the pass. We can fill ourselves up. We can pray. Read. Study. Talk. Listen. Sing. Give thanks. Give. It is a truth known by many wise people that the more we give of the gifts that God has given us, the more we become filled up, like a cup that runneth over. So give. Give some more. Do justice. Love mercy. And take and eat, take and eat, take and eat, here at this richly-set, lavish banquet table.

Yes, the eternal justice and complete peace we long for is delayed. And yes, sometimes it feels like we have been waiting in the darkness for a long time. But look around. Imagine that this morning, you are surrounded by bridesmaids, waiting. We are waiting with hope and expectation. We are waiting with our light shining bright into the world. We are waiting with a reserve of oil – of patience and love – fed by Christ’s very presence in this worship. Open your eyes and see that this is the very beginning of the kingdom of heaven, shining all around you.     

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

12 November 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Humility

The previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, once uttered a somewhat withering remark, to the effect that you can tell the church is in trouble when the clergy are overly concerned about the color of their buttons.  He was referring to the practice in the Anglican Communion of priests adopting the symbols of rank when taking on distinct roles within the church hierarchy.  Canons of the church are allowed the addition of red piping and red buttons on their cassocks, as is sometimes in evidence here in our own precincts.  Archbishop Williams, even after he had achieved the highest possible position in the entire Anglican Communion, usually dispensed with the sartorial indications of his own rank and office, preferring plainest black.  He very likely had in mind Jesus’ own teaching about the scribes and Pharisees: “do not do as they do....  They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” 

Jesus was talking about the small accoutrements still used by Orthodox Jews in their prayer: the leather boxes containing a verse of the Torah, and the fringes of the prayer shawl, the tallit.  I don’t think he was criticizing the use of these aids to prayer, rather, he objected to the transformation of them into items of personal ornament.   And he went on: “You are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher.... And call no one your father on earth for you have one Father - the one in heaven.”   It has to be admitted that it is not immediately clear that our Lord belonged to an Anglo-catholic parish.  It’s a bit of a worry.  I, myself, am in possession of the ecclesiastical garment with the most fulsome and capacious sleeves of any of the clergy in this parish, so I will brook no criticism of my colleagues, wherever your minds may wander.

Of the many sayings we may delight to imagine that Jesus never spake, these few in the 23rd chapter of Matthew’s Gospel are among my favorites to ignore.  I do not wish to be called “Rabbi,” but you may stick with “Father,” unless you hear otherwise from the Verger.

My real supposition is that Jesus was not expressing a blanket prohibition of the terms “rabbi” and “father” any  more than he was articulating a prohibition of the use of the phylacteries, or the tallit.  Jesus’ aim in his teaching was to express something of the sanctity of humility, and the inevitability of humbleness in the truly faithful life.  But these few sayings of Jesus’ are precariously available to the practitioner of what we might call “false humility.”  For it is easy enough to cast aside the buttons, trim off the fringes, shorten the sleeves, and insist that everyone call you “Bob” without ever actually adopting the true attitude of servanthood and humility that Jesus is teaching about here.  In the church, we often decide to have it both ways: to keep both the buttons and the false humility - it’s a specialty of ours.

A little article I came across recently carried the intriguing title, “Why Nobody Wants to Go To Church Anymore.”  The author posited these four plausible reasons:

“They don’t want to be lectured.

They see the church as judgmental.

They see the church as hypocritical.

They see the church as irrelevant.”*

I think Jesus might have made a similar assessment of the scribes and the Pharisees, and there’s every possibility that he shares this assessment - at least some of the time - of the church.

But Jesus was an ineffective administrator, and he lacked the imagination of a bureaucrat.  He never came up with a four-point program, or with a list of seven secrets of effective discipleship.  He didn’t devise a curriculum, or write a white paper.  He put no system in place to prevent the church from falling into these same pitfalls to which the religious leaders of his own day were also prone.  

No.  This is what he said.  “The greatest among you will be your servant.  All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”  The first of those phrases refers to himself, in the first instance.  And the rest of it applies to us, Jesus’ own mother providing the first example of the truth of the teaching: she who humbled herself was exalted.

By one account, at the beginning of Scripture, all humanity - in the form of the first human - was formed out of the dust of the earth, and animated with the breath of God.  You might call that a humble beginning, albeit ennobled by the divine breath.

Near the other end of the Bible, the Son of God - himself fully human - is taken down from the Cross after his scourging, humiliation, and execution, to be placed, at last, in the ground, bringing, in a sense, to perfect completion God’s human experiment: from dust to dust.

In between, the children of God were called into the covenant from which they restlessly and repeatedly meandered; empires rose and fell; the patriarchs and prophets followed God’s guidance to lead the people into and out of exile more than once, and toward the Promised Land; the Tribes of Israel were dispersed; judges and kings lived and died; civilizations were lost; the Temple was built, destroyed, and rebuilt; the Ark of the Covenant disappeared; and the word of God was spoken, mangled, dreamed about, interpreted, written down, lost, set to music, imperfectly copied, and buried in the sand.

But still, for Christians, the story of God goes from dust to dust.  Although it was written by the hand that laid the foundations of the earth and fastened the cornerstone of creation, the hand of the One who shut up the sea with doors, and who made the clouds a garment of thick darkness, who commanded the morning, and caused the dayspring to know its place, who entered into the springs of the sea and walked to its depth, who first perceived the breadth of the universe, who knows the place where light dwells, and as for darkness, knows the place thereof, who is himself the father of the rain, and from whose womb came the ice and the hoary frost of heaven, who binds the sweet influences of Pleiades and looses the bands of Orion, who knows the ordinances of heaven, who lifts up his voice to the clouds, and sends lightnings that they may go and say unto the world, “Here we are,” who put wisdom in the inward parts, who satisfies the desolate places with water, and causes plants to spring from the earth, who fills the appetites of young lions, and provides for the raven his food, who knows the treasures of the snow, who has seen the doors of the shadow of death, and for whom the gates of death have opened.**

This is the God whose Son “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him.”***

This God gives us our life, our history, from dust to dust: a story of humility crowned by the humiliating death of his Son, the Messiah, born in a stable, then utterly forgotten for most of his life; who in preparation for his own demise stooped down to wash the feet of his followers, on the night before he died.  And then, from the humble, borrowed grave wherein his body lay in the dust, a new work sprang forth, and new life was born, the hope of heaven burst into the world.

The paradox of Christian faith is that triumph is won by the humble figure of Jesus, whose own followers were uncertain about who he is, or about what would become of them.  And Jesus regularly reminds them - and us - that if his way toward triumph was humble, we should expect our path toward triumph to be humble too.  We should embrace humility, we should be accustomed to kneeling, and the dust should be well-known to us, we should be familiar with the ways of servanthood, we should be prepared to take up our cross, and we should be ready to give up our lives - to lose them in all kinds of meaningful ways, if we expect to find meaning in life at all.  This is the consistent and regular theme of Christ.

Jesus is not teaching us easy lessons.  And no lesson can ever be easy whose lesson-plan goes like this: God is omnipotent, but he sent his Son to us to set aside his power, live in humility, and give up his life for the sake of our salvation: be like God, and humble yourself so that you may be exalted with him.  This is not a winning sales-pitch.  There is no jackpot here; there may not even be colored buttons.  There is servanthood, which means stooping, bending, feeding, working, sweating, staying up late, and rising early; and which also implies that while you are doing it, covered in dust, you will probably not be sufficiently well compensated.  Mind you, I am not preaching an ordination sermon here; Jesus seems to indicate that this is the Christian life he is talking about - meant for all of us, not just for some.

The thing about this message of humbleness is that you cannot really convince someone about it with a lecture.  True humility always resists judgmental-ism and hypocrisy.  And in world that is screaming in pain and poverty, the humility that leads one person to serve another in need will never be irrelevant.  For there in the dust, is carried to us still on wisps of ennobled breath, the reminder that “all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Which is not the sermon I wanted to preach to you, only two weeks away from Commitment Sunday, when I want to be talking to you about stewardship, about giving, about the importance of your generosity of spirit.  But the sermon I wanted to preach makes no sense if those four reasons “Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore” ring true: if I lecture you in a church that seems to be judgmental, hypocritical, and irrelevant.

Jesus looked at the buttons of the scribes and the Pharisees, and he told them that their lectures were not only boring, they sounded judgmental, hypocritical, and irrelevant under the circumstances of the day.  And the buttons (the phylacteries, the fringes) were not a problem in and of themselves, I think he meant to say, they only proved the point.

But it would do no good for me to go and chop off the very lovely, full, and ample sleeves of my best surplice.  Better to gather them in when I kneel, and be in search of feet to wash; to allow those sleeves to drag in the dust, if it puts me alongside you, where we can both see the Cross from a different angle, and seek to serve one another.  And we find there in the dust that there are others who are in need, whose lives have been shaped by deep humility, and who need to hear Jesus’ promise that soon and very soon they, and all who have been humbled, will be exalted.  May God give us the grace to wrap those humble souls in the long sleeves of our garments, and keep them warm.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

5 November 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

* Wes McAdams, www.radicallychristian.org, 13 June 2014

** See Job 38

*** Philippians 2:7-9