TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Rev. Dayle Casey

The Chapel of Our Saviour

Colorado Springs, Colorado

November 17, 2002

Proper 28 -- A

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18

1 Thessalonians 4:13--5:10

Matthew 25:14-29

 As we saw last week, the matter of time is a puzzlement.  In one sense, there is always time, yet there always comes a time when there is no more time.  Life is like that.

            It was like that for the Christians in Thessalonika, in Paul's time.  "What happens if....?" they asked.  What happens to those who die before time runs out?  What happens if we die before that Day comes when the Lord returns?

            What happens if....?  It's a big question, a question we ask all the time.  But nothing ever "just happens," as if by chance, says Paul; all things are made to happen.  So Paul tells the Christians in Thessalonika, "Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who have fallen asleep.  I don't want you to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.  Jesus died and rose again, so we believe that when that day arrives, God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him....  So, about times and dates, we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, like labor pains that come on a woman in childbirth....  But you, brothers, are not in darkness, so that this Day should surprise you like a thief."  So the big question is what happens here, in the meantime, "because you are all sons of the light and sons of the day, and we should stay awake and sober, as befits those who live in the light, that we might clothe ourselves now in faith and love and hope.  For God has not appointed us to suffer wrath.  God does not mean for us to experience retribution, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.  He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together in him."

            Judy once gave me a poster with a picture of three monkeys with three different expressions on their faces.  "There are three kinds of people," the poster reads:  "Those who make things happen," shouted the expression of the first monkey; "those who watch things happen," said the second, "and those who wonder what happened," puzzled the third.

            But I rather think that God sees us as only two kinds of people  --  those who make things happen and those who don't, those who use the time that God has given us to share in the creative work of God, making things happen with whatever time and abilities we have been given, and those who watch things happen around them, wondering what has happened.

            Nothing ever "just happens"; all things are made to happen.  God created us for himself, and Jesus died for us so that we might live together in him and for each other, and has given us time so that we might make it happen, in our time.

            But there will be a time when there is no more time.  And that day will be like this, Jesus tells us:  "Once upon a time, there was a man who went abroad.  Before he left, he called his servants and entrusted his capital to them.  To one he gave five bags of gold, worth about twenty years of wages  --  it was a huge amount of capital.  To another he gave two bags of gold, worth about eight years of wages.  And to a third he gave one bag, still an awful lot to work with and a big opportunity, worth about what the servant would earn in four long years of labor.  The master gave to each according to his ability.  Then he left the country.

            "After a long time, the master returned to settle accounts with his servants.  The man who had received the five bags of gold said, 'Sir, you entrusted me with five bags of gold; here are five more that I have made with the five you gave me.'  'Well done,' said the master.  'You have made good use of what was mine in the time you've had.  You have proved trustworthy in a small matter; I will now put you in charge of something big.  Come and share your master's joy.'  And he said the same to the servant who had received the two bags of gold and had doubled his investment.

            "But when the third servant appeared before the master, he said, 'Sir, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered.  I did not want to risk what belongs to you, so I hid it in the ground, where it has been safe all the time you've been away.  Here it is; it is yours, and now you have it back.'

            "But his master said to him, 'Now you've torn it!  Now you've lost it.  Don't you know what time does to uninvested wealth?  Offering back uninvested wealth is like offering back a corpse in exchange for a living person.  Don't you know that hiding what I gave you is opportunity lost?  Don't you know that nothing ever "just happens," that all things are made to happen?'

            "And the master took the bag of gold from the man and said, 'Take this useless man and throw him out into the dark.'  And the master gave the bag of gold to the servant who had ten already and who knew how to make things happen with them."

            Nothing ever "just happens"; all things are made to happen.  Things are made to happen, and we gain or we lose according to the time we use or the time we lose.  In his story, Jesus is telling us that there is a danger in life, a danger of aiming too low and reaching it.  He is calling us to be as entrepreneurial with the good news of God as we are with the businesses we start and the real estate we manage, calling us to be as clever and committed to multiplying the Gospel in the time we have been given as we are to multiplying money.

            Several years ago, when baseball was still both fun and important, Thomas Boswell wrote two delightful books about baseball and life.  He called them Why Time Begins on Opening Day and How Life Imitates the World Series.  In our day, Jesus would have known those two truths, and he might have told a story about them.  He might have told it like this:  Once upon a time, there was  a game that was tied in the top of the ninth inning.  There was one out, and the manager signaled for a hit-and-run. 

            (Now all of you know that the purpose of a hit-and-run is to make things happen, to move the runner from first base to third base, and perhaps to force a throwing error.  In any event, the purpose is to put the runner into a position where he might be made to score, not by the off-chance of the relatively rare home run, as if by magic, but by the ordinary and rather dependable course of playing out the rest of the inning.  With a man on third and one out, if that can be made to happen, the runner can later be made to score in a variety of ordinary ways  --  with an ordinary single, on an error, on a fly ball, or even on the right kind of ground ball or sacrifice bunt.)

            So the coach signaled for a hit-and-run, and on the next pitch the hitter singled safely to right.  But the runner, who rounded second base easily, suddenly hesitated, looked back to right field, and scurried back to the safety of second base.  The next two hitters flew out to center and right, and, instead of scoring the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly, the runner, along with the hopes of his team, died at second.  And the advantage they could have had was lost and now belonged to the team coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth.

            And the coach?  Well, of course, the coach was furious.  "Why did you stop at second when the play called for you to go to third?" he asked the hapless base runner when he trotted off the field.   "Well," replied the runner, "I knew you to be a hard coach, and I was afraid I might get thrown out, so I thought it was better to be safe at second than sorry at third."

            And to this pathetic plea the coach said, "Casey, you knucklehead, don't try to think; it's too hard for you.  I'll do the thinking."  And to his assistant the coach said, "Take this useless man and banish him to the dugout and the bench"  --  where, I can tell you from experience, there is darkness and weeping and much gnashing of teeth!

            All things are made to happen.  And to those who have will more be given, and to those who don't have, even what they have is taken away.

            This truth used to bother me.  Does this mean that God favors the rich and impoverishes the poor? I used to wonder.  But life has taught me that that's not what it means.  Jesus' story is just an affirmation of a simple truth of life  --  that God's dice are always loaded.  Nothing ever "just happens," not even the Day of Judgment.  All things are made to happen.

            If we use the opportunity given to stop at second when the play calls for heading to third, if we use the time given us to seek a sheltered place where we can watch what's going on when the times call for making things go on, then we have indeed made something.  We have created for ourselves an occasion for death to have its way with us.  If we do not practice speaking Spanish, then we will not speak Spanish.  If we do not practice the piano, then we will not make music happen.  That is just the way life is.

            But if we live in the time allotted as ones created in the image of the Creator himself, if we use the time and resources God has given us to make things happen as God would make them happen, seeking, in time, to bring forth increase as God would bring it forth in time, then what has been created?  Nothing less than an opportunity for the Spirit to work in us and through us to bring forth life, in time, as God would bring it forth in time.

            "We think of eternal life, when we think of it at all," Frederick Buechner says, "as what happens after we die; we would do better to think of it as what happens when we begin to live."  Hiding the bag of gold, stopping at second when the play calls for moving to third, fearing to use now the gifts we have been given, is to act as if there will always be plenty of time, when in fact the time for making things happen is always now.

            Eternity is all time.  Eternity is found in every moment.  Every moment, therefore, is pregnant with the possibility of eternal life.

            "Always remember," St. Paul reminds us, "that this is the hour of crisis....  This time, now, before the master returns, not some time later, is the hour of judgment, the critical time."

            "Love," says Mother Teresa, "is a fruit in season at all times, and within the reach of every hand."  Love can be made to happen at any time; encouragement can be offered at any time; hope can be made to happen at any time.  That's true as long as time is.  Can love be made to happen tomorrow?  Can encouragement and hope be made to happen tomorrow?  Sure, if there is still time then.  But, more certainly, it can be done right now, before the master returns, before that Day arrives, because now there certainly is still time.

            In the days of Peter and Paul, there were those who worried about why Jesus had not yet returned, and Peter reminded them that time is evidence of God's patience.  The fact that that Day has not yet happened is God's way of being patient with us, God's way of giving us time to multiply the Gospel in our time, God's way of giving us time to invest in love and hope in our time, God's way of giving us time to invest the gift of time we have been given, time to live in this world the life God has given us to live.

            Advent, which is coming soon, is about the possibility of making it to third base, and to home.  It is about the "yet-to-comeness" of life, and about the necessity of decision.  It is about the intersection of our own judgments about life with God's judgment about life.  Advent is about the necessity of our deciding how we're going to live our lives in time in the only time and world God has given us to live them in.  It is about eternal life, about what happens when we begin to live.

            Who knows when or where that intersection, that crisis, that time, is?  Or was?  Or will be?  All we really know is that we live now, in the time we have been given, which means that the future is yet to be and that there is still time for it to be, still time, now, to use the time we have been given to make love and hope happen.

            Advent, in other words, is about being pregnant.  And Christmas is about being born.  Advent is about the Word of God pregnant in the world, even in a world of terrorism and possible war in Iraq.

            We know about being pregnant.  We know, when pregnant, that we have a choice, which is what life in time is all about.  We have a choice.  There is time, if we wish, to abort the Word and the Hope.  And there is also time to bring the Word and the Hope to birth.  Still time to see them born and given a name, still time to beat swords into plowshares and pruning hooks...

            ...still time to give birth again to God's Word in this given world and time; still time to heal the sick, cleanse lepers, and raise the dead; still time to share our food, our clothing, and our money with those who have none; still time to visit those no one wants to visit; still time to share time with our children and tell them we love them...

            ...still time, in John the Baptist's words, to repent; still time to turn to the babe in the manger and to Christ on the Cross; still time to turn from our desperate notions that we can save ourselves with our money, our intelligence, and our bombs...

            ...still time to invest; still time to make things happen; still time to turn from life lived for self to life lived for others; still time to sell what we have and give to the poor; still time to do for others as we would want them to do for us; still time, in other words, to be the Word of God in this given world and time that God sends us to be.

            There is time, and yet no one knows the time.  That's what Advent, and now, and eternity, are all about.

            In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.