The Rev Kimberly Reinholz - November 16, 2014

November 16, 2014

The Rev. Kimberly Reinholz
Cathedral Church of the Nativity

Proper 28
Matthew 25:14-30

I have good news and I have bad news.  Which do you want first?

• The bad news is, I’m not Rick Cluett.  He hurt his back and had to stay home today, he is healing but he regrettably isn’t here with us this morning.  We keep him in our prayers for a quick and complete recovery.

• The good news is, this is the LAST parable that we are going to talk about for the never-ending season of Pentecost!  And boy is it as doozy.  I know why Tony went on vacation and left Rick with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But let’s get down to this parable.  These servants and their talents, what are we to make of them?  The kingdom of heaven is like this?   Really, if we don’t make money in the market place, if we don’t invest wisely, then we will be beaten and thrown out into the darkness.  This doesn't sound like the kingdom of heaven that I was taught about in Sunday School.  This doesn’t sound like the heavenly kingdom where all dogs go to, it doesn’t sound like the kind of God that I want to be judging me. 

I don’t want a Lord who will judge me based on my bank balance- because – I’ve done the same thing that Tony talked about last week.  I’ve borrowed against that 401k to invest in my marriage- to pay for my wedding, to invest in my education- to pay for part of seminary, to invest in my living expenses- when I was in school to pay for some unexpected expenses.

But then I remember that all of these parables, are metaphorical, and maybe (God I hope so) this parable of the talents is as well.  So what could Jesus be trying to teach us in this parable what are the talents that God has given each of us equally?  I believe the talent which God has given each of us for our investment – for our greatest “earning potential” is the gift of Love.  Now we all know that the greatest commandment according to Jesus is the Shema- You should love the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, and the second is like it you should love your neighbor as yourself.  

Consider for a moment if God, your neighbor and yourself, were investment opportunities like those offered to the servants in the parable.  And love was the currency.

Could we imagine that loving God, loving your neighbor and loving yourself would yield the greatest return?  Could this be the kind of wise investing that the first slave who was given five talents, and doubled his investment was capable of?  Could this slave be the ideal follower of Jesus- one who is not only capable of loving God, loving their neighbor, and loving themselves, but able to love God, their neighbor and their self.  

Could we also imagine that the second slave, the one whose two talents yield two talents is a person who is capable of only loving others, and loving himself, but not loving God?  How many of our friends and neighbors fall into this category- the spiritual but not religious, the humanists, the “nones” who proclaim love for one another and profess love for themselves, but there is no love of God.  They do have worthwhile relationships in this world, but they live in a world without the hope of eternal life (as we heard in Paul’s letter to Thessalonian’s last week) a world without God, a world without the Body of Christ, a world without the Kingdom of heaven.   

Could we finally imagine that last slave, the slave who is afraid of the master, the slave who is afraid of harsh judgment, the slave who buries the talents, as the person who is so paralyzed by fear that they cannot love anyone perhaps not even themselves?

We have all been given this gift of Love which can only increase if it is shared.  This gift that grows in power when we love ourselves, when we love one another and when we love God. 

But sometimes we cannot love. 

Sometimes we cannot love ourselves, sometimes we feel unworthy of love, sometimes we feel worthless and talentless and lacking in some capacity. 

Sometimes we cannot love God, there are times when we cannot understand God’s motives and we get angry, frustrated, and confused. 

Sometimes we can’t love our neighbor.  People can be crazy.  People can be mean and vindictive and hateful.  And it’s not always easy to love them. 

But it is not supposed to be easy to make investments in ourselves, in others or in God.  We have to have faith that our investments will produce good returns even when we have doubts about them. Sometimes it just takes the opportunity to care for someone else to shake us out of our fear, our doubt or our uncertainty about the validity of loving ourselves, our neighbors or God. 

How many of you have seen the movie the Wizard of Oz, or read the books by Frank L. Baum? 

You know the premise Dorothy Gale of Kansas travels to the Land of Oz, somewhere over the rainbow.  She spends the entire length of the movie/book trying to make her way back home with the help of the tin man, the scarecrow and the lion.   Each of them deem themselves defective in some way.  The scarecrow is without a brain, the tin man a heart and the lion courage. 

I hope this isn’t a spoiler for any of you, but the companion’s journey to the Emerald City in hopes of meeting the Wizard who tells them that they had had these particular talents all along – and they had used their brains, their heart and their courage to bring Dorothy safely to the Emerald city.  All they needed was to have faith and the love they had for Dorothy and one another, allowed them to increase their gifts and talents.  But it was the love that was the currency and the investment brought about the fulfillment of their desires. 

Let me tell you about one of my Dorothy’s.  Someone who I cared about very deeply in a time when I wasn’t sure what God wanted from me, if I was worthy of being loved, and if anyone was worth my time, never the less my love. 

I was 25 years old and heart broken.  My boyfriend of 6.5 years had broken up with me and I was devastated.  I had been attending church at a small parish.  I started volunteering with a group of refugees and asylum seekers on Wednesday afternoons in order to get out of my head for a while every week while I was writing my masters thesis.  While I was there I met a lot of people, I helped babysit little kids while their parents met with lawyers, sat with siblings or spouses while meetings were happening, and did dishes after other meetings.  I was just there to keep myself busy.

One day I met Teresa.  Teresa had come to the UK from Chile to Pinochet.  She had lived illegally in the country for nearly 35 years at that point.  Because she was in the UK illegally she couldn’t get health care, she couldn’t get housing, she couldn’t get any of the basic needs that the government provided.  She came to the program seeking some legal counsel about how to find help, she had been cast out of her native land and was effectively a non-person in her new home.  Talk about being in the darkness weeping and gnashing your teeth. 

Teresa and I started to talk, before and after her appointments with the lawyers, counselors, and ot  her officials.Not because I had anything to offer her, but only because I was the only one in the volunteer corps with even a basic understanding of Spanish.  When we first met we talked about the weather, about the coffee we were drinking, about her sons and daughters in law, about her grandchildren.  But eventually when she felt more comfortable we spoke about her journey, about how she came to live as she did, about her husband who had been killed in the coups, about the life she had lived. 

Through these hours of conversation, I came to love Teresa.  I came to invest in her, I came to work for her and use my gifts and talents to help her, even when I couldn’t invest I myself, or invest in God.  It was through this love that I was able to begin to love myself again, and eventually to love God. 

However the rest of that is a story I will have to tell you another time.  For now I invite you to spend a few moments thinking about your Dorothy’s – those people who show up in your life.  Those people who seem to need help, those who need love, and support and you think you can provide it.  Those who are hungry, lost and alone.  Those who we are called to as Christians to love – and our love takes the shape of feeding, clothing, visiting, praying for, providing a drink to.  Think about those whom you have invested in, those whom you have loved. 

Give thanks for them, and give thanks to God who gave you the love to begin with.   Amen

The Rev. Kim Reinholz - Oct 12 2014

Kimberly Reinholz

Sunday October 12, 2014

Cathedral Church of the Nativity

Proper 19 A

1Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, "Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8

We’ve all heard that saying – it looks like a duck, it sounds like a duck and walks like a duck then it must be a duck.

Well today’s Gospel looks like a single parable about a wedding feast, and while it might look like a duck, but in reality it’s not.  In reality it’s two ducks, or rather two parables strewn together over the course of creating our canon because they are both set in the same context of a royal wedding banquet. 

If we were to break today’s reading into the two distinct stories the first dealing with the invited guests and the second dealing with the inappropriately attired guest we can see this selection in a much different light.  Especially if we consider the context in which the Gospel of Matthew was written.   A context of complicated social responsibilities and expectations not easily translated into our modern mainly middle class American culture. 

It is believed that the author or authors of Matthew’s gospel survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and accordingly the author and those who followed blamed the Jewish leaders for their complacency in the Roman occupation. 

The parables of Matthew indicate over and over again an understanding that while the Israelites were the chosen people, they denied their esteemed status as the ancestors of Abraham and Sarah.  Those who were the rightful heirs of the Kingdom of God were cast aside by their own choices.

This is what Matthew is attempting to prove in having Jesus tell parables where those who were invited deny their invitation by choosing what appeared to be the good alternative options –one went to his farm and the other to his business.  Later in the same parable, these invited guests assault the slaves who come to escort them to the festivities. 

It can be understood that the slaves are an analogy for the prophets whose lives are recorded in scriptures, they were those who served the King without distraction, without differentiation.  They were not slaves to the land or to the economic pressures of the world.

Matthew’s author continually derides the Pharisees for their inability to see that the Kingdom of God is greater than the Kingdoms of People and this parable is no different.  He casts the light in such a way that the Pharisees neglect to see that they are being honored as guests at the King’s wedding feast, instead they are choosing to focus on earthly matters instead of heavenly things.

Only after those who had initially been invited are destroyed and their city burned do they realize that they have chosen unwisely to focus on their work rather than their life.  Some bible scholars claim that this is an allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem and use it to base their understanding of the time in which Matthew’s gospel was composed.  But the destruction of the farms and the business could also be an allusion to the temporary nature of the human world, and the understanding that the Kingdom of God is eternal where the kingdoms of humanity are fragile.

The second parable – the “what not to wear” parable is a little more complicated.  It seems that the King has prepared a feast, but the guest whom he invited, the Pharisees, who are distracted, are unworthy of their invitation.  Instead the adopted heirs, the sinners and tax collectors, who have no right to even be invited to the wedding banquet, are now given the place of honor at the table. The Pharisees are the same but the context of this parable is different, the guests in the first parable would rather farm or sell wares, but in this parable, they are deemed unworthy of attending the event for some unknown reason. 

So instead of having unworthy guests at his table the King casts a wide net out into the community inviting all who the slaves encounter on the street into the wedding feast. 

Upon entering the feast the King finds the ragamuffin crowd of guests, including the one who is inappropriately attired and the sentence for this fashion crime is being gagged, tied and left outside of the city walls where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I thought Joan Rivers was a tough fashion critic, apparently this King is even more judgmental. 

But as with all parables there is exaggeration and hyperbole present in the images.  The message is extreme but there is a lesson to be learned in this parable as well.  And I believe the message is you better be prepared.

Now I have a bit of a confession to make, I am a HUGE fan of Rupaul’s Drag Race and also Project Runway so when I hear this parable I imagine the King looking at this wretched individual like Rupaul and tell on of the drag queen contenstants to “sashay away”. Or Heidi Klum “auf wiedersehen -ing” another designer whose outfit just didn’t pass muster.  

But the problem is that the man on the street wasn’t planning on coming to a wedding that day, he wasn’t planning on meeting RuPaul, or Heidi Klum, he was planning to just run to the store.  I feel like it's the first century equivalent of showing up to class in your pajama pants, or running to Wawa for a quart of milk with your grubby sweats on. 

So why is the King so judgmental?   What does it matter what the unintended guest is wearing?  Shouldn’t we all be received and accepted as we are, aren’t we a come as you are kingdom? 

I think that the point isn’t as superficial as it seems.  The point isn’t that the guest is dressed in white after labor day or seersucker before memorial day.  The fashion faux pas is an example of how one ought to constantly life “as if” and be prepared to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

We shouldn’t live our lives in the “good enough” realm.  At a certain point in my life I lived by the motto- “done is better than good” and how many of us can relate to that feeling.  When 7 million things are pulling us in 7 million directions when our lives are out of control we sometimes feel like our “C game” is good enough.  This is what Jesus is warning us against in the second parable. 

We always ought to bring our “A Game” – we always should be ready to serve God when the call comes, we should always be ready to follow the commandments, and if we come up short there will be judgment. 

However, there is one aspect of this parable that I think is missing, or at least it is not directly mentioned, the Tim Gun character, the mentor, the advocate, the prophet, the dare I say it, the messiah (the savior) who stands before us and teaches us and helps us to do our best with what we have been given.  The person who tells us to “make it work” when what we are working on isn’t quite up to snuff, and that person isn’t the slave who will bind us and throw us into the darkness, but that person is Jesus who is telling us we have to be prepared- which is not a new theme for the parables in Matthew- who shares with us many times, the message of being prepared for the coming of the Kingdom.  Proof that Matthew and those who followed him believed that the Kingdom was coming eminiently.

For us 2000 years later the immediacy of the end of days doesn’t seem so inevitable in our lifetime.  We tend to live our lives not as if the invitation will be coming soon rather we tend to focus on our day to day life and loose track of what is truly important.  We tend to get comfortable and complacent and figure that getting by is good enough.  But what we are called to do as Christians is respond to the invitation the opportunity, the chance to take risks and fulfill our calling to Love God and love our Neighbor in all places and at all times.  What we as Christians are called to do is be prepared at all times to fulfill our baptismal vows to: observe the sacraments; preserve the prayers; resist evil; proclaim the Gospel; seek, serve, and love our neighbors; and strive for justice for every human being; not some times, not when it is convenient, not when it suits our agenda, but at all times.  

Jesus teaches us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like so that we won’t miss the invitation, and we won’t show up unprepared.  He wants us to make it work.  But it’s up to each of us to make the choices to respond, to show up and not skate by.

Amen.