Looking Again

 Matthew 25:14-30

The parable of the talents. A great stewardship sermon. At least this is most often how it is related, but what if...what if we listen to the text a bit deeper? What if we played with the text a bit? What if we see it in a new light?

This is what story is supposed to do for us and this is a story, one of many Jesus gives us on what the kingdom of heaven will be like. Well, what does it then say to us? If we take and mosh all these stories together we get a kingdom of heaven which is not very consistent. It varies in who and what happens. Maybe this is a part of the point.

This week I listened to Padraig O'Tuama give a talk about scripture, in it he did a poetic devise called erasure poems, where you take out some of the text to hear it in a new way. The thing is this also helps us to play with the text. Too often we think of the text as some piece of historic, written on tablets, story which can't be played with. The whole reason Jesus uses story though is for us to hear differently then we normally would. The problem is we have taken centuries of story and made them fact. We stopped playing with them, we stopped hearing them as they would have back in Jesus' day. So today lets invite a little imagination into the story. 

As the story ends we hear about abundance and scarcity. It is a world view we take on, do we give out of the abundance we have been given? Do we see out of the abundance we have around us? Or do we only see how little we have and that we need more? We need more money. We need to control money. We need to control what we have so we may have more. 

The master gives from his abundance to each one. Each one sees either abundance in this or fear of losing, scarcity. How do we look at the world? Which mode do we operate out of? The thing is seeing abundance never only relates to money. Seeing abundance includes the gifts we have of friendship, the gift of trust, the gift of simple things. All abundance comes from is the simple. These are the things which are intangible and we can't hold onto in any other way.

The beauty of abundance is in gifts of time. When someone offers to be with you, when you take time to do something creative to give to someone else, when you invest time in noticing the whole of what is around you at any given moment. This is acting, seeing, claiming abundance. Even playing with the text is operating out of abundance. It is intangible, but what is revealed is other, it is holding onto a childlike imagination of what is.

They say as we age our imagination goes. We don't ask as many questions as a child does. We forget to play with things. We forget the wonder of the world around us. The memories of what is most important. A walk in the woods, playing in the mud puddles, noticing something for the first time and being in awe of it, these are all childlike qualities. They all help us to notice the abundance in the world around us. 

The thing is the way we see this is the way we act in the world. Rome saw they might lose the people they conquered so they forced ways of being Roman onto the ones they occupied. Scarcity is the operator here. They say from the archaeology of the area of Canaan there once existed an egalitarian society and this is what the refugees from Egypt settled into and married into. There was no battle of Jericho, no conquering another, just living together and sharing the abundance the land had instead of controlling it out of scarcity. This makes a beautiful story of tolerance and taking in and peace, instead of control, occupation, and extinction. 

Today we sit in the middle of growing numbers of COVID cases, of friends quarantined and taking the measures they need to, to be safe. The ways in which we see this are the ways we get through. From taking time with family, to enjoying meals, to playing with one another, to walking in nature all forms of abundance. The abundance of things offered online we never would have seen, the fact we can still gather online, and the ways in which we can operate out of abundance seem stained. All we need to do is recognize and count the gifts we have. The gift of time, the gift of silence, the gift of realizing what is really important all these are the ways of abundance.

Even in the face of fear the others operated with abundance. How can we let the world see this abundance. This wonder of what it is to be alive, to have the gift we can give of care for one another? Maybe its in the small acts instead of big ones. I heard an NPR report the other day from a hospital in Montana. The staff there is overworked, experiencing compassion fatigue and it hit me, we have the power to help. We can write notes of encouragement to our own health care staff. Let them know we appreciate their gift. Everyone thinks of big public ways to do this, but what about the ways in secret we can do this? It is just as effective. We don't need reports highlighting what we've done, but the abundance of knowing we may have cheered someone who needs it. I would encourage everyone to do this. To say thanks because we are a people of abundance and not the scarcity of what we have or don't.