19/11/23 St Peter’s 2nd before Advent
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Matthew 25:14-30
Our gospel reading is a parable about the kingdom - a subject that Jesus talked about a lot. He prayed about it, and spoke about it, and taught his disciples about it. Wherever he went he didn’t just teach about it but brought it into being - not in its fulness - his promise is there is more to come - but still the true taste of what God’s kingdom is like.
In a few minutes, just before we take communion, Your Kingdom come will be part of our prayer.
But what does that mean and how can we be part of the answer to one of our most regular requests?
Rather ambitiously we’re going to look at three questions - what is the kingdom? what part have we been given? And how do we go about playing that part - you’ll be surprised by how short and inadequate my answers are.
What is the kingdom?
Last night Hilary saw Macbeth about the struggle for a throne, I’ve just finished reading ‘The Uncommon Reader’ which says a lot about what it means to be a monarch. But they are not what Jesus was talking about. In Macbeth the crown is taken by violence, and held and lost by violence - kingship as power and the court a place of survival of the fittest. The king and kingdom are about ruthless domination.
Alan Bennett’s book, written in 2007 and with the Queen as the main character is funny, light and short , but it gives a strong sense of the rather stuffy protocols that govern court life that she had to navigate.
These are not pictures of the kingdom Jesus is talking about but if it isn’t the brutality of Macbeth’s court or the hidebound protocols that the Queen had to contend with what is it?
The best picture I know of what he meant by the kingdom of God here on earth is given by Rowan Williams and my apologies because I’m fairly sure I’ve already quoted this to you but it bears repeating.
When reading the Gospels you sometimes get the impression that if anywhere in ancient Galilee you heard a loud noise and a lot of laughter and talking and singing, you could be reasonably sure that Jesus of Nazareth was around somewhere nearby. Jesus created fellowship wherever he was. And it is one of the things in the Gospels that is remembered as most distinctive about him, because even then some of his friends were embarrassed by it. The indiscriminate generosity and the willingness to mix with unsuitable people were already, in the first Christian generation, just difficult enough for the Gospel writers to scratch their heads and cough just a little bit about it. But they could not deny it or suppress it. It was too vividly remembered. Jesus sought out company and the effect of his presence was to create a celebration, to bind people together.
This doesn’t sound like a kingdom at all, but where Jesus the king holds sway - there is the kingdom of God.
It isn’t a place or a hierarchy or a power block, it’s a community that recognises Jesus as king. It’s a place of welcome and reconciliation. It’s for everyone. It’s an attractive community that is seen as good news even by people without a religious bone in their body.
Three characteristics we will come back to - indiscriminate generosity, willingness to mix with unsuitable people and joy. This is the kingdom we are praying will come.
What part have we been given?
Listen to our reading the kingdom is like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. I am used to reading this as a story as though the master has given the servants a test to sort out the useful ones from the useless but this isn’t what it means.
What helped me to take it more seriously than that was to read something Dorothy L. Sayers - the detective story writer wrote, ‘God underwent three great humiliations in his efforts to rescue the human race. The first was the incarnation, when he took on the confines of a human body. The second was the Cross, when he suffered the ignominy of public execution. The third humiliation is the church. In an awesome act of self-denial, God entrusted his reputation to ordinary people.’
Jesus is saying ‘the Father has taken what is most precious to Himself and genuinely put it into our care, he has made his kingdom on earth our responsibility. We creatures are being charged by the Creator with joining Him in working for His kingdom and then being sharers of it with Him.
We are the servants who have been given the gifts to grow the kingdom. What part have we been given - he wants us to help make the communities we are part of - obviously the church, but going beyond that into our neighbourhoods as well - more like the kingdom of God.
Third question How do we do it? How do we live as good servants?
Churches and communities are local groupings and what one looks like will be very different from another. Our brothers and sisters in Ukraine, in Palestine, in Israel, are facing very different problems from us, so how they live out their faith may well look very different, but any community of the Kingdom will share some common characteristics
Indiscriminate generosity - God is a God of grace it is in his nature to give - so that should mark us too - whether money, time, concern - the gifts we have been given are for using.
The trouble with preaching about something is that it makes it sound more religious than it actually is. What God wants is for his people to be welcoming and recognisably good news. We are called to be good neighbours.
Jesus was always displaying his willingness to mix with unsuitable people. He would talk to anyone whether good, bad popular or unpopular - sometimes people said of him if he knew what the person he was talking to was like he would have nothing to do with them, but he did know and he was still there chatting. We are called to welcome rather than judge the people we meet.
The third characteristic is joy. In the parable different servants were given different amounts to work with depending on what they were good at. The work God gives to us will fit with who we are and where we are. We are all in different places, we all have different capacities, we all have different strengths and weaknesses but what is common is that we are people of the kingdom and we should nurture its values in all our relationships.
The contacts we have with each other should reveal what God’s kingdom is like to others - creative, just, true, joyful, hospitable, a place where each person matters and knows it.
The people who were with Jesus had found their proper place in relation to him and one of the results of that was joy and if we are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing then joy will be there too.
One of the frustrating things about serving God is we don’t know how we are doing. A talent was money rather than a gift and if you invested it it was easy to see the result. Not so for us - the only person who can say how we are doing is God. He knows what He is asking of us and how well we are responding, and he brings his own judgment to bear and his view of success is unlikely to be the same as ours - after all we are following someone who thought that washing people’s feet was not beneath Him, who saw the mood of the crowd following Him shift from welcome to condemnation and who was betrayed and deserted by his closest friends before being crucified - this God may well have a topsy turvy idea of success.
What we do know from the parable is that the one option that is not open to us is to have a faith that makes no difference to how we live. Burying our gifts away isn’t allowed.
And this leads us back to where I’ve normally started. The third servant and his fate. This is someone who has removed themselves from the work of God, who has not let their relationship with Him affect how they behave. A challenge to us who follow Jesus - is the way we live shaped by His values? It’s a challenge and a warning, it isn’t a judgement. There is no need for anyone to find themselves in the third servants position.
What’s Jesus saying to us through the parable? - Take it seriously that I have trusted you to be the kingdom of God on earth. It isn’t a test that will set the level of out reward in heaven - we are participants in His work now - the Kingdom He has given us to grow is the one we share with Him now.
But don’t let this paralyse you - bring your kingdom life into the way you do everything. This is not a call to be religious but to develop a compass that will point us in the direction of the kingdom of heaven so wherever we are, whoever we’re with we will know what is good and then so live.
