Which Servant Am I?

Matthew 25:14-30

Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.

After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. "Master," he said, "you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more."

His master replied, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

The man with the two talents also came. "Master," he said, "you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more."

His master replied, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

Then the man who had received the one talent came. "Master," he said, "I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you."

His master replied, "You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest."

"Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

This parable has been haunting my thoughts in recent days. How often do we read Jesus' parables and mentally place ourselves "in a good spot" in his stories. We are, of course, servants who are taking God's gifts and investing them, of course. Right? Reaping a good harvest with our talents...

Or are we?

I am struck of late by the haunting thought that I have perhaps more in common than I want to admit with the man who hid his one talent in the ground. This thought gravitates around these words...

I knew that you are a hard man.

It's a commonplace that most Christians are keen to not enter the field of full-time Christian missions. "Lord," we say, "I'll do anything... but please don't send me as a missionary." We often try to make it a bit of a joke (maybe it's nervous laughter?) when we share this sort of thing with each other. But at the heart of it all, are we not simply admitting that working for God full-time is a harder job than we care to contemplate? This has been the case for me more than I care to admit.

I knew that you are a hard man.

We don't simply avoid serving God full-time. We work full-time avoiding service to God. Our lives are, more often than not, a long story of taking care of ourselves and a pretty tight circle of family and friends. Count me guilty on this charge. I've only served one soup-kitchen for a few hours on one day — in the last ten years.

Matthew 10:42
And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.

Mother Teresa has our respect. but somewhere in our hearts we must think she was a fool. Do we really believe that she is now being rewarded more so than the average bloke who died last week while vegging in front of the TV? I guess not. If we really did, we'd be lining up behind her for the same bargain.

Instead we line up in front of Walmart at 4AM on the Friday after Thanksgiving. And when we're not in that line, we're likely lined up on a sofa. Most of American Christendom is spending most of their free time in front of a flickering screen.

In fact, I just read a day or two ago that the average American spends about five hours per day watching TV. And since, sadly, the average nominal American Christian is indistinguishable from the rest of America, the same number is a pretty decent proxy for the average bloke in the pew. But I digress...

At the close of the parable, Jesus' final words indicate that the first servant still has all ten talents — and now one more besides! God is not a hard man. The problem is with his hard-hearted and wretched servants.

Revelation 3:17
You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

Help me, Lord! I don't want to be a wretched servant. Help me to invest into your kingdom the treasures you have given me.

Darwin Never Had A Chance

It's an odd jumble of thoughts, but here goes nothing...

I am struck by the growing scientific evidence that our brains are shaped by how we think, whereas we usually think of it the other way around. Yes, we're born predisposed to all sorts of character traits and predispositions. No doubt about it. But we also by our choices and habits form our brain too. An example: it has been shown that the brains of London cab drivers are abnormally enlarged in the areas where memories of useful things like the street layout of London are stored.

But I digress... so it struck me that perhaps our choices are not only forming our brains to a certain extent but also forming, even more markedly, our very souls. That this race in life is to become spiritually fit in a very strange but real sense. We can see which earthly athletes have been training. I suspect it is just as obvious to the watching angels which earthly souls are in great spiritual health.

Some of us are dead. Some are pew potatoes. And some frail little lady praying in a cottage somewhere is the finest specimen of spiritual perfection an angel can lay eyes on. They gather to watch such gentle souls with more affection than any earthbound couch potato ever devotes to his favorite sports team. I wonder if the angels paint up their faces when she begins to pray.

On to another rambling thought. Jesus was the ultimate loser, by Darwin's reckoning. He had no physical offspring. L-O-S-E-R. Needless to say, he didn't have to die childless. But he chose to. Perhaps a blog on that one day...

But here's the strange thing. Strange thought. Jesus was indeed looking for offspring. He was playing Darwin's game, but a quantum level higher than Darwin's trifle. Jesus wanted his spiritual DNA to prosper. And ironically enough, to be the spiritually fittest it turns out to be the case that one has to play to lose the contest Darwin describes so well as it is played out in the physical realm. Everyone knows, for example, that it's the alpha male who gets the harem. But Jesus informs us that he would would be greatest must be servant to all. On and on and on and on it goes. Spiritual vitality depends upon us not playing by Darwin's rules. We have to be Darwin's loser in order to be God's winner.

The scriptures, in their own oblique fashion, give hints to this spiritual reality overlaying a more easily recognized physical one. Jesus wants us for his bride. When we agree to his indecent proposition (indecent because we don't deserve it) he forms us into his own image. What does it mean to become like Christ if not too, in so many words, take on his spiritual DNA?

Funnily enough I ran into this quote from Dallas Willard that plays into all these jumbled thoughts I've been putting to words. "You cannot be a pew potato and simultaneously engage in spiritual formation in Christ's likeness."

I know it's a bunch of jumbled thoughts. But I do like the way they play together. How ironic, that Jesus outshines Darwin at his own game and did so by seeking to lose it on Darwin's terms.

More fun with words and parallels...

The best a Darwinian devotee can do is to hope to pass half his DNA on to each physical child. The other person in the sexual union provides the other half. And each child is themselves mortal, so it's a game with no permanent winner! Closely examined, the entire enterprise begins very much to look like the myth of Sisyphus writ large. Pointless and hopeless. Is this the best Darwin can offer?

But Jesus is in it for a whole transformation, and he's playing for eternity. When Jesus achieves spiritual union with us... when Jesus gets what he wants... we are fully transformed into his image. And we don't get half his spiritual DNA. We get all of it. The results are immortal, eternal, and glorious. What's more, Jesus has achieved this union (to greater or lesser extent) with perhaps a billion people and counting.

How Isaiah could have nailed it so clearly some 700 years before Christ's birth and 2,500 years before the birth of Darwin? How Isaiah could have seen it all so clearly... is a mystery with no answers, bar this one: God revealed his secret plan to a listening ear. It is all there in Isaiah. Jesus died a loser in Darwin's game of physical propagation so as to win an even bigger contest of spiritual propagation.

Isaiah passed from the scene long before Jesus arrived. But he saw him clearly all the same.

Isaiah 53:8, 10
No one cared that he died without descendants,
that his life was cut short in midstream.
...
Yet when his life is made an offering for sin,
he will have many descendants.

Darwin, you set your sights too low, and your game was eclipsed thousands of years before you set it to paper. You described the shallow fleeting victories of the survivor of the physically fittest. But Jesus has demonstrated for eternity that he is the eternally glorious savior. The spiritually fittest.

Game, set, match.

Three Deadly Horsemen of Worry

Ok, so I think there were four horsemen, but whatever...

I was reflecting upon my blog posted yesterday, and I think there are three basic sources of worry, and they are not all about "suffering" as I made them out to be in that blog. Jesus faced them all, and through it all he never ceased to exhibit a peace "that endurethed."

(I think the only time he showed any sign of lacking such peace was when he was alone with God on Gethsemane and knew a time was coming when God himself would reject him. No doubt that was a worthy moment to be troubled!)

But consider the rest of the life of Jesus as recorded in the gospels...

1) Jesus wasn't afraid to suffer.

That part I noted yesterday. Too often we worry because we're afraid we will suffer. How ironic is that? We signed up for suffering when we pledged ourselves as his! Never mind the fine print... didn't we read the big print?? Those not-so-subtle comments about having to take up our crosses and follow him?? But we worry nevertheless. Is a cross coming? When will this one be taken from me? When we expect crosses and are not surprised by them... when we bear them without complaint... I think most of our worries will become a thing of the past.

2) Jesus wasn't afraid he wouldn't get everything done.

The world always had more for Jesus to do than he had time to do as a single man. Why we think we can do better than he did I don't know. But we do. And usually the cure is to revel in our limitations and let God accomplish, through us, more than we can ask or imagine, to quote that scripture verse. When we expect to not get everything done, but trust instead that God will help us to do exactly what needs to be done (by us), a big chunk of our remaining worries will also become a thing of the past.

3) Jesus didn't fret about things not placed under his control.

He no doubt grieved over every poor choice he saw anyone make. Note his lament, for example, over Jerusalem. ("O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.") But I don't think Jesus worried (strictly speaking) at all about Jerusalem and her wayward children. Worry of this sort involves a certain amount of unhealthy clinging... clinging to an unhealthy desire to exercise control over domains not meant to be under our control. Jesus never did that. If we cast aside worries of this sort, I do believe the last of our sources of worry would be conquered.

And if we did all that, I do believe indeed his peace would be given to us in abundance... a peace beyond understanding and of the sort the world can never offer us.

The Peace of Christ!

Give me more of it!

You're Kidding, Right Jesus?

I was struck by a funny thought on Sunday night. I logged it away as a blog idea and quickly forgot about it, but was reminded of it again today when I read this morning's lectionary gospel reading, which includes this verse:

John 14:27
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

OK, so on the face of it, there's nothing particularly hilarious about this verse. It often comes to mind when I'm harried, troubled and/or tired. I desire peace. So.... what's so funny?

The thing I found so funny that night is the irony of the setting. The last verse of that same chapter has Jesus saying, "Come now; let us leave." Where is Jesus going? To the garden of Gethsemane. To do what? To be arrested, tried, beaten, whipped, mistreated, and then brutally executed. Jesus knows exactly where he's heading. And yet he instructs his disciples to not be afraid.

And he offers them his peace.

So Jesus is heading out to meet his death. But it's not like he was coming from Lake Placid, either! During his three years of ministry Jesus was relentlessly ridiculed, maligned, slandered, mistreated and hated by an awful lot of powerful people. He had to stay on the move just to avoid getting killed!

And yet Jesus tells us not to be afraid. And he offers us his peace.

OK, most of us are not at risk of being murdered, but we all know what it's like to be under pressure from family, friends, and sometimes strangers. Are we stressed by the pressures of ordinary life? Jesus knows about that too.

Jesus faced all we faced and more. His family thought he was insane. His friends just wanted to ride on his coat-tails to power. Crowds just wanted him to give them free meals. Sick people wanted him to heal them. He was a wanted man in every sense of the word — harried and pursued relentlessly. More so even than Hollywood actors and actresses.

And yet he offers us his peace.

Thus my surreal moment of hilarity. Jesus? Give me his peace? Offered peace like that, I might just prefer the alternatives! But Jesus was clear about it. So was the Apostle Paul. And Peter. And the author of Hebrews. If we opt for life with Jesus Christ, we'll indeed get his peace — and we'll also share in his sufferings. It's a package deal. I can't ask for his peace and decline his sufferings.

No wonder Jesus said his peace was not of the sort the world had to offer! And no wonder so few of us know the peace of Christ. We don't know the peace of Christ precisely because we're worried we might have to face the sufferings of Christ. But his peace is exactly revealed and made real when we willingly endure trials of all kinds.

But I preach to myself here as much as to anyone else. I frequently feel I lack the peace of Christ. Why? Why do we so often feel that we don't have peace when our lives are a whirlwind? I think it's because we mistake the peace Jesus offers with outer serenity.

Jesus never promised me outward serenity, but I guess I'm still in thrall to the notion that the good life includes (is defined by?) quiet afternoons in the sunshine with a good book. A brief review of the New Testament gospels and epistles reveals that neither Jesus nor Paul had any such life. Why do I want what they didn't seem to seek or have?

Do I want the peace Jesus offers? I think I do. But with Jesus as guide, I guess I need to let go of some notions about what it looks like to have it.

** Upon reflection (that is, after all, the title of my blog!) I think this blog deserves a bit of revision... but instead of fixing this one, I'll just throw up a few amendments in a new blog...)

An Interview With Jesus

So I was sitting in bed a few days ago, gathering my thoughts together for the new day. Or was I perhaps winding down a day already drawing to a close? Whichever the case, there was a tall-backed office chair next to the desk by the bed and I imagined for a moment that Jesus was sitting there in it, looking at me.

It being an office chair, somehow Jesus turned into a bit of an executive in my mind's eye... a rather imposing CEO. I suddenly began to feel like a job applicant. Or perhaps a mail room clerk.

"What do you have to offer me?" Jesus asked.

I should have known better, but I found myself looking for things to offer him. Talents. Money. Faithfulness. But each thing I thought to throw before that chair suddenly turned as if to dust before I could get it to him. Nothing I had to offer seemed to be even worth offering. This man before me holds the universe in his hands. Even if I were to consider only his "human" resources, he'd still have men and women all over the world who surpass me in any way one could consider. And, let's be real about this... He's God.

I had nothing to offer Jesus. And we both knew it.

Things were not looking good. But my spirits rose. "Jesus," I said, "wherever I go, I would like you to have free rein to do what what you want to do through me. I'll do my best to honor this commitment."

It was my best offer, and we both knew it. He didn't press for more. In fact, I think I saw a twinkle in his eye. "Now you're talking," his small smile seemed to say.

But this odd little time with the Lord had one other interesting facet to it all. CEOs in black swivel chairs are usually of average height or taller. The more I looked at him, the more I realized that this Jesus sitting in front of me was short. Really short. He was only about five feet tall.

Now I'd never really given it much thought, but the logic was impeccable. (I do admit this was not a divine visitation. I was definitely constructing a vision in my mind's eye.) But my imagination had taken me to an odd nexus. I'd never really thought before about how short Jesus was when he walked the earth. But average heights have been rising for perhaps millenia. Just a few hundred years ago I think the average male European male was only about 5'-6". If Jesus were of average height 2,000 years ago, he'd surely have been a very short man by today's standards.

So there I was, looking at my short CEO. My five-foot Lord and God. For the first time in my life, I felt extremely biased and afflicted with heightism. What does it mean to serve a midget and call him your Lord? Perhaps those in the temple dealing with an 11-yr old Jesus were struggling with similar feelings. Who is this little fellow?

It was definitely a mind-bender, but Jesus grinned and his eyes now seemed to ask, "And do you still call me Lord?"

I did. But it was definitely a strange encounter. Food for thought. As if God indwelling a five-foot body could be any less (dare I say?) "belittling" than doing so in a six-foot one. The fact that I have to ask the question at all reveals how very little appreciation I have for the crushing humility of God's decision to take on human flesh. For me to quibble about the height of the body he indwelt is to miss the point entirely.

The more I reflect on it, the more I think I have not really learned in my heart the lessons on offer from the scriptures surrounding Samuel's selection of David to be Israel's second king. Saul, their first king, was tall. Very tall. And an utter failure — a wreck of a man. David, the man God chose to be Israel's second king, was "not so tall." But God had to talk some sense into Samuel who, like me, had some hidden and unhealthy reservoir of respect for height. Samuel was quite ready to anoint one of David's older (and taller) brothers as Israel's next king. God had other plans.

1 Samuel 16:7
But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

So little David went on to be king of Israel. Perhaps some Israelites had to get used to having a less stately looking king. Now I realize that I must do the same.