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Time, talents and treasures isn’t just a “churchy thing” you hear about in stewardship campaigns… it is actually a concept we should prayerfully think upon, as we go about, in our “everyday worlds.” It’s true, we’ve been hearing a lot about time these past few Sundays. With Reformation Sunday, we not only got to see a nice reminder of our roots as the Body in the world, but we got to think about the power of conviction, belief to change. There’s that wonderful promise and hopefulness of faith—CHANGE. We can change the world or at least our corner of it, by getting up and out into the mix of it—DO it, Be it, LIVE it—the change God needs for us to spiritually grow from, is the wisdom He plants deep in our hearts to reap.
The prelude this morning is a wonderful upbeat Christian
rock song: ‘Good to Be Alive,’ by Jason Gray.
The title alone speaks volumes of our everyday hope, perhaps we’ve
become forgetful of that. The lyrics of this song are definitely not the words
from someone who spins their wheels, but from someone who lives into those
daily leaps of faith. This musician, person of great faith begins with a
question: “Hold on, Is this really the life I'm living? 'Cause I don't feel
like I deserve it... Every day that I wake, every breath that I take, you’ve
given. So right here, right now, while the sun is shining down, I wanna live
like there's no tomorrow. Love like I'm on borrowed time. It's good to be
alive!” He continues with hope and
encouragement with another realization: “If the life that we've been given, is
made beautiful in the living, and the joy that we get, brings joy to the heart
of the giver... Then right here, right now, I wanna live like there's no
tomorrow. Love like I'm on borrowed time. It's good to be alive! I won’t take
it for granted, I won’t waste another second... All I want is to give you, a
life well lived, to say “thank you.”
Wow, can we say or recall moments we have felt that same
way about our lives and the fruit of our labors? Probably not often enough
honestly. It is nice, though, when we can see the future with those optimistic
leap of faith eyes! This is the season of being grateful and putting that grace
given to us, through Christ, to work.
Living Grace is by no means being works righteous or doing things to serve
yourself… This is not that kind of “health and wealth…” Living Grace is living into changing what is
broken in the world through the gifts we have been spiritually given by
Christ. The scriptures, this week, are
lovely. We are first overdosing on St.
Paul by taking a fly on the wall glimpse into his pastoral letters of faith and
encouragement for both the Ephesians and Thessalonians and close our spiritual
lesson for this week with a very complex parable from Jesus trying once again
to teach the closed hearts and minds of the Pharisees about true time, talents
and treasures of the Kingdom of God.
Each and every close of the year is another frame of time
down the road of life. We can see it like picture frames from a reel of film,
or see them like those stages of metamorphosis, the caterpillar to the
butterfly make. The real-time process
isn’t all that long for the butterfly, but in regard to our metamorphosis, or
better said, transformation, it is really slow…
Really painful at times and really testing upon us. Why does God seem to test us so much? Why do we deserve that? Here’s the voice of
our faith being tested and responding but not necessarily being too hopeful
about it, but questioning. The Day of the Lord talked about or hidden within
our texts today are about that big scary, weird, intense word: “the apocalypse.” We don’t like wondering or even talking much
about the quote, end of days, since frankly we’ve not had a nice picture of
hopefulness left to our social imaginary.
From All Saints Sunday onward, the lectionary is trying
to teach us about that complex subject of being and living hope into the
unknown future as true children of Grace and Promise. We have to hear this
simple song in our hearts as the wisdom of God encouraging us onward—let all
things, now living, a song of thanksgiving to God our creator triumphantly
raise… You can probably start playing the rest of that song in your head. How about hearing it through your heart? One
of the joys I truly have as a pastor are small moments when you share in the
joys of others, when you experience them, feeling hope. This is a real hope that changes lives,
encourages lives to change! In visiting
Linda, Dick’s niece, the other day, I got to share in her joy. After 2 years of waiting on a long list, she
had her interview with a government social worker to receive home care
literally when I was seeing her at the same time. As if this wasn’t wonderful enough for her,
one of her nurses is considering helping her to move into a much larger,
cheaper home that would grant her greater mobility and would be much further
south.
Just like that Sunday a while back when she was able to
visit us, I once again, felt, shared in her joy. This is but one moment of many moments, God
gives us, to see the true treasures in this one solitary earthly life. With these treasures though, there is going
to be issues with our time and our gifts we have been given. Some people take out those giant daily planners
and become lost into trying to file away, schedule away every waking moment of
their day. Yes, you need to be organized
but not to the point your heart gets lost in God’s true purposes for you. This is the key to living a gracious life
where everyday you can feel thanksgiving even if it is the start of a dark day.
Truth be told, but Monday was not a good day for me except the very end when I
had my evening online class. I waited
outside nearly 5 plus hours for a garage door repair man. As human nature would have it, I was quite angry,
discouraged, tired and disappointed in the lack of helpfulness from the
apartment management people. It is a
good thing to remember St. Paul’s reminder to be “New-natured” about things…
for I definitely struggled with that, that day.
Struggling in and out of hopefulness, having faith in
change and sharing yourself with others, was what the Pharisees just couldn’t
do or refused to do. Jesus’ parables in
Matthew expresses a frustration of trying to get through to hard-headed people. “We never change, we like things the way they
are, it’s always been done this way… etc.” Sounds a little too often like many
a church out there… especially ones on the verge of closing… God’s answer to
that negative attitude is tough cookies!
Life changes, circumstances change whether you like it or not. So, do we
just become pessimists and work on formulating complaints to God, or do we get
up on our feet and DO something?! God wants us, as Paul says in the
Thessalonians’ text, to truly be children of light and day. He needs us to don
that spiritual armor of faith, love and a helmet of hopefulness, saving Grace
because every day is going to be a journey alongside, with a challenge. We need to expect the unexpected, realize our
time and place and incorporate our gifts for the greater good of our neighbor,
out of a faithful love for God.
Some of that hard-headedness comes from fear. For the Pharisees, it was a matter that they
felt that they had no right to change their laws, they saw coming from
God. For the slave in today’s complex
parable, he didn’t want to chance anything and his inactivity was both foolish
and cowardly in some ways. “Playing it
safe” is the spiritual comfort junk food of someone unwilling to grow, and go
forward, into an unknown future. Just yesterday was a big day for our church
stepping out beyond our comfort zone and sitting amongst a whole bunch of other
churches to promote our little corner of the East side of Vegas. With
everything but the kitchen sink of PR materials, old bulletins & some of
Grace Schmiedel’s church photo albums, I sat our table. Meeting many and telling many about our
church, was something that once again gave me great hope. The only question I
had was the thought, if this table wasn’t free, would we have taken this
opportunity to share? I would hope that
we still would.
Our give and take culture sometimes truly stretches us
beyond our capacity, beyond our willingness to see things through, but we
must. It will truly be a sad day, when
we come to that spiritual cross-roads of feeling, being stretched too thin and
we cave into our fears. We cave into our
fears by giving up. Our great God of
love and Grace always says and hear it deeply: never say never for I have never
failed you by not living into my Promise of New life, a Kingdom to come. Come and follow me, the road is very long,
and the route may not necessarily, be that clear… but come and follow me
nonetheless. These are the Living Words
of life from a God who has come down to us and met us where we’re at and still
tries, nonetheless to love His irrational, fearful, doubting children… For we
are the gracious hope of the future and the fruit of the promises of God. It’s our turn to step up to the plate.
Speaking of plates, this coming week, as we prepare to
help Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutra-system and the like make lots of money
off of us after Thanksgiving… Let us
remember what being grateful truly means.
Let us think of our families those we have lost in one way or another
and those we will come to see and reminisce with as we grab another plateful.
The greatest Thanksgivings for me, are now going on being memories from 35
years ago or so. This was when my
grandparents were still alive and hosting in their little wood frame Bungalow
in the near west suburbs of Chicago. This was when my whole family acted and
treated one another as a real family.
Those days are long gone but being grateful for even that passing moment
of time is something the Lord has taught me to see as priceless. My talents just like yours, are waiting for
us to tap into them, not merely for the glory of God and His Kingdom come, but
truly for a life worth living and a thank you lived deeply from the heart.
Let us pray,
Ever Gracious Lord,
May Your sovereign compassion teach us many things
And open us to our many talents, potentials
Help us discover and grow from Your gifts of Grace
throughout our everyday lives.
It is good to be alive, it is good to love and take those
daily leaps of faith
We look to You always, Your encouragement is our refuge
and strength. AMEN
November 19th,
2017; Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 28; Year A; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon By:
Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins, OSST
Psalm 90:1-12;
Zephaniah 1:7-16; Ephesians 1:7-18; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church at 9:30am
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