November 15, 2020 – Proper 28

Which servant are you?

And what does that mean about how you go about your daily life in response?

In an ironic twist of fate – or perhaps due to God’s intervention – we get this classic parable on a Sunday just after we have been shut down due to the global pandemic, which has caused more than a million deaths worldwide, over 200,000 deaths in the United States, over 600 deaths in Erie County, and immeasurable sickness across our globe. I fear we are becoming numb to the numbers, and while none of us wants to shut down for fear of losing some of our freedoms and due to economic consequences, I think today’s Gospel reading directly addresses what we do now.

My friends, we are between the proverbial rock and hard place. We are to care for our fellow inhabitants on earth, and that means not putting them at risk. And yet it feels like in order to care for them, we must be with them and in a position to serve them in person. How can we navigate these murky waters to find a resolution of which Jesus would approve?

As I have mentioned before, the Vestry and I have begun looking at death within our church — not particularly of the members — but what has already died. As Anna Olson wrote, “We fear that we are at the end of an era, and we are…. We fear that things are falling apart faster and faster. They are…. The certainty that we will have neighbors looking to … commit to regular Sunday worship … is a mirage” (Claiming Resurrection in the Dying Church, p. 2). The truth is that we have served our neighborhood and the generation which we were planted to serve, and we are now living beyond that generation, and that means that we were successful. We have won the fight that thousands of churches never even got to fight fully, and we have gotten to celebrate that.

But what if we give up now? What if we admit that we have no clue what to do with the current moment? And if we don’t know what to do now, how likely is it that we will know what to do with the next twenty years? What we’ve been able to hang on to is slipping from our grasp. So… what if we give up on our old ways of success and measure success simply by being places where we and our neighbors welcome one another and are welcomed? Where we can forgive and be forgiven? Where we especially can love and be loved?

Beautiful people, this frees us to be who we were always meant to be. And if we are in this together, we can discover new growth where it is already popping up, acknowledging that God is always doing a new thing. 

We are meant to be dreamers. We are meant to cast visions. Our God gave us free will and created each of us with an independent mind. God wants us to do just two things: love God and love one another. These are the two things we are given to do in the Bible. And our efforts in living them out may not be immediately recognizable.  But if we truly want to resurrect our church, we must let it die — it must go through a sure and certain death. We will not look or smell or feel the same, but God’s presence within us will still shine forth in new and exciting ways.

In today’s parable, we saw three servants. The third servant was led to security and contentment with what he had been given because of fear; he was content with simply preserving intact what he had been given. The first and second servants trusted in the Lord and ventured into ways that enabled the talents, treasure, and faith which had been entrusted to them to grow. 

Faithful ones gathered virtually today, the question for you this week is simple. Which servant are you? And what does that mean about how you go about your daily life in response?