We are coming close to the end. Two more Sundays and the church year is over. This ending coincides (at least in Northern Hemisphere) with the end of the solar year, and the descent of the earth into the darkness of winter. The lectionary, the cycle of scripture readings which for the last year has guided us in its meandering but logical course through the story of Jesus as it is told in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, now asks us to think about the end. The end--or is it the beginning?
In the Godly Play Sunday school room we teach a lesson called the Circle of the Church Year, and the material for the lesson is a circular calendar made of wood that looks kind of like a clock. And lying on top of the calendar around the face of the clock is a gold-colored cord. When we are about to tell the story we take that cord and ball it up inside of one fist. Then we begin by holding up the fist and pulling one end of the cord out very slowly. And we say that people sometimes speak of time as if it was a line. Time in a line. But then we point out that as the cord gets longer the part that was the first to come out of the fist is now the oldest part and there is a new newest part coming out all the time. Eventually we come to the end, which is the newest part of all. Then we ask the children, “do you know what the church did?” and then we tie the ends of the cord together to make a circle, so the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.
The Christian hope is that every end is also a beginning, In Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, he reminds the church that what we wait and watch for is not nightfall, but day. It will come suddenly, like the onset of labor that says “ready or not, here comes the baby.” In Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus’ is walking out of the Jerusalem temple for the last time, and his ministry is at an end but for his anointing for burial, and a last Passover meal with his friends, and his suffering, and his death, his disciples choose that moment to ask him about the end of the world. He gives them a long answer, the last of the five great discourses in Matthew that began with the Sermon on the Mount. He foretells a time of trial, upheaval, of persecution for the church and suffering for all the earth, which he also likens to “birth pangs.” For the end will also be an advent, an arrival, a coming, a coming back, a coming to be with forever.
The other thing that Jesus says about this end that is also a beginning is also echoed by Paul —don’t bother trying to predict the time. It will come upon us suddenly like birth pangs, or like lightning that strikes in the east and lights up the sky as far as the west. You will know it when it happens, so those who announce it ahead of time are to be distrusted. That is what false prophets do. The anticipation of the end is not about getting there first. It is not about timing our sprint to the finish line. It is about living every day, every lifetime, in a state of readiness. It is about being fully alive, fully awake at all times to the possibility of God’s coming in the very next moment. And it’s about holding nothing back, because we know that tomorrow may never come.
Most of all it means living with only one fear. I think that’s a point that many people misunderstand. They think that the God who comes will be vengeful and violent and really, really, pissed off. And I would say that we can’t discount that image entirely. We are talking about coming face to face with a power of love and truth that is completely beyond our imagining. It will lay bare our illusions and pretensions and excuses and false idols utterly and forever. It will break once and for all the systems of thought and orders of power that oppress and destroy and make life not worth living. But there is a Christian twist on this idea of the end, which is, after all, found in many religions, and now even has its secular, materialistic version. And it is this—not only is the end also a beginning, but it will come to us with a shock of recognition. It will be a reunion, because the one who is coming at the end is one we’ve met before.
And in that sense, we do know what to expect and we do know how to prepare. We can be ready because Jesus of Nazareth showed us what it is like to live face to face with that power of truth and love. He’s already been through the birth pangs, already entered the new creation that waits to be born. And so if we really want to be ready, we have his words to live by, we have his pattern to follow.
In Matthew’s gospel Jesus’ career as a teacher ends with a set of three stories about how to live while we’re waiting for his return. The first one, the “Parable of the Wise and Foolish Maidens” is about staying awake and alert, keeping our wicks trimmed, and a supply of lamp oil ready to hand so that when the bridegroom comes we are ready to light his way into the feast. Today we heard the second of these stories, the so-called “Parable of the Talents.” The first thing to notice about this story is that before the master leaves he entrusts what he has to his slaves. And these are not insignificant amounts of money. Remember the slave who only received one talent? Well, he was getting the equivalent of 130 pounds of precious metal—gold or silver. It is not that surprising, then, that he was afraid of what might happen if he lost it. What if it was stolen? What if he was taken advantage of by confidence men? Rather than run that risk, he figures, let me bury the master’s treasure in a secret place that only I know about.
And if we fear the Lord who is coming, not in the sense of speechless awe at his glory, but by freezing up in dread of judgment and punishment, we are liable to make the same mistake. We can make “not screwing up” the focus of our relationship with God. You and I have been entrusted with invaluable and precious gifts us so that we might go into the public marketplace and invest them, put them at the disposal of others, trade with them, circulate them, put them to work, so that they are multiplied, and bring more honor, inspire more love, evoke more gratitude for the Lord who gave them to us and is coming back to gather all the world’s riches into the house of joy. Our one fear at his coming will be that we took the precious treasure we received, and because we were afraid to screw up, we hid it from the world.
To look truth and love in the face and know we did that--that, my beloved friends, is judgment. That is punishment. That is the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
We need to value our talents. Not for what they are worth in the eyes of other human beings; certainly not for what we can get for them in the way of power, and possessions, and prestige; but for how God will increase them if we trust him enough to put them to work, to put them in play, even to put them at risk, in God’s service.
What are the talents you have been given? Are you investing them in the world? The end is coming. What are you bringing to the celebration?
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