You should have heard MY weeping and gnashing of teeth
on Wednesday at our bible study!
Echoes of an old sermon I preached on everyones lips.
“It’s just not fair”
This passage doesn’t feel fair.
On the surface it seems to,
but like any parable, once you start pressing the text
we came across something that made us all uncomfortable.
Here’s a little recap.
The master of the house is going on a trip
so he calls 3 of his slave together
These 3 have differing degrees of ability
so he gives them differing amounts of money
according to their ability
But even the one he trusts least has more money than he
would have made in a year!
When the master came back, he called his slaves together
to see what they had been able to do with his money.
The first guy who was given 5 talents (or 5 yrs of salary) had doubled it
woohoo! The master was happy,
figured he was right all along to trust this guy
and said he’d put him in charge of more
The second guy who was given 2 talents (2 yrs of salary) had doubled it too
woohoo again! The master was happy
again right to have trusted this guy
and put him in charge of more stuff too
The third guy who was given the 1 talent (1 year of salary)
didn’t have any extra to give his master
He’d just dug a hole and put the money in it to keep it safe.
because quite frankly, he was scared of his master
and actually had the courage to call his master a thief
Well - the land owner was beside himself - jumping mad
called him a “wicked and lazy slave”
And here’s the part that can be taken so many different ways…
“So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.
For to all those who have,
more will be given, and they will have an abundance;
but from those who have nothing,
even what they have will be taken away.
As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
And thus began our bible studies weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Because if we read this parable as if
God is the landowner - the slave owner
and we are the different slaves with different abilities
Even though the master believed the last slaves abilities to be less than the others, he still threw that slave out into the darkness for giving in to his fears.
What do we do with this vengeance?
This calls so many things into question.
Is God really a God of Love?
Where is the grace of God in this parable?
Where is the compassion?
Where is the Jesus that I follow?
The traditional way to read this is that you have to take some risks in life
and the worst thing you can do is give in to you fear
and not bother to try at all.
BUT
It could be that it’s a story about inequity and things not being fair.
It could be a story about abundance or stewardship or judgement
It could be a story about sharing your gifts to build up the kingdom of God.
We all agreed that was absolutely right
It could be about all of those positive things.
But there was still this annoying rub
This friction between our understanding of a loving God
and this seemingly heartless master in the parable.
A master who was so angered by someone who gave into their fear,
who refused to engage and try,
That he called him worthless
and threw him into the outer darkness
with all that weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Friction between our understanding of who we know God to be
and stories in scripture isn’t a bad thing;
it isn’t something to just blindly accept
Because this story doesn’t change God into a heartless disciplinarian
It just means that we’re missing something in the story.
I think for us to get the whole picture,
it needs to be placed back into scripture
back into it’s context
amidst all the other stories and parables that are around it.
Because this is only a small part within a larger conversation.
The story actually began more than 60 verses earlier in Chapter 24:3 with the words:
“When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’”
Jesus answers this question with many warnings about false teachers
about days when the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give light
to lessons about timing and watchfulness
and two warnings about being thrown into outer darkness
with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
including ours today.
all of these stories are about people left outside,
judged and cast away
called worthless
All of these stories exist to help Jesus answer the question
what will be the sign of your coming
and of the end of the age?’
Because Jesus experienced all those the things in his last days
He was cast out into the darkness,
mocked
beaten
called worthless
abandoned by his friends
Aren’t those the signs that Jesus’s earthly life was ending
and the reign of Christ about to begin?
So that means, the piece we were missing
was the cross.
The grace and love is found at the crucifixion
Through Jesus’s death
No more will anyone be excluded from the light
No more will that outer darkness engulf the weak
No more will fear overcome love.
Jesus experienced that exclusion from the light
that darkness and that fear.
so much so he cried out from the cross
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
when he breathed his last breath
the very foundations of the world shook
and because of that sacrifice,
the world will never be the same again.
And we will never be the same again.
We don’t need to worry and wonder
When the world calls us worthless
When the world excludes us
When events around us cause us to fear,
and the darkness descends around us
recognize we are standing in the shadow of the cross
and lean into the light of God’s love.
