He's so talented!

Sometimes things aren't about what we want them to be about.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  Sometimes Jesus just says what he says.

There's a term I've coined, called 'Christian Gymnastics,' in which we, as Christians, will go through insane logical loops, take great leaps of faith, to make sure that the faith fits our preconcieved notions of what we want it to be.  I know, we in the Lutheran church have 'sola scriptura' as our byline, letting the scriptures say what they plainly say, but we're as bad for it as anyone else.

Case in point, the reading that we had from Sunday.  This reading, from Matthew 25, is right smack dab in the middle of the most difficult, hardest to hear, chapter from the New Testament.  Or, at least, the most difficult one for Christians to hear.

For you see, these passages are exactly what non-Christians want to hear, both about

themselves, and about the Christian faith.  They're quite law-heavy, telling you that you have some stuff to do.  And we don't like that, especially as Lutherans.

For you see, as Lutherans, we have a built in fear of works as far as righteousness goes.  We have a fear, a trepidation of works as anything that justifies us before God.  And part of this fear is to not talk about works, really, at all.  We talk about it only just barely in passing, but we talk only about the work of Jesus, his grace, his work on our behalf, and us bringing nothing to the table.

And that's fine, I suppose.  It's good as far as preaching the gospel goes, but unfortunately for us, Jesus doesn't avoid talking about works.  He actually talks about them quite a bit.  He's quite keen on discussing works, on bringing the topic forwards, and he does this for a very good reason - he's aware of what our tendencies are.

We have a natural inclination, as Christians, to understand the severity of sin, and we know that none of our good deeds can possibly counterbalance the sins that we commit.  So knowing that we can't counterbalance the sins we've committed, we tend to concede the point, and instead of concentrating on doing good deeds, we default to just avoiding bad deeds as much as we can.  If it's all 'thou shalt not' all the time, then what are you actually supposed to do?  And all this is, to reference the reading that we had from Sunday, is burying the talent.  For fear that we might misuse the talent, for fear that we might waste it, use it improperly, for fear that we might get it wrong, or feel as though we might place our salvation in our own hands, we take the talents, and we bury them.  That way, we avoid evil, right?  It's like those three monkeys, the ones who hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.  Sure, you can stay away from doing anything specifically evil, but that's not the same as doing anything worthwhile.

The illustration that Jesus uses isn't idle, or someting to be tossed aside.  When he talks about burying our talents, it's something we do literally, and in this case, I don't use the word literally as an intensifier.  If you'd rather your talents were physically buried in the ground, if you're seriously thinking about burying your talents deep underground where they can be returned to God in a pristine form, then don't worry about it, for they will be bruied soon enough.  You will spend far more time dead than alive.  Your talents, your skills and abilities, your likes and dislikes, your passions and joys, they'll all be buried soon enough.  No trouble there.  But the big question is what do you do with them while you still can?

The parable of the talents seems pretty clear that you were supposed to do things while you had the chance.  You were supposed to act on possibilities.  You were supposed to move on it.  You were given time and space and abilities and skills by God himself, to be used in his service, and for your fellow human beings.  The parable of the talents tells us as Christians, that it's not enough for us to be blessed by God with time, resources, space, abilities, passions, and to just let them languish.  They were given to you by God for a reason.  To be used.

The final judgment of God entails him returning, as he does in the parable of the talents, to ask what we've been doing while he has been gone.  What have you done with what God has entrusted you with.  What have you done with who you are?  Is it anything?  Or did you bury it all out of fear of you losing it, out of fear of you squandering it, out of fear of your works.  Did you take who God has made you into

and bury that, or did you use it for what he had made you for.  The scriptures tell you what that is, for they tell us, in a verse that will end up being important for these last few weeks in the church year, that you are God's workmanship, created by him to do good works, which he has created in advance for you to do.  He's extremely serious about that, and he's awfully serious about the massive sins of omission you have. The thing is, that not only do you not live up to God's standards in the Bible, but you don't live up to your own standards of how people should behave either!  You know that.  When placed next to even your own standards, your own rules, you don't meet up to what you know people should do.  And it's not just the junk you do that you ought not to do, but it's the stuff you don't do that you know you should.

As Christians, we need to wrest our minds from the idea that the perfect Christian life is akin to a coma, to a living dream. Divorce yourself from the notion that the best life for you to live is the one in which you do nothing for fear of doing something wrong.  God made you into a special, unique human being, placed you into this time and space for something.  He meant for you to be doing what he put you here for.  Not to earn your salvation, but avoiding it doesn't earn your salvation either.  You don't get holier by avoiding works, you know.  Christ died to take away your sins, your anger, your resentment, your guilt, your shame, your lust, your pride, and, if you're already a Christian, more than anything else, your horrible complacency and apathy.  His death on a cross was for your complacency and sloth, and he died to set you free from its burden.  Through his death, you have not been freed from works, but for them, not liberated for sloth, but for dynamism.

If your next question is going to be 'what then ought we to do?'  Stick around.  Next week.

PJ.