Pentecost 23

Pentecost 23 (Matthew 25:14-30) “Well done…”

Jesus longs to meet us and greet us with the words: well done, thou good and faithful servant. Well done. Enter into my Father’s house. Continue the journey of love, through love and to love.  Rejoice and be glad.

Jesus longs to greet each of us and all of us with these words at the final judgment and in the here and now at the altar of sacrifice. The here and now offers us a glimpse, a foretaste and an actual experience of the hereafter. At the altar of sacrifice our Heavenly Father sends the Holy Spirit from the eternal realm to touch and transform time with the timeless Presence of the co-eternal Son. The reality of worship is the real presence of God with us here and now.

In this parable Jesus reveals to us the real, the ideal and the principle.

The real is the reality of choice. Our Heavenly Father created each of us to reflect one specific aspect of the infinite love of the co-eternal Son. God created you to be a unique image in time and space of the eternal transcendent pattern of the Son. The first best choice you can make is to accept the gift of reunification with the divine in Jesus Christ. The second best choice you can make is to choose to be you.

This may seem self-evident. The Bible records for us how difficult this is. Jesus doesn’t expect you to be perfect. He had a passionate desire for you to be you. In the parable he describes how the master (God) gave gifts to each of his servants (us) according to their ability. God does not expect a musician to be a surgeon. Nor does God judge a computer tech according to the standards of an architect. God designed you to be uniquely and forever you. The question is: which version of you are you choosing to become?

You have the most amazing gift to choose to become who God created you to be. You can employ the various talents you possess to use the gifts God gives you. The major obstacle is the triad of sin. Sin, original sin, is separation from God. That original separation manifests in our souls as the triad of sin: fear, self-will and pride.

The real is the reality of the original blessing of Creation. It is also the reality of original separation. The ideal is the choice we can make to live and move and have our being in union with God by grace through faith. It is the ideal of salvation.

We see in the parable that the faithful servants trusted the master. They were motivated by a desire to use the gifts the master gave them to the fullest of their innate potential. Each had different talents and each produced different results as they applied their unique talents to the gifts.

Grace is God’s gift to us. Some gifts are universal- offered to all people everywhere. Some gifts are unique to a time, a culture or an individual. As we make a real choice to receive the gifts of God by faith we express our trust in the reality of God.

The unfaithful servant tells the master (and us) exactly why he lacks faith. He lives by fear. He does not trust.  Sadly, as he chooses to live by fear he cannot trust. There is a certain spiteful sullen pride in his response to the Master. He not so subtly implies that his fear and lack of performance is all the master’s fault.

Blame is always a component of pride. Blame always says: I am not responsible for my own actions. It is my parents’ fault. It is the fault of the education system, the government, of God. That is why pride subverts faith. Pride says it is all about me. But, none of us is God. None of us can control all events let alone other people. So the voice of pride is the voice of blame.

The unfaithful servant fears the master. He fears failure. In that fear he believes that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. In his pride he blames the master. By an act of spite through self-will he refuses to use his talents and buries the gift. He has chosen to perpetuate separation in the way he lives his life. And, therein lies the principle. Fear diminishes us. Faith expands us.

How we experience our lives in the here and now forms our souls for the way we will experience our life in the hereafter.

Of all of the people in the Bible Jesus is the one who speaks most of the universal unconditional love of God; and, Jesus is the one who speaks the most about the eternal consequences of our choices here and now.

The choice Jesus reveals in the parable is the one real choice we have. It is the choice to live by grace through faith. It is the choice to accept the gift of the Father by the presence of the Holy Spirit. That gift is Jesus.

Jesus sets us free from the power and the pain of Original Separation. Jesus sets us free from slavery to the triad of sin: fear, self-will and pride. Jesus sets us free to be the unique person God created us to become.

The operating principle is choice. The underlying reality that supports that choice is love. That love is Jesus himself reaching out to us, inviting us, giving us gifts, helping us, encouraging us and supporting us. Jesus does this because he loves us with an everlasting, universal and unconditional love.

Because he loves us so much he warns us. It does matter how you choose to cultivate your attitude and actions.  Jesus longs to greet us here at the altar of sacrifice on the Day of Real Presence. He passionately desires for us to come by faith to receive the grace, the gift, of divine love. It is that grace, that gift, that enables us to make the one real choice to follow Jesus and to become uniquely and forever who God created us to be.

It is in that weekly choice that Jesus delights to give us a foretaste of the Heavenly Kingdom as he embraces us with the words: well done thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the infinite and eternal joy of God.