Text: Matthew 25:14-30

After a long time away, we’re back to the lectionary this week – although this passage might as well have shown up in October in the Difficult Passages series.  The Parable of the Talents is one of the more familiar parables of Jesus and is an important one for us First World Christians to ponder.  Although we now use the word talent to refer to one’s aptitude, ability, and natural gifts, the term originally referred to a unit of money.  A very large unit of money.  One talent was worth 15 years wages, so in this parable even the person who was given one talent was given a massive sum.  If a decent wage in our time is $40,000 a year, that makes one talent worth well over a half million dollars.   The person with five talents was basically given a lifetime supply of wages all at once.  But all three of the servants won the lottery that day.

In the parable those who use their talents to make more talents are richly rewarded and the message seems pretty clear: Those who have been given much, those with privilege, those with money or skills or resources of any kind, are responsible to use it in a way that multiplies the wealth.  The one servant who buried his talent in the ground and sheepishly handed it back to his master with no gain to show for it has his talent taken away, and is punished.  Punished quite severely.  He is called wicked and lazy and worthless.  He is thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  In its context in Matthew, the parable seems to serve as an allegory for how to manage one’s resources in the present time before the coming of the end…

Texts: John 1:35-39; 1:43-46; 4:27-30; 11:32-36

Come and see.

About ten years ago I was able to attend a gathering in Barcelona, Spain called Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.  As far as I could tell, all the major and minor religions of the world were well represented and the week was filled with seminars, panel discussions, and cultural activities.  For someone just beginning seminary studies, it was both exhilarating and overwhelming.  One of my dearest memories from that week is the lunch times.  A contingent from the Sikh religion had set up a large tent a short walk from the main buildings and every day prepared, served, and cleaned up a simple but abundant meal that was open for everyone, and free.  I went every day.  For the Sikhs it was a practice of what they call Langar, a sacred meal, meant to inspire humility in the Sikhs who serve, and those receiving, as we were asked to sit in rows on the ground together, and hold out our bowls when we wanted more.  They were always quickly filled.  Some of my best conversations during the week happened with whoever I ended up eating next to during Langar.  There were many words spoken throughout the week that gave insights into other religions, but the Sikhs taught something about themselves we couldn’t have learned any other way.  And all they said, basically, was “come and see,” or “come and eat.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase recently – come and see.  It’s come to mind especially in these last couple months when we as a congregation have taken a significant step in becoming more public about our wish to fully welcome and be blessed by all persons regardless of sexual or gender identity.  It comes at a time…

Text: Matthew 5:13-20

Today, November 2, is All Souls Day.  Yesterday was All Saints Day, the day before that was Halloween, and the day before that was trick or treating in the city of Columbus.  My relationship with this cluster of days has undergone significant shifts over the years.

During my growing up years, our family didn’t celebrate Halloween – meaning we didn’t dress up or go trick or treating, and we were taken out of school early on the day of the Halloween costume parade.  My parents weren’t comfortable with the way Halloween seemed to glorify death and fear.  I don’t remember feeling left out or upset that we didn’t get to do what everyone else was doing.  This was probably aided by the fact that we lived a few miles out of town so didn’t have to peer longingly out the window at all the action we were missing.  We just skipped it, not a big deal.

When Abbie and I had Eve and Lily and lived in a neighborhood in Cincinnati with lots of foot traffic, including for trick or treating, we joined the festivities.  Along with the fun they had, and our enjoyment of getting compliments about our cute costumed kids, there was another feature of the experience that stood out to me.  What other holiday or event do we have that brings a good portion of a community out of their homes and on their front porches to meet and interact with neighbors?  I’m not sure there is one quite like it.  As a person whose job description, in part, is to build community and foster intergenerational relationships, I was pleasantly surprised at how this evening enabled neighbors to meet each other, and how adults welcomed children and treated them with kindness.  Granted, the interactions were usually…

Text: 1 Samuel 15

Speaker: Jim Fredal

When I first decided on this text, and this theme, as a topic for a sermon on violence in the Bible, I asked some friends about it.  We read the passage and talked about it one evening for several hours and I have to say the conversation was heated, intense, and quite diverse. Some thought passages like this should be eliminated from the Bible, others found new ways to think about it, like the effect of trauma (the Amalekites harassing the Israelites immediately after their exodus) on victims and their inclination toward violence against perpetrators.  Others cited passages like this as good reason not to pay much attention to Christianity or Judaism.  I found all of their arguments compelling if not ultimately convincing, and have gone through a range of responses myself.
So how does one respond to a text like this?  We cannot in good conscience accept it and yet we hold it to be scripture, and as scripture it makes claims on us.  What do we do with a text that we don’t really understand and can’t agree with?  I have experienced and chosen a variety of responses in my life, some similar to those that came up in our conversation.
Option #1: I can simply affirm that, however difficult it might be me us to understand, God’s judgment is just.  God’s ways are not our ways, and the folly of God is wiser than human wisdom.  When God appoints the hour for the destruction of the wicked, who are we to question this judgment? If evil must be destroyed, mine is not to question or even comprehend the decision of God.  If God said, I believe it, and that settles it!
Option #2: I decide that I can’t accept what it actually says— God commanding…

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Text: Numbers 25:1-18

Today’s reading contains just about all the elements one could fit into a “difficult passage.”  There’s forbidden sex.  There’s idolatry and sacrifices to the wrong god.  There’s a treatment of foreigners, and specifically foreign women, as inherently dangerous.   There’s Divine wrath which demands public executions.  There’s a respected leader, Moses, ordering his people to kill their fellow Israelites.  There’s a plague that wipes out 24,000 people, many of them no doubt innocent.  There’s violent vigilante justice by a zealous individual, Phinehas, which apparently brings resolution to all the above problems.  Phinehas is rewarded by the Lord with “a covenant of peace,” for him and his descendants.  To top it all off, there is a final command from the Lord for Moses and the Israelites to keep harassing these foreign neighbors.  Forgive me if I’ve failed to name another feature of the story you find particularly troubling.

Welcome to worship.  Today’s lesson has been rated R.

This is indeed a difficult passage.

But, as we are committed to doing during this series, rather than cut this page out of the Bible or pretend like it’s not there, we’ll confront the story head on, wrestle around with it, and see what kind of blessing it has to offer.  That phrase I’ve highlighted as the sermon title “A covenant of peace,” comes from the words spoken by the Lord to Phinehas after he kills the Israelite man and Midianite woman, Zimri and Cozbi.  Posing it as a question is meant to highlight a topic of particular interest to us.  A question which hangs over this entire text:  In a violent world, what is it that makes for peace?

The passage is printed as an insert in the bulletins and I’d like to start by walking through the first half of the story as…