Wednesday after the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time – November 16, 2011

Zephaniah 1: 7; 12 – 18/Psalm 90: 1 - 8;12/1Thessalonians 5: 1 – 10/

Matthew 25: 14-15; 19-29

Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines. D. D.

Introduction:

The Church is at the end of Ordinary Time, also called Kingdomtide.  It is a time wherein God gives us the opportunity to practice what we have learned.  During this period of time, He has given us instructions on how to put into practice His principles so that we experience His kingdom.   Some people are waiting for the Kingdom to come.  The reason that they are waiting for the Kingdom to come is because they don’t have the Kingdom. If you have it, you are not waiting for it to come because you already have it.

Scriptures tells us it is close as the words of our mouth.  How do we speak?  Do we speak Kingdom language or do we speak the language of the world?  Do we speak fear, doubt, and anxiety?  Do we speak divisions, hatred, gossips or are we speaking love?

Several weeks ago, Scripture told us that we are given two basic commandments in the New Testament which really tie up the Ten Commandments into just two, like a capsule:  you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind – all your being and all that you are; and love your neighbor.   It says, “Like unto it.” On the same level of loving God, we are challenged and commanded to love our neighbor.

This Wednesday evening is designated as “Community Night.”  It is when all the families and all the communities are supposed to come together so that we can learn of the kingdom of God.  Sunday is a time of worship.  It is a time of focusing our praise toward God, but Wednesdays are meant to build us to fix our lives, to give us understanding and knowledge.  We take the things which we have learned on Sunday and put them into a deeper understanding so that we can grow in the things of God.

I wonder how many of us are concerned about our communities that we find out, “Why are you not attending on Wednesdays?”  Do we even pay attention to who is not present?  Do we care enough that we want them also to grow?  That we want them to be deeply rooted in the things and in the principles of God?

Love your neighbor as yourself!  We can see that there are many empty seats.  On Sunday, we don’t have these many seats empty.  People want to worship God, but you cannot worship God if you do not have the Law.   God doesn’t accept worship without the Law.  We follow the principles that are established, then, He can receive the worship.  God says, “I am tired of your feasts; I am tired of your ceremonies; I am tired of your sacrifices because you are not following Me.  You are not following My law.”

Part of what Wednesday is all about is establishing an understanding deeper in our hearts so that when we prepare ourselves for Sunday, we have followed His commandments and we are ready.  Look around: who is missing?  Identify them.  Who isn’t here?  Do you care?  It is a challenge for us to care about our neighbor.  Have you asked them why they did not come?

There may be some valid reasons and I am not saying that there isn’t, but there is the basic understanding that this is a time when we should be focusing deeply because we want to know about our God.  We want to walk more closely to Him because if we are not growing in Him, as it says in Sunday’s gospel, “If you are not using the talent that I gave you, I am going to take it away from you and you are going to be in darkness.”

Do we care?  We need to be concerned about this as we come before God.  It is not just us.  We want the rest of the community to be with us. We want our family to be with us.   We want the others that we care about to also move ahead with us. We don’t want them to be left in darkness. We don’t want them there because Christ moved us out into a marvellous light.  Are we not walking in that light?

This is a challenge that should be coming upon us.  We are coming to the end of the Calendar year which is designated in this particular portion of Ordinary Time.  It is a time when we do our work.  Remember, we are royal priesthood and royal priesthood has a ministry to do.   Sometimes, we just forget about other people.  We are so concerned about “Me”.   When you get out there in the traffic and try to get to a certain place on time and try to do things and nothing seems to work, we forget about others.  Then we find ourselves missing out on the real concern that God has given to us and the blessing that belong to us.

Are we concerned?  Identify who is missing in your Area, in your community, in your Ministry.  Who is not here?  Pinpoint them.  Maybe we need to start taking a roll call to find out who is missing because we care.  We think that it is being too rigid, too legalistic.  If you care, you want to know why.  Why can’t you see the importance of learning more to be able to do more?

This is just a challenge for us!

 HOMILY:

I trust that you have your Bibles with you so that we can evaluate and look at what God speaks to us; know that it is from Him that these words come; and that they come to us with a concern not for wrath, but for life.  Scriptures tells us that God did not prepare us for wrath but that we may share in His life, in the Kingdom. This is His plan.

Sometimes we look at the things that happen to us and we think, “God is angry at me.  God is mad at me.”  In reality, very possibly, the things we are going through are preparing us to receive more from God, but our attitude and mind sets them as difficulties or problems, or punishment rather than seeing them as opportunities to grow.

The gospel speaks so clearly to us of God’s provision in our lives and how that we can live in the joy of the Lord.  It is not in our own joy, but in the Lord’s where we are supposed to be.  Nehemiah 8:10, “The joy of the Lord is my strength.”  Seeing Him pleased with what we are accomplishing and walking in obedience, He rejoices over us with singing.  When we are walking in obedience to Him, fulfilling His will for our lives, He rejoices because He created us to be like Him.

God is very proud of His creation that in John 3:16, it says “For God so loved His creation, the world that He gave His only Son.” You can’t get anymore love and commitment than this. God loves us so much.  Even in our weaknesses and rebellions, He loves us.  The love that He has for us is intense.

Matthew 25 says to us, “This is the Kingdom.”  Many of us are looking for the kingdom to come.  The Kingdom is already here.  It is among us, but if we are going to enjoy it and participate in the Kingdom, we do so according to His way, His purposes, and His plans, not ours.  That is part of our problem because we are seeking our way rather than His way; and rather than doing what He has set for us, we want to do our own thing.

This parable shows us that when Christ left earth, He gave to us talents.  He relates it as though it was money, but the parable says, “He entrusted His possessions to us.” He entrusted His power, everything that He had to us.  Ephesians 1:3 says, “He blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.” 2Peter1:3 say that we have been given everything pertaining to life.  God has not held back anything, but has given to us everything pertaining to life.   All of His possessions, He left in our care.

Get the pattern of how God establishes this.   When God created the whole earth, when He put man in the garden, He said, “Cultivate it and keep it.  This is your responsibility.” He gave man this responsibility.   Why do we sit back thinking that God is going to do everything for us and we don’t have to do anything?  God has already done everything!  He has already given to us everything, but we must first receive it and we must begin to walk in it, use it by faith.

The parable is talking about taking the talents, the abilities that God has entrusted to us.  He trusted them.  He is showing trust.  Should it not be that if someone trusts us with something they are intense to make certain that that trust is not misused?  When somebody says, “I am going to trust you to do this,” what is our attitude?  Do we do everything within our power to make certain that we accomplish that trust?  It should be and this is why God shows us this principle.

God entrusted these talents to us. He entrusted all of His possessions to us and He did so according to our ability.  Not everybody has the same responsibility. Levels of responsibilities are different because God recognizes the difference in us.  We are not all the same.  To some, He gave more responsibilities; to others, He gave a little bit less; to some, very little because that is their capability.

Romans12:6-8 tells us that God gave gifts to all of us according to our ability, and the gifts that God gave to man to us is our responsibility.  He did not choose us to be seat warmers.  These empty chairs are not going anywhere, not moving or flying around.  They don’t need somebody to sit on them to keep them were they belong.  It is not our job.   Our task is to fulfill the gifts God has given to us.

In our world today, in our lives, we are looking for something that we can train ourselves so that we can earn a living. We can become successful so that we can be acceptable and approved by society around us.  We are retraining ourselves in manners or ways in which are contrary to the gifts that God gave us.  What is wrong with the gift that God gave?

If God gave that gift, will that gift not provide everything we need? Why are we trying to find something else?  “Bishop, if I don’t do it this way, I won’t have anything.”  Who told you that?   Did not God say, “I will supply all of your needs according to My riches and glory?”    He didn’t tell us that He will supply all of our needs according to how we fit into the system of man.  It doesn’t mean that being there is wrong, but did He put us there?  He is going to put us all over.  We are going to take over the world, “Go ye to all the world.”  Going into the world, don’t become like them but change them to be like God.  But are we using that talent for such purpose or are we using the talent that God has given to us for selfishness? “I want more money.  I want a bigger house. I want a bigger car.  I want to go on a vacation.  I want to do things that somebody is doing also.”

This is not why God gave us these benefits.  His benefits, these talents were given to us so that we would build His kingdom with Him, together with Him.  We are partners – being in fellowship with Him.  We are to complete His suffering.  It doesn’t mean that we suffer.  He suffered and we are to complete that and bring it to the fullness in our lives and in the world.

This parable in Matthew is parallel to Luke which gives us a bit of information to help us see things more clearly.  Luke 19:12 says, “A certain nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself and then return.” Does that not identify Jesus?   When He finished His work here on earth, He went to the Father.  The Father blessed Him and told Him that He has done His job well, and the Father said, “Because You have done this well, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.”  He gave Him the authority over all things.   “Every knee will bow to You.”  This is dominion; kingship.   After He received His kingdom, Christ then will come back to the earth to get an accounting of what we have done with the talents and abilities that He has given to us. What did we do with them?

Matthew tells us about the first person that was given five talents. “He was entrusted with these and immediately he went out and invested it.”    Sometimes, this is our religious background: when God gives us instructions, we will say, “I will pray about it and see if it is okay.”  If it comes from God, why are we questioning it at all?  Why do we need to pray?  Who do we think we are?  The Master has already spoken, and we will say this?    For what reason?  This slave, the minute he receives the trust of the master, immediately, he responds, not tomorrow.

This is an attitude which shows the effect of trust and confidence.  The master has given to him the most.  You could see the confidence, not a pride that rises within him.  “If the master trusts me this much, surely, I can do greater things for the kingdom.”   Immediately, an important word, was his response.  This is how close he was with the master. This is how much confidence he had with the master.  When the master spoke, immediately he responded.

Do we respond immediately when we hear God speak to us?  The question some would have, “When does God speak to us?”  It is every time we read and hear the Scriptures.  It is God speaking to us.  What is our response to it?  What is our reaction toward it?

When you are ministering, some people sit in their chair and their mind is not there.  All you are seeing is a physical form, but the real body, the real person is somewhere else.  It is like a ghost.   “I am preparing lunch for my family.  I am preparing business for tomorrow.  I am preparing for a meeting that I have after the Bishop finishes.  I’ve got to prepare how I am going to handle it.  What am I going to do?”  This is being a ghost – our minds and our bodies are not together.  Scriptures says, “With your whole body, soul, and spirit.”   We separate ourselves.  Sometimes, we are thinking of what somebody said to us that made us angry; and the homily is about love and yet we are thinking anger.  We are not receiving because we are not focusing upon what is being said.

How many people go to sleep?  I tease some people, “You got a button on your butt and the minute you sit down, you go to sleep.”   It is automatic to them.  “Bishop is not going to say something important.  God is not going to say something important so I am going to sleep.”  What they are saying is, “God doesn’t speak to the Bishop so I don’t need to listen.  I don’t need to pay attention.”  How rude, and how we will answer for this at some time!  We say, “I was tired.”  If we have our mind set on what we are doing, sleep doesn’t come easily.   We can control it if we want, but our problem is we give in to it. This is where we get ourselves in trouble.

The slave immediately responded.  When the master came back, the one who received the five talents immediately went to the master.  He was happy to tell the master, “I have earned. I have doubled what you gave me.”   In Luke, it is not doubling, but ten times.  It really shows somebody who is really committed to God and he takes the talents and develops it ten times.    The master says, “Well done!  You have done well with small things; I am going to give you bigger things.”   This is principle for leadership: you don’t pick someone to do a job who is doing nothing; you don’t try to give him a job to get them busy.  You choose someone who is active because they are the ones who will get the job done.

Jesus shows us this in this parable.  You don’t just give them a job so that they can do something.  If they are busy, if they are doing something, then, you reward them for what they are doing.   Too often I heard people say, “Let us give them a job so that they will come to Church.”  If this is why they come to Church, they might as well stay home because the reason we come to Church is for worshipping God, giving God praise for what He has done.

The work is the result of our commitment to God. It is the benefit of it.  It is because of all that He has done for us.  We do this not to earn His attention, but in thanksgiving unto Him, praising Him by doing His work and being obedient to Him.

Too whom much is given, much is required.  This man brought in five new talents.  He developed what it was.  We normally look at talents as being money, but it is not necessarily money when it is told as a parable.   It is given to us as that which is a symbol of ability, potential, and things that can happen, things that you can do.  What are you doing with what God gave to you?

St. John Chrysostom says, “If you don’t use the love God gave you, you will lose the love God gave you.”  The principle here is: if you don’t use your gift, you will lose it.  The person that lost one talent was put into outer darkness.  The symbol of outer darkness is not hell but that state wherein you can not see potential, ability or hope.  If you are in a problem, you can’t see out of the way of the problem because you are in darkness.  If you have conflict, you cannot solve the conflict because you are in darkness.  The problem overcomes you.  If you are having financial problems, you can’t see the way out of it because you are in darkness.  You cannot see how to get out of your problems.  They just seem to get bigger and bigger.  If you don’t use the talent, you end up in darkness.

1Peter2:9 tells us that God took us out of the darkness and put us into the light because we are the master as far as being under Him.   We are the servants or the shepherds that are under Him.  We have the ability to see and to move forward because of the light.  If we lose the light, where can we go?  What can we do?  We can’t go anywhere.  It doesn’t matter how much we try to get out of our problems.  The problem gets bigger.  Even though you think you are prospering, and you build a house, you won’t live in the house.  You set up a feast, but you can’t drink the wine.  You have a pocket, put money into it, and then it is gone.  This is because you are in darkness; you cannot see the solutions.  You can’t see the answers.  This is because we haven’t used the talents and the abilities that God has given to us.

We easily get caught up with the world; then all of a sudden, we find out that we have a problem and say, “How am I going to get out of this?  I denied the gifts that God gave. I did not use them; and now, I am unable to solve my problems.”   Is it fatal?  No, because we can repent and God is merciful.    We must understand why these things happen.

This is given at the last Sunday of Ordinary Time.  God has given to us everything; now, what are we doing with what He gave to us?  Are we using it for ourselves?  Or are we using it for Him? If you go back in history, the reason they have huge churches in the past is because the people, as part of their inheritance, as a part of their wills gave large amounts to the Church.  They did not give them all to their families.  They knew that the families would just waste it.  They wanted something that would maintain itself and stay as a witness of their life and what God has done for them.  They give to the Church.

You don’t hear much about this anymore.  Most people don’t have anything left when they get to the end of their lives.  Possibly, it is because we haven’t used the talents that God has given to us.  We end up nothing as a legacy to share how great God was to us.  This is a legacy which speaks to our children, to those beyond us.  How favourable God is with us.  It doesn’t always have to money, but other things that God gives us that we leave behind as a witness.  David left behind the Psalms as his contribution, his legacy to the whole world. The Psalms are read more than any part of the Bible.  What are we preparing to leave?  Are we being obedient to Him, bringing forth what He has given to us?

The Master comes back for reconciliation and he wants everything cleared up.  What did you do with the gift that I gave you?  Are you using it?  Have you used it?  Account for it.  We don’t like to account for things that we received.  In some cases, we resent being responsible. This is talking about responsibility, credibility.  Why are we ashamed of what we have done?  Why are we ashamed of how we have used the talents and the abilities if we use them properly?   It should be like we are the first man who reported to the master, “Look at what I have done.”  And the master says, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the master.”

Here is the whole goal: being in the joy of the Master. This is where our strength is.  When we know we have pleased God, when we know that we have His blessing in our lives, we have the strength.  Fear takes away our strength.  In fear, you freeze; you don’t have abilities. In anger, you cannot accomplish because you lose your ability to think and act clearly.  The peace that God wants to give us is the joy of His kingdom.  The joy there strengthens us to go to the next level with Him and see the things of God growing tremendously.

Paul, as he was ending his life, would not give up.  He would still go and do the things of God.  Even if he was warned about going to Jerusalem, and be put into ropes and chains, it did not bother him.  “I don’t care because I am doing what God wants me to do.”  This is why the martyrs of old could be so bold and so strong to say to those who were torturing them, “You don’t need to tie me to the post.  I won’t move because I know my God.  You may take away my flesh, but you can’t take away my life because my life is Him. He will not deny me.”    The men that were thrown in the lion’s den sometimes would kneel down in front of the lion. They won’t run; they did not scream and holler because they had that peace and that strength that would allow them to face whatever came without fear or anxiety.

This is the promise of God to us.  This is the desire.  He shares so that we don’t wonder, “How can I have this joy?  How can my life be filled with joy?” God tells us very clearly in Matthew 25 and Luke 19 if you want the joy, “The joy is not because of you but it is because of Him.”  When you are putting your faith into entering into His joy, you are going to be the one who will benefit from it.  You will be the one strong.

Joy is a state of being, not an emotion, so that everything we see, we see with a different light and potential.  We see it with different understanding.  Even the problems, the conflicts, the persecution, we don’t see them as against us.  We see them as God’s challenge and witness to His power in our lives.  Our eyes have been opened because we have the peace and the strength.  Go ahead and do what you want, but I know my God.  My God will not fail me nor forsake me.

This portion of Matthew is given to us on the last Sunday of Ordinary Time.  God wants us to understand all that He has given us all year long and to use it for His glory and His honor.  I shared a little story that I have experienced in my life.  Your son sits on your lap when he is small.  You have treated him by giving his some candy.  He is so excited, so happy that he wants you to try and give you candy. He puts it in your mouth.  As a father, you want him to think that you are very happy about receiving the candy so you show, “Wow, that is good. I am so glad that you shared that with me.”  The son sees the joy in your heart. What does he do?  He wants to give you another one.  Inside of him is programmed this plan that God has which is to please the master.

We, as parents, too often destroy the attitude that the child has.  When he becomes very selfish, and says, “Mine…mine…,” we want to correct it. Maybe, we are the ones who cause it to come to that point because we did not recognize God created us to be the givers.  In giving, we find our joy and the fulfilment of life in pleasing the master.  When we have pleased the master, we are strengthened.  That little child wants to give you everything he has got. He is going to use all the little pieces of what you gave him and he will be happier than you.

It is like the story in the Scripture where that it talks about the friend of the bridegroom.  We he hears the bridegroom and the bride together in their room, he is fulfilled.  He is filled with joy because the bride and the groom are together.  As a friend, you are happy because they are happy than if it were you.  This is the principle that God wants us to understand.  This is why He has given everything to us because we are secure in Him.   If we are secure in Him, we can begin to be the ministry to others because that will be our strength, our hope, and our provision.

As we come to the end of Ordinary Time, we are going to find out in the next portion of our Calendar more things that God has given to us.  We should be growing.  We never come to the end.  We are always moving forward.  Next Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King.  It is not the end of one year, but is also the beginning of another year.   Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. When we are walking with Him, and we are fulfilled in Him, we find ourselves filled with strength because we are doing God’s work and what He gave us to do.  If we are doing that, we know that we are pleasing Him.  If we are pleasing Him, that gives us strength.

This is the joy – knowing Him and we have fulfilled His will in our lives.  May we, as His people recognize and trust.  He reaches out to us.  We must reach out to others and trust.  Trust our children because that is the beginning of joy! The master trusted and he entrusted to the slaves his possessions, then he went away and came back.

Christ is coming back.  Christ has died; Christ is risen, Christ will return. This says, “Be on your toes. Be diligent to make certain to being what Christ wants us to be.”   I do not share for heaviness, but to understand because if we don’t, we can’t do what we are supposed to do.  This is not something that we should say, “No,” but we should be excited because this is how we can be in the joy of the Master.  I want to be in His joy, so I fulfil His will.  There, I will see Him happy, and He will be blessed.  We are a blessed people!  We want to do His will.