Living Hope / Resident Aliens - The Inside Challenge

Pagans, Jews, slave, free - the communities Peter addresses were remarkable. We today struggle with diverse communities as did cities of the Roman empire. Christian communities lived with increasing pressure of hostility and persecution. They had become resident aliens. God had called them into a "living hope" created by Jesus’ resurrection. That new birth created the tension between the deep reality of their identity in Jesus and the structures of life and society where they lived and worked. You are a "holy nation" but also perhaps a slave woman abused at the whim of her master.

They had experienced the transformation of their lives within an empire explicitly based on class hierarchy, slavery, sexual hierarchy, ethnicity, and violence, with no opening for political change.

How do you live? You want revenge, rebellion. You want passivity. You want to go back to pagan life: career success, standing in the community. Peter says those desires are at war against your life. Don’t react. Rather actively create an excellent, beautiful way of life. No malice, guile, envy. Learn love, forgiveness. That’s who you are. Live that. Don’t let reaction to evil make you violent, envious. Even under oppression, let every act you control create a place of beauty, God’s glory lived out.

Living in the Frame of Human Institutions

But you live in some specific spot in the world with its structures of power, control, violence. You know who your true Lord is, and for his sake you expect the best of human powers (very human). An emperor (even Nero), a governor, all claim to support the good against evil. Well, that’s exactly who you are. Your true Lord calls you to embody doing good: create inclusive communities, serve, love even enemies. Don’t fight the world’s foolish ignorance with your own foolish hatred or violence.

Live within those structures knowing that you are free people. You are God’s beloved creatures, given new birth as God’s children. You serve God who is the true Lord of all that exists, even the emperor. Peter knows well the tensions of that situation (Act 5:29). God never calls you to do evil, but many situations challenge us to stop an evil, protect others, create the beauty of justice, find the good.

Peter encapsulates the challenge with four imperatives: Honor every person. No one is "the other." Everyone is valued. Build a real inclusive community of love where you break down all the human barriers and create real community. Only God holds true life and death. Only God is to be treated with reverence, fear. The emperor? He’s a human. You honor him like everyone else, even Nero.

Finding the Wholeness of Grace under Oppression

Peter begins applying this by going to the most challenging case: a disciple who is a slave (property owned by a master with the power of life, death, abuse, punishment) with no control over her/his life. It was precisely these, living at the very bottom of "human institutions," who had experienced grace in a new birth to a living hope through Jesus’ resurrection. They also faced the moment by moment challenge of believing in their own humanity in a world that made them chattel and tools. But they are full human beings, free children of God; they can create and experience grace even in suffering.

The radical disparity of evaluation between the slave as human property and as God’s beloved child points to the deep challenge of Jesus as seen through Isa 53. He comes among us, under the twisted master of humanity. He shows God’s reality in the midst of human desires, violence, ignorance, and fear.

He embodies the God who seeks our good when we neither know nor want that good. He descends into the bottom of what human depravity does all the time, and he takes it fully on himself.

He bears our sins and our wounds and creates life and hope. He heals in a way that even a slave, even a prosperous New Yorker can experience. He gives us identity that is real and good and beautiful!

Learning a Living Hope - Following the Prophets

Peter is leading believers under stress to grasp what it means that they’ve been "born again into a living hope" by Jesus’ resurrection from death. He’s talked of their future imperishable inheritance and that even as they face present persecution they’re guarded by God’s power for salvation. It all centers around Jesus, who brings inexpressible joy and a present experience of that salvation [1:3-9].

Peter knows how hard it is to become spiritual "resident aliens" in a vast empire with contrary values. He want them to know the depth of the story, the ancient past, that’s now theirs. In fact, what they are experiencing through Jesus’ resurrection is the fulfillment of the deepest promises of that past.

He doesn’t tell stories. They’ve probably learned them. He weaves together reflections on those stories in the language of scriptures they can study to help them understand their own life and identity. What they experience in their ‘modern’ time corresponds to what prophets saw in Israel’s life. He leads them into the rich poetic language of scripture to express the transformation they experience.

How does a New Birth Change Things?

How does an adult experience new birth? It starts from God’s action in Jesus which sets off responses. You start undressing from your old ways down to your ‘birthday suit’- guile, hypocrisies, envies.... Jesus had no guile [2:22, Isa 53:9]; seeking life rejects guile [3:10, Ps 34:13] and gives a taste that the Lord is good [2:3; Ps 34:8]. You find yourself a new baby with a lot of growing, learning to do. You long for milk, real nourishment that doesn’t deceive, that comes from the logos/word: the event of Jesus that we receive as good news, God’s living word [1:23]. You listen, follow, purify, love, grow.

The taste of that milk is like no other. It is personal experience of the deep goodness of God as giver of life, Jesus as redeemer, renewer of life. The taste of divine life given by the Spirit. Nothing compares.

A Life Built between Human Rejection and God’s Delight

Peter shifts from the Lord as nursing mother to living stone - a big metaphorical jump! But in Moses’ great song in Deut 32 God is called the Rock...who gave birth to you. A much used image.

Peter wants to talk about the solidity of the new life of hope in Jesus and also the experience of conflict, rejection, and vulnerability that has hit these disciples. He builds on three passages: Isa 8-9; 28, and Psa 118. The stone/rock is God, the life-giving Rock. In Jesus he comes among humans and is vulnerable to human rejection. God’s wisdom and power are radically different from human.

They’ve come to Jesus, this living stone foundation of a spiritual house where God and human meet, and they find themselves part of that sanctuary, living stones, a priesthood bringing people into relationship with God through Jesus. This living stone is honored by God but rejected by people.

This living stone doesn’t look like most people’s image of God. Thus the problem that has always been there, in Israel and now among Gentiles: Can I bring myself to trust God when he doesn’t show himself with the trappings of human glory. When God humbles himself in Jesus, am I offended?

Called into a Marvelous Light

Peter affirms their choice and identity as disciples: They’re like God’s people at Mt. Sinai. God is giving them new identity and new purpose. Their experience of birth, taste, identity, light is for sharing.

Our future flows from the great, ancient, ongoing story of God’s people, God’s mercy: a Living Hope.

Minds Ready to Move, Act, Serve, Do...

In 1 Pet 1:1-12, Peter writes to believers as "resident aliens" facing intense trials, but born again into "a living hope" by Jesus' resurrection. Thus they celebrate even under persecution. They have not seen Jesus, but love and trust him, and experience joy and glory and the deliverance of their lives.

The result is not passivity but readiness for action that can respond to diverse challenging situations. We "gird up the loins of our minds" (KJV). Like Israel at the Exodus, ready to move, to act at a moment's notice. Deliverance of our life / soul is a process in which we actively participate. Think clearly, soberly. Commit to our direction: Set your hope on the grace we see as we see Jesus. That grace has already been revealed and will be fully revealed. We live in and learn that Grace.

Even under persecution as a tiny minority, the believers knew that they were part of God's rule over his whole world by astonishing grace. They knew that their reality would outlast the Roman empire. Peter sees this revelation in the promise of Isaiah 40 in the revealing of God's lasting glory.

Training for a New Way of Life: Learning from God

Amazingly, we are children of God! We listen and follow ('obedience') as we are trained into a new way of living. It's like learning a new science or profession or being apprenticed in a new skill. There are patterns of thinking, desires for power, self-indulgence, self-assertion, and exclusion of others that flow from not knowing God and his grace in Jesus. Peter says, that's where you were. You were shaped by those patterns. You can empathize with those who still see life through those lenses.

Those patterns of mind and life are still all around trying to squeeze us into a mold. Like Paul (Rm 8:2), Peter stresses the need to recognize that squeezing process. Only by listening to a new vision, transformation into a new way of thinking, can we recognize God's will and shape our lives by it.

The challenge is to know who to listen to and follow. God called us into this life in Jesus. He shows his unique character/holiness in Jesus. We are apprentices. We listen and practice, practice, practice! Peter, like Paul, had experienced the power of the story of Jesus to change lives. Even pagans did not just learn about Jesus. Jesus' reality -- grace -- grasped their lives, changed them from inside.

Being children of this Father, listening to Jesus, is what makes disciples into "resident aliens" in every human society based on human power, domination, exclusion, violence. God is everyone's God -- Jews, Gentiles, slave, free. He evaluates life, knowing and loving each person, by their own actions. In Jesus, he redeems us from slavery (like the Exodus) by giving himself in Jesus' death (like the blood of the lamb) to free us from bondage to the futility of life in the ignorance that excludes God.

Peter says this is a reality of God embedded in the whole story of the world. God in his Word created the world leading to the complex beauty and brokenness of human life. It is that Word that became flesh and showed us true beauty, but also took on our brokenness and death. Through him we see God's grace overcoming death in Jesus' resurrection revealing the glory of new life. This is where the whole story is going. We learn that God intends that conquest of death not just for Jesus but for us. We learn new faith / trust and hope in God that empowers our present actions and aspirations.

Training for Love and Lasting Life

Peter says that the believers' lives / souls (psyche) have been cleaned / purified by listening to the truth of what God has done in Jesus and by letting that grace shape life. The result is that the love of God that is at the heart of that grace grows a corresponding love in the believer and in their community. It is a love without manipulation or hypocrisy. A self-giving love that seeks the good of others. Peter says practice it eagerly as it keeps purifying you from the inside. Practice it close up with brothers and sisters who have problems and struggle with suffering and sin like you do.

This is the ongoing process of new birth. Birth not by our flesh, subject to death (Peter quotes Isa 40). A seed is planted by God's word -- the powerful event / word of Jesus -- a seed that the Spirit uses to create God's own eternal life in us. Jesus, the living Word of God, becomes our joy and glory. Now we're dressed for action, for facing, dealing with, growing into the challenges that life offers.

Identity Papers for Resident Aliens

1 Peter takes us into the life of 1st century Christians under intense stress. Peter writes "through Silvanus" (5:12) from Rome to Gentile and Jewish believers scattered across northern Asia Minor (Turkey). Tradition says Peter was executed in Nero's persecution in a.d. 64 after fire in Rome.

The experience of dislocation by joining new communities of faith and then suffering persecution stamps the intensity of the letter. Who am I? Why is this happening? Where's my life going? Should I stay?

Peter starts from that dislocation: They are "resident aliens" in their own home towns, people with new citizenship. They see familiar political allegiances, temples, synagogues, family ties with new eyes. Likewise others see them now as outsiders. Old career plans, amusements, connections change.

But Peter reminds them of their experience of new identity: Chosen by God, the experience of God's Spirit, listening to a new vision of life, intimately tied to Jesus, Messiah of Israel, dying for Gentiles. The identity of a new citizenship of grace and peace open to everyone -- no outsiders, no enemies.

Birth Certificate of Resurrection Life

The new identity is more than a new passport, it's a new birth by God's mercy. They had lived in a world bounded and enforced by death (conquest, war, fear). But in Jesus, God had opened a living hope by Jesus' resurrection -- the real conquest of death in all its destructive powers. The entire vision of life expands as death shrivels from the ultimate No! to life, to a painful interlude.

This new birth is as God's own child, sharing the very life of Jesus by his Spirit. We learn to see our life on a vast new scale. Our inheritance as God's children is not accumulated stuff, even great stuff. It is a new resurrection world including a new resurrection us! Its reality has only broken into our little world in Jesus' resurrection. The God who raised Jesus guards both that future and the present us.

Thus the paradox! Celebration in the midst of distress. All kinds of trials were being forced on them. (Tacitus, Annals 15:44 on Nero's persecution in Rome. See www.opendoorusa.org for present day persecution.) It made all the difference that they identified with Jesus. His teaching, suffering, death, and resurrection, his whole vision of life, changed their vision of love, service, life, hope, death, all!

Love beyond Vision, Joy beyond Words

They were faced every day with the Thomas challenge (Jn 20:24-29). They had never seen Jesus.

He was a story too good to be true, but too strange not to be true. No one could have invented this! They had fallen in love with him. Their faith/trust in him endangered their lives but more importantly changed their lives, their identity, to the core. They knew this grace, this joy, this hope was true.

It was a grace that, even threatened with death, could only love and pray for the persecutor. It had no dark side of violence and surrender to the power of death. Even in dying, it conquered death.

In spite of their distress it broke forth in celebrations of joy beyond words, a vision of its indestructible glory. Yes it was emphatically a hope for the future, but the reality was that here and now they were experiencing the deliverance/salvation of their lives. They had lost their lives and gained them!

A Long Journey into Life

Peter says that when you look back into scripture, this strange, wonderful reality of grace and life through the suffering Messiah has been there, often hidden, but all along. Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, pointed to future generations when promises would be realized.

The scattered believers then and now experience that realization breaking in. They/we need to prepare to live fully in hope/grace of this age opened by Jesus resurrection, an age of love, faith, joy, and suffering, experiencing his revealing now and awaiting the consummation of that living hope.

Broken Hopes and Living Hope

We focus on the meaning of Jesus' resurrection from Easter to Pentecost: a living hope (1Pet 1:3). Jesus entered Jerusalem to such hope, all so cruelly crushed in a cross and tomb! How could things go so wrong? How could a movement emerge? Was it wrong? What did Jesus' resurrection mean?

Luke emphasizes the perplexing events. None of Jesus' disciples could grasp his crucifixion or thought anything good could follow it. They were broken-hearted, disappointed. Male disciples hid. The women went to the tomb with spices to cover the smell of death. Then new things began to happen. An empty tomb. Women were told by 'angels' that Jesus was alive. The apostles couldn't believe it. They were amazed. They talked, argued. If only! Why not prevent death? Why not redeem Israel?

Jesus had told them in advance but had not taught them a doctrine of his death and resurrection. It was important they experience it happening first and then come to an understanding of the meaning of the events. This was to be a transformation of the world, of life on the deepest level, a living hope.

Engaging the Mind with New Vision, New Meaning

Jesus challenged the couple traveling to Emmaus to think clearly. To let the events open their heart / minds to new understanding. An impossible event had happened! What else could be different? Crucifixion: hopes crushed, defeat by oppressors wielding death. Resurrection changed hopeless defeat into new power. Death conquered! It illuminated Jesus' identity. It challenged long received ways of interpreting scripture. It sparked new Hope. It opened the future and changed the present.

First the fact/event. Jesus challenges the disciples to accept their own experience. Look! Touch. Think. Remember. What was happening went against their beliefs, the story of God's rule they understood. Here was final physical resurrection. The same person but new, beyond death. Spirit and body.

Meaning in Scripture. Jesus led them from Genesis to the prophets and writings. They needed to see that the story / meaning they had found shaped and limited their expectations. He opened their minds to see a greater narrative in texts and meanings they had devalued or misread. These events were the exact culmination of the story of Israel leading to a Messiah for the world, not against the world.

A Heart Bursting into Flame

As the events merged with that meaning, they not only illuminated their minds, a fire was lit within them. The two on the road especially noticed it because they had not realized they were talking with Jesus.

But Jesus allowed them to recognize him not in the words alone, only when Jesus broke bread -- meaning united with the physical. This marked a deep personal relationship and echoed "This is my body, given for you." The human united in the transformation of broken hopes into a vibrant new faith and certainty. Resurrection. Hope! The world is profoundly full of God's grace and power; God has done a new thing, as he promised. Jesus is the living Lord. So also with the disciples later: Spirit and Body united.

A Life that Testifies to Hope

"You are witnesses!" This doesn't stop. You live for this. You die for this. Here is the uniting of all our pain and joy in the Messiah of God. All thinking is transformed by these events: repentance (metanoia). God gives release, forgiveness. He gives it not only to Israel, but also to all nations. It starts from Jerusalem (redemption of Israel). This is your future and the hope of all the world renewed. This is God's story that gives meaning to our past, present, and future. A living hope.

Can This Really Be Happening?

Jesus' resurrection is not a doctrine; it is an event. Christian life has many teachings, but none would be known or noticed without what happened that Spring morning, 1986 years ago. Jesus wasn't like other religious founders who labored years to build a religious community. If Jesus had simply stayed in the tomb, nothing would have happened: A different world.

But Jesus' resurrection is also a difficult and challenging event. First, it's impossible. Everyone knows that dead is dead. That's why we love near-death experiences and zombies or ghosts.

Running through the narrative of Jesus' resurrection is that very human response of doubt.

Of course many loved him, but.... One disciple helped have him arrested, others fled when a violent death loomed. He was placed in a tomb. The two Marys went to see the tomb, not a resurrection. Even as they encounter Jesus, fear swirls with joy inside them. The disciples see Jesus and worship, but some doubt. How could it be different? If something's too good to be true, it usually isn't. If this was actually happening -- not a dream or ancient myth or philosophical doctrine -- then the world is a very different place from what we thought.

It might just be possible not to be afraid, even in the face of death, of anything! Mt wants us to sense that transforming miracle (earthquake): to the women, "You, don't be afraid!"

The challenge of Jesus' resurrection hasn't changed. It was impossible then as now. Doubt is built in. But the fact that it happened changes everything. Like Mary Magdalene, I am confronted with a different world, physically, existentially, on the deepest levels of life.

I live in a world wide open. Not draining down into death. Open to God, open to life.

Hearing an Old Story Again for the First Time

As Matthew like other disciples looked back on this transforming event and lived out its effects, they wondered why they had not seen it clearly before it happened. Why didn't Mary expect more than a tomb, even though Jesus had told them? They had a story that they thought was unfolding from scripture, exciting, with Jesus as a new king, renewing all.

Now they saw that was only part of the story. The dark narrative of deep suffering for God's people and God's servant and hope beyond that suffering, a story that ran through so much of the prophets and psalms, was (naturally) blocked out. The realization that Jesus was embodying God's people as Messiah and taking that pain and death on himself, was something they could see only after it happened -- the fact that he was conquering not Rome but death and every empire built on death. Conquest of death through death and into new resurrection life! It was all something none of the disciples had ever dreamed.

Now Mt looks back at scripture and sees it new. He and others remember Jesus crucifixion and resurrection and hear so many echoes of Psalm 22 and other passages. And as Mt tells us about these events, he emphasizes details that help us hear the connection as well:

The sufferer's (Israel's, the Servant's) journey from abandonment and death to the very surprising outcome of celebration of God's kingdom among all the nations of earth. Jesus had supplied the powerful transition that made the journey possible -- his resurrection.

What Does a New World Look Like

Jesus points his disciples into that new unexpected world. They will live among all kinds of claims of power and authority. They need to see God's kingdom! That deeper than the tumult of human violence and authority is the authority of God's self-giving love embodied in the crucified Jesus, raised into new life. They will be emissaries of that old/new kingdom.

That God is personal, loving. They call everyone to learn, to plunge into God's life in Jesus and in God's Spirit. Teach, learn, practice. Never be afraid. This new life unites them forever.

The Good Friday Service at the Manhattan Church of Christ.

Congregational Singing

Tell Me the Story of Jesus

Tis Midnight, and on Olive’s Brow

Night with Ebon Pinion

Welcome and Prayer

THE PASSION OF JESUS CHRIST

A dramatic congregational reading

from the Gospels of John, Mark, and Luke

(NIV, adapted)

Psalm 22

Scripture Reading (NRSV)

Angels Bore His Soul Away

Words and Music by Douglas E. Wagner

Psalm 88

Scripture Reading (NRSV)

The Suffering Servant

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (NRSV)

Prayer of Confession

Personalizing Christ’s Sacrifice

Lord, I Need You

When My Love to Christ Grows Weak

Loved by You

Prayer of Thanksgiving

How Deep the Father’s Love

What Do You See as Events Unfold?

Matthew is leading us to see who Jesus is. He helps us watch as different people interact with Jesus, positively and negatively, and we can respond to what they see in Jesus. His concern is with us readers. He is recounts memories of the early disciples, oft repeated. He counts on our growing sense of expectation, our sense of how difficult this was for many of them.

Two days earlier (Sunday) Jesus entered Jerusalem with a crowd acclaiming him King (21:1-11) as he enacted prophecies of the humble king (Zech 9:9; Ps 118:25-26). Since then, conflict with all the leaders in the temple. Questions of Messiah, Temple, kingdom of the Son of Man -- all loaded with expectation and struggle at the time of Passover. All challenging for us.

Now Jesus begins (v 2): Passover (deliverance from oppression, creating a people in covenant with God); Son of Man (receiving kingdom, unending authority). What flows from these? "Handed over to be crucified"! What!? The opposite of expectations! What can it mean?

We watch the chief priests, Caiaphas (high priest appointed by Romans): Seize the dangerous Jesus; kill him. Not during Passover! Let a sense of disappointment and failed hopes set in. Two scenarios with a surprising overlap. But 'crucified' means Romans, and at Passover.

A Woman's Beautiful Deed

The scene changes: Bethany banquet with a man who symbolizes Jesus' ministry of giving life. We watch as an unnamed woman enters and pours precious fragrant oil on Jesus' head. Jesus does not stop her or question her. He simply receives the act. What does it mean? We can easily see that Jesus is being anointed as king, a humble king anointed by a woman.

We watch the disciples respond, probably thinking to please Jesus. He had just instructed them about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked. It's too late to recover the oil but not too late to condemn the woman's action as waste and express their concern for the poor.

To their surprise, Jesus does not approve their judgment. This is why Jesus said not to judge. The woman's act will never hinder them from serving people in need. But their moralism blinds them to the grace of the kingdom unfolding in front of them. It embodies God's self-giving love to give meaning to all their acts of loving service. This is a unique moment of surprise.

Then Jesus expresses the meaning of the woman's beautiful deed. We are surprised! We knew it would be anointing as Messiah-King. And it is, but in a way we had not expected. It is preparing "my body for burial" -- after crucifixion. No mention of resurrection. The darkness must be faced. The disciples must see it. Only through the horror/grace of death will the kingdom of the Messiah/Son of Man break forth (Ps 22; Isa 52-53). Jesus surprises everyone.

Jesus adds weight to the moment. Crucifixion, burial sound like defeat, the end. But they're God's unconquerable love that will be proclaimed to the world. A beautiful deed retold forever!

A Disciple's Betrayal

But at least one of the disciples has had enough. All this talk of crucifixion and burial is not the hope, Exodus, kingdom victory that Judas had signed on for. Jesus talked about feeding the hungry but then accepted a woman's extravagance anticipating burial! It made no sense! If it's a kingdom, Judas is ready! If Jesus is planning defeat and death, it's time to get out.

Judas probably feels like he's been had. What can he get out of this fiasco now? He goes to the people with resources to pay: 30 pieces of silver. The "five talents" Jesus used as a symbol of the gift of God's kingdom is a thousand times that. But this is real money. Hope is dead.

Judas will hand Jesus over at Passover. The Romans will crucify him. He'll be buried! What will become of Kingdom hopes? Cross and Kingdom together?! How? What do you see in Jesus?

A Prophetic Vision Revisioned on the road to the Cross

This is the final block of Jesus' teaching in Matthew. It ends the the last complex discourse of judgment and anticipation (23-25) before things rapidly unfold in Passover and crucifixion.

What is going to happen is so hard for Jesus' disciples to grasp, so paradoxical, that Jesus wants to plant in them a new vision for the future. He uses an image that he's often used: the Son of the Human (Son of Man). Often to speak of himself in third person. Always loaded language, drawn from Daniel, used several times in this discourse, with other Daniel refs.

Jesus proclaimed God's Kingdom, a hope loaded with faith and political struggle. Was he Messiah or was he about to die -- the end of dreams. An impass. The Son of Man image come from a powerful vision in Daniel 7: God's people receive the kingdom while beastly kingdoms of the nations are destroyed. The Son of the Human embodies God's Kingdom.

Jesus retells that vision to show how it is being fulfilled and transformed. Yes, a new age, God's kingdom is breaking in, but such surprises! It begins now and extends through 'judgment' to resurrection. Jesus as King begins the conquest of death by dying (!) ... and resurrection. The King is Immanuel, God with us, but in unexpected ways, through a challenging future.

Blessed and Astonished in a New Kind of Kingdom

What happens when Daniel's vision is fulfilled? The Son who becomes King gathers all Gentiles, but not to destroy them. He judges them. But how? Some are welcomed as "Blessed by my Father." God's Kingdom has been for them "from the foundation of the world." Jesus' good Jewish disciples must be astonished. Jesus says the nations are just as astonished!

The King says they cared for him in all kinds of real, not pretended, need. A strange king! In the power and structure of this world he has nothing, but he built the world as Son of God.

He was there among all the nations, hungry, a stranger, imprisoned. They cared for him!

"Lord, When?!" He is the Son of the Human. In every human he has a brother or sister. When "you did it to one of the least of these...." The Kingdom is breaking in. It reveals who people are. They discover the deep reality of God that sweeps away the power/wealth of our world.

The other side in the vision: Like the "one talent" man, they are condemned, not for evil acts, but for not actively doing good to "the least." They live in our ordinary world of self-focused values, not self-giving love (agapé). The world does not share in conquering death by dying. It just dies. That punishment of the age to come begins now and continues. So also Life! Everything about this kingdom, especially its King, is a judgment on the values of our world.

A Dying King, Alive Everywhere!

Jesus answers the disciples' questions. The glorious kingdom is breaking in. Its Glory is God's self-giving love. The King is enthroned. You will see him on a cross, with you always, in every person in need. This is what the world has always been about. Not our power, greed, our desires, our mammon. This is life that conquers death. Life that lasts because it is God's life.

This kingdom is already here in the resurrected Messiah, the Spirit -- life of the age to come. It begins now and never stops. You can live it in every moment in love and service and hope.

The Talents -- A Parable Well-Known

Every time we admire someone's talent or speak of them as talented, we are alluding to this parable of Jesus. The English word 'talent' is from the Latin talentum from Greek talanton. That connection reflects and shapes how this parable in understood, past and present.

The parable is regularly interpreted as being about the talents that God has given us and how, when Jesus returns, he will judge our lives on the basis of how we have used those talents. Did you make use of your talents and increase them? Did you bury your talents? It helps us to see our abilities as gifts of God, not our own achievements, and to see life as stewardship, to be lived boldly, not fearfully. It is even better when we see these talents as spiritual gifts, given to us for responsible use by God's Holy Spirit to benefit others.

This discourse of Jesus, however, starts from the question of the destruction of the temple and Jesus' manifestation (parousia) as king (Mt 21). The disciples can't imagine the crucifixion and resurrection or a second coming. What would Jesus have meant by this parable as he spoke to them in their context? Could that help our understanding of it?

What are the Talants?

A talent/talant of course is not a personal ability but a large amount of money -- 75 lb. of silver, 6,000 denarii (a day's wage, Mt 20:2). Thus nearly 20 yrs wages. Five talants is 100 yrs wages (at $30,000/yr =$3 million). More than a fisherman could imagine, much less a slave. This is the estate of the master, entrusted to his own servants.

All three servants have huge amounts to work with. Two actively let these funds work and they double. One is fearful of loss and of a hard master and keeps it safe. The first two are approved, the third intensely condemned. The talant of the third is given to the first.

Jesus is not talking about the abilities of the disciples but about God's great gift to Israel, his promises of God's kingdom (Dan 7) that Jesus' proclaimed. Part of what was happening in Jesus coming to Jerusalem as king and in all that would unfold was the master coming to open that gift: Humble king, crucified, resurrected, 'all authority,' all nations included, or violent conflict with Rome, destruction of temple. Jesus' negative judgment was focused on the chief priests and Pharisees for rejecting/blocking God's kingdom he proclaimed.

It is that Kingdom of heaven breaking in that is the valuable pearl, hidden treasure, growing mustard seed, the talants. The question for the disciples: Are you open to its power? Do you let it work? Do you let it break through boundaries. New wine in new wineskins. Or, like the Pharisees, do you stop it's work, hide it, try to keep its promise safe for yourself?

Joy and Darkness

God called Israel as a light to the nations. In the Kingdom, light was opening out to all nations. Rejecting that inclusive kingdom meant sentencing oneself to darkness, regret, anger.

Disciples learn that letting the treasure of God's kingdom work in its own surprising way means gain, learning to trust God, and ultimately joy: "Enter the Joy of your Lord!" That joy is the way of life defined by God's love and transforming presence, the way Jesus taught. It becomes the conquest of death and separation, fulfillment of all God's promises. It comes down to challenge us as well. In that great gift, even my little talents find a place.