The Mystery of God’s Justice (with audio)

Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 28, November 19, 2017; The Rev. Dr. Cameron E. Partridge

It’s a privilege to be with you here at Emmanuel Church. Thank you very much, Pam, for the invitation to preach and to all of you for welcoming me this morning. I enjoyed getting to collaborate with you on the Boston-Cambridge Mission Hub when I served as Campus Minister for Episcopal students at Boston University, and I’m glad that being in town for the American Academy of Religion / Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting has finally given me the opportunity to worship with you on a Sunday morning.

Almost exactly one year ago, I found myself on a Sunday evening plane at Logan airport with Sophie our eighteen-year-old cat stunned into silence in her carrier under the seat. After living in Boston for over twenty years, we were heading into a new life chapter in the Bay Area where I would start as the rector of St. Aidan’s in San Francisco, soon to be joined by my spouse Kateri, our two boys, and our other eighteen year old cat. As the plane turned to the west and started to careen down the runway, I looked into the sunset and felt like I was being flung headlong into a mystery. In its own right, this moment of beginning our family’s move brought us a turbulent mix of excitement, anxiety, loss, and renewal. But in the wake of the presidential election results that had come in just a few days earlier, the whole world felt like it had come off its axis. Even from a year’s remove, happily immersed in my ministry at St. Aidan’s, the memory of that evening flight remains fresh to me. It felt like we were all being thrown together into the end of the world, alarmingly in tune with the themes of this moment in the liturgical calendar.

And now here we are once more at the time of year when the days grow shorter, the air gets chillier (even in the Bay Area, though not as chilly as here), and the readings assigned by the Revised Common Lectionary get downright depressing. Last week we had the bridesmaids who got shut out of the wedding banquet when they ran back to the store to get oil for their lamps (Mt 25:1-13). Not long before that we had another wedding banquet where a guest was excluded for failing to honor the divine host by wearing the appropriate wedding garment (Mt 22:1-14). (Watch out for wedding banquets!) We are now in a time in our church year where the readings are designed quite literally to bring us up short by asking us to sit with endings. The theological term for this theme is eschatology, the theology of last things. This theme will actually continue into the first part of Advent that begins two weeks from today, since Advent brings us into the threshold between the first Advent of Jesus, his birth, and the second Advent, his return to bring all things to completion. But in these last two weeks there is a further edge of judgment. No one likes to feel judged, but especially for anyone who grew up in a tradition of Christianity that heavily emphasized themes of judgment in general or who has been harshly and personally condemned by other Christians, these readings can be deeply unsettling. When one has had such experiences, the very idea of judgment in connection with God can bring that experience back. These readings can prompt us to ask, where is the God of hope? Can there be any hope in divine judgment? My answer is yes. The shared root of judgment with justice begins to suggest how. More specifically, divine justice reminds us that God’s angle on creation is infinitely more comprehensive and unexpected than any creaturely view.

Our passage from Matthew’s gospel, known as “the parable of the talents,” is the second of three parables in the twenty-fifth chapter that center on the kingdom of heaven. The first of those parables, which we heard last week, ended with the admonishment, “keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Mt 25:13). This week the action centers basically on the investment activity of three slaves who have been left with money by their master who has gone away on a journey. The first two slaves take what has been given to them and double it, five talents becoming ten and two becoming four. But the third slave, judging the master ahead of time as harsh and unfair, takes the money, buries it for safekeeping, and returns it to the master. Not only does he return it, but he does so with a critical explanation: “I knew you were harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours” (25:24-25).

I’m struck by several things. By burying the talent he ensured that the master would reap exactly what was sown, and no more. And because this man’s actions are suffused by fear, the burying becomes not so much planting as hiding. The master seems to react in anger not only because of the lack of monetary growth but because of how the slave had judged the master: “you knew, did you,” he begins. In a sense the third slave’s judgment of the master seems to have become a self-fulfilling prophesy. You judged me to be unfair, so now you will reap an unfair outcome, the master basically declares. Yet the master himself only gave him one talent to begin with, apparently because of his own previous observations about the slave’s “ability” (25:15). From the slave’s perspective, the master had stacked the deck ahead of time. One could ask, did not the master create a self-fulfilling prophesy by so evidently failing to trust this slave, by pre-judging his ability? One has to assume that the slave could observe the higher number of talents entrusted to the others. It seems that the slave basically viewed this entire system as rigged and refused to participate. He anticipated the master’s horrifying conclusion that “for to all those who have, more will be given,” and that “from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (25:29). This system in which he refused to participate then basically ejected him (25:30).

We might well ask, what about any of this is even remotely just? Where is the righting or inverting of social and economic inequities that form such an important hallmark of the kingdom of heaven, as we have heard in passages earlier this fall: the first becoming last and the last becoming first (Mt 20:1-16 on September 24th and also re: debt forgiveness, Mt 18:21-35 on September 17th)? Taken on its own, today’s parable can distort our overall understanding of the basilea, the kingdom or reign of God, how its justice works. We cannot afford to lose sight of these crucial qualities. And if I may preview next week’s gospel, the third parable from Matthew’s 25th chapter also provides a crucial frame in which to situate today’s reading. There the center of the story is on those who are disenfranchised: the hungry, the thirsty, the unclothed, the sick, the imprisoned, the estranged. This famously stark parable of the divine judge emphasizes that our treatment of those on the margins is in fact how we treat God. If Jesus did not actually mean for his parable to condone economic inequity (or tax reform that disproportionately benefits the 1%…), how might the parable of the talents help us understand the justice that operates in God’s basilea?

If last week’s parable emphasized that the kingdom would come in an unexpected hour or time, this week’s suggests that it can come amid an unexpected context. And in that sense, next week’s parable will carry on this emphasis on what we don’t know, reminding us not to hold on too tightly to the context we’ve been placed in this week, to declare with absolute certainty, this is exactly what the kingdom of heaven looks like, these lines here mark its exact parameters. We should be careful of saying too confidently, I know when I am interacting with God in this person and I know when I am not. As next week’s parable (Mt 25: 31-46) will bring home, in fact we don’t know for certain. The righteous are shocked to be told they have done various wonderful things unto God. And the unrighteous, too, are astounded that they had failed to recognize the divine identity of people they had treated poorly. God’s presence and God’s qualities of judgment seem to flow in unexpected ways through our time and our space, through contexts and people. Some of these times, places, and people will make complete sense to us and some will seem completely incongruous.

If this observation continues to be unsettling, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And if you’re not convinced, perhaps our first reading from Judges may help (Judges 4:1-7). The Revised Common Lectionary only gave us the tip of this story’s iceberg. The judges were Israel’s warrior-leaders before the beginning of the monarchy in all its fraught character. In this time where the Israelites were figuring out how to live in proximity to its neighboring communities, God used human judges help Israel come to know when they had gone astray. Today we hear about Deborah, described as “a prophetess… who was judging Israel” (4:4) a judge who, it simply needs to be said, is awesome. And if God’s appointment of a woman judge amid a sea of male leaders is not fabulously unexpected enough for you, get ready for the ending. God prompted her to convey to the Israelites that the time of their twenty-year-long oppression under King Jabin of Canaan and his military general Sisera was coming to an end. Barak son of Abinoam was to position armies from the tribes Naphtali and Zebulun onto Mt. Tabor, and God would deliver Sisera’s armies into their hands. Our reading stops short of the real drama on several counts. We don’t hear Barak’s pleading response to Deborah, “if you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go” (4:8). Nor do we hear her reply that while, yes, she would join him, “the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman” (4:9). Deborah’s then shouts to Barak, “Up! For this is the day on which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. The Lord is indeed going out before you” (4:14). After Barak’s armies rout Sisera’s, the general escapes and hides in the tent of a woman he thought was his ally. Only this woman, Jael wife of Heber the Kenite, waited until Sisera was asleep and killed him (4:21). It’s a gruesome and unexpected completion of Israel’s vistory, the specifics of which I will leave for your own perusal (or you can ask me at coffee hour). God’s justice flows through this story in highly unexpected, unpredictable, and unsettling ways.

We cannot presume to fully understand the justice of God. We do catch important glimpses of it. We are formed to be on the lookout for it, to be mindful and watchful. We are even told, through all the unsettling qualities of today’s readings, to be hopeful and encouraged by the qualities of God’s justice that pervade the in-breaking of God’s reign. Paul is absolutely convinced of this in his first letter to the Thessalonians (5:1-11). God’s reign is coming to birth he says. As one who has been present at two births—those of both of my children – right here in Boston, I might add, I am moved by this image. As a parent, as well as one whose own growing up took unexpected turns, I am also mindful that no matter how much we think we know about what, and who, is coming to birth, our knowledge is always limited. And so Paul joins the voices of our parables and of Deborah, inviting us to be watchful, wakeful, and responsive together amid the unexpected– to stand with each other and share with one another what we see, to bear witness and to act.

I cannot believe how the injustices of our world have become magnified in this last year. This country’s deep patterns of racism, classism, xenophobia, misogyny and transphobia were clearly with us long, long before all that was unleashed by the elections last November. The urgency of the call to keep awake together is widely and intensely palpable. Keep watch we must, stand together we must. In a world that is deeply unsettled and unjust we are asked to be people of justice who believe in a just God, even as we also cannot claim to have ultimate insight into all the depths and qualities of God’s justice. That lack of knowing cannot deter us from our work, our call to be repairers of the breaches of our world, our call to be beacons of truth and transparency, justice and peace.

This evening I will again be on a plane at sunset. I will be returning to San Francisco, to my local context in all its specificity, but also to the ministry that all of us share across the miles. Today and tomorrow, communities around the world are observing Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), a tradition that began in San Francisco in 1999 to remember the murder of Rita Hester which had happened the year before right here in Allston, Massachusetts. Tonight Boston’s TDOR will be taking place at Diomass’s own Cathedral Church of St. Paul. This service, which is organized by the local trans community and is not religious, will give trans people and people of all gender identities the opportunity to come together and bear witness to the lives of trans people – almost all trans women of color – that were lost around the country this year, at least twenty-three at last count (see the project Unerased). People are dying. And people are living. People are falling into the cracks, and people are resilient. I invite you, if you are able, to come and stand with the trans community this evening, to listen and bear witness, to draw and lend strength, to convey that we stand together as people of hope, of justice and peace. Come and keep watch for the justice of God lifting up the broken-hearted, honoring the dead, sustaining and activating the living. I cannot stand with you there in body, but be assured, I will be with you in spirit. May the justice of God in all its mystery never cease to surprise, encourage, and galvanize us into hope and to action.