Sermon - 24th Sunday After Pentecost (11/15/2020)

Zeph. 1:7, 12-18; Ps. 90:1-12; 1 Thess. 5:1-11; Mt. 25:14-30

Zephaniah isn’t one of the best known of the Hebrew prophets.  Zephaniah lived in Jerusalem perhaps two generations before Jeremiah, and his message to the ruling elite of Jerusalem was basically the same as Jeremiah’s:  God brought us out of slavery in Egypt to live in God’s land as a free people with liberty and justice for all.  But you have turned it into another Egypt and that is not going to end well.  You have hardened your hearts like Pharaoh, you are building monuments to yourselves and your riches and your accomplishments while forcing your neighbors to make the bricks, and it is all going to come crashing down on your heads.

You tell yourself, Zephaniah says, that God hasn’t acted yet and so God won’t act in the future. But you are wrong; God will act and you aren’t going to like it.  Like Pharoah you think your gold and silver will spare you, your horses and chariots will save you, but they will not – you didn’t mind when the “less fortunate” did the suffering and the dying, but now it’s going to be your turn. Like many of the Hebrew prophets, Zephaniah gets poetic in his dramatic descriptions of just how bad it’s going to get for those who do evil.  And – although we only read from the first half of Zephaniah’s short book today – like many of the Hebrew prophets, Zephaniah eventually turns equally poetic in describing how wonderful it will be for the people who have been suffering all these years when God finally delivers them from evil and frees them again from bondage.

Like many of the Hebrew prophets, Zephaniah promises that God will judge all the Pharoahs and Egypts of the world – even the ones that have been built by God’s own people. And Zephaniah promises that God will then save and deliver God’s faithful people, the ones who did not enslave their neighbors, the ones whose hearts were not hardened to the suffering of others, the ones who kept the faith during the hard times – they will know God’s salvation and deliverance.  First judgment, then salvation – this is the message of Zephaniah and pretty much all the Hebrew prophets.

Jesus, like the Hebrew prophets before him, promises both God’s judgment and God’s salvation. But with a twist.

In Matthew’s telling of the gospel, Jesus speaks to his disciples immediately before his arrest and crucifixion of the coming judgment and salvation of God.  He does this in three parables. In last week’s parable of the ten bridesmaids, Jesus cautions us to be careful and alert: Many will come and say I am he, many will come and say the kingdom is here, but in fact they will offer only more Pharoah, more oppression, more exclusion, more temporary celebration for some at the expense of others. Don’t fall for them, Jesus warns his disciples. Wait with patience for the real bridegroom.

In today’s parable, Jesus continues to show his disciples what God’s judgment is not like.  What those who keep the faith and do God’s will must endure between now and the day of God’s judgment.  It’s not until the third parable, which we read next week – the parable of the sheep and the goats, what you did to the least of these you did to me – not until then does Jesus tell a parable about God’s judgment.  Today’s parable of the talents is another parable about life before God’s judgment, life before God’s deliverance, life still under Pharoah’s rule.

That the master in the parable of the talents is Pharoah, not God, would have been much clearer to the disciples of Jesus than it is for us today. A “talent,” in Biblical times, is not a God-given ability, like the talent to play a musical instrument. A talent is just a lot of money. Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard, some worked all day, some worked just an hour, and they all got paid one denarius – which our translation renders “the usual daily wage,” one denarius. A talent is 6,000 denariuses (denarii?) – 6,000 days wages, for a day laborer working 6 days a week that’s 20 years wages. We could say a million dollars.

And so here we have a master who is a multimillionaire owner of slaves. In Biblical times people would have assumed that such a person is a bad guy, someone who almost by definition must have gotten their wealth illegitimately, by depriving the poor of their livelihoods and enslaving them to a life of poverty and despair. We would not make that same assumption about a wealthy person today, and I’ll let you decide what that says about our own time and culture. But in the first century, the disciples would have heard that this master is a bad guy.

Indeed, the 3d servant in the parable says as much: I knew you were a harsh man – literally, I knew you had a hard heart. (Who has a hard heart in the Bible? Pharoah!) I knew that you reap where you do not sow – in other words, I knew that you are a thief. And the master does not deny it. The master’s philosophy is: To all who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, and those who have nothing will lose what little they have. In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and I intend to be rich.

If Jesus were telling this parable today, using American movies instead of Hebrew Scriptures as his model, I think he’d tell it like this:[1] For it is as if a mafia boss, going back to the old country, gathered his henchmen and entrusted his crime syndicate to them. To Joey he gave the meth, heroin, and gambling businesses; to Tony the extortion and protection racket, and to Vinny the loan shark business, each according to their ability.  Joey set to work on the dealers and the bookies and made 5 million dollars. And in the same way Tony extorted another 2 million dollars.

But Vinny, who got the loan shark business, he didn’t want to break anybody’s legs, so he didn’t loan out any money and holed up with his brother Louie. And when the mob boss returned, he came to settle up with his henchmen.  Joey came with five suitcases of money, and said, Godfather, you handed over to me the meth, heroin, and gambling businesses, and I’ve made you 5 million dollars. And the boss says, Well done, I will make you my right hand man, come with me to Atlantic City for some wine, women, and song. Then Tony said, Boss, you gave me the extortion and protection rackets, and here is 2 million dollars. And the godfather says, Well done, I put you in charge of the Lower East Side. You come with me to Atlantic City as well.

And then Vinny came forward and said, Godfather, I knew you were a hard man, breaking legs and busting chops. So I was afraid, and I went to my brother Louie’s and kept all your money. Here is your million dollars back. And the godfather said, You idiot! You knew, did you, that I break legs and bust chops? Then you should have at least put my money in a guaranteed CD and made me some interest! Take the loan shark business away from him and give it to Joey. And as for this one, he’s not one of us. Break his legs, bust his chops, and throw him into the river.

What would Zephaniah have said about this parable of Jesus?  Zephaniah would say, Woe to the godfather, and to Joey and Tony. They go to Atlantic City today, but their business is coming to an ugly end. Zephaniah writes a Hollywood-worthy screenplay about Joey and Tony getting what’s coming to them.  But what about poor Vinny?  Vinny, who didn’t want to break anybody’s legs.  Vinny, who tried to do the right thing and wound up in the river.  Zephaniah did eventually promise that for the Vinnys who keep the faith and endure to the end, there will be deliverance and freedom – but what consolation is that to Vinny now, his broken body at the bottom of the river, swimming with the fishes?

Days, perhaps hours after Jesus tells this parable of the mafia boss and his henchmen and what befell poor Vinny, Jesus will be called before the chief priests and the elders and the Roman governor – the mafia bosses of his day.  Jesus will say to them, I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. If I have done wrong, produce the evidence, but if I have not done wrong, why do you strike me?  And they will say to Jesus, Take away what little he has, and do to him what we do to people like this, people who won’t play our games of power and theft, and throw him away.  Throw him away, let him swim with the fishes.

And then, on the third day, God delivered judgment.

You see, this is the twist that Jesus puts on the Hebrew prophets who went before him.  They imagined God’s judgment on evil would come first, and only then God’s salvation for the righteous.  But with Jesus, God’s salvation comes first – God’s first judgment is to give salvation and new life to Jesus, the righteous one who does not submit to evil and so, like poor Vinny, becomes the victim of human wrath.  God’s judgment on Easter is: Life and salvation for Jesus, and with him life and salvation for Vinny too, and for all those who in faith do what is right and withstand Pharoah and all the evil ones. “For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

For the mafia boss, and for Joey and for Tony, judgment is indeed coming.  And Scripture teaches us that we may indeed hope for salvation even for Joey and Tony and Pharoah – as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, they “will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15).  But for those with the faith to see that Jesus has already come as Vinny and that God’s judgment on Jesus and Vinny was already given at Easter:  for people of faith who can see the presence of God in Jesus crucified, who can see the presence of God in Vinny with his legs broken at the bottom of the river, who can see the presence of God in the least of our brothers and sisters we can receive God’s salvation right now.

And this is what sets up Jesus’s third and final parable of judgment that we will read next week – the risen Jesus now lives in the hungry and the thirsty and the ill-clad and the imprisoned; the risen Jesus now lives in the Vinnys of this world, and when we have the faith to act with love and compassion towards them we will be spared from the judgment that is still to come, for what we do to Vinny we do to Jesus.

In these days, it is hard not to miss that we are surrounded by wrath. But even now, whatever the Pharoahs of this world may do to Vinny, or even to us, in faith we are given the eyes to see that God’s judgment of salvation has already been pronounced. The risen Jesus now lives in the Vinnys of this world, and when we have the faith to act with love and compassion towards them we will be spared from the judgment that is still to come, for what we do to Vinny we do to Jesus.

[1] – This retelling is inspired by Brian Logan, see http://theologicalscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/11/reading-bible-again-for-first-time.html.