Category Archives: Episcopalians and the Bible

I Will Bless You, and You Will Be a Blessing: A Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter

Posted on by
Reply

The Very Rev. Andrew B. Jones

May 13th, 2012

Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church – Madison, Wisconsin

This sermon is based on the readings for the 6th Sunday of Easter in year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.  You can find those readings here.

Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning is only a few short lines.  So as we read through it we may be tempted to rush ahead to our Gospel text of the day.  Baptizing Gentiles doesn’t seem like such a big deal to us in this day and age so let’s just jump straight to what Jesus has to say about love!  But if we take another look at the reading from Acts and read it in its context, read it thinking about the themes of the book of Acts, we begin to recognize that this is a passage fraught with conflict: fraught with potential and hope.  It is a passage that demands our attention today.

It says in this passage that the Holy Spirit descended upon a group of people and Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:47)  Apparently, someone has been saying that the Gentiles should not be baptized.  We get another clues as to what has been happening when we go back a few more lines and read that “The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles…” (Acts 10:45) people who they thought were on the “outside.”  The leaders of “The Way, this new faith, this new idea about how to be in relationship with God were in conflict with one another.  Should converts to the faith be required to be circumcised according to the Jewish tradition and Mosaic Law in order to participate in this community?

There was a lot at stake here for Peter and the leaders of the early church.  They are members of a new and growing movement trying to understand how to live out their new faith and their new understanding and to integrate that with their Jewish identity.  At the same time this new movement is under the scrutiny and suspicion of Rome who is very concerned about this movement’s ability to claim people’s allegiance and to subvert their fealty to the Emperor.  This new way of being is also being regarded with great suspicion and hostility by the temple authorities, the Scribes and the Pharisees who, even as we approach the day of the destruction of the Temple and the end of Temple Judaism, are concerned and angered by claims that Jesus is the Messiah.  They are anxious about the competing claims of this new group in their midst.  They are also angry about the ministry and preaching of that radical, liberal malcontent who is claiming that God’s love and grace is open to everyone… even to the Gentiles.  You know… that radical, liberal malcontent Paul!

Paul, whose ministry and teaching is in conflict with the Temple authorities, is also in conflict with Peter and the leaders of the early church.  Paul is saying that people who are converted to the faith from outside of Judaism should not be required to undergo circumcision in order to become members, and Peter and the leaders of the church have been fighting him.  But here, in this moment, Peter meets a group of Gentiles and he learns that he must in fact offer them the sacrament that forms us as the church, and that he must offer that sacrament without asking them to become circumcised.

What evidence do Peter and his group of “circumcised believers” find that causes them to change their minds?  After all, in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis God makes a covenant with Abraham and in that covenant makes a lot of promises to Abraham and to the people of Israel through him:

“I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:6-8).

These promises are so deeply imbedded within the people of Israel that even as they come to this new faith they are clinging to them, to the reality and to the understanding that this is not something new, this is not something drastically different.  This is a fulfillment of the faith and the promises that were established in their forefathers, the faith that they have understood and held all of their lives.

In that seventeenth chapter of Genesis God goes on and tells Abraham that his part in this covenant is to circumcise every male among his people.

“You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you” (Genesis 17:11).

And a few short lines later God says:

“Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant” (17:14).

So as Peter and the leaders of the church, in this new and evolving culture and context, with hostility from the synagogue and from Rome confronting them on every side, trying to understand how to be faithful and to live out the teachings of Jesus, are confronted by people who have not been circumcised and yet want to be baptized… they are deeply troubled.

What could make them change their minds?  All along they have been saying “no” to requests like this one.  Something must have shifted their position!   What, short of the very teachings of Jesus himself, could have led them to affect this radical shift in their understanding?

But if you go back and read through the Gospels, through Jesus’ teachings, Jesus doesn’t say anything about circumcision!  We know that he himself was circumcised.  We have that story in our sacred texts.  And we know that Jesus says through his words and actions, over and over again, that the Kingdom of God is for all people.  But Jesus himself does not address the specific issue of circumcision.  He doesn’t ever say whether or not circumcision is a requirement for being a member of his Body, the Church.  So by what evidence do Peter and his colleagues abandon this requirement that is as old as the book of Genesis?

Go back to our passage from the book of Acts and we will see that it was the presence of the Holy Spirit in those who sought the sacrament of Baptism that convinced Peter that he must in fact offer them this blessing.  The people there began to speak in tongues and to extoll God.  Peter and his friends saw this as evidence of the Holy Spirit in these people.  God was already there.  God was already present in these people.  How could they possibly refuse to baptize them?

Now that may seem like a radical thing to do: to overturn all those years of tradition and that sense of scripture based on what seems to be their subjective observation of an event in their lives there in that moment.  But there is scriptural warrant for this kind of interpretation and this kind of change.

In the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus says:

 ‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:25-31).

Two chapters later in the Gospel of John Jesus says:

 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16.12-13).

Jesus himself says that revelation will be on going, that the holy Spirit will come and will guide us into change, that the Holy Spirit will move us forward, and that God is not done speaking yet.

So when Peter and his colleagues encounter these Gentiles who begin to speak in tongues and to extoll God, and they perceive this to be a manifestation of the fruits of the spirit, they baptize them.

We are reading this morning from the 10th chapter of Acts and really, this is the beginning of the end of this conflict.  The conflict between Paul, with his radical liberal views, and Peter and the circumcised believers has been building for the first ten chapters of the book of Acts, in chapter 15 it comes to a head.  In chapter 15 Paul and Barnabas are talking to other church leaders in Antioch and we read:

“And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. So they were sent on their way by the church…” (Acts 15:2-3).

No small dissension and debate!  They were sent on their way to meet with Peter and the elders of the church.  Seems to me they were going to General Convention.  In the end Paul and Barnabas prevailed.  After a long and serious conversation Peter stood up and said to the rest of the church:

“My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us” (Acts 15:7-9).

So just to make sure we understand what we are talking about here… We have the early church struggling to find its way forward, struggling to define its mission and vocation to the rest of the world.  It is doing that in a context that is shifting dramatically and there is opposition from the culture around them, and from those in authority over the nation of Israel.  There is dissension within the church itself.  And then they are confronted with something that seems to go against the scriptures that they hold sacred and which challenges the very core of their beliefs.  These uncircumcised Gentiles have come seeking the sacrament of baptism, the sacrament that binds us one to another and makes us the church.  And in the face of that challenge, the church changes and offers that sacrament because of its faith and trust in the manifestation of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Just to make sure that we understand what we are talking about… we are talking about the sacrament of baptism.  But all week long, as I wrestled with these passages, I was confronted by the reality that we could just as well be talking about the sacrament of marriage.

On Tuesday night this week we gathered with a group of people here in Madison at Saint Luke’s, to talk about the materials that have been presented to General Convention by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.  We looked at the thirty-eight year history of legislation in General Convention around the blessing of same gender unions.  We read through the theological points being offered for consideration by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.  We looked at the materials they have developed to prepare people in same gender unions to have their union blessed.  We looked at the extensive study guide that they have prepared to help congregations and dioceses discern whether or not they are called to participate in the three-year trial use of the liturgy that they have developed.  And we sat together in that space and we read through the liturgy.

Before we began that reading there were people in the room who were uncomfortable with what we were doing.  They were uncomfortable with the idea that we were considering this at all.  There were other people who felt that this is not enough.  “It’s a blessing not a marriage and why can’t we have the same sacrament that everyone else has?”  By the time we finished reading that liturgy everyone in the room was in a very different place…

A very powerful experience, a liturgy that recognizes the covenantal nature of relationships and makes room for the church to offer it’s blessing on two people who have made life long monogamous commitments to one another in the kind of love and joy that is manifested by God’s relationship to us and by God’s relationship to the church.

It was particularly difficult to come home from that meeting on Tuesday night and to learn that the state of North Carolina had passed an amendment to its constitution banning same gender unions, and civil unions, and partnerships: stripping away hospital visitation rights and all sorts of things that married people take for granted.  It was a difficult and strange juxtaposition.

It was even stranger then the next night when I came home from an all day retreat with the Diocesan Executive Council and the Diocesan Strategic Planning Task Force, and heard my son exclaim from his room down the hall that he had just read on Face Book that President Obama had affirmed same sex marriages in a televised interview with a reporter from ABC.  It has been a difficult and tumultuous week.

This issue is not going away.  Our nation is grappling with it.  Our government is grappling with it.  And my brothers and sisters, denominations all across this country are wrestling with this issue right now.

We, and I say that because I believe this is true for most if not all of us,…  I can say without doubt that I know and love many people who love people of the same gender.  And I have perceived holiness of life and the movement of the Holy Spirit in many of those people.  I know many people who are in monogamous, lifelong committed partnerships with people of the same gender and I have seen the fruits of the Spirit and the ends and purposes of marriage served and made manifest in those relationships.  And I believe that we are confronted and convicted by that truth and that the manifestation of the Holy Spirit leading us and teaching us to a new thing.

This summer I am serving as a deputy to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Indianapolis.  Last April I went to a workshop in Atlanta sponsored by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music as it developed the materials and resources that are now available to all of us in “The Blue Book” so that we can prepare for this conversation at General Convention. I am proud to have been a part of that work.  And I will be voting to allow the three year trial use of this liturgy when we gather at General Convention this summer.

In the time between now and then, and while we are there, I will also be praying.  I will be praying that we in this church and that we in this diocese will be allowed to recognize, and to honor, and to bless the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that we experience in the same gender couples who are members of this parish, who are members of this community, who are members of the Body of Christ, and who are beloved children of God.  I will be praying because I believe, that faced with the evidence of the Spirit’s work among us, we must, must, bless what God is doing in our midst.

Amen.

The Episcopal Church and the Blessing of Same Sex Unions

Posted on by
Reply

The Episcopal church is now wrestling with a resolution to allow a trial period for the blessing of same sex unions.  As I think and pray about my role as a deputy to this year’s General Convention,  where that resolution will come to a vote, and as I work to help the poeple of the Diocese of Milwaukee develop a sense of history and context for the trial rite that has been prepared by the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music, I have been greatly moved by, and highly commend this teaching by The Rev. Cynthia K. R. Banks, Rector of St Luke’s Episcopal Church in Boone, North Carolina.

She spends 45 minutes teaching about the scriptural and theological  elements of this debate.  She talks about our tradition, about our Anglican/Episcopal ethos and heritage, she even engaged Richard Hooker as she offers a description of her own personal journey around the blessing of same sex unions.

The context of her teaching is the debate surrounding an amendment to the Constitution of the State of North Carolina that would define marriage to be exclusively between one man and one woman.

Her scholarship is excellent, her arguments powerful, an her conclusions, I believe, reflect a growing and deepening understanding of the kingdom of God and the role of the church in helping to bring that kingdom to fruition.  I cannot recommend this video highly enough!

Here is her concluding paragraph:

“So the Scripture that haunts me at night is from Matthew 23, verses 4 and 13, when Jesus addresses the crowds about the scribes and the Pharisees: ‘They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear and lay them on the shoulders of others but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.  But woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven.  For you do not go in yourselves and when others are going in you stop them.  Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, and mercy, and faith.’

Because I am a religious leader, the current day Pharisee, Jesus’ words hit particularly close to the heart.  I fear for too long we have neglected the weightier matters of justice, and mercy, and faith.  I fear for too long the church has laid heavy burdens on our gay and lesbian brothers and sister and not been willing to move them.  I fear for too long we have locked people out of the kingdom of heaven and the foretaste of that kingdom that comes in covenanted relationship.  And I don’t want to add to that burden any more.”

You can view Rev. Banks’ teaching here

Episcopalians and the Bible: A Brief Excursus

Posted on by
Reply

A nasty Virus and preparations for the celebration of Saint Andrew’s Day have left my creative well a little dry.  I will continue my discussion of Episcopalians and the Bible in a few days.  In the meantime I would like to offer some material, resources and thoughts, from friends of mine to keep you thinking about the way that we read and understand our sacred texts.

The first is a post by Kathleen Henderson Staudt who was an adjunct professor at Virginia Theological Seminary when I was a student there.   Her post appears on The Episcopal Cafe and is titled: Bible Reading Episcopalian: Who Knew?

The second resource is a link to the Episcopal Church’s on line Visitor’s Center.  More specifically it is a link to a page of “An Outline of the Faith: commonly called the catechism.“   The catechism is a great place to start if you are exploring the Episcopal Church.  It addresses different aspects of our faith in a question and answer format.  This link will take you to the section that begins with the question: “What are the Holy Scriptures?”

The New Church’s Teaching Series, published by Cowley Press, has two great volumes on our approach to scripture.  Opening the Bible, written by Roger Ferlo, another of my professors at VTS, is a wonderful resource  as is Engaging the Word, by Michael Johnston.  (Please note that I have provided links to Amazon.com as an easy way to identify these books, not as an endorsement of Amazon)

Finally, if my post on reconciling reason and experience with scripture and a conversation about the creation stories in the book of Genesis have you intrigued you should check out:

A Catechism of Creation: An Episcopal Understanding
prepared for study in congregations
by the The Committee on Science, Technology and Faith

Until next time,

Andy+

Episcopalians and the Bible: Does Reason and Experience Trump Scripture?

Posted on by
2

In my last post I talked about the validity of reason and experience and why they are a legitimate part of the equation as we seek to deepen our faith and understanding.  Critics of the church, and, with a nod to Henry Peter’s comment on my last post I am including in the word “church” folks of all denominations and traditions who read the Bible the way that we do, would say that this is where we undermine or deny the authority of the Bible.  Let’s take a look at why we say that our critics are wrong.

We are not challenging the authority of the scriptures, those works that are included in our sacred canon.  What we are questioning is the interpretation of those scriptures that has become “canonized,” that for some has become as sacred as the scriptures themselves.   How does that work?  We have to start at the beginning.

We read the creation stories in the book of Genesis and we wonder.  How does this material align with what I have learned in school?  How does it align with that we have learned about the history, the geology, the biology of the earth?  If we accept a plain sense reading of those passages, if we take them literally, we seem to have a real problem.  There is a disconnect, a dissonance, between what the Bible, to which we grant authority, says and what our minds, our reason and experience of the world says.  So what to do?  Do we throw out one or the other?  Do we just turn our heads with an uncomfortable smile on our faces and ignore the fact that these two important parts of our lives don’t work together?   I think that to walk away from this moment of disquiet is to deny or undermine the authority of both our reason and our scripture.  We are in essence saying that the scriptures are not worth our time and attention and that we are willing to ignore them when to examine them head on would cause discomfort.  To walk away from this moment of disquiet is to infect our faith with an intellectual dishonesty that will undermine it and lead to its irrelevance in our own lives and in the life of the world.  We must ask the question, “Can our experience of the world be reconciled with what the scriptures tell us?”  In this case they can.  Here is how that might look.

When we look at the two creation stories in the book of Genesis we begin to realize that they share things in common with other ancient traditions and stories from the Near East.  The people who told the stories that are now written down in the Book of Genesis were responding to a very human need to explain our origins and beginnings.  It is also important to acknowledge the reality that these stories were told by generations and generations of people, sitting around their campfires at night.  They told them to one another and they told them to their children.  “Where did we come from Mommy?  Well dear, in beginning God made…”  Biblical scholars do not believe that Moses wrote the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.  They are the product of whole communities, generations of people, who were trying to explain things that they knew to be true, that their experience of the world told them must be true, and they were using the cosmology, the images and metaphors, and the language that was available to them to tell that story.

Further analysis of the text helps us to see that these ancient people weren’t as interested in telling us how the earth was made as they were in telling us about our relationship with the one who created it.  We don’t learn from the Book of Genesis how all of the stuff really came to be.  If we are reading the book of Genesis as a science textbook, even if we read it as a science textbook that would have related the ancient Near East’s understanding of the physical world,  we are going to be very disappointed.  That is because the book of Genesis was never intended to be a scientific treatise on the creation of the physical world.  It was a book that describes who we are in relationship to one another, to the created world, and to the God who created us.  And it is a book that talks about those fundamental relationships by telling stories.

When we approach the stories in Genesis in this way we are not challenging the authority of the scriptures.  We affirm the nature and depth of the relationships that the scriptures depict.  We affirm the deep sense that somehow, in ways that we cannot articulate, God is responsible for who and what we are.  And that reality establishes our relationship with God and with one another.  What we have let go of is an interpretation of these scriptures that tells us that God created the world in seven days, that the dry land holds back the deep and turbulent waters of chaos, and that the moon the sun and the stars are suspended in a dome that holds back the waters above us.

So have we allowed reason and experience to trump the scriptures?  Here is the final test.  Can we read the scriptures, the stories of creation in the book of Genesis in the way that I have described and still be faithful to the text?  Have we distorted the meaning of the text to suit our own needs or can we read them in this way, with integrity, and still find that the scriptures are powerful, authoritative and life giving?  The answer to this final question is “yes.”

Of course the stories of creation in the Book of Genesis are an easy place to start.  While there are clearly people who still want to claim that the Earth was created in seven days, witness the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, most people are not so comfortable letting go of the years of accumulated science that has shaped our understanding of the physical world around us.  So demonstrating the interpretive shift that allows us to reconcile our reason and experience with scripture is, in this case, more of a relief than a challenge.   There are however, other understandings that our reason and experience have revealed to us, that have challenged and are challenging historic, canonized, interpretations of scripture that I would like to deal with.  I mentioned them in my last post and in my next post I will address the fact that for the Episcopal Church, and for progressive Christians of all traditions and denominations, ordained ministry is no longer reserved to men alone, and that we no longer view homosexuality as a sin.  One revealed truth that is not so contemporary, another that continues to shake some parts of the church today.

I look forward to your comments and responses.

Peace,

Andy+

Episcopalians and the Bible: Don’t Check Your Brain at the Door!

Posted on by
3

You may have seen comedian Robin Williams’ Top Ten Reasons to be an Episcopalian. Williams lists as the number 7 top reason, ” You don’t have to check your brains at the door.”  Well if you ask me, his number seven reason should be listed much closer to the top.  I think that the Episcopal Church would agree because they used it in a national ad campaign!

Ours is an “incarnational” faith.  In other words we believe that God is present and discernable in the world.  God is made manifest in the world around us.  God is incarnate in the world.

That means that the things that we have learned about and through the world around us are a valid part of the equation when we seek to understand God, the scriptures, and who we are and the lives that we are called to live.

Some religious traditions and philosophies will tell you that the world is an illusion that we need to rise above, that it is a veil and a distortion from which we need to break free.  Other traditions and philosophies will tell you that the world is completely corrupt and that anything, any understanding, that comes from the world around is us bound to destroy us.

The Episcopal Church and Anglicanism affirm the reality and the relevance of the world around us and the reality and the relevance of the lives that we live.  The things that we have learned over the centuries, from the social and physical sciences and from one another are legitimate, and valid parts of the ongoing story of God and God’s beloved creation.

Sometimes Episcopalians are accused of abandoning the Bible, of rejecting the scriptures in favor of a social or popular gospel.  Sometimes Episcopalians are accused of rejecting the “authority” of the scriptures.”  If you look closely what you will discover is that it is not the authority of the scriptures that is being questioned but the authority of an “interpretation” of the scriptures that is being questioned.  That questioning often arises because of something that we have learned from the world around us or from one another.

We no longer believe that the earth is flat, or that all of the planets circle the earth.  We no longer believe that slavery is an appropriate state for those who find themselves enslaved.  We no longer think that ordained ministry should be reserved for men alone.  We no longer think that homosexuality is a sin.  There are lots of place where our increased understanding of the world around us, and our discernment of God through the world, has moved us to abandon previously held interpretations of the scripture and to re think what we have thought in the past.

I started with a line that the Episcopal Church borrowed from Robin Williams.  I will end with one that I think we should borrow from our brothers and sisters in the United Church of Christ.  “God is Still Speaking.”  The final argument for believing that God is still speaking, that revelation is ongoing, and that the things that we are learning need to be incorporated into our faith, our understanding of God and the world, comes from the Gospel of John.

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you.  But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:25-26).

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth (John 16:12-13a NRSV).

God is still speaking and we will undoubtedly continue to discover ways and places where we have been wrong, where our understanding and interpretation needs to change.  S don’t check your brains at the door.  Bring your experience, your understanding of the world, and the things that you have learned to the table and add it to the mix.  Help us to increase our understanding by broadening and diversifying our collective perspective.    Help us as we work together, guided by the Holy Spirit, to discern God’s voice and live as faithful people in a world that is moving, living, breathing and alive!  Come experience the Episcopal Church!

Weeping and gnashing of teeth… the sequel: Episcopalians and the Bible

Posted on by
3

This past Sunday, instead of preaching a sermon on the Gospel assigned for the day I gave the Annual State of the Parish Address.   There were quite a few people who told me they were disappointed that I had not used that time to address a part of Matthew’s Gospel that they have often struggled with.  I would like to take a moment to respond to their concerns and to use this moment to talk about the way that we, as Episcopalians, read the Bible.

Here is the passage that had people so unsettled:

Jesus said, “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, `Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, `Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, `Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, `Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, `Master, I knew that you were a 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.’ But his master replied, `You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ ” (Matthew 25:14-30 NRSV).

 It was the last two sentences of this passage that had people upset.  To all those who have more will be given?   And to those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away?  Outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth?  Wow!  Those are difficult words to hear.  Jesus is using a metaphor to describe the Kingdom of Heaven and if the master in this story represents God, then this passage might be cause for some real concern.  At least it would if this passage represented all that we knew about God.  Fortunately for us it does not.

Episcopalians see the Bible through an interpretive lens that is formed from the broader scriptural witness.  In other words, we don’t try to base our understanding of God on single passages of scripture but on the picture of God created by the whole of our canonical texts, from the two stories of creation contained in Genesis to the strange and poetic apocalyptic language of the Revelation to John. Bounding the story with the creation narratives and John’s treatise on the evils of empire make it clear that using the larger story, the broader narrative, to develop an understanding of God is by far the more difficult approach, but as Episcopalians, and as Anglicans, we understand that it is this larger narrative that provides the more comprehensive understanding of the God in whom we live and move and have our being.

Using a single passage of scripture to interpret the rest of the book is called “proof texting.”  Proof texting, using single or a few passages of scripture to paint a picture of God has allowed people to use the Bible to justify slavery, the war, the oppression of women, and the marginalization and a whole host of peoples whom we describer as “other.”  The truth is, we can find individual passages of scripture that will allow us to make almost any point, to further any agenda, to advance almost any cause that we want.  Episcopalians know that using the narrative created by the whole of our scriptural witness helps to prevent us from misusing our holy texts for our own purposes.

So back to the weeping and gnashing of teeth…  I really don’t believe that the most shocking part of this passage is the whole bit about taking the one talent away and giving it to the slave who had ten talents.  I think that the really shocking and scandalous part of this parable is when the slave says to his master,   “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid…”  This is the moment in the story when we should be outraged.  After all the master in this metaphor represents God and we know that what this slave has said is completely untrue… right?

Let’s go back and think some more about the big picture, the narrative description of God that is created by the totality of our scriptural witness.  There may be some passages of scripture that seem to indicate that this slave has given an accurate account of God, but those passages are few and far between.  And, when taken in the context of the larger story, the passages that describe God in the way that this slave describes God merit some further investigation and study because they just don’t make any sense.

There are lots of ways that people express the “big picture” narrative description of God as represented in the Bible.  There are lots of themes and ideas that need to be covered in that description.  But when I am asked to distill the message of the Bible into a clear concise statement I will say that God loves is so much that God came among us as one of us, allowed us to do our very worst, and continues to love us anyway, proving that nothing, not even the deepest darkest truth about what we are capable of, will ever separate us from the Love of God.  This, I believe, is the message of the cross and the crucifixion.  God knows exactly what evil we are capable of and despite that deep knowing God will never abandon us.

This narrative description of God has the power to change our lives.  It is also this knowledge of God that should make us suck in our breath in shock and say to this slave, “No!  You are wrong!  Don’t you get it?  You have been given a gift by a loving and generous master!  How can you say such a thing?”  Reading this text through the interpretive lens that is formed by the broader scriptural witness has the potential to change our response to this passage.  It has the potential to redirect our questions.  But there is still that whole business about weeping and gnashing of teeth…

The parable doesn’t really tell us what the three slaves did in the time between their master’s departure and return.  It only tells us what each of them produced in that time.  Here is how I picture the life of our “wicked and lazy slave” unfolding from the moment he received that fateful gift.  He takes this immense fortune home and buries it in the back yard, in the bare spot under his kids swing set to that no one will know that the earth has been disturbed.  Then every night, as he stands at the kitchen sink doing the dishes he looks out into the yard to make sure that the treasure is still there.  Pretty soon he starts going home at lunch time to check on his buried talent.  He is so worried that someone will discover it and that he might lose some of it that he finally leaves his job so that he can sit at the window and monitor it.  His family gets so fed up with his behavior that they leave him.  They even take the stray dog that sometimes kept him company during his long vigil!  Throughout this whole ordeal he loses weight, his hair begins to thin and turn grey.  He is tired all the time, can’t think straight, and always seems to be ill.  He loses everything that he had.  He didn’t have much to begin with, but even what little he had is lost.  What had been intended as a gift turns into a curse and in the end, owns him. He spends his days alone, in the darkness, weeping and gnashing his teeth…

In the end his master didn’t have to punish him at all!

In the end, the parable was really a metaphor to describe something that is all too easy to imagine.