God’s Venture Capital

Homily 580 – 35 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
February 4, 2023
Epistle – (258) Colossians 3:12-16
Gospel – (105) Matthew 25:14-30

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

I don’t know if you feel this way, but as I read the parable, I get afraid.  Afraid that God will not be pleased with what I have done for Him, and that I will be cast out.

Being cast out of the Kingdom of God is in fact worth being afraid of.  But that fear has to be mitigated in the light of God’s love for us.

In the parable, there isn’t just one person who gets cast out – there are two others that are rewarded!  So have hope!  Maybe we can find something there.  I think we can.

First of all, let’s look at what they were given initially.  One given five talents, one given two talents, and the final given one talent.

It may be our initial reaction to think about talent as a gift or ability, and that may be true.  In Christ’s day, however, a talent was a quantity of money.  Today, we might call this “seed capital”.  This portrays God as a kind of venture capitalist, which couldn’t be further from the truth, but for the purposes here, we’ll let that slide.

A talent was equal to 6,000 denarii, and a denarii was worth a laborer’s day wage.  In Iowa money, it would be worth maybe $65.  So a talent would be worth about $391,500.

Now the amount doesn’t really concern us much here.  What we are really interested in is that the individual the man gives his money to – that man is called “slave.”  This money still belongs to the master.  But it doesn’t belong to the slave, it is only in the custody of the slave.

The amount gets lower, according to the master’s assessment about what each individual slave could handle.  The first got $1.5, nearly $1.6 million.  The second got around $750,000.  The last one got $391,000.

That last one was suspect.  The master didn’t evaluate his ability very highly.  But, he was still entrusted with something.  And we know the first two put the money to use, and earned more – double – for their master.

The last one, however, buried his in the ground.

Now, the question that I have is what gains value in the Kingdom of God?  This parable is describing the Kingdom, so what does “increase” mean in the Kingdom of God?  The answer is in caring for the poor, the sick, the widow and orphan, the imprisoned.

That is what we see throughout Christ’s teachings – the value proposition, what God expects, is that the things we are given are used for the benefit of others.

So, it stands to reason that the individual, that third slave, who buried his talent in the ground – we might say “hid it in his mattress” – didn’t use the money for the benefit of others.  In all likelihood, he used it for himself.

Instead of providing food and clothing and shelter and companionship to the needy, he spent it on things that he could maybe enjoy until the day of accounting – then, he could give them to the master and say “here is all the things I bought for you.”

In other words, he was selfish with what the master had given to him.  And this is what angers the master when he returns.  Not that he still has the value, but the value didn’t get put to use – at all!

The slave is called wicked and lazy.  Not like the other slaves that did what they were supposed to do and returned a greater amount.  Those were called “good and faithful” and were given even more.

It is the selfish, fearful slave that is wicked and lazy.

Obviously, or maybe not, this principle applies to everything not just our finances.  We are slaves.  We are these slaves.  And whether we are given much, or little, we know what to do with it.

We give it away.  We put it to work for those in need.  We deposit it in the storehouses of God, which Blessed Theophylact in one of his commentaries calls “the stomachs of the poor.”

Even when we don’t have much to give, like the third slave.  Because even not much, in modern day America, is a lot more than some have.

And you all have heard from me by now that the idea of sharing is undervalued.  I love the idea of sharing because we too can share in the abundance.  If we give it away, and nothing belongs to us, we can’t have any of it.  There are no fees charged by slaves for managing resources.

But if we share, we join with the poor and the needy of our world, and we too can partake with them, of one dinner – because we are poor too!

Saint Paul, in his epistle to the Colossians that we read, outlines that act better than I ever could.  Clothe yourselves with a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance.

Consider others better than us, more needy than us.

We know how much we have, and, if we are honest with ourselves, we know how unworthy we are of everything we have.  Everything comes from God.

What Christ is telling us here is that in the midst of our unworthiness, we make ourselves worthy by giving – by sharing.

And adding what St. Paul says, walking in love, the bond of perfection.  Walking in peace – meaning, knowing that whatever we have been given is sufficient for us.  Not requiring more.  A common synonym for peace is to be content.

Love all, be content with what God has given, share what you can.  And finally, St. Paul tells us, be thankful.

Because none of it is ours.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

The humiliation of incarnation.

Homily 575 – Theophany
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
January 6, 2023

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Note:  This homily was delivered extemporaneously, and is transcribed with light editing.

Today we’ve come to the baptism of Christ. We also see in the gospel reading for today why in the West the feast is not called Theophany but Epiphany.

The word basically means the same thing.  It’s a revelation to or revelation of something.  With me, Theophany is a revelation of God and Epiphany would mean that’s a revelation to us – our revelation. We are the one to have an Epiphany.

And so when we look at that, what we’re seeing here is not just the importance of Christ’s obedience to God to be baptized. John’s obedience to Christ that he be the one to baptize Him.

We see the revelation of the entirety of everything in this one feast which is WHY this feast was the most important feast other than Pascha in the ancient times. We see the revelation of Everything, that is we see God the Father telling us that this Jesus Christ is His Son, the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity.

We see the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove. We see Christ’s obedience and we also see all these things that are coming in to plan. Sometimes it’s good to remember these things that happen because when these things happen, they remind us that what we see and what we feel and what we contact in the world is not what God created it to be.

What we see is a world that’s fallen. What we see is a world that is crumbling. We see a world that is subject to corruption.

What does that mean subject to corruption? It means it doesn’t have life. It is in the process of dying and decaying. So whenever you hear or see someone in the world say “Well this is the way God made it”, no far from it! This is not what God made. God, yes, made it but God made it unfallen. We made it fall.

We are the one who brought the world – the creation, the cosmos – into this decaying, dead process. And we did that because of our own ego.

I think about in my own life and times – unemployed or underemployed or how do you want to look at it – and I thought – and I confess that many times I would think to myself, I would apply for that job, but that job is beneath me you know?

I don’t want to be a custodian. I mean my father-in-law was and he found joy and peace in being a custodian, and he took care of his family. I had no right and no reason to be able to say that job is beneath me. I’m thinking, “I’m a college-educated guy! I’ve got licenses and professional reputations and all this other stuff!”

That’s my confession but now take that, and think about Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God enthroned at the right hand of God from all eternity. The one through whom God made all of this – Creation –and the will of the Father was that Christ come here and not just be God in this world, but to be incarnate. To become part of creation. To become a human.

How beneath him was that? We look at the circumstances around his birth, unwedded mother – betrothed but unwedded – in Bethlehem, with no place to stay. He was homeless. He was born in a stable with animals. He was laid for his first bed as incarnate God on this planet, he was laid in a manger.

It’s sure the icons that we see of the nativity tell us that revealed to us that even in that moment, when he was wrapped in swallowing clothes, that was foretelling of his death and burial.

You will see him in the icons of the nativity, wrapped in burial clothes and lying in a manger that ostensibly looks very much like a tomb, a coffin.

From the very beginning we see what Christ was doing. Christ never owned anything other than the clothes on his back. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have means to support himself.

When He came to John, John recognized what was happening, and Jesus was then treated like the person He was – the Son of God – and yet still in that treatment he was given, He offered humility.

He said, “No John you have to baptize me because this is the Will of God.”

So as we go through our days on this sojourn in this place, remember who we are as sons and daughters of God, as members of the Kingdom of Heaven.

But also remember that we imitate our Lord in everything that we do. That we serve others in every way that we can, just as Christ washed the feet of the apostles.

How humbling has Christ ascended the cross and sacrificed his own ego in the garden of Eden? In the garden of Gethsemane, the new Eden. We remember these things and we imitate these things and we no longer think these things are beneath me. Rather we think this is what Jesus would have done.

He would have served. He would have found, even sought out, the unlovable – the ones who are dismissed by society. Those who are even dismissed by the rest of the Christian world.

Those are the people that Christ would have looked for and would have served.

And I encourage us to do the same because, beloved, when we find that humility, when we’re able to offer ourselves to others with abandon, with freedom, the same freedom that Christ had:  that’s when we find the essence of who we are.

That’s when we find the joy of living in the Kingdom, and that’s where we find eternal life

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

The King who wouldn’t listen.

Homily 574 – Eve of Theophany
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
January 5, 2023

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Note:  This homily was delivered extemporaneously, and is transcribed with light editing.

I’m struck by a couple of things in the Old Testament Readings.

Perhaps the most important one is the passage about the king who sought the will of God through the prophet, and then when the prophet told him what to do he said that can’t be right.

See, he wanted to do something else.  I think about that and I think about how often we are that king because it’s pride that gets in our way.  It’s pride that tells us don’t worry about this; do it the way you think makes sense

But that’s not right. God is mysterious in his ways because in certain cases He is simple in his ways.  He doesn’t demand much from us. He doesn’t demand much of us.

What he asks for first and foremost is to love Him.  Is that really too much to ask?

To love God, the one who created us, who created us simply to love Him. That was all that He had intended for us to do and to be in the garden of Eden when he created humanity. He placed them there and He said “be fruitful; multiply”.

In the garden he said come in with me and I will commune with you. That was the extent of life, and then we had to go and let our ego get in the way and let our pride get in the way.

As a result we find ourselves now separated from God not because God can’t do anything but because we chose it. That’s what we choose when we follow our ego, instead of setting it aside just simply to love God.

If we start with the love of God then everything else will follow.

If we start with the love of God then we will do everything to either follow his law, follow the commandments that he set out for us, and repent when we fail to do.

One of the verses says that Christ was baptized in order that humanity could receive forgiveness. As we look at that and as we hear these myriad of scriptures talking about the Jordan, talking about the power that water has, we realize that’s what Christ was doing in the baptism of Himself. He was restoring Water to its place of healing.

That healing is not for those who are full of pride. Those like Pharaoh’s soldiers, his cavalry, his chariots.

They were not Saved by the Water of The Red sea. They were drowned in it and it was because they did not recognize their place.

They did not recognize that God wanted and deserved their love.

So as we go forth from this place with the blessing of the water, with the blessing of Jordan, may we also find ourselves in the place where we love God, and we really focus our attention on that.

When we do that we will love everyone else, and we will be kind, and we will find ourselves obeying his commandment even without thinking about it.

Because we love

So with that I wish everyone a blessed feast – a glorious feast – of the water and that we find ourselves wrapped in our own baptism, which is the same as the baptism of Christ.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God