Ten Talents and What God Says...

I relied heavily on the scholarship and insight of Sarah Dylan Breuer and Mark Sandlin this week. Though I do take the latter to task a bit in this sermon, I really appreciate his words and his insight.

And apropos of nothing at all, here's some really cool music:

MATTHEW 25:14-30

“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.’”

This is the Word of the Lord.

I am absolutely convinced that a parable is never, ever one thing. Not when it comes from the mouth of Jesus, anyway.

The classic interpretation of this parable focuses on the third servant's – slave's – unwillingness to use what he has been given in a productive way. The idea that the man who has gone on a long journey, whose return was a long time in coming, and who reviewed the performance of those he had left behind, is a representation of Jesus at the end of time is unavoidable.

And, I mean, it works. I've preached it that way, right here, three years ago.

I suggested, back then, that the real error in what the third slave did went deeper than just burying money... because of course the parable isn't really about money, and it isn't really about special skills or abilities that (thanks to this parable) have come to be called “talents,” only as soon as I say that, I realize that I and everyone else I can recall preaching on this parable from this interpretation ends up talking about money and talents in some manner, but I digress.

Anyway, I noted that in the next pericope, when Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, the criteria he uses to divide the groups is whether they fed him when he was hungry. When he was thirsty, did they give him anything to drink? Was he shown hospitality as a stranger, or clothed when he was naked? When he was sick, when he was imprisoned, did they visit him? In the economy of the Kingdom of God, these are the investments that yield the return the Master is truly interested in.

In the common interpretation of the Parable of the Talents, if that third slave had been around today, he would have been the person who was all about making sure his needs were met, he was comfortable, had a reliable retirement strategy and a nice car, decent clothes and plenty of food. He would have fretted about giving money to a homeless person, because they may spend it on booze. He would have relied on government agencies or nonprofit organizations to provide assistance with rent and utilities, all the time complaining about those agencies and organizations, and never actually daring to face the needy on his own. They might be lying, after all. They may cheat him. Worse, once you start caring, once you start giving, once you answer that phone, well, where does it stop? What if there isn’t enough left for the bills?

That third slave would have buried himself in his work, and in his activities, and played it safe, and probably would have been pretty respectable in everyone else’s eyes.

But playing it safe never changed anything.

Ultimately, the Parable of the Talents is about being present. About doing the things that need to be done without fear, with the same extravagant, joyful abandon with which God has lavished grace and love upon us. The point of the parable was not whether the slaves had been given six hundred thousand dollars, or one point two million dollars, or three million dollars, or twelve dollars and a rusty bucket. What interested the traveler upon his return was, what had they done with it?

And what will we do with what we have been given? Bury it, or broadcast it? Playing it safe makes sense, especially in this day and age. It is rational to be afraid. To be uncertain. We might mess up. We might do the wrong thing. We might be taken advantage of.

All of that is true, and I would be lying to you if I were to say it is not possible. But God calls upon us to act, and to act now, to take chances and trust that God will take care of us.

Like I said, interpreting the parable that way works.

But.

Just like last week's bridegroom, the man, the master, this week... well, I'm sorry, but he isn't acting a whole lot like Christ. He's an absentee landlord who doesn't do any work himself, but lives off of the labor of his slaves. The profit-making that the master demands would be seen in Jesus' culture as coming, out of necessity, at the expense of other more honest people; it would be seen as greedy and grasping rather than smart or virtuous. The absentee landowner tells the slave whom he treats most harshly that the punishment is specifically for refusing to break God's commandment against usury, a practice consistently condemned in both the Hebrew bible and the New Testament.

Is the behavior of the master in the parable something that God would commend, let alone imitate? Is this kind of behavior what Jesus expects of God's people?

Do I have to say it? No.

Mark Sandlin suggests that the hero of this parable is not the master, but the third slave – the one who dared to stand up to the master, to point out his greed and cruelty and injustice. “I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed...” Both Sandlin and Sarah Dylan Breuer suggest – and it makes sense – that the next -to-last phrase Jesus utters in this parable: “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...” is perhaps better translated this way: “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”

What if – what if – the “master” in this parable isn't God... what if it's us?

The master is us, those with power – including the middle class in America.

Every time we live into our positions of power and then judge those who are struggling on what we see as the margins of society, the master is us. Every time we assume a right to our privileges and label those without those same privileges as “lazy,” the master is us. Even when our places of prerogative are so endemic that we live into the abuse they cause by carelessly supporting the slave labor required to provide the goods we want at rock bottom prices, the master is us.

Ouch.

So which of these dueling interpretations of the Parable of the Talents is the “correct” one?

I want to suggest this morning that we don't have to choose. After all, God is still alive and active, and still speaks to us all where we are – in the midst of our lives and situations, in our own unique language. And note how I said this: God speaks to us.

One of the dangers in preaching, and in Biblical interpretation in general, is the tendency to use Scripture as a teaching tool to bring others into our own points of view. In fact, one of the sources I used this week for this sermon is an article by a writer that ultimately uses this parable as an indictment against a political party that he is not a member of.

I mean, it's a well-written piece, sure. I think it makes good points, but, then again, I am not a member of that political party, either. And just writing or reading something that makes me feel good... at the expense of others... changes nothing. The rich still get richer, the poor still get poorer. It's dangerous.

It is dangerous because nothing changes. As Max Lucado says, God loves us just as we are, but too much to let us stay that way. If I read Scripture to justify myself, but not to grow or change or find direction and answers and bring myself into closer communion with my loving Creator, what good is it to read Scripture at all?

So maybe we do have to choose, but the challenge is to choose to read the parable in a way that challenges us.

If, reading it the traditional way, we are challenged to take what we have and use it in ways which bring hope and healing, which encourage others to put their faith in the risen Christ, if it pushes us to look at what we own in a new and uncomfortable way – not as a security blanket but as a tool kit – then perhaps this is the correct interpretation.

If, by turning the parable on its head and seeing the third slave as the good guy and the master as the one ultimately in the wrong, we are challenged to live beyond our places of privilege, to speak truth to power and to honor those who live in the margins, then perhaps this is the correct interpretation.

Because, ultimately, both interpretations must ultimately be filtered through what Jesus says next, in the end times prophecy about the sheep and the goats, which is, by the way, our Gospel reading for next Sunday. God speaks to us in Scripture, sometimes to comfort the afflicted, and sometimes to afflict the comfortable, but always to lead us to act in a manner which glorifies God and brings hope and healing and comfort and the Good News of the risen Christ to the world.

When the Son of Man comes, he won't say, “Just as you did not do it unto one of the more productive of least of these, you did not do it unto me.” The judgment will not be predicated on the basis of how much money we made, or for that matter on how religious we were or whether we said a "sinner's prayer," but rather on whether we saw that the least of our sisters and brothers in the human family, whether in or out of prison, had food, clothing, and health care. We serve Jesus himself to the extent that we do these things, and we neglect Jesus himself to the extent that we don't. Period.

In the Parable of the Talents, we are the master, we are the faithful servants, and we are third slave as well. This is our story. It is a call to arms, an encouragement, a challenge.

The question is, are we willing to let go of the fear? Are we willing to live into the story of the third slave who confronted the powers that be? Are we willing to risk what little we have in order to heal a hurting world, in order to bring the Good News of new life in Jesus Christ to those in the margins, to those who need to hear it most?

We Were Not Meant For This!

Transfiguration - is it a once-in-history event, and for Jesus only, or is it something more universal, more frequent, and perhaps less recognizable?

Is there a message for the here-and-now in the transfiguration, or is it simply an account which reassures us that Jesus is who he claimed to be, or worse, a later tradition inserted into the Gospel account to impose divinity upon Jesus?

Read on...

Exodus 34:29-35
Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

Luke 9:28-43
Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" — not knowing what he said.
While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not." Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43And all were astounded at the greatness of God.

This is the Word of the Lord.

One of the strange by-products of taking our readings from the Revised Common Lectionary is that, sometimes, the text seems to be starting off in mid-thought, or leaving something important out of the story. “Now about eight days after these sayings…” the reading starts, and we have to be wondering, “Eight days after what sayings?”

Today’s reading takes place immediately following the familiar account of Jesus asking the disciples “who do you say that I am?” Peter replies “You are the the Christ of God ,” which signals a turning point in their understanding of Jesus. No longer merely “Rabbi,” “Teacher,” “Man from God,” “Maybe/possibly 'The One Who Is To Come,'” but the Messiah, Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus warns them to silence, then says, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life... If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

So eight days after these challenging, these explosive words, Jesus takes Peter and James and John to the mountaintop.

So it’s no wonder that some people wonder if this passage is factual, or if it’s some kind of holy myth that developed later and was inserted into the Gospel, or a resurrection appearance of Jesus that has somehow got misplaced and re-located, back in the middle of Jesus’ ministry instead of right at the end. Neither of these, of course, is my opinion. I think, rather, that the event takes place at the perfect point in the narrative. Jesus has said some very hard things to the disciples. He had made some challenges that, quite literally sounded like a death sentence.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer, one of the authors of The Theological Declaration of Barmen in our Book of Confessions, wrote this elsewhere: “When Christ calls a man to come and follow, he bids him come and die.” That is, after all, what “taking up your cross” meant to people under the rule of the Roman Empire. It meant you were going to die the slow, horrible, painful and embarrassing death which is crucifixion.

So, yes, this story shares some clear links with other passages of Scripture. For example, our Old testament reading today, Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai when he received God’s law. We are told that when Moses came down from the mountain, his face was shining with the radiance of God. Or there is the passage where heaven and earth overlap as Elijah is carried away into heaven.

There is, however, another Biblical account that this story can be linked with. As well as looking back all those years to Moses and Elijah, this story also points us forward… to Jesus’ death on the cross.

Unlike the accounts of Moses and Elijah, however, it is more in the contrasts than the similarities that we see the striking links between the Transfiguration and the Crucifixion.

In this story of the transfiguration, Jesus’ clothes shine with the glory of God; at the crucifixion, the soldiers gamble for Jesus’ clothes. Here in this story, Jesus is accompanied by two great heroes from ancient history; there, on the cross, Jesus is joined by two common criminals. Here, at the transfiguration, Jesus is witnessed by three male disciples - Peter, James and John; there, at Golgotha, three woman are named as witnesses: two Marys and Salome. This scene of transfiguration is one a scene of dazzling light, while at the crucifixion Matthew tells us that darkness came over the whole land. Here, in this scene, Jesus basks in God’s presence, there on the cross He cries out, ‘My God why have you forsaken me?’ Here on the mountain God confesses Jesus as God’s son as a voice sounds forth, ‘this is my son, the beloved!’ There it is left to a Roman centurion to blurt out, ‘truly this man was God’s son.’

So many contrasts. It’s as if the horror of the Crucifixion account were a deliberate inversion of the splendor of the Transfiguration. And if so, then what is God’s written Word trying to tell us?

At this point in the Gospel Jesus is on a journey - a journey that will take him to Jerusalem and to death and beyond, to Easter. Jesus has spoken candidly about the painful, humiliating death that awaits him, and what this transfiguration story is doing is showing us what is beyond, at the end of that journey. It gives us a preview of Jesus’ destination. The cross, the crucifixion, Golgotha, is one stop on the way, but it’s not the end of the journey. We are not left, thank God, with Christ disfigured, naked, abandoned and bloody, nailed up like a scarecrow. Beyond that is the risen Christ who can only be glimpsed here.

But of course, - and this is an important point - what we see revealed here is not just the goal of Christ’s journey, but the goal of our journey too.

Or to put it differently, what Peter, James and John are witnessing here is not just Christ’s destination, but their own destination too, and ours, yours and mine. We too will shine like the sun.

Christ came to transform us. He came to transfigure us with the light of God’s grace. And the cross is, in many ways, part of our journey just as it was part of Christ’s journey (the discussion of what it means for a 21st-century American to take up the cross is a long one, and for another day), but because of Christ the Cross is not the end of our journey.

There, on the mountaintop, Jesus is the Christ of the journey’s end, our journey’s end. The Transfiguration is Christ’s destination… and our destination.

But down the mountain, of course, we must go. Directly following our reading this morning, the four of them come off of the mountain and find a crowd, and a young boy who has convulsions.

Here a different image of our humanity - not the transfigured humanity that is our destination, but our disfigured humanity. Here in this fearful scene we are closer to the hill of Golgotha than we are to the mountain of transfiguration. This world is the one we are all too familiar with.

It’s a world where lives are preyed on by evil forces. It’s a world where humanity is denied. It’s a world where people’s destiny is a cruel parody of what awaits us when, with Jesus, we are risen.

And when we look around us we see life lived at the foot of the mountain rather than at the top. We see lives that, in the light of Transfiguration, were clearly never meant for us.

We weren’t meant for this. Every time we see a homeless person begging in the streets: we were not meant for this. Every time we hear of a child dying of a preventable disease: we were not meant for this. Every time we see our terrible capacity for inhumanity paraded before us on the television: we were not meant for this. Every job lost, every home foreclosed: we were not meant for this. Every flood and earthquake and shooting and scandal: we were not meant for this. Maybe that’s why Jesus healed the epileptic youngster. Maybe that’s what motivated Jesus to heal every other poor person he came in contact with, whose life was disfigured by disease or disability or injustice: we were not meant for this!

And what are we to do about our world? I said before that the Transfiguration was not simply an event that happened in the life of Jesus, a pushpin in the map of Christ's journey, but an indication of our own ultimate destination as well.
Taking it a step further, in the same way that the Transfiguration was an event in Christ's life, we too are transformed and transfigured by the ongoing work of Christ in the Holy Spirit in our own lives.

We can, of course, see this transformation in the lives of the Apostles. Though it didn’t happen until after Pentecost, Peter and James and John, along with the rest of The Eleven, dedicated their lives to spreading the Gospel, to healing the sick and ministering to the poor and the forgotten… telling the world this great Good News that we were not meant for this! These eleven, who had been cowering, aimless, and silent, were transfigured into bold evangelists, powerful speakers, gifted leaders, fearless martyrs. They spoke truth to power, and cared for the lost, the forgotten, the marginalized.

We, too, have been transformed by a God who, in the words of Max Lucado, loves us just the way we are, but too much to let us stay that way. Moreover, the transformation, the transfiguration, is an ongoing process in our spiritual journey.

This Wednesday begins the season of Lent in our liturgical calendar. Last week, I suggested beginning early with a Lenten discipline of looking for the fish in our lives – those places where God is speaking, challenging, directing and calling us through the everyday, the mundane, the familiar, the fixed, the ordinary.
Let's broaden the scope of that discipline to include being sensitive to the ways in which God has transformed us, and the ways in which God desires to further transfigure us.

For most of its early existence, Christianity was considered the religion of slaves. People who had been excluded from fellowship with the Living God, whether because of the place they were born or because of some disease or defect, were being welcomed into relationship, were being transformed and transfigured by the love of God in Jesus Christ, and were being brought to the place of response to the Good News by people like Peter and James and John, people who had denied Christ, who had hidden in fear in the dark days following the Crucifixion, who even though they had spent years living with and listening to Jesus didn't understand what it was all about, but who had themselves been transformed by the Holy Spirit.

And it still goes on today. Men and women from every walk of life – rich and poor, in boardrooms and prison cells, in high-rise apartments and mud huts, in living rooms and in homeless shelters, in cathedrals and nightclubs – are transformed by the saving message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and are brought to that transformation by men and women just like you and me. Not well-known evangelists or powerful speakers, but “regular folks” who have experienced the transfiguring work of the Holy Spirit and are sharing it, in word and in deed, with the world around them.

Sharing it because in this wonderful vision of an alternative reality, where streets of gold replace unpaved streets and reeking alleys, where death and sickness and poverty are replaced by glory shining like the sun, in this wonderful promise of the here-and-now, as well as of resurrection and the end of the journey, there is hope.

I Have Called You By Name!

First off, I owe much to "Partners In Urban Transformation" for background on this sermon. Also, the opening story is taken from "Rebecca's Community."

As always, please comment, criticize, etc. as such things will make me a better preacher.

Isaiah 43:1-7
But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,
I give people in return for you,
nations in exchange for your life.
Do not fear, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you;
I will say to the north, "Give them up,"
and to the south, "Do not withhold;
bring my sons from far away
and my daughters from the end of the earth —
everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made."

Acts 8:14-17
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

This is the Word of the Lord.

Ella was fourteen when she ran away from home. She went as far as her meager savings would take her, and ended up on the streets of the community of King's Cross. Within days Ella came to the attention of a drug dealer who was skilled in the art of taking advantage of others.

For around two weeks he supplied her with free drugs, saying she could pay him back at a later date. He showed her how to shoot-up and supplied her on a daily basis. He also protected her from other drug dealers, pimps, and people bent on violence.

The aim, of course, was to get her hooked, and after using heroin for two weeks Ella was well and truly dependent, both on the drug and on the dealer to supply her fix.
It wasn't long before Ella's debt to the drug dealer totaled well over a thousand dollars, and he issued an ultimatum: She had three days to pay back the money, or become a prostitute in order to work off the debt. Do nothing, and her throat would be cut.

Elle became, in effect, the property of the drug dealer.

Fortunately for Ella, the drug dealer wasn't the only person on the streets of King's Cross who had taken an interest in the teenager. Numerous homeless people had warned her about the path she was going down. She was warned not to use drugs, not to build up a debt to a drug dealer. She had ignored every warning.

Now, fearing for her life and not knowing what to do she turned to some of the homeless people who had warned her. They knew, given the particular drug dealer involved that the threat on her life was very serious and there was no way out. There was no point approaching charities for help. What charity would pay money to a drug dealer? Informing the police was not an option. On the streets, “narc-ing” someone out is a death sentence in itself.

They could have told her to go away, that she should have listened to them in the first place, but she had made her bed and now it was time to sleep in it. Instead, over the following three days a small group of homeless people raised the money needed to pay off Ella's debt.

They paid off her debt with money that had been stolen, money that had been made selling drugs and money that had been made from prostitution. They redeemed Ella through the “commerce of the streets.”

The day these homeless people bought Ella's freedom, they issued their own ultimatum. They took her to the train station and gave her money for the train, and told her “Take the chance you have been given and never, ever come back here.”

Six centuries before the birth of Christ, much of Jerusalem was in ruins and nearly abandoned. The Temple itself was a pile of rubble. After years and years of running after other gods and acting in abominable ways, after years and years of ignoring warnings from prophet after prophet, Jerusalem had fallen to Nebuchadnezzar, and the best and the brightest had been carried off to Babylon. More years passed, and the captives despaired. Psalm 137 remembers, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps.”
Into their bleak circumstance, God speaks hope through the Prophet Isaiah: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Not long after Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to Heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit to his followers, news came to the Apostles that the Samaritans, too, were responding to God's grace. The Samaritans thought differently, acted differently, worshiped differently, and were considered by the “good” Jews of the day to be beneath contempt. Yet as Peter and John lay their hands on these believers, they saw and heard irrefutable evidence that God had redeemed, had called by name, had claimed as God's own, even the Samaritans! That day the Apostles began to learn, as the Apostle Paul would write later, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

On the Christian calendar, we have left the season of Christmas for Epiphany. While the Feast of Epiphany remembers the Three Wise Men discovering the Christ Child, this season represents a time of discovery for all people, both in the church and outside of the church... an opportunity to discover the essence, the meaning of God's grace, an opportunity to see that God has called us by name.

Now in our American, twenty-first century culture, this idea of God calling us by name is kind of a nice, warm-fuzzy kind of thing, the stuff of a devotional book by Max Lucado. When we hear the phrase, “I have called you by name”, we interpret that to mean that God takes note of or recognizes us, and thus gives credibility to us.

For me it reminds me of growing up. Being called by name when you're a kid isn't always a good thing; you could be getting called home for dinner or called on the carpet for doing something wrong. Now, I could always tell which it was by how much of my name Mom used when she called me. “John” was OK, it was suppertime or maybe “Match Game” was on, but “John Richard” was trouble... and how much of the second syllable you heard was an indication of how much. “John RICHard!” was a talking-to, “John RicHRT!” meant RUN!

In the understanding of those who wrote and read the Scriptures, though, this idea of being “called by name” went much deeper. It is in fact a technical term used for indicating the establishment of sovereignty over a person. For a king to “call you by name” means that the king has selected you from his court to bring you under both his protection and his authority. For a superior (in this case, God) to call someone by name means that the superior is declaring sovereignty over the other.

The person named now comes under that sovereign’s protection but is also under his authority and is therefore accountable to the overlord. God says, “you are mine.”

And unlike some earthly king or ruler who captures and conquers and annexes simply in order to have more and more territory and control and possessions, God's claim over us is a claim not of property but of family. Our Gospel reading, Luke's account of the baptism of Jesus, is an opportunity to remember our own baptism, when we became members of God's family, adopted or grafted in, sealed into an ever growing, ever dynamic, ever deepening walk with our loving Creator, who has redeemed us.

When we Christians hear the word “redemption”, we automatically think of the act of sacrifice by Jesus on the cross that brought about our salvation, and while that's true, it is an adaptation of the word. “Redeem” actually means “to buy back” or “to repossess.” It's primarily an economic term, meaning to free one from a legal or financial obligation by a transaction or agreement that takes place. Thus, for God to say, “I have redeemed you” is to have God declare, “I have bought you back”. Back from whoever we have tried to become or whatever we have done or wherever we have wandered, all in search of something to fill what St. Augustine called the “God-shaped hole.”

God has redeemed us, yet God's claim over us is not a claim of possession but of love. Elsewhere in Isaiah, the prophet quotes God as saying, “See, I have engraved you in the palms of my hands.” This same Jesus who we see baptized in today's reading of course goes on to have his palms engraved by nails in an act of redemption for all humankind: The people who are like us, and those who are not. Those we love, and those we don't like very much. People who impress us, and people who scare us. All humankind.

Thus our epiphany, our discovery, is that the beauty of the Gospel message is this: Whether we are trapped like Ella, exiled and enslaved like the Jews in Babylon, despised and marginalized like the Samaritans, or just normal everyday people, God speaks to us in every place and time and says, “ I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Thanks be to God!