+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

Deuteronomy 31:30-32:14, 2 Corinthians 11:21b-33, Luke 19:11-27

As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.
Luke 19:11

John Wesley’s reading on this is the obvious one: “They thought the kingdom of God - A glorious temporal kingdom, would immediately appear.” It’s the obvious reading because not only was it true of the 12 Apostles, it’s true of some (all?) of us today.

I want the Glorious Temporal Kingdom to appear instantly, really. I’ve wanted it to appear when I was a member of the Moral Majority in the early 1980s, working to overthrow all the Godless Liberals that were ruining our country. I’ve wanted it to appear when I was working on social justice issues with the senatorial campaign of Mark Green in NYC. I wanted it to appear instantly when I campaigned for the NYC Gay Rights Law which Mayor Koch signed in 1986 - and I was horrified when the Supreme Court, later that same year, promptly overthrew that kingdom with the Hardwick case.

It may seem odd to you for me to compare the “Glorious Temporal Kingdom” to all these seemingly petty political decisions. But I tell you true, the amount of prayer that was put into the 1986 Gay Rights Law alone would have made you think I was praying for the conversion of Emperor Constantine. I count it an especial irony that I turned that event over to the intercession of St Patrick and he pulled it off - despite the political machinations of the the Roman Catholic Church in NYC, which is also under Patrick’s patronage.

In the reading from Deuteronomy (32:8-14), Moses sings:

When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share. He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided him; no foreign god was with him. He set him atop the heights of the land, and fed him with produce of the field; he nursed him with honey from the crags, with oil from flinty rock; curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs and rams; Bashan bulls and goats, together with the choicest wheat - you drank fine wine from the blood of grapes.

In my very uncycnical, young mind, each of these events should have fixed things for good for ever. We should have been dining on the honey from the crags and curds from the herd. But no. We’re humans and nothing is for good for ever. But there’s something else missing in my equation - in all such equations.

This odd parable of the talents in in our Gospel today. Follow it:

The departing Nobleman sets up a Junta and provides funds.
The Nobleman goes away to become King someplace else.
They reject him.
He comes back and asks for an accounting from the Junta.
1 guy gives him a tenfold return.
1 guy gives him a fivefold return
1 guy gives him his money back.
The Nobleman gives the last guy a royal what-for, and then says:

I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them - bring them here and slaughter them in my presence

So my question is, Does this story tell us about what Jesus taught just before his death? Or does this story tell us about what the Lukan community taught in the first century after Jesus, as the time of his “Glorious Appearing” drew further and further away from the time of his departure?

This is important because as the time grew longer - and some estimate Luke to be written as late as in the second century of the current era - the church started to grow roots, settle in, adapt to the world’s realities. The idea that Jesus was gone for a little while and might be back was replaced with the idea that Jesus will be back at some later date not yet determined. What do we do now? Ideas about selling everything and giving to the poor - in expectation of a speedy return and judgement - were replaced by ideas about giving to the poor because they need charity.

As the Church begins to weave more here-and-now reality into her teaching, is the man who hides his talent the man who was just sitting around waiting for Jesus to come back? Are the others the ones who managed to do good in the world, despite the absence of a “glorious temporal kingdom”? Is this parable a lesson in how important it is to avoid becoming “so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good”?

But, of course, we can read it further. The Gospel credits this parable to Jesus in response to the Apostles’ supposition, just days before the Cross, “that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.” That glorious temporal kingdom has held sway in the Church since Constantine found a way to co-opt the Church into the Roman State for his own political and, perhaps, spiritual ends. This is not just an Orthodox problem: it’s a Catholic problem and an Anglican one as well. In many northern countries it is Lutheranism that is the state religion. Each of these has not only great theological differences but also political ones: Lutheranism and, to a certain extant, Anglicanism outside of England, have both held sway in largely democratic countries. Even in England the monarch’s power is sharply curtailed. Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, however, do not do so well in marriages to democratic regimes where they might be out-voted.

In more modern readings, the man with one talent might be seen to be the man who refuses to play along. He’s the man who, despite the good that might come from co-operation simply stays away from the game. How do we know we’re not supposed to play along?

In my own adult cynicism I’ve become this man that doesn’t want to play along despite the good that might arise. Oddly enough I’ve felt that to be a more-Christian stand despite centuries of Christian politics. I begin to sound like Paul, huh? “Are they ministers of Christ? I’M A BETTER ONE!”

A curious thing, however: the man with one talent is not rejected. Only those who reject the Nobleman as King are slain. All the those who got a tenfold return, those who got a fivefold return and he who got nothing… they are all accepted (even though the guy with one gets yelled at). We’re all working out our salvation in fear and trembling, coming to different answers - struggling with the same issues, or different ones. How we get on in our love for each other - despite our differences - is what counts.