River Road Church Baptist

November 13, 2005

Dr. Michael J. Clingenpeel

“A Terrible Way to Live ”

“He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”

Embedded in this brief sentence from the Apostles Creed are two affirmations. First, that Jesus will return. Second, that Jesus will judge.

Neither of these is very popular with Christians. For one thing, we're not quite sure it will happen, and who can blame us? For 2,000 years Jesus has promised to return and we have yet to see Him. For another, we tend to prefer a Jesus who loved children, welcomed sinners and practiced forgiveness; a Jesus who said, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world;” who said, “Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest;” a Jesus who said, “my peace I leave with you… therefore, let not your heart be troubled and neither be afraid.” We like a Jesus who is kind, gentle, welcoming, grace-dispensing.

But the gospels remind us that Jesus will return as judge. Have you noticed that most of Jesus' sermons end with the theme of judgment? The Sermon on the Mount – Jesus says, “not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Sermon on Mission – “do not think I have come to bring peace on earth, I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” His Sermon on the Parables – “This is what it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire.” One hundred and forty-eight stories in the gospels and 60 of them contain the theme of judgment.

The judgment of Jesus offers a counterbalance to the grace of Jesus. For how can we believe in the grace of God as a wonderful thing if we don't first understand the judgment of God as a terrible thing? John Newton, in his famous poem, wrote: 'Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.' How do we know the sweetness of grace without first understanding our own wretchedness?

In the Book of Common Prayer there is a prayer that captures that conviction. It is a prayer I have used in my devotions on more than one occasion. It reads like this, "God, imprint upon our hearts such a dread of thy judgments as to make us both afraid and ashamed to offend thee and, above all, keep in our minds a lively remembrance of that great day in which we must give a strict account of our thoughts, words and actions to Him who thou hast appointed the judge of the quick and the dead, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord."

The knowledge that Jesus will come some day in judgment, imprinted on our minds and on our hearts, prepares us to receive grace as the gift that grace is for our lives. And so this morning the lectionary gospel lesson is a parable of judgment. It comes out of Matthew 25, which is really three simple, familiar parables. The center parable we know as the parable of talents. It is our lesson for the day.

You remember, of course, the details of the story. A traveler depart s on a journey and leaves his own servants in charge of his money in proportion to their capacities. Each one is given an obscenely large among of cash. Eventually, the traveler returns to find out what they have done in the meantime with the money. He is pleased with the first two. They have invested it and return to him principle plus interest. But he is not pleased with the third. The third man acknowledges that he is fearful of the master and therefore he took the money, buried it, and returned every penny of it, but because he had not invested it, there was no interest returned. So the parable ends – “cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”

The parable has two simple movements. The traveler goes on a journey and the traveler returns. He recruits or calls these three men to be responsible for his goods in his absence, then when he returns he examines the quality of their work. Grace is given and judgment is handed out. Life is both gift and accountability.

Now the point of this parable we often miss. We often assume it is a parable just about money and giving, and while that may be one application of it, that is not the main point of the parable. You will be pleased to know that is not the main point of the sermon.

The point of the parable is expressed most clearly in a paraphrase of the text by Eugene Peterson in The Message. The third servant responds to his master in this way, “Master I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, but you demand the best and make no allowance for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the very last cent. The Master was furious. That's a terrible way to live, he says. It's criminal to live cautiously like that. If you knew that I was after the best, then why did you do less than the least? Get rid of this 'play it safe,' who won't go out on a limb. Throw him into the outer darkness.”

You see this is not just a story about money. It's a warning about how you and I live our lives; about how we conduct our discipleship on a daily basis. The purpose of life is not security nor is it safety. Disciples are not to withdraw from the world; we are to engage the world in which we live. Nor are we to refuse to exercise our faith to some good end. We are not to be preoccupied with our own pleasure. This, writes Peterson, is “a terrible way to live.” But it is for most of us the way we conduct our lives.

Before Harold Kushner wrote his best selling book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, he was a congregational rabbi or pastor. He said that he spent most of his time teaching people that religion is a source of community, something that binds us together, that faith is primarily about our morality and that God demands righteousness from us. He said that after some years of teaching this he arrived at a conclusion that his people were not hearing him. “I was offering them a graduate course in theology,” he writes in The Lord is My Shepherd, “while they were still operating at an introductory level, understanding religion and faith in God in terms of personal security. Their souls craved a God who would make them feel safe.”

Kushner goes on to write that most of us have a morality of security, which is to say, anything that makes us safe is good. Anything that makes us feel anxious is bad. Our world is an unstable place, but Jesus did not call us primarily to a morality of security, otherwise, exercising our faith would be absolutely unnecessary.

Think about the persons who populate the pages of the Bible. They are ordinary people, shepherds, fisherman, business women, property owners, tax collectors, soldiers, mothers, widows, homemakers, musicians. They are people like you and me. The examples of faith that they offer are examples of people who did not live lives just to save themselves; lives where their morality was based upon their own personal security. They are people who embraced risk; who set caution aside and who lived each new day with excitement and challenge so that they were open to God's future.

There was Noah who risked ridicule by building a boat. There was Moses who risked failure in the pursuit of freedom rather than to accept security in slavery. There was David who risked his own life by facing up to a giant with a sling shot and several small smooth stones. Then there are the nameless ones; a boy with a lunch who risked spending the afternoon hungry in order to give his lunch over to others. There is the widow who offered her mite.

Person after person that form for us the great examples of faith are those who embraced risk and set aside caution and understood that cautious discipleship is a terrible way to live. Risky discipleship is in fact the way that Jesus called us to live.

I have considered this week how I might illustrate this passage. We preachers are always looking for the illustration that will be an open window that will allow light to come in to the sermon. I have thought about some of the great disciples of the ages who lived their lives incautiously in the obedience of God. I thought about people like William Tyndale, who in order to get copies of the Bible in his people's language gave his life. I thought about Lottie Moon, who in order to put food in the mouths of hungry people in China gave up her food and ultimately her life. I thought about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who fought against National Socialism in Germany in the 1930's and early 1940's and gave his life at the hands of the Nazi's in prison. I thought about Mother Teresa who poured out her life in giving deeds of love and service to the poorest of the poor.

But frankly, none of us here are Mother Teresa or Dietrich Bonhoeffer or William Tindale or Lottie Moon. We are just ordinary people.

So I have fished for a better illustration to answer the question, what does a life of risky, incautious discipleship look like in the West End of Richmond in the year 2005? How do you and I avoid the trap of living a cautious Christian life? Of picking only the safe alternative for ourselves? Of being that play-it-safe disciple that Jesus condemned in His parable? And I have no answer.

So this morning I leave the answer to you, because coming up with an answer to that question is the starting point for you one day hearing from Jesus the words, "Well done, you good and faithful servant."

May we pray together? God, help us to seek out the answers to the questions that challenge us. Help us to know how we can live lives that aren't focused primarily on our own security, safety or pleasure, but rather how we can receive the talents and opportunities and time and blessings that you have given to us and give them over; invest them in ways that are a blessing. Help us to fill in the blanks. Through Christ we pray, Amen.


MC; lmk, mt