Sermon for Second Sunday before Advent, 2008

I’d like to start by asking you a question. Your boss suddenly calls you over and tells you that he’s going away for a while. He doesn’t tell you where, why, or how long for. But he does tell you that he wants you to look after his savings while he’s gone.

And off he goes. So what do you do? It’s not your money after all. There might be a possibility of making him a profit. But investing in stocks might not be the best idea at the moment – what if you invest in the next Northern Rock? Or housing come to that with the way prices have been falling… Although maybe they’ve reached their lowest price and are about to rise?

Maybe just putting it in the back might be the best idea. That Icelandic bank seems to have good interest rates…

Maybe just hiding it under the mattress might not be such a bad idea after all!

But your manager has told you he trusts you to look after it.

So what would you do in that situation?

You can see the dilemma these slaves would have had. When we hear of a talent we might think of a skill we have, but that is not what talent means in this Gospel. Rather, a talent is around 30kg of a precious metal – which would be enough for a normal person to live on for about 15 years. For a slave, then, this would have been untold riches, and they had to be responsible for it.

There is a difference between this parable from Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel. Whereas in Luke’s gospel the talent is hidden in a napkin, today we heard of it being buried. To a Jewish listener, this idea of burying would have been understood as an appropriate way of the slave preserving his master’s possessions, and meant that he wasn’t liable if anything happened to it. Hiding it in a napkin would not have given the same protection to it, and of course neither would investing it.

It seems quite easy to understand this parable in relation to nowadays. We are those who are given various talents. It may be actual talents or abilities, God-given gifts. Or maybe the talents are actually this world. Possibly the talents are the Church or the Christian Faith. But what do we do?

It is so easy to say that my skills are my skills, and I don’t have to share them with anyone else. As long as I am OK and have a peaceful life everything is OK. It isn’t necessary to worry about anyone else.

In the same way it is easy to decide that the world doesn’t matter. We can do anything we like with it, abuse it, take advantage of its resources, destroy the rainforests, and so on.

With the Church and the Christian Faith, it is easy to view only what happens in church on a Sunday morning as important – a case of “get into church and get it over with” before getting on with normal life for the rest of the week.

All of these are nice and easy for us, and don’t really involve any risk. They are the equivalent of burying the talent away, hiding it. We don’t need to put ourselves out, and risk embarrassment, failure, or any kind of bad effect.

But we don’t risk anything positive happening either! What if we try to invest the talent instead?

We might use our skills in a way to help others, to make the world a better place. It is easy to complain about the state the world is in nowadays without ever considering whether we might be able to help to improve things.

We might think about the state of the world and the environment. Maybe by using less energy, thinking about public transport – admittedly that isn’t really possible up here, alternative energy, buying fair trade products, and so on.

But what about the Church? It is easy to consider the church a club where others are welcome to come in, encouraged even, but it needs to be on our terms. This is a way where we look at “church” as being the building which we visit for a while on a Sunday morning but not much else.

Do we want to box the Christian Faith away, protecting it against the world (or maybe protecting the world against it), keeping it where it can’t do any damage, can’t have any effect?

OK, so our traditions, the way we’ve always done things, how our services are, how the church looks, won’t get affected in ways we don’t like. But at the same time the Christian message won’t get known by a new generation.

What generally is the country’s attitude to the church now as opposed to generations ago?

• You go to a wedding, Baptism or funeral and few people know even the Lord’s prayer

• People think that the only thing the Church does is ask for money, while assuming it is loaded with money

There are many who have not just lost contact with the Church but have actually never had any contact with it. There are so many who have little if any idea of the Christian Faith apart from watching the Vicar of Dibley or Father Ted. To some, even the fact that Christmas has anything to do with Christianity would come as a shock! I’m not saying that this is our fault, but it is something which has happened and is still happening. But what can we do about it?

We could just insist that they come to services they understand nothing of, in a strange building with unmovable seats in rows, where everyone else knows when to stand up and sit down, not to mention what book to look at when, and what to do when everyone starts going forward. Or are there ways to make the Christian faith more accessible, services easier to follow, the whole thing less intimidating? Personally I think the use of the projector at times is one thing which helps, but it is only one small step.

As Christians we should go out and share the Good News about Jesus, this Christian Faith which has been passed down through the ages to us today. It hasn’t been easy to pass the Faith down to us, we only have to look at all the Christian martyrs to realise that. Of course that even includes in-fighting within the Church. Yesterday was the 469th anniversary of the execution, during the Reformation, of Hugh Cook of Farringdon, the last Abbott of Reading Abbey, John Rugg and John Eynon, Rector of St Giles Reading where I was Baptised many years later.

Through the ages Christians have received the faith and taken risks, gambled if you like, in order to spread it throughout the world. It isn’t easy, and certainly isn’t comfortable, but it needs to be done. Not being irresponsible in trying to force the Christian Faith on people, but by living as Christians every minute of our lives, and show that we are Christians by the way that we act.

The investments described in the Gospel fascinate me.

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….. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.

So he received five talents, went off at once and made five more talents. But his master came back after a long time and he’d made in total – five talents

I suppose his investments after this first one might have gone bad. But it looks more likely that he earned a fair profit for his master and then carried on investing and pocketing the rest. If I was to ask you how much profit you’d earned in one day and you said £1000, and then came back in a year to be told the total profit was £1000 I think I’d smell a rat.

So in the same way we shouldn’t rest on our laurels, thinking that what we’ve done in the past is enough and that, having done some good we can just worry about ourselves now. NO, we should keep investing what God has given us, keep spreading the Good News, keep making Christ known in the world.

Next year is the Year of the Child in this diocese. What, both as a church and individually, can we do to make the Christian Faith known to a new generation?

Sermon for 22nd Sunday after Trinity, 2008

It all sounds so simple, today’s Gospel reading, doesn’t it? And so relevant as well – should we have to pay taxes!

Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and to God what is God’s.

We certainly see examples of this thinking around us all the time nowadays:

· Tony Blair apparently wanting to play down his religious beliefs while Prime Minister so that he wasn’t thought of as a loony

· People going to church as Christians on Sundays but living as anything but during the week

· Faith (or “are you religious?”) being viewed as little more than a hobby to the outsider, meaning that worship is relegated to a lifestyle choice or hobby like going to B&Q on a Sunday or watching football.

In short, a literal understanding of “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” leads to a marginalisation of the Gospel message, saying what you do as a Christian should only happen inside church – and not affect the rest of your life.

But is this really the case? That our life as Christians is totally separate from our life as citizens of the UK, humans, or however else you want to put it?

We should start by considering what had happened in this Gospel account.

The Pharisees and Herodians were plotting against Jesus. We often hear about the Pharisees in the Gospels, but not the Herodians. Like the Pharisees, the Herodians were a sect of Judaism at the time, although the two sects had different concerns.

The Pharisees were of course very strict about the Jewish Law, and so anti-Roman. The Herododians, as their name suggests, were supporters of Herod and pro-Roman – even though he wasn’t Jewish and was a puppet ruler imposed by the Roman Empire.

No matter what Jesus’ response, he cannot win. If he said they should pay taxes, he would be criticised by the Pharisees for being supportive of the Empire. If he said they shouldn’t pay taxes, he would be denounced by the Herodians and so the Roman authorities for treason!

Let us consider the coin Jesus demands to be shown. It shows an image of the emperor. At this time the emperor was understood to be essentially a god. So coins with his image on were considered graven images of this other “god”. Not really the kind of thing good Jews should be carrying round.

In fact, Jewish Palestine had its own copper coins without the image of the emperor – allowing Jews to use coins without this problem. But the tax had to be paid using the Roman silver denarius everywhere in the empire, including Palestine.

Considering this, we have to wonder why either the Pharisee or Herodian were carrying such a coin. Had their concern really being about paying taxes they wouldn’t have been carrying the coin. A coin with an image of the emperor, and an inscription proclaiming him as a god. It would be worse than wearing a Swindon football shirt as a Reading fan, or a St Austell shirt as a St Blazey fan!

The fact that Jesus asks for this coin suggests that he and his companions didn’t carry such a coin, unsurprisingly, and also shows what lengths the Pharisee and Herodite were willing to go to set Jesus up!

But Jesus wasn’t going to be beaten this easily. His response, while appearing simple, is actually quite complicated.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s”

So, yes. Pay taxes to the emperor, with coins showing the emperor’s image and so that belong to him, and give to God other things – things that don’t belong to the emperor.

But how does the emperor get the status of a god? Throughout the history of the Jews at least, all authority was believed to have come from God. In today’s first reading from Isaiah we heard God say to Cyrus “I have called you by name, I surname you” – or rather give you a title. Thus Cyrus, a gentile, was called the Lord’s anointed – a title normally given only to Jewish kings. The authority of Cyrus, then, came from God.

The secular state would therefore be understood to have a claim on its citizens, but only because the authority ultimately comes from God. This claim would include things like taxes.

If we think about the secular state at the moment we invariably think of taxes, and other concerns to do with money – especially with the financial situation at the moment. It is easy to get caught up in the concerns about money and financial stability at the expense of everything else. For many money appears to have taken the status of a god, being worshipped in itself.

But money isn’t evil of itself, and is essential to live. We need it for our day to day lives – as does the church itself – but it isn’t the be-all and end-all. It is, however, a sign of the secular state as much now as in the time of Jesus.

Money and the state has its place. Likewise God has its place. But they are not totally separate areas and we have to consider how they relate.

The authority of the state and money come from God. All things come from God – he made us out of nothing. We might owe taxes to the state, but we owe everything to God. The state too owes everything to the God who created all things.

If all things come from God, we should look at how we can use all things for the glory of God. That means not using them only for our own ends, worshipping and serving God not money.

The second reading today, from 1 Thessolonians, speaks about how Christians have become imitators of Christ and have turned to God and away from idols and so serve a living God.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,” – some things which are of limited importance in the grand scheme of things – “ and to God the things that are God’s” – everything important, for everything comes from Him.

Let us then remember that there is not a separation between “church” and “not church” in our lives – the “not church” parts are also part of church, of serving the living God, Father Son and Holy Spirit.