A sermon given on the 25th Sunday after Pentecost – Readings here

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant us that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our savior Jesus Christ.

What I just read is the original version of today’s Collect. The “Collect,” which is really the same word as “collect,” is the gathering prayer that the Celebrant reads at the beginning of each service.

This particular Collect was written by Thomas Cranmer, the first Archbishop of the Church in England, after it split from the Catholic Church.

Cranmer lived and died during a significant moment in the church’s history. Not only did he write and compile the first liturgies written in English, he was also among the first generation to have access to printed copies of the Bible.

Before the invention of the printing press, laypeople sometimes had access to Psalms and selected Gospel readings in their own language, and they had probably memorized some scripture. But services were in Latin, and most people were totally dependent on their parish priest to provide religious instruction.

So, when Cranmer sat down and wrote today’s Collect, he wasn’t just saying something everyone already knew about the importance of reading the Bible.He was making an argument that very few people could have made before the sixteenth century.

It wasn’t so much that people of his time didn’t understand that “all scriptures were written for our learning.”

After all, the Scriptures themselves say that in Second Timothy:

“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

So, people understood that Scripture was an important tool for accessing the story of God. But, for the first time, they actually had access to ALL scriptures, in the context of the whole Bible, translated in a language they could understand.

And, as literacy increased throughout the sixteenth century, they could even READ them.

Knowing this gives us a better appreciation for the significance of Cranmer’s words. It’s not simply a reminder that Scriptures are a nice thing that we have. It’s a revolutionary argument that we have a responsibility to engage with them.

To hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.

And through this practice, we expect God to speak.

Now, expecting God to speak is an easy thing to do when the Scriptures are pleasant. When it’s the angel saying, “Do not fear” and Jesus saying, “You are blessed. In other words, it’s easy to hear the voice of God when the Scriptures sound like a lullaby.

But what do we do with scriptures like today’s Gospel reading?

As Deacon Dawn pointed out last week, this reading – as well as the one before and after it – are disturbing. In fact, the genre is literally apocalyptic. With all this talk of outer darkness, and weeping and gnashing of teeth, they sound very inconsistent with a God whose primary trait is love.

Today’s reading, the Parable of the Talents, is pretty well-known, because preachers like to use it as a reminder to give money to the church. But, I had a hard time getting over its ickiness…

First, there’s the disturbing language of a “Master” and his “slaves.” Then, there’s the impatience and cruelty of the Master. And maybe I should also point out, that the most obvious moral is that we are all supposed to invest in the stock market? If you’re not sure what the heck is going on here, you’re not alone.

In reading my trusty commentaries this week, I actually laughed out loud a couple times, as the scholars went in circles trying to make perfect sense of the story.

They could say a few things with authority: Context clues suggest that we’re supposed to think of the Master as Jesus and the slaves as the Christian community. The scholars also point out that the amount of money – or “Talents” – given to each slave was enormous, up to 15 years’ worth of wages.

But in the end, they don’t exactly know what to do with all the ins and outs.

For example:

Why was the slave who buried his talent, entrusted with less in the first place?

Why didn’t the Master tell anyone what his expectations were?

Why was he so mad with that poor guy who didn’t actually lose any of the money?!

And maybe, most significantly, why does the text completely contradict Jesus’ words, “the last will be first, and the first will be last”?

Instead, it says:

“For to all those who have, more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

It is at the end of all these questions that Cranmer’s words should come back to us. If it’s true that all scriptures are written for our learning, that means that we don’t have to clean up the messy parts of our Scriptures to benefit from them.

They don’t have to be perfectly clear to teach us something.

Cranmer suggests that when we’re confused or disturbed by certain Scripture passages, which he calls “dark mysteries,” the thing to do is: hear them, read them, take notes, learn from others, and inwardly digest.

In other words, we should spend more time with them. We should stay with them. We can treat the Bible like an old friend. We can talk it out, fight it out, ask lots of questions, settle into the silences, and find our way out to the other side.

We can trust that there’s something good and life-giving in the relationship we have with the Bible.

This week, I decided to put Cranmer’s advice to the test…

I spent quite a bit of time reading, marking, and learning, and I’m happy to tell you that I have digested something. That’s not to say that I won’t hear something completely different the next time I encounter the passage. And it’s also not to say that I have discovered the true meaning of these apocalyptic words.

But, for today, this is what stands out:

“I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.”

What resonates, for me, in this story is the fear. Just like the man who buried his talent, I live with so much of it. The fear that I’m not enough, and don’t have enough. The fear that I’ll be misunderstood, and that all my Jesus talk is making it hard to make friends. The fear that living into the subversive values of a God who walked toward death in order to gain life, is too great a sacrifice for me to bear. The fear that maybe I’m wrong, about a lot of things.

I am afraid to take what Jesus has given me, and do something with it.

Does that mean that Jesus is going to, just, discard me like the man in the story?

Well, here’s where the digestion comes.

I remember that this passage is a parable. Nothing happened to the guy who buried his talent. Because he never existed.

This is a moral story, a warning, but it’s not a historical fact.

And that leads me to the next realization: None of us are the guy who gets chewed out by the Master. Because, unlike the Master, Jesus has provided us with instruction for how to live.

We’re not being left in the dark – we know that Christ has called us to love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

We know that we have been called to share that love, until the whole world is made new.

We know that we’re not supposed to suffocate love by burying it, silencing it, and never mentioning it again.

By the very nature of him telling the story in our Scriptures, Jesus is not the unjust Master. Like a good coach, Jesus is telling us that it’s imperative that we rise to the challenge of the Gospel. And the time is now.

With that in mind, the overwhelming cry of this story isn’t that we’re all gonna be tossed into outer darkness, because we’re not great with money. The overwhelming cry of this story is actually a lullaby, disguised as a command:

“Do not fear!”

The story is telling us in the strongest terms that when everything gets apocalyptic, we can no longer afford to fear.

Love doesn’t grow if we bury it. Love only grows when we spread it around.

In the face of the world’s brutality, we are understandably impatient. Sometimes it’s hard to find comfort.

But Cranmer reminds us that the Scriptures are always there, just like an old friend. If we give them a chance, they will find a way to comfort us. They will speak the honest truth when no one else will. They will challenge us on our crap, stop us in our tracks, and command us to pull our heads out of the sand.

Hear them, read, mark, and learn.

At first, you might experience a little indigestion. But trust the process. With God’s help, you will digest.

Amen.