2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Matthew 25:14-30
Today we continue to
celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, when the
Theotokos and St. Joseph the Betrothed took the forty-day old Savior to the
Temple in obedience to the requirements of the Old Testament law. This is a feast in which we celebrate how the Child born at Christmas
has fulfilled the hopes of the children of Abraham and extended them to all
people with faith in Him. Righteous Simeon held Christ in his arms and
proclaimed, “Lord, now let
your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen
your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light
for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” The elderly Prophetess Anna also “spoke of
him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” The Old Testament temple and priesthood were
preparatory signs of the coming of the Great High Priest Who offers Himself for
the salvation of the world. He has
fulfilled the law and the calling of every human person to become like God in
holiness, for He has joined humanity to divinity in Himself as the
God-Man.
In order to
celebrate this feast properly, we must go beyond speaking words about what
Christ has done, as true as those words are.
We must present and unite ourselves to Him personally, making every
dimension of our life an entrance into the heavenly worship of the Kingdom. For our Savior is the One “Who sat down at the right
hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and Who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set
up by the Lord, not by a mere human being.” (Heb. 8:1-2) Everything that we think, say, and do in this
world may participate already in heavenly glory through Christ, when we unite
ourselves to Him in holiness. In order
for that to happen, we must obey St. Paul’s instruction: “We entreat you not to accept the grace of
God in vain…Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of
salvation.” If we are not offering ourselves
to the Lord today, then we are refusing the only opportunity we have to share
more fully in His life. The past is gone
and we have no idea what the future will hold.
We must be good stewards of the opportunities available to us right now,
if we want to find the healing of our souls.
As
the parable in today’s gospel reading makes clear, we must invest ourselves more
fully in the life of Christ. The point is not what particular challenges and opportunities
we have on a daily basis, but whether we are responding to them in a way that serves
God’s purposes for us, our neighbors, and our world. The servants who invested
their talents such that they produced more were exalted. The servant who, out of fear, buried his
talent in the ground and produced nothing lost what he had and was cast out. The point was not how much they began with,
but what they did with what they had. Regardless
of the circumstances of our lives, we all face the same challenge to enter more
fully into the blessed life of the Kingdom.
“Now is the day of salvation” for us all because the ultimate question
is whether we are uniting ourselves to Christ in the present reality of our
lives. If we are doing so, then we are
becoming more fully the people God created us to be in His image and likeness
through the eternal ministry of our Great High Priest. If we are not, we are refusing to cooperate
with our Lord’s gracious invitation to share in the life of the Kingdom. That
is a path that leads only to greater spiritual weakness.
In
the parable, the man with one talent hid it in the ground because he was afraid
of his master. Notice that the master said that the servant, at the very least,
could have put the talent in a bank and produced a little bit of interest for
him. We may be tempted to refuse to give our time, energy, and abilities to serve
Christ because we are afraid that He will not accept our offering. We may think
that we will fail at what we have set out to do or perhaps somehow look foolish
in the eyes of others. We may feel weak
or guilty or otherwise believe that opening some area of our lives to the
Savior will result only in harsh condemnation.
Remember,
however, that the master in the parable would have accepted even a small amount
of interest from one talent put in the bank.
He told the unfortunate servant that the proper response to his fear was
at least to do something productive, not to be paralyzed by anxiety or shame. On the one hand, it could be understandable
why we would hesitate to unite ourselves to the Lord. It can be painful and embarrassing to
acknowledge the truth about our own brokenness and need for healing. Since God is infinitely holy and we most
surely are not, the temptation not to expose ourselves to Him is powerful. We like to think that it would be better to
avoid the pain of condemnation, failure, or hurt pride by keeping the Lord—and a
recognition of the truth about our lives-- at arm’s length. Consequently, we bury our talent in the
ground as we refuse to offer and open ourselves to Christ.
The
problem, of course, is that the assumptions driving the fears that keep us from being good stewards of our
talents have no basis in reality. The
Master Who calls us to offer our lives to Him is Jesus Christ, Who endured
crucifixion, death, burial, and descent into Hades for our salvation. Purely out of love for us, He offered up Himself
in order to conquer the grave in His glorious resurrection on the third
day. In His earthly ministry, the Savior
had mercy on every repentant sinner who came to Him, including St. Peter who
denied Him three times before His crucifixion.
He healed diseases of all kinds, cast out demons, and even raised the
dead. There is no reason to let fear of rejection
deter us from humbly offering ourselves to Him for the service of the Kingdom.
If
we wonder what it would mean for us to be good stewards of our talents, all
that we need to do is look around us. Christ
said that He “came to serve, not to be served” (Matt. 20:28) and there is no
shortage of ways to serve Him in our parish, in our families, and in our
neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. To
the extent that we help even the lowliest person, we serve our Lord. We
must also be good stewards by devoting our time, energy, and attention to
prayer, reading the Bible, studying the lives and teachings of the saints, and gaining
strength in resisting our self-centered desires by fasting and other forms of
self-denial. We must deliberately invest
ourselves in daily practices that enable us to offer ourselves to Christ. If we do not, our focus will remain simply on
ourselves, and especially on fulfilling our passions in ways that further
enslave us to them.
At the end of the day, we
must offer ourselves to something or someone.
Remembering how Christ has fulfilled the ancient prophecies of the Old
Testament, let us unite ourselves to Him as our Great High Priest by making
each moment of our lives a point of entrance into the eternal liturgy of the
Kingdom of Heaven. Righteous Simeon and the
Prophetess Anna waited decades for the Messiah.
Since He has already come, let us give our whole lives to Him. That
is the only way to be good stewards of our gifts as we refuse “to accept the
grace of God in vain,” but instead do all that we can to cooperate with Him for
the healing of our souls. Anything less
amounts to burying our talents in the ground and refusing to invest ourselves
in the service of the Kingdom.
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