Parable of the Talents
This Sunday's gospel reading is Matthew 25: 14-30 - the parable of the talents.
I'm not preaching - so I thought I'd post up a sermon I KNOW I wrote on this only a couple of years ago. But I can't find it - which is odd. I know that then I took a fairly hard line on 'this is about money - stop trying to squirm out of it'.
But maybe that isn't the message for the four churches where I'm currently serving. I think here there are more issues about the other resources we have - especially of buildings. Who are our buildings for? And what does Jesus want us to do with them??
One of the great challenges of serving four churches is four potential set of headaches about maintenance - but I don't see anything in the gospel here which supports us using our buildings as clubhouses - isn't that the equivalent of burying the talent? - so we need to be more imaginative, more engaged, more prepared to have things get a bit messy in order to serve our neighbours, and through them to serve God.
Use those resources! Jesus says.
Amen!
I'm not preaching - so I thought I'd post up a sermon I KNOW I wrote on this only a couple of years ago. But I can't find it - which is odd. I know that then I took a fairly hard line on 'this is about money - stop trying to squirm out of it'.
But maybe that isn't the message for the four churches where I'm currently serving. I think here there are more issues about the other resources we have - especially of buildings. Who are our buildings for? And what does Jesus want us to do with them??
One of the great challenges of serving four churches is four potential set of headaches about maintenance - but I don't see anything in the gospel here which supports us using our buildings as clubhouses - isn't that the equivalent of burying the talent? - so we need to be more imaginative, more engaged, more prepared to have things get a bit messy in order to serve our neighbours, and through them to serve God.
Use those resources! Jesus says.
Amen!
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