As many of you will know, the Church’s year is divided into seasons which mark various times and events in the story of our salvation and of Jesus’ life and ministry. One of the ways we mark the various seasons is by changing the colour of the vestments, altar frontals and pulpit and lectern falls we use in church. We use the colour purple, for example, to indicate our sorrow for sin during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent. We use white for celebratory seasons such as Easter and Christmas, and to show the special celebratory nature of Easter Day and Christmas Day, we might use gold vestments and decorations. We also use colours to mark particular days, such as red for Pentecost or for martyrs, white for saints or blue for the Blessed Virgin Mary. For most of the year though, we use green, and this is used to denote what the Church refers to as ‘Ordinary Time’. Ordinary Time, which is sometimes also called the ‘Green Season’, is the time of the Church’s year when we’re celebrating our salvation and our Lord’s life and ministry in general terms rather than celebrating any part of those things or event in them in particular. Today, although it’s not the last Sunday in Ordinary Time, is the last Sunday of the year when we will use green vestments and decorations. Next Sunday we will use white to mark the feast day or festival of Christ the King and then Ordinary Time for this year will come to an end and we will change to purple and start a new Church year as the season of Advent begins.
Despite the impression people may have from the Advent calendars they see in shops, the season of Advent doesn’t necessarily start on 1st December. Advent always begins four Sundays before Christmas Day. Neither is Advent about eating a piece of chocolate every day before Christmas Day. Advent is the time of the Church’s year when we prepare to celebrate the Incarnation of the Son of God, the coming into the world of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. So, in the Church’s readings during Advent, we hear about the prophets who foretold his birth, we hear about John the Baptist who was sent to prepare the way for the Lord, and we hear the story of the Annunciation when the archangel announced to Mary that she was to be the mother of the Lord. Whatever the readings during Advent are though, the theme that runs throughout the season, the Advent motif, is the call to be awake, to stay alert and watch, so that we will be ready to meet the Lord when he comes. And, as we come towards the end of Ordinary Time, we see something of that Advent motif breaking into our readings today.
In our reading from 1 Thessalonians, St Paul tells us that the ‘Day of the Lord’ will come suddenly and without warning, at a time when we least expect it. And, because no one will be able to escape from the Lord on that day, we’re urged to be the ‘children of the light’ and ‘of the day’ that we’re called to be, so that the Day of the Lord may not ‘surprise’ or ‘overtake us like a thief’ and St Paul tells us that to do this we must not ‘fall asleep’ or to ‘go on sleeping’ as other people do, but to ‘stay awake and sober’.
To be the people we’re called to be as children of the light and of the day, of course, means to be good disciples of Christ, and this is what St Paul is urging us to be in this reading. And in urging us not to sleep, but to stay awake and sober he’s telling us that to be the good disciples we’re called to be, we have to ready, at all times, to do what Jesus told us to do, to be about the Lord’s work. And this links to the Gospel, and the parable of the talents.
For us, today, a talent is an ability or skill, but that’s not what the word meant in Jesus’ day. To be honest, we’re not really quite sure exactly what Jesus was referring to by ‘talent’ in this parable because, in biblical times, a talent could either have been a weight or a unit of currency. As a weight, usually of gold or silver, it’s thought a talent was the equivalent of 33kg of 72lbs. As currency, a talent was the equivalent of 6,000 denarii. So, given that Jesus’ speaks of 1 denarius as the wage for one day’s labour, 1 talent was what a labourer could expect to earn in 16 years of work. But, whichever of these Jesus meant, he was taking about large amounts, even when he spoke about the servant who was given one talent. And when it comes to the meaning of the parable, we can quite easily substitute our understanding of the word ‘talent’ for what it meant in Jesus’ day, without changing the meaning.
It’s clear from the parable that, whatever we have been given by the Lord, we’re expected to use it in his service. If we do, we’ll be rewarded by the Lord when he returns. If we don’t use what the Lord has given us, we can’t expect any reward when he returns. It’s made clear in the parable too, that whatever we do for the Lord is enough, so long as it’s commensurate with what we’ve been given, because the reward for the servant who was given two talents and made two more was the same as for the servant who’d been given five talents and made five more. And, when we consider what a talent meant in Jesus’ day, it’s also clear from the parable that whatever we’ve been given by the Lord, is more than enough, even if it’s only one talent.
There’s no doubt that we all have talents of one sort or another that we’re called to use in the Lord’s service and could use in the Lord’s service. What we have to do is make sure that we do use them, and use them in the right way, because if we don’t, then we might as well simply bury them in the ground for all the good they’re going to do us on the day when the Lord calls us to give an account of what we’ve done with the talents he entrusted to us.
I’m sure we all do try to use our talents in the right way but, because we don’t know when the Lord will return, or at least when we’ll be called from this life to meet him and give that account of what we’ve done with our talents, we have a tendency not to use them in the way we should as often as we could. I don’t think our problem is so much towards wickedness, of deliberately burying our talents in the ground by not using them, but of laziness. We let opportunities to use our talents in the Lord’s service slip by because we’d rather do something else instead. We perhaps think we can afford to do that because we’ll always have another opportunity to use our talents in the Lord’s service, forgetting the warning that the Lord will come suddenly, without warning and at a time when we least expect him. We miss opportunities to use our talents for the Lord because we don’t take to heart that Advent call to stay awake to be alert and watch and so we’re not ready to meet the Lord, whether that be when we meet him face to face, or when we meet him in other people.
That happens in so many ways. One, perhaps rather amusing, incidence of this I remember very well happened when a parish priest I know gave notice of the Christmas Carol service in the parish, only to be told by almost the entire female section of the choir that there couldn’t be a Carol Service on that date because they wanted to go and see The Chippendales, a group of what we might call exotic male dancers, who were performing locally on that night. And when the parish priest suggested that the ladies of the choir might be getting their priorities a bit mixed up, they replied that he could always change the Carol Service to another night. One wonders what the ladies of the choir would have said had the Lord asked them to give an account of how they’d used their talents, that night!
That is just one example of disciples of Christ failing to use their talents in his service because they wanted to do something else instead, and thought it didn’t really matter because they could always use their talents in his service another time. But there are so many ways in which we all do this. How many times have people not come to church to worship the Lord on a Sunday or on some major festival of the Church because they wanted to watch a football match or the continuation of a story in a soap opera on the TV, or because they wanted to go out socialising? How many times have PCC members, for example, missed meetings for the same reasons? How many times have Christians not helped someone when they could have done, or not helped as much as they could have done because they were too busy with their own affairs or with enjoying themselves and have put those things first?
Christians very often do these kinds of things, even though we’re warned repeatedly through the Scriptures, not to do them. And, in my experience, Christians often do these things because of what might be called laziness; they can’t be bothered to do what they know they should have done because they think they’ll always get another chance to do it. So, if they didn’t go to church well, they can always go next Sunday, and they can go to that festival of the Church, next time. If they missed a meeting well, they’ll find out what went on anyway, and they can always go to the next meeting. If they didn’t help that person or that cause, they might feel a bit guilty, but not too much, because there’ll always be another person to help and another cause to contribute to. But if the coronavirus, the lockdowns and the restrictions on our lives we’ve gone through this year, and are still going through, have done anything, they’ve surely reminded us of the fact that we can’t take tomorrow for granted. They’ve reminded us that we can’t fail to do what we should do now simply because we think we can do it another time. They’ve reminded us that there isn’t always a next time and so, hopefully, they’ve reminded us that we need to do what we should, whenever we can, while we still can.
In essence, that is the meaning of the Advent call to stay awake, stay alert and watch for the Lord. The Advent call is to be on the lookout for ways and opportunities to use our talents in the Lord’s service and, when we see them, to make the most of them, in full awareness that we might not get another chance. It’s a call, and a warning, that breaks into our readings today and one that we’ll be reminded of throughout the season of Advent. We all know the secular custom of making New Year’s resolutions. Advent marks the start of the Church’s New Year so let’s make obedience to the Advent call one that we resolve to make and keep so that, when we meet Lord, we’ll be able to give a good account of what we’ve done with whatever talents we’ve been given.
Amen.
You will find the Propers for the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (2 before Advent) here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 