[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #635, Pentecost 27, 11/16/08

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Pentecost 27, November 16, 2008

Judges 4:1-7
Psalm 123 or 76 
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30


Pack Rat Or Flower

The parable of the talents scares me.  It says that I can make fatal choices in my relationship with the master.  My tendency is to think that I can just rock along through life doing what I want to do, and somehow that will be good enough.  Jesus told this story about a man like me who knew the master, made his own decision about what he had been entrusted and, when confronted by the master, found his choice wasn't good enough.  The master said, "Get out of here."  Where do you go when the master of the universe says, "Get out of here?"  That's scary.

Why do I identify with the servant in the parable that was rejected?  Aren't there three servants here?  Two are congratulated by their master and rewarded.  Why isn't this, for me, the story of the two faithful servants?  Because the rejected servant was a pack rat, and I'm a pack rat.  His sense of security lay in preservation.  The best thing he knew to do was to pack it away, store it up -- hide it.  Those other two servants took chances with what they had been given.  They could have lost everything.  He didn't lose anything, but then lost everything.

To be a pack rat is to misunderstand life.  Have you ever dug up or broken into the home of an actual rodent pack rat?  You find a pitiful collection of things socked away for a day that never came.  The pack rat doesn't understand that life is fluid.  It flows.  You can't stop it.  You can only channel it.  Life just flows.  To really live, you have to let the gift of life flow through you.  If you try to catch it, hold it, bury it, you'll miss it.

Consider the flower on the other hand.  It's very nature is to share, to risk, to communicate.  When a flower opens, it opens to the world, to the sun, to the heavens and to every creature on earth.  (...for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. {1 Thessalonians 5:5)  When it opens, it shares all its riches, its fragrance and its beauty.  It invites every passer by.  The bees come summoned by the scent, the humming birds by the color.  They take from the flower, freely take as the flower freely gives.  The flower has no protection and cares not to guard its beauty.  It is soft and delicate and subject to all intruders.  To risk its life is its life.  The flower turns its face to heaven and beyond.  (To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!  {Psalm 125:1)  It is in touch with the whole crea¬tion.  That is the reward for the risk.

"She (Deborah) sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, 'The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you, "Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun.  I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand."'"  (Judges 4:6-7)  Barak and Deborah, in a brief flowering of the tribal confederacy of Israel, plunged into what was either the end or the beginning.

Finally the flower explodes into the world with a myriad of seeds.  Nothing is left of it, no cache of collectable, no monument, but the world has changed for its having lived.  A hundred flowers will rise where it has fallen.  God will be glorified in endless years of summers. 


May these thoughts strengthen you. 
 
An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor 
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