Spiritual Complacency and Fear

Homily delivered at Kidlington Methodist Church, England, in November 2008, based upon 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 and Matthew 25:14-30.

Granted, this was only the second homily I've ever delivered, and I still haven't studied sermonizing, so please try to forgive it its trespasses, but do feel absolutely welcome to offer criticism.

All images used (in blog post form only) link to their sources; no infringement intended. Please note: I do not necessarily agree with or affirm the content of the sites to which I have linked.

The hymn All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord, cited below, had been sung earlier in the service. Also cited: The Screwtape Letters (novel) and V for Vendetta (film).

Why yes, Don Feder, I did refer positively to what you considered the "most explicitly anti-Christian movie to date" during a Christian worship service. But look on the bright side. At least Avatar (2009) hadn't come out yet.

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"Rise and Shine: Spiritual Complacency and Fear"

Wake up!

It's time to get ready! Brush your teeth. What do you mean your shirt and trousers are in that war zone? Find them! Hurry!

Have you done your homework?

Sound familiar? The parents, children, and university students are nodding.

In preparing and rousing the Thessalonians, Paul wrote:

"You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled" (1 Thess. 5.5-6).

Paul founded the Christian church of Thessalonica on his second missionary journey, and he was eager to know how the people were progressing in their new faith. One of their concerns was the second coming of Jesus, the Parousia, but Paul did not aim to overwhelm them with doctrine. Rather, 1 Thessalonians was primarily meant to encourage them. He even ended this section not only urging them to support one another, but commending them for having done so.

So on a topic that sometimes gets a bad rap in our present world – Judgment Day, the End Times, the Apocalypse – Paul wrote to tell them that the second coming was actually an inspiration and a comfort, a stimulus for Christians to serve God, an incentive to live holy lives. Paul blesses them:

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5.23).

He warns them that "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thess. 5.2), but tells them that this will not surprise them because they are not of the darkness, but children of light. He adds:

"Since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet" (1 Thess. 5.8).

Such imagery gives us strength and hope; it reinforces to us that our faith will fortify us, that God will save us from peril. Yet there is temptation, even in a Christian life, to sleep, to fall into spiritual lethargy; to assume that our relationship with God is fine if we go through the motions. In his novel, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis shares with us the advice from a senior devil to a junior devil. The senior devil once says, 'Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep’ (Lewis, 40). The inaction and lethargy of God's people is where sin can thrive.

Matthew 25 tells of Jesus' Parable of the Talents, though for now I would venture to call it the Parable of the Timid Servant. A master, before going away, leaves talents – a unit of money – with each of three servants: to one, five talents; to another three talents; and to the last, one talent, each according to his ability. Now that isn't to say that the last servant is given nothing of value -

A single talent weighed in at 33 kg, or 73 lbs. For a visual reference, think of your average 10-year-old, or, barring that, 33 1kg packages of Miracle-Gro. We're speaking in terms of great potential all around. And for those of you inclined to maths, that means 165 packages of Miracle-Gro to your first servant there. That's a lot of plants.

So servants #1 and 2 each invest what they have and double it. But the third servant is paralyzed in fear of his master's return – so afraid of wrath and blame or even his own humble failure that he refrains from acting at all except to bury the talent in the ground (which may have worked more in his favor if the talent actually had been Miracle-Gro). When their master returns, he invites the first two servants to partake in the joy of their master, but he goes so far as to call the last servant "wicked." Clearly he is not being blamed simply for poor financial planning; his error was inaction, burying all he had away from the light.

God is not a conniving thief or malicious slave master wishing us despair and harm, but God's works and timing and demands are often unexpected; they often surprise us. God wants you, the entirety and whole of you – all you've been given and all you can do with it. When your soul enters heaven; when Jesus comes again; but also right now, in this moment, on this day. God wants you.


Remember, remember, the 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Day, just recently. Many of you may be well familiar with the story and film, "V for Vendetta." If you don't know it, suffice it to say that there is a beautiful line in the film delivered in a scene of courage, desperation and trial.


Evey (Natalie Portman) reads a moving letter in V for Vendetta (2006).

The speaker says: "I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tottle Brook and she used to tell me that God was in the rain."

I myself vividly remember once walking with a friend through a light rainstorm in New York. The conversation turned to the extent that we minded the weather, and I expressed a vague feeling of it's-nice-but-I-don't-exactly-want-it-on-me. She was more optimistic about it than I, looking up for a moment to let the droplets seek refuge in the curves of her face. "'God is in the rain,'" she quoted.

Of course, we also once traipsed through the storm of the century that eventually flooded numerous towns in the area. Taking our typical route to church, we crossed a bridge over what was usually the most modest of streams and water was absolutely gushing below in great currents.

By the time we arrived, we were so drenched with God that at first I was reluctant to let my waterlogged shoes squeak down the aisle, let alone sit my soaked soul on the pew. That week, Sunday best was not a viable option. We were both layered in the most waterproof clothing we owned. Already two of my umbrellas had become casualties of other recent storms, and I had none to bring with me. We were dripping wet, and we were late for Mass. Two things I, as a Protestant, was not ready to see how the Roman Catholic Church would tolerate.

But no one so much as frowned at us. We attended the service, recognizing no one but joining in worship and the passing of the peace with people who'd had to journey through that same storm. Whether they came on foot or by car, many of them probably knew what it was to look out the window that day in a moment of "maybe we can catch the next one...?" and found themselves on the way there nonetheless.

Perhaps like the third servant, I too was so distracted by my own fear of being shunned for arriving in such horrendous shape that I never even thought about what it really took for each person to arrive there; what it meant that, whether out of obligation or personal will, they were able to do everything necessary to get there, and so had we. Maybe the point was not that we were soaking wet, that we had "weather on us" – but that, God being in all things and guiding our paths, we were so full of Spirit in that moment that we could wring it out, fill a bucket to share and still have plenty remaining.

Living a Christian life does not mean only believing that God's Spirit exists any more than living on Earth means believing in the concept of rain – that it comes from time to time and that, in some form or another, it will come again. To be a Christian, a child of light, is to let God drench you with the Holy Spirit inside and out, so that even if Jesus is not physically present on the earth, everything that his life, death and resurrection meant is still represented here in each one of us and all the greater in a fortified Christian community.

"He bids us build each other up" or, should we say, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing" (1 Thess. 5.11) – "And, gathered into one, to our high calling's glorious hope, we hand in hand go on. The gift which He on one bestows, we all delight to prove. The grace through every vessel flows, in purest streams of love" (All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord, Charles Wesley, 1747).

You have the ability to invest time, resources, money, skills, talents – and the decisions about these things are important; they shouldn't be taken lightly and are best managed under God's direction. But looking further, what else might this parable mean for Christians, for children of light? What if we put ourselves in the place of that last servant, who also received something very valuable? What if we were to bury Truth, or our Christianity, our very spirituality, our relationship with Creator and Redeemer? Whether we are afraid of God, society, persecution, failure... none of these fears validate hiding our faith in God, our hope in Christ, our strength in the Spirit. If none of these things permeate our daily lives, we may as well bury our heads in the sand, too.

Should we not declare: "Lord, you have been our refuge; from one generation to another, before the mountains were born, or the earth and the world were brought to be; from eternity to eternity you are God" (Psalm 90.1-2)? Should we not find solace in the immensity and magnitude of our God? Should we not invest each bit of the dust from which we're made and bring something greater than ourselves to the world? "Our years pass away like a sigh" (Psalm 90.9) – should we not call upon our Lord: "Teach us so to number our days; that we may apply our hearts to wisdom" (Psalm 90.12)?

You have the power to demonstrate what it means to follow Christ; to exemplify that he lived and died that we might be better people and more complete souls; that Christ will come again and that, in trusting him, we do not need to fear; that the Day of the Lord will be beautiful: not merely a day to be judged but a day to witness justice. God will set all right.

But until that day, God is calling us to live as the children of light. We must not hold back in fear or complacency. Rise and shine. Let God surprise you with what you can do – with the Christian you can be – through the One who strengthens you (Phil. 4:13).