Images and THankfulness and How are we Living?
I enjoy church history and really enjoy viewing various icons throughout the ages and flipping through pictures and depictions of Jesus and the saints. Depending on the time when a painting was created, and the culture of who was doing a painting, depictions vary widely.
I find it is helpful to have different images and to study various works of art depicting biblical scenes and the like, because it can help us view God in different ways, offering different perspectives, and perhaps stretching our imagination.
Artists bring their imagination to the work and create pieces for us to ponder and reflect upon, perhaps challenging our theology or causing us to think about something differently. Art opens our mind.
We are aware and have been taught that we are all created in the image of God, but various paintings reflect different images, full of variations in imaginations and thoughts. When an artist paints or draws an image of Jesus, it is a reflection of who God is to them. Frescos and paintings are not just visual images, but reflect who God is to the artist theologically. What the artist thinks of God and how the artist views God.
I find this healthy and it is a visual reminder that to each of us God is unique — none of us has visually seen God nor did we know Jesus in the flesh, and so our imaginations are just that — imaginations. We are limited. Icons and images are useful for helping us to focus and to help us reflect, but we gaze upon them with the knowledge that they are just that artist’s depiction of what they visualize.
Jesus was aware of this human tendency to create God in our own image as well.
In our Gospel lesson for today, the famous parable of the talents, the parable is really not so much a parable about how we use our talents or wealth, but rather it is a parable that deals with our understanding of God.
Our own image of God, how we view God, has profound consequences for how we live; how we understand ourselves, our relationships to others, and the way we face the world around us.
In the parable of the talents, a man is going on a journey and so he summons his servants and entrusts his property to them. To one he gives five talents. To another two talents. And to another one talent.
A “talent” in Jesus’ day was equal to about 15-20 years of wages for a servant. So, to one servant, he gives what is equivalent to seventy-five years’ worth of wages, to another thirty years’ worth of wages, and to another fifteen years’ worth of wages. These are enormous sums and so in hearing this parable in Jesus’ day, you already know that this is an extra-ordinary story, a story that is being told to make a point.
The extravagance of the man giving the talents — this sort of generosity is just not done. People typically, don’t do this sort of thing for others, nor do many people even have the means of doing this.
But that is the point of the story — people don’t normally operate with this amount of generosity — but God does. God, like the Master, has acted with us in extreme generosity. Generosity that is hard to comprehend. And as a ramification of this generosity, the question, “What are we going to do with it?”
How do we respond to the generosity of God?
In the parable, the first servant, the one who received five talents, immediately went out and traded with what he had been given and he made five more talents. He went out “at once.” The owner pours out an extravagant amount of riches upon his servant, and he “at once” goes out and puts it to use. He makes more.
He understands the gracious gift of God. He doesn’t hold back what God has given him, but right away starts multiplying God’s gifts. And when the master comes and sees how his servant has used his gifts, he is given more things to be put in charge of. God gives abundantly and graciously and in turn we are to use these gifts, be wise with them, invest them. The servants are then asked to enter into the joy of the master.
The first two servants multiplied what they had been given. And they were invited into the promise of joy.
The last servant, however, doesn’t do the same. He takes his gift and hid it in the ground. He operates out of fear, rather than abundance and generosity. He wants to bury his money for fear of losing it. This is an action of a person who thinks God was out to get him, a frightened person.
This servant, though given a tremendous amount, 15-20 years of wages, views God as a hard Master, a punitive Master. He sees God in the image that he has created of God - his own image — he imagines that God, the Master, is just like him. He fails to see everything that God gave him. He digs and hole and buries what God gave him in the ground.
How we see God, how we view the God we serve — will and does have profound consequences for the shape and quality of our lives.
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen is the love story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, both of whom have to overcome their biases in order to end up together. Ms. Bennet viewed Mr. Darcy as arrogant and ill-tempered. He viewed her as aloof, and her family was certainly not of the ilk he was accustomed to. Her pride, and his prejudice had infiltrated both of their views of the other to such an extent that they were unable to truly see the other. They have to unlearn and overcome their pride and prejudice in order to truly see the other.
And how is that with us with God? What things must we unlearn in order to see God, or what things do we need to learn and embrace in our view of God? Is God a God of grace and abundance, or a miserly God, punitive, and without mercy? And how is your view of God holding you back maybe in some way, not allowing you to fully embrace God’s grace and generosity and affecting how you interact with others and the world?
The last servant in the parable today, though given much, is fearful and acts out of this fear of His Master and of losing what was given to him, rather than viewing the abundance the Master had given him and multiplying it, having the courage to go into the world with it.
The Master in the parable pretty much tells this servant to go and lay down in his miserly little hole he dug for himself. What he was given was taken from him. The servants that had been trustworthy in a few things, would be put in charge of many things. And those were the ones — not to be overlooked — who would enter into joy of the Master.
How we view the Master - how we choose to interact with the world around us — will and does affect our joy.
We can choose to bury that which is given to us, or we can choose to move forward and make something of it.
And the reason we are told to do this, is because we do not know the times or the seasons and we have been told that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night and that we must be ready.
Each day is a gift. We have little time on this earth.
And we need to choose how to live, adjusting our image of God if we need to in order to live abundantly.
“For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Thessalonians 5:10)
We serve a God who loves us. So, let us put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:9)
and let us be like the Psalmist in Psalm 123,
“To you I lift up my eyes, to you enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he shows us his mercy.”
Let us keep our eyes on Lord our God. A merciful God. A God of abundance and grace. A God who expects us to use what we have and multiply it. A God who does not ask us to operate out of fear or miserliness, but out of abundance and joy. Let us lift up our eyes, expanding our own image of God.
Amen.
I find it is helpful to have different images and to study various works of art depicting biblical scenes and the like, because it can help us view God in different ways, offering different perspectives, and perhaps stretching our imagination.
Artists bring their imagination to the work and create pieces for us to ponder and reflect upon, perhaps challenging our theology or causing us to think about something differently. Art opens our mind.
We are aware and have been taught that we are all created in the image of God, but various paintings reflect different images, full of variations in imaginations and thoughts. When an artist paints or draws an image of Jesus, it is a reflection of who God is to them. Frescos and paintings are not just visual images, but reflect who God is to the artist theologically. What the artist thinks of God and how the artist views God.
I find this healthy and it is a visual reminder that to each of us God is unique — none of us has visually seen God nor did we know Jesus in the flesh, and so our imaginations are just that — imaginations. We are limited. Icons and images are useful for helping us to focus and to help us reflect, but we gaze upon them with the knowledge that they are just that artist’s depiction of what they visualize.
Jesus was aware of this human tendency to create God in our own image as well.
In our Gospel lesson for today, the famous parable of the talents, the parable is really not so much a parable about how we use our talents or wealth, but rather it is a parable that deals with our understanding of God.
Our own image of God, how we view God, has profound consequences for how we live; how we understand ourselves, our relationships to others, and the way we face the world around us.
In the parable of the talents, a man is going on a journey and so he summons his servants and entrusts his property to them. To one he gives five talents. To another two talents. And to another one talent.
A “talent” in Jesus’ day was equal to about 15-20 years of wages for a servant. So, to one servant, he gives what is equivalent to seventy-five years’ worth of wages, to another thirty years’ worth of wages, and to another fifteen years’ worth of wages. These are enormous sums and so in hearing this parable in Jesus’ day, you already know that this is an extra-ordinary story, a story that is being told to make a point.
The extravagance of the man giving the talents — this sort of generosity is just not done. People typically, don’t do this sort of thing for others, nor do many people even have the means of doing this.
But that is the point of the story — people don’t normally operate with this amount of generosity — but God does. God, like the Master, has acted with us in extreme generosity. Generosity that is hard to comprehend. And as a ramification of this generosity, the question, “What are we going to do with it?”
How do we respond to the generosity of God?
In the parable, the first servant, the one who received five talents, immediately went out and traded with what he had been given and he made five more talents. He went out “at once.” The owner pours out an extravagant amount of riches upon his servant, and he “at once” goes out and puts it to use. He makes more.
He understands the gracious gift of God. He doesn’t hold back what God has given him, but right away starts multiplying God’s gifts. And when the master comes and sees how his servant has used his gifts, he is given more things to be put in charge of. God gives abundantly and graciously and in turn we are to use these gifts, be wise with them, invest them. The servants are then asked to enter into the joy of the master.
The first two servants multiplied what they had been given. And they were invited into the promise of joy.
The last servant, however, doesn’t do the same. He takes his gift and hid it in the ground. He operates out of fear, rather than abundance and generosity. He wants to bury his money for fear of losing it. This is an action of a person who thinks God was out to get him, a frightened person.
This servant, though given a tremendous amount, 15-20 years of wages, views God as a hard Master, a punitive Master. He sees God in the image that he has created of God - his own image — he imagines that God, the Master, is just like him. He fails to see everything that God gave him. He digs and hole and buries what God gave him in the ground.
How we see God, how we view the God we serve — will and does have profound consequences for the shape and quality of our lives.
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen is the love story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, both of whom have to overcome their biases in order to end up together. Ms. Bennet viewed Mr. Darcy as arrogant and ill-tempered. He viewed her as aloof, and her family was certainly not of the ilk he was accustomed to. Her pride, and his prejudice had infiltrated both of their views of the other to such an extent that they were unable to truly see the other. They have to unlearn and overcome their pride and prejudice in order to truly see the other.
And how is that with us with God? What things must we unlearn in order to see God, or what things do we need to learn and embrace in our view of God? Is God a God of grace and abundance, or a miserly God, punitive, and without mercy? And how is your view of God holding you back maybe in some way, not allowing you to fully embrace God’s grace and generosity and affecting how you interact with others and the world?
The last servant in the parable today, though given much, is fearful and acts out of this fear of His Master and of losing what was given to him, rather than viewing the abundance the Master had given him and multiplying it, having the courage to go into the world with it.
The Master in the parable pretty much tells this servant to go and lay down in his miserly little hole he dug for himself. What he was given was taken from him. The servants that had been trustworthy in a few things, would be put in charge of many things. And those were the ones — not to be overlooked — who would enter into joy of the Master.
How we view the Master - how we choose to interact with the world around us — will and does affect our joy.
We can choose to bury that which is given to us, or we can choose to move forward and make something of it.
And the reason we are told to do this, is because we do not know the times or the seasons and we have been told that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night and that we must be ready.
Each day is a gift. We have little time on this earth.
And we need to choose how to live, adjusting our image of God if we need to in order to live abundantly.
“For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Thessalonians 5:10)
We serve a God who loves us. So, let us put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:9)
and let us be like the Psalmist in Psalm 123,
“To you I lift up my eyes, to you enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he shows us his mercy.”
Let us keep our eyes on Lord our God. A merciful God. A God of abundance and grace. A God who expects us to use what we have and multiply it. A God who does not ask us to operate out of fear or miserliness, but out of abundance and joy. Let us lift up our eyes, expanding our own image of God.
Amen.