From Mary who is about to give birth to the Messiah, to Hannah, who received the gift of a child and in her joy gave that gift right back to God, to Deborah, who gives glory to God for every earthly victory, to Miriam, who in the utter chaos of the Exodus from Egypt, remembered to pack her tambourine so that if she made it out alive, God might be praised with singing. These women tell their own stories, and they tell the story.

I’m grateful that Kate often preaches about our relationship with God as a love story, because it helped me hear this passage from Isaiah and understand that the agony of lost, distanced, or unrequited love is actually quite similar to the agony of not being able to sense the closeness of God. The longing is the same. 

I would like to propose that the Parable of the Talents, not unlike the Feeding of the 5,000 from five loaves of bread, taps into Kingdom Math. Spreading a finite amount of resources equitably across a community is an admirable notion. But an abundance that, once released and shared, will grow exponentially for everyone, well that’s Kingdom Math. The numbers may not add up, but God’s joy and truth are there. 

Although we hope for it, it’s hard to imagine a world in which everyone in the Middle East can share their homeland and their holy places. I was uncomfortable sharing a random cemetery I found with people who actually have relatives buried there. But if we learned anything from the first five books of Holy Scripture over the summer, it’s that while we are promised an inheritance of family, holy space, and blessings of purpose, we are not guaranteed comfort. In fact, it’s only on the other side of our discomfort, on the other side of our acceptance that the inheritance must be shared, that we will find our promised land, the Kingdom of God. 

This morning we’re back in the thick of it with Matthew’s Gospel. At the beginning of today’s chapter, Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As the crucifixion draws closer, the stakes get higher, and the teachings and proclamations more urgent. With the parable of the wicked tenants, I think Jesus wanted his listeners to squirm a bit, and I think he succeeds, even to this day. 

It is a comfort, on this most joyful day, to know that even as we move through the messy, beautiful, hard work of being in community, we need not fear surprise or disagreement or conflict. Because we have a way forward. We have a little encouraging push from Paul to get to work. We have all kinds of guidelines for how to love each other, and we even have some steps for reconciliation when we need them. Most of all, we have our worship to ground us in the faith and keep us from forgetting to whom we belong: to God and to one another. So this fall, as we do every fall, we recommit to this place, to each other, and to our common worship. There’s no better time.

The first part of the passage tells us that the disciples were out on the water in a storm not by chance, but because Jesus had instructed them to do so. At first, this might be a little disconcerting. Why would Jesus send the disciples out onto the water if he knew or even suspected a storm might come? But when we take a step back, we can see this story is actually part of a larger pattern that spans all of holy scripture.