God’s work
Sermon for the the 13th Sunday of Trinity. Eid Church and Kvinnherad Church, Norway, 27th August 2023. Texts: Psalm 92:1-5.13-15; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; Matthew 25:14-30
Today we focus on something that we don’t talk much about in our Lutheran sphere, namely the spiritual gifts God gives us. We have read the parable of the talents. This is not primarily about us doing as much as possible and producing as much as possible, but about us being able to take what little we have, what we have been given, and doing something with it to the glory of God and to the benefit of our fellow human beings.
In the parable, we meet a lord who is going abroad and who gathers his servants, so that they can manage his wealth in his absence. They are given eight talents in total. The first gets five, the second two, and the third one. This was not small change. A talent was 6,000 denari, and one denar was one day’s wage for the average worker. This was, then, 48,000 daily wages, or roughly £4 million in today’s currency. Two of these servant manages their talents well, while the last hides his talent, because he is afraid. And the lord becomes angry upon his return.
This story is not about finance, but about what we do with what we have been given, if it is much or little (though I don’t think we can say that £500,000 is ‘little’). When we have received gifts from God, whether it is to teach people, to do great deeds or other things, we must also use them. We must let God be active in our lives, let him take shape in us. As St. Paul tells us today, in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.”
Our ultimate goal is to be conformed to God, to be formed in Christ’s image. As Christ puts it, in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is not based on ourselves but on what we have been given by God and on His power, on His deeds, on His works. Everything we do, we do because of God, “who activates all of [the activitues] in everyone.” It’s all based on the mighty deeds of God, in creation, in the Church, in the individual christian. In the Church, we celebrate the liturgy. This is a translation of the Greek word leitourgía, which is, in turn, based on laos, ‘people,’ and ergon, ‘work.’ It’s often translated ‘the work of the people.’ But this must be understood on the basis of God’s work. And that is why some Christians have taken the Greek word leitourgía, ‘the work of the people,’ as their starting point, and juxtaposed it to another Greek word, theourgía, which means ‘God’s work’ (from theos, ‘God,’ and ergon, ‘work’). This has been borrowed from Neoplatonist philosophers, but with the caveat that this pertains to the One true God, who has revealed Himself in Christ.1 We can, therefore, talk about liturgy and theurgy, and these cannot be separated.
God is the one who works in us. When we praise, we do so because God has put His song of praise in us, as it says in Psalm 40:3. When we gather together for the Divine Liturgy, we do so because God has first called us in baptism and gathered us together as one Church. And when we do good deeds, we do so because “we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life,” as St. Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10. It’s all rooted in God’s work, from the creation of the universe to the smallest thing we can imagine. And that should lead to a song of praise, as it says in today’s first text from Psalm 92:1-4:
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
And we can do so together, in church, in the world, and in society. Together we can honour God, thank Him and praise Him for what He has done, for who He is. When we see His work – be it the sun, the planets, the stars, animals, human beings, or what happens here when we baptise or when we celebrate the Eucharist together – we see his greatness, but we cannot put it in words. We fall short and we have to realise that this is a mystery. We cannot grasp it intellectually, but we can still grasp it through the gifts God has given us. As C. S. Lewis says on the Eucharist: “The command, after all, was Take, eat: not Take, understand.”2 But we don’t always live up to our calling. As noted, our ultimate goal is to be conformed to God, to be formed in Christ’s image. As Christ puts it, in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is the law, this is the demand, as we see in James 2:8-9: “You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” This is harsh, as it accuses us. For we do show partiality. We do not live perfect lives. There are probably many of us who hide our talents, who keeps them to ourselves, instead of doing something with them to the glory of God and to the benefit of our fellow human beings.
But it is not our deeds that are the point here, but how we are formed. I like to point out that the Greek word for sin, hamartía, is not first and foremost a juridical term. It is taken from the art of archery and it means to ‘miss the target.’ Sin, then, means to miss the bigger picture. When we sin, we are not looking to Christ and to our goal to be formed in His image, to be conformed to God. It is therefore not a juridical word, but a much more dynamic and metaphysical word. It is not primarily about our individual deeds, but about us, and the way we are shaped and the way we shape our own lives. When the Bible talks about sin and damnation, it is not principally about punishment or the deeds, but about how we are as persons. When we don’t hit the target, we ourselves affected, because we don’t live up to what we were created for, to live in communion with God, with the creator, He who is love and light, and be led by Him.
But it doesn’t stop there. This is not the last word. Because we get help to get back on track, and we need that help. In the Bible and in the church we call this the gospel. This is a translation of the Greek word evangélion, which simply means good news. And the good news is that God came to us and became one of us, a human being, in Jesus Christ. The gospel is Jesus. And Jesus is the one who took responsibility for us. God took on the job Himself, and sorted everything out. We can call Jesus the true human, not just because He has the same nature as us, but because He lived the perfect and true human live, the life we are called to live. But we may participate in Him, and share His life. Because God became man, he could make amends for us. We have a calling to live in Christ, but it has its starting point in what He has given us, not in our own efforts. As Jesus says it in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” But it might be difficult. It is a bit difficult to admit that we need help. We would like to have a recipe for how we can improve. But that often only leads to weariness and heavy burdens. Because we can always do better. No, we should rest and share in what is impossible for us to achieve by our own power, but completely possible for God. Our life in Jesus is actually about Jesus’ life in us. In Philippians 2:12, St. Paul says to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” But in the next verse, 2:13, he adds: “For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
We are all called to work in God’s kingdom, for the same pay, the fellowship with Jesus, but not everyone has to work the same amount. This is about reaching out our hands, accepting what God wants to give us and letting Him work in us. Gods grace surpasses all understanding, and we all have one task; to follow Jesus wherever he goes, until one day we get to see God as he really is, in his perfect kingdom.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Kindle ed. (London: William Collins, 2020), 88.