Zephaniah 1.7,12-18, Matthew 25.14-30
Second Sunday Before Advent, 15 November 2026, Austwick
So let us consider this story of Jesus, a parable of a man who was frightened of his boss. So fearful of his master’s wrath that he was paralysed into inaction.
Knowing that his boss was a harsh man, reaping where he did not sow, and gathering where he did not scatter seed; he was afraid, and went and hid his boss’s investment money in the ground, so that at least he could give him back what was his.
And, true to character, when his master found this employee had failed to capitalise on the investment, failed to increase his wealth by any amount at all, in anger he condemned him, called him ‘worthless’, and threw him out into that terrifying place where many losers end up in scripture: the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The story resonates because we know there are harsh and frightening bosses in our world. You may have even worked for one, so you’d know what a terrifying experience that can be. The extreme cases who come to mind are the plantation bosses who subjugated their slaves with brutal force: treating those slaves as ‘worthless’. Their inhumane behaviour haunts our history and repeats today in the figures of gang masters who entice people to migrate with the promise of work, only to seize their documents and force them into the harshest of working and living conditions under the threat of violence to them or their families. [1]
But maybe we’ve all suffered under someone – a boss, or a teacher, perhaps even a family member – who has treated us cruelly, told us we were worthless, made us feel useless. And as a consequence has disempowered and diminished us. By contrast, how we’ve flourished when someone has uplifted us and influenced us for good.
When church friends who sang in their school choir and had music tuition at home told me I couldn’t sing for toffee, I believed them and stopped taking an interest in making music (though I always loved listening to it). There was, of course, some truth in what they said, I was untutored and couldn’t read music. But years later on the island of Iona the musicians John Bell and Graham Maule told me and the rest of our motley gathering that we had the voices of apprentice angels; told us to disbelieve those voices in our heads who’d previously put us down and condemned us to a life of musical impotence; handed us music sheets and launched us immediately into song. They did this so persuasively that before long we were taking parts in complicated choral pieces and our hearts rose as decades of denigration melted way. I still can’t properly read music but years of encouragement from John and Graham and other Iona Community musicians has taught me enough to make the basic connections between those little figures on the page and sounds coming out of my mouth. [2]
So the parable of a man who was frightened of his boss tells a familiar tale of how people who are diminished by those who have influence over them, cower, shrink and are lost.
This story is part of Jesus’ lifelong mission to teach the kingdom of heaven as being different from the kingdoms of this world; to persuade people that, despite what they had been taught, God is no tyrant, full of wrath and quick to condemn and punish, but God is one who brings salvation to the lost, liberation to those who are bound in physical or spiritual chains, good news to all.
The scriptures which came before Jesus are stuck within the notion of a violent God. Our psalm this morning is just one example among many: “we are afraid of your wrathful indignation,” the Psalmist dares to tell God. Cowering before this wrathful God, we must accept that “the sum of our days is but labour and sorrow”, and learn to “apply our hearts to wisdom”, which sounds rather like doing what we’re told, however crushing an experience this may be.
Jesus’ mission is to subvert this idea of God and to introduce the idea of the God who longs to save broken humanity, to redeem those of us pulled out of shape by our experiences of being diminished. One way he does this is to tell stories like this parable of the man who was frightened of his master, to provoke us to question the integrity of the tyrannical boss and to ask, surely this boss can’t be meant to represent God? Surely God rules in a different way, a way of love and compassion and grace?
Paul was the first writer to try to describe the difference which Jesus had made to our understanding of God and our relationship with God. When Paul writes to the Thessalonians about “the day of the Lord” it conjures images of the punitive God who is coming, as we cower in anticipation, to judge us harshly and more than likely condemn us to the outer darkness. But then just a few verses later Paul says, “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”
The wrathful God is sadly still active in our world where slavery and angry condemnation still exist. But emerging since Jesus, is our awareness that our God is not like that. Paul says, “encourage one another and build up each other” in the knowledge of the One whose hearts’ desire is to redeem us, uplift us and inspire us to lives of fulfilment and joy.
God will have his day: but in truth now that does not just mean one day at the end of time. It means every day, for since Jesus’ resurrection every day is one in which we can be freed by the Spirit of God “to live a life of self-giving in imitation of Jesus thanks to our faith in the death-less nature of God”. [3]
God will have his day: and every day is now a day not for wrath but for salvation. Jesus’ resurrection created a continuity between this age and the next. Knowing that we are loved completely, not awaiting condemnation, every day we become capable of sharing in this wonderful life without end.
Notes
[1] Wikipedia, Slavery in the 21st century.
[2] John Bell, An Apprentice Angel. The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, renew:all, The National Retreat Week. This is a short story from John’s book And Then She Said – True Stories Without Morals.
[3] James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, ch. 6, on “The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Delayed Parousia.” As referenced in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary: Reflections, Year A, Proper 27a.
