Foolish virgins and faithful servants .....

 An article in the Guardian this week explained how the unpaid Chair of a Government task force leading on the development of a vaccine or vaccines to control Covid 19 stands to make a considerable bonus from the profits generated by her investment company.

It could be interpreted from today's Gospel that rather than criticism the response should be:

"Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' ?

But I suspect that is to miss the point of the story which is not a rather simplistic justification of venture capitalism but rather a more profound illustration of what the Gospel means by Grace and Judgement. 

It has been difficult over these past months of lockdown and limitations on our freedom of movement to not read into the Gospels, the Epistles and the Psalms which we have been invited by the Lectionary to consider, a certain reflection on the impact of Covid 19 on our well being as a community and as a church and as a christian family.

There is a reality about what has impacted on us:

Our collective church life has effectively been brought to an end by lockdown and the further restrictions imposed on us.

Our experience of pastoral support by telephone, social distancing, worshipping in masks or again now on Whypay, hardly reflects the key message of the Gospel: 'enter into the joy of your master'.

As I sit in this empty church sharing the words with you via a mobile telephone as together we keep a Eucharistic Fast I can't help wondering whether, like the third servant we are simply burying our treasure in the ground?

Discussing the Virus Jonathon Van-Tam was asked whether due consideration had been given to the impact of lockdown on personal well being and mental health. His response was I felt genuinely sympathetic but there is a sense that we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place.

It is very hard to imagine how we will recover from the impact of Covid on our personal lives, our families, our communities, our church or indeed whether we will survive in anything like our previous shape?

However the Gospel reminds us of another truth regarding the deeper reality of the Kingdom of Heaven. The master in the Gospel offers his servants not just the gift of money to invest, considerable though that money is, he offers the gift of time.

Verse 19 After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. 

I hope that will be true for us also.

We have the gift of time, at some point in the future we will look back on 2020 and reflect on how we have grown, how we have responded to adversity, how we have missed and valued our families, how we have missed and valued the Eucharist, breaking bread together, sharing the peace and joining with Angels in singing hymns to the praise of our God who has delivered us.

There is in this parable a rich array of gifts. Like dinner at Christmas the table is overflowing. A talent is a vast sum of money and is distributed generously by the master.

Like us the servants are entrusted with great wealth. Even in the middle or hopefully closer to the end of a pandemic we are invited to spend time with one another and in God's presence. We are invited into a fulness of grace that is offered continually even through these strange and unreal times. 

As has been said of this parable: 

God can only give faithful love and we are the beneficiaries of that love whatever maybe and whatever the outcome, the virus may be presenting an existential crisis to the world and the Church but ultimately God's love will not be confined or limited.

So in this strangest of strange worlds, with the pandemic affecting the health and wealth and well being of our nation and our church it may be possible, just possible for us to look back on what was and try to glimpse what may yet become and recognise the dynamic of joy that undergirds the life of faith to which we are called and which we enter through our baptism. The joy of the master is the joy of the feast that we have shared and will share again, which is self giving and distributed into the world.

In Matthew 19:29 we read that: 'everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life" .

The obedience of trust is not a burden or a fearful endeavour but the joy of discipleship in which everything is given.

As with last weeks Gospel of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, there is an invitation to a feast.

That feast is the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper. The feast, the awaited parousia, is not some far off event, pie in the sky when you die, it is the sharing of bread and wine at the Sunday table, a table that is overflowing. 

This is the why and the how of our entering the 'joy of our master'.

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