The Adam-Shawn Dialogue - The Eye is the Lamp of the Body

For Shawn's responses please see his blog

Hi Shawn:

I heard, perhaps, the best sermon I have ever listened to yesterday by Bill Britt of Peachtree Road United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. In the sermon he reminds us of the peculiar nature of the Gospel of Matthew in which a major theme is "the God you believe in is the God you get" - which is to say that the parables are particularly construed and told in such a way as for there to be an opportunity for the reader or hearer of the parable to discern who God is.

His example is the Parable of the Talents in which a rich man puts his slaves in charge of his estate as he goes away on a business trip. Rev. Britt mentions some scholarly work that would place the worth of a talent at about $500,000 and so surmises that the first slave is given $2.5 million to invest; the second slave is given $1 million to invest; while the last slave is given half a million bucks to invest while the rich man is away.

When the master returns from his trip he calls in his slaves to see what they had done to invest his money. The first slave had doubled the $2.5 million; the second slaved had doubled the $1 million and to each of these slaves the master exlaimed, "Wonderful, you are a good and faithful servant. I left you in charge of only a little, but now I will put you in charge of much more. Come and share in my happiness!"

Finally ther third slave comes in and says, "Sir, I know that you are hard to get along with. You harvest what you don't plant and gather crops where you haven't scattered seed. I was frightened and went out and hid your money in the ground. Here is every single coin."

This upset the master. He looked at the slave and said, "You are lazy and good-for-nothing! You know that I harvest what I don't plant and gather crops where I haven't scattered seed. You could have at least put my money in the bank, so that I could have at least earned interest on it."

"Now your money will be taken away and give to the slave who has the $5 million.! Everyone who has something will be given more, and they will have more than enough. But everything will be taken away from those who don't have anything. You are a worthless slave, and you will be thrown out into the dark where people will cry and grit their teeth in pain."

I find the parable so intriguing because some of the study notes one will find in some Bibles refer the reader back to Gandhi's particular intrigue of Christian Scripture - the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus claims,

"Your eyes are like a window for your body. When they are good, you have all the light you need. But when your eyes are bad, everything is dark. If the light inside you is dark, you surely are in the dark."

What the preacher is getting at is that if we look at the Parable of the Talents through the eyes of the 3rd slave we will only see a Master who is wrathful and vengeful, even though the parable does not seem to show any evidence of the Master doing anything evil. The Master gives over a portion of his riches and blesses those who use them properly; whereas he angers when one of the slaves only sees the Master as a tyrant because he has no idea what to do with the blessing of opportunity that the Master has offered the slave. The Master had given opportunity to each of his slaves according to what he had seen in them and to those who were able to use the opportunity for good he bestowed gracious and lavish compliments upon them, and entrusted them with more. The one who saw the Master as vengeful, on the other hand, did nothing with the opportunity, and therefore, the Master calls his slave, in some translations, "WICKED" and "lazy!"

You have to see that in this parable everything in it actually means something else. Jesus begins telling by saying that "God's kingdom is also like what happened when a man went away and put his three slaves in charge of all he owned." This parable is about how we use the resources of God's reign to bestow blessings upon God and God's created world. Do we see God as a tyrant or as the provoker of Apocalyptic Welcome?

I've heard Dr. Tony Campolo mention how young people will often come to him and say, "I don't believe in Jesus anymore." He responds to the young people saying, "Well, tell me about this Jesus you don't believe in."

"Well," says the young person, "I don't believe in a Jesus who hates gays; I don't believe in a Jesus who looks to bestow hatred; I don't believe in a Jesus that sleeps with right-wing politicians; I don't believe in a Jesus of justice, but no mercy; I don't believe in a Jesus of hellfire, etc..."

Dr. Campolo responds saying, "I'm glad to hear that. I don't believe in that Jesus either."

What I'm getting at is that, as preachers who have been called first, and foremost, by Jesus Christ himself, we have the opportunity to create opportunities for people to fall in love with the God of opportunity. We cannot force people to see the world through the lens by which we view it; but we can spend time attempting to provoke them into being convinced that God is not blood-thirsty and looking for new recruits for the what the Book of Revelation calls "the lake of burning sulphur." But, rather, that this God is "out to get them." This God is looking for an opportunity to transform the worldview of young people like your son. This God is looking for an opportunity to be a fundamental visage of Truth for your son. This God is looking for ways to fall even more deeply in love with your Son. This God is looking to share opportunity with your son.

Opportunities to walk boldly along that road from Nazareth to Jerusalem to offer SHALOM to each city and household that is passed by while carrying a cross upon which you may die for believing that God's provoking vision of hope for a restored humanity and revived creation is actually a bigger and better dream than my own vision of unity.

"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light." (Matt. 6:22)