Those sour (and sweet) grapes.
Sermon preached at Trinity by the Sea November 19, Proper 28, Year A
Several years ago, I set out on an intentional journey in my own psyche with some studious guides. I was following in the footsteps of many who have gone before me. The writings of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and other Jungian authors were helpful guides. This intentional inner journey started when, in a clergy support group, my mentor Pittman McGeehee told us that when his first son was born, he thought he’d better learn to understand masculine psychology. So, after being married with no kids for 10 years, when we learned Eli was to be born, Pittman’s words came back to me, and I dug in. I am in some ways still on that journey, but I’m far enough along that I can send this postcard from my travels. The word psyche is the Greek word for soul. So any psychological work we do is soul work. The psychologists I have been in touch with over the years remember that.
Another great quote that has guided my parenting and rule of life is from Carl Jung himself, who
said, “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parent.” Those are haunting words which are akin to the Biblical wisdom “The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
On the one hand, we have the reality of what we inherit from our parents--as they raised us with all the love and care they could muster, they guided us sometimes unconsciously in our developmental years. I had a small crisis of vocation when I learned my dad had been in discernment about being a priest, and that his dad was a Methodist minister for a while, but left the ministry. Was I, in my own vocation, living their unlived lives or my own calling in life? We do have to sort out what we carry with us from our parents, and those who mentored us.
Then there are our children, and in the church we have a lot of children to consider, not just those born to us. What about their lives, and how are we to unburden them to become who God is creating them to be?
Discernment is a word we use in the church to describe the intentional process of decision making. The process is often guided by elders and peers--a trusted circle of support. I started a formal discernment process in 2002 when I was a youth minister in Houston, but my discernment for priesthood really started in High School, when I had this little spiritual nudge to be a priest. I didn’t know what that really meant then, but 30 years later I’m starting to understand what priesthood is about. Vocation, our calling to become who God is creating us to be, is a dynamic thing. Music is part of my vocation. So is being Laura’s husband; sailing, writing, running. Not only is it my responsibility to God to live the gift of life I have been given, it is also an important part of my vocation as a parent. If I am not living my full life, I am leaving a burden to my son, and I hope and pray to empower him to live his own life.
Sometimes parents feel that much of our own life has to be put on hold, and all focus goes to our children. It seems that all those other vocations are somehow suspended or…buried…all, our buried talents. Ah! I knew Jesus would show up somewhere.
I’d like to suggest that there are not as many people in the Gospel reading parable as it seems at first; rather, like my inward journey which had outward results, this parable is a look deep within our spiritual lives. Like good jokes and story telling, Jesus tells the parable of three slaves entrusted with talents, and what they do with the talents. It’s helpful to remember that we get our common use of the word “talent,” referring to our God-given gifts and abilities, from this parable. A talent in the context of the parable, as Jesus tells it, is a large sum of money: 15 years’ day labor.
and return the whole amount to the master, and the third, as we heard, hides it because he already knows how harsh the master is. And what he already knows, or thinks he knows about the master may be part of unraveling this teaching.
Hearing this parable, we may be as perplexed as the original hearers, especially when the master seems to live up to the expectations of the third recipient. If we look at this as a spiritual teaching, we might consider the places in our own lives where fear rules our decision making. What corners of our lives are shadowed by fear of what life has dealt us? Do we “already know” God as one who watches, counting our every mistake ready to deal out punishment?
Where then are we like the first two, who accept the generosity of God’s abundance and double what they have been given? Again, I am referring to our spiritual currency, those parts of ourselves that make us who we are; multiplying the inward gifts of God will have outer world results.
The theme for our stewardship month is from Jeremiah: and the image is a tree rooted by a stream, we are rooted in abundance. The theme is an invitation not to focus on what we are lacking, but to recognize what gifts God has given us, like the first two, who received and used what God had given them.
I would bet that most of us, through discernment, could identify some of those currency reserves we have hidden away, and we may even feel the weight of judgment from God that comes from our own fear. I would like to suggest that the fear was put on us from some other influence than God. Like the third recipient in the parable, we may have that perception, we may have identified that feeling of fear with God, but more likely it came from a burdened parental figure that was eating sour grapes. It has shut down many people’s singing voices--somewhere along our developmental years someone trying to prove their own worth has to tell us how lousy our own voice is, and so we bury it under words like, “I can’t sing.” Folks, if you are human, you can sing. It’s our first form of communication. Take a risk and make a joyful noise unto the Lord…
The outer world, our collective reality we happened to be born into will push its values onto us. Every generation deals with that. I’m suggesting here that Jesus is inviting us to deal with the outer world, but accept guidance from the inner, spiritual world. That is, we will always have responsibilities to navigate the challenges of life, but if we hide away our talents, we will feel like we are living in a teeth-gnashing outer darkness.
I’m so glad I got to see my parents having fun while I was growing up. Not only do I have memories of them enjoying time with other adults, and going on occasional trips together. I remember my dad going off to what seemed like a far-away land called South Texas to hunt deer on his friends ranch. I remember him being part of a group called the Men’s Eatin’ Meetin’ that I was not old enough to attend. I remember my mom spending time with her friends in church and outside of it--I recall traveling as a family, and stopping off at their friends’ homes on the gulf coast… In short, while I know they made sacrifices to take care of us, in my developmental years, I got to see them enjoying this amazing life we have been given.
We all have buried currency; nobody's perfectly complete on this spiritual journey. Learning to discern, to listen deeply to the Holy Spirit’s prompting and nudging can help us unburden those who come after us, as well as friends and family around us. Vocation, our calling in life can be about our outerworld job, but it is much more than that. It is about using all the currency God equips us with to become who God is creating us to become.
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