There was a teller sent from God, whose name was John, whose name was Gwendolyn, whose name has been forgotten, whose name is known only to us. They came as tellers to tell about the light, about the love, about the times like this, so that all might believe that love is true and triumphs; and God’s actual, so that all might believe that among us we’ll find God already and always.
The Rt. Rev. Phoebe Roaf, bishop of the Diocese of West Tennessee, makes her annual visit to Calvary.
Friends, we live at the heart of a beautiful and hurting city called Memphis. Jesus insists that we keep alert and awake and to live as though God might walk into our lives at any moment, as God does in every moment when a stranger walks into them. What will we be up to? What should we be caught offering to God’s beloved world on that day?
Psalm 100 invites us into a spirit of intimacy. It reminds us that we are made by God, we belong to God, and we are the sheep of God’s pasture. We are entrusted to the intimate, loving care of our shepherd – a shepherd willing to leave the 99 to come find and care for any one of us who is lost. Ultimately, the Psalm reminds us that God is good.
When we begin with the conviction that God is the one who calls to us in the garden, or the good shepherd who takes off after us when we stray, and if we believe the kingdom of God is a realm of gift and grace, not scarcity and fear, we might pause before assigning every characteristic of the master in the parable to God. And in that pause we may notice that fear of the master is what caused the man to bury his talent in the ground. Fear is the problem here, not the point.