Jack Hardaway
]
I’m good at digging holes.
Lots of practice.
I’ve worn out shovels, the tip of the blade develops a sort of U-turn.
I’ve snapped off Lord knows how many shovel handles.
I used to bury things as a child. Finding excuses to dig, I’d bury secret treasures, broken toys, and secret potions made of berries, twigs and mud. I’d draw maps for people to follow. Later I’d dig them back up to see what happens under the ground over time, as Randy Travis sings, “exhuming things better left alone.”
And then there were all those attempts to dig a hole to China. How far till we reach hot lava? How far till everything turns upside down?
We still have this deep pit back in the brambles in our back yard that my children dug, the lawn mower keeps falling into it as I cut around it. I wish they would come back and fill it in…
I mostly dig holes now to plant trees and shrubs and perennials. I bury dead animals and pets.
There is the memorial garden here at church, I dig the holes for the ashes when we commit our dead to the ground.
I frequently dig up things though, while doing all this digging, old treasures, old garbage, ancient coca cola bottles, and lots of marbles, my favorites are the big shooter marbles from the old fiber glass plant, an old Barlow pocket knife. I carry that with me most of the time.
We dig up things.
We bury things.
We bury our hearts.
We hide our fears and pain.
We bury God.
And we reap strange twisted fruit when we do that. Hate and despair become an invasive species.
We have to be careful what we bury.
Things don’t stay in the ground.
The ominous parable of the Talents that we hear today is a warning about that.
We usually hear that the parable is about being good stewards of our God given talents or else face a harsh accounting. It is about that, but there is more, it is about something more primal than that.
It is about being active disciples with a productive faith, a life of love, conversion, forgiveness, healing, servanthood, baptism and proclamation of good news.
It is about that as well, but there is more than that as well, something murky and dark.
It is a parable of extremes, an extreme amount of wealth, literally the wealth of empires, being entrusted without directions, and extreme dividends and vast returns, and extreme judgement with outer darkness and gnashing teeth, negative integers, less than zero. A parable of less than zero.
This parable is all these things.
And underneath all this is a warning about burying things.
A parable of warning about what we bury.
Our hearts, our fears, our pains, and we bury God along with all that, digging that hole that takes us to the outer darkness. Where we become less than zero. Our teeth gnashing out in hatred and despair like a wounded animal.
God rises.
We thought we could bury God.
But the tomb is empty.
When Jesus rose he emptied the earth of her dead, the chains of death have been broken and rusted away.
Yet we cling to what we bury, dragging us down into outer darkness.
It is an ominous parable about the murky parts of our souls and our lives.
And God is there, exhuming our hearts.
Live without fear.
Live with a radiant trust and hope.
That is the fruit of the resurrection.
We don’t have to hide anymore.
No more fear.
Abide no hatred, abide no despair.
Trust and hope and love with reckless abandon.
That old shovel has been broken.