Some years ago, we had a lovely bishop on the New South Wales Central Coast who would occasionally run a workshop which he entitled ‘Don’t just do something, sit there!’ This was a deliberate response to our modern tendencies towards hyper-activity, including within Church circles. In the bishop’s case, he was hardly neglectful of social justice. He was, for example, very involved in the work of Samaritans (aka Anglicare in the Diocese of Newcastle), and a leading figure in Anglican environmental work. However, what he saw was that, without grace and space for God, even the best of our words and works are at risk of becoming easily frenzied and frustrated. Vitally, theologically, over activism also risks colluding with our world’s self-concerned drives for ever increasing productivity and consumption of various kinds – each of which can become godlike demands upon us. Particularly in Western Christianity, these also make use of ideas like the Protestant work ethic, which can easily reinforce the false idea that we essentially have value through what we do, rather than who we are, and that we are judged by what we achieve. No wonder our lives and world become so stressed, and it becomes so difficult to handle conflicts within, between, and beyond, ourselves. Just ‘being’ is so easily despised – whether this is through simply sitting, contemplation rather than action, space and silence rather than words and works. No wonder God, the source of being and becoming, also so easily disappears. Perhaps however, as the bishop suggested, these may actually be ways back to balance, including helping heal great conflicts. Understood in this way, our Gospel parable today (Matthew 25.14-30) calls us to consider burying our talents, our time and our treasure, as means of divine resistance and renewal…
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