"The Treasure in You"
Pastor Roger Gustafson
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Matthew 25:14-30
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
A reference to professional football might seem like a strange way to start a sermon, but why not? It’s Sunday, Football Day in America; most of us will spend a generous amount of time this afternoon and this evening worshiping at the Shrine of the Blessed NFL, so here goes:
To watch Aaron Rodgers quarterback the Green Bay Packers – the perfect Green Bay Packers, I might add, and that’s a lot for a Vikings fan to choke out – to watch Rodgers quarterback the Pack is to watch someone who is absolutely firing perfectly on all cylinders. You get a sense of this when the camera zooms in on Rodgers after a play or maybe when he’s coming out of a huddle, and he’s got that grin. It’s a grin that says, “I’m the right guy in the right place at the right time, doing exactly what I was put on this earth to do. Life is good.”
Aaron Rodgers would fit beautifully into this parable this morning. It isn’t a story about football, however, it isn’t even a story about money, although it sounds that way. It’s the Parable of the Talents. As Jesus tells it, a wealthy man entrusts several different amounts of money to several different servants, based on his knowledge of their capabilities. And then, with no instruction about just what they’re supposed to do with what they’ve been given, he leaves. In the ancient world, a talent was a unit of money, usually silver, usually weighing about a hundred pounds. A talent was thought to be about 15 years’ salary for the average worker, so we’re talking about very tidy sums. The first servant was given five talents, or 75 years’ wages; the second was given two talents, or 30 years’ wages; and the third was given just one talent, 15 years’ wages – still not too shabby, if you can imagine 15 years worth of your own salary at one time and in one place.
We’re not told the motivation of the first two servants, only that as soon as the master leaves they go out and do business with their investments. In both cases, they were spectacularly successful, doubling their master’s investment. They become the rock stars of Wall Street! But it’s the third servant who catches our attention, and he gets our attention because of his investment strategy and the fate that it earns for him.
In the financial industry, they tell us that the most precious commodity out there is not money; it’s information. If you want to increase your holdings, or want to increase your chances of increasing your holdings, you have to have good information. Wrong information, or good information applied wrongly, can seal your doom. So we don’t know what kind of information that these first two servants had about the master, but we do know what the third servant knew about him, or at least what he thought he knew, because he tells us: “I knew that you were a harsh man … and I was afraid.” He’s afraid of losing what’s been entrusted to him, so he buries it in the ground, ensuring that it will not be either stolen or used. With him, it isn’t “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” but “nothing ventured, nothing lost.” According to the law of the day, burying money that had been entrusted to you was considered prudent, wise; he’s playing it safe. But the master isn’t interested in safety; he is indeed a man of great expectation, with those who risk much on his behalf being rewarded, and those who risk nothing losing everything.
Language historians say that our modern definition of the word “talent” – a skill or ability in the learning or doing of something – comes directly from this parable in Matthew’s gospel. So there are a couple of ways of interpreting this story and applying it to our life today. In one sense, this is about accountability, about profit and loss; it’s about stewardship in its broadest sense, about risk and reward. But that interpretation of the story is predictable and boring, and since Jesus is never either predictable or boring, there’s bound to be a deeper meaning for us.
I’d like to call our attention to a particular verse in this story. It’s verse 29: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” What’s the it at the heart of this verse? Again, it’s not a story about money, about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, about investments. This is a story about imagination, about vision: seeing what you have, and then seeing more; multiplying it. Imagination – that’s what these first two workers possess: They see what they have, and they see what the might have if they apply themselves with energy and creativity.
We don’t know what the master would have said if the first two workers had come to him empty-handed and said, “Sorry, boss, but we blew it. We thought we had a good opportunity, we gave it our best, but we lost it all, every last shekel.” I’m willing to bet that the master’s response would have been exactly the same: “Well done, good and trustworthy slave! You saw a possibility, and you acted.”
This third man sees only what he has, sees only the security of the moment. He’s afraid of losing it, so he buries it, making sure that it isn’t stolen, but also making sure that it doesn’t get used. His fear drives him to inaction. He has a fearful picture of the master, and in his fear he simply drops the talent into a pit of uselessness. As he rejects the gift, he effectively rejects the giver, and his fearful picture of the master becomes reality.
Our confirmation students have a journal question to work on this week, a question that comes from this story. Here it is: “What words and images would you use to describe God, and where do you think those words and images come from?” That’s a question for our confirmands, but it’s a good one for the rest of us to think about as well. How do your expectations about God shape your experiences of God?
It’s true in our everyday lives, isn’t it, that what we expect does much to shape what we experience. For example, if you see conflict as terrifying and something to avoid no matter what, then it probably will be that for you. If you see conflict as a chance to grow, it probably will be that for you. Is a crisis a threat or an opportunity? Is someone who disagrees with you an enemy or an extremely valuable colleague? Again and again, in ways large and small, what we expect does much to determine what we experience – with people and with God.
You may know people who have been able to look at what they have and then look into the future with imagination toward what might be, and sooner or later what they envision becomes reality. These are people who live out what Robert F. Kennedy meant when he famously said, “Some people see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’”
Well over a century ago a man named Milton Wright became a pastor in the Church of the United Brethren. Pastor Wright was a smart man, hard-working and possessed of a keen intellect. He rose through the ranks of the church, finally becoming a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren. He was an intellectual, even fancied himself a bit of a scientist; so it was no surprise when one Sunday he got up into the pulpit and declared that all this talk about people flying, about heavier-than-air flight, was contrary to the laws of nature and contrary to the laws of God, and that it would never happen.
Bishop Wright had two sons, named Wilbur and Orville; and they were able to look beyond what their father saw, to imagine a future very different than the present, and through hard work and courage and inventiveness, were able to bring that future into reality.
Yes, this is a story about faith and faithful living. Faith is not simply having a list of comforting ideas about God, and faithful living isn’t about getting those beliefs right and then living a good life by avoiding bad things. Jesus is telling us that faith isn’t about ideas about God; it’s about actively investing our lives – our lives – in enterprises that do not benefit us but benefit the Kingdom of God; it’s about expanding our horizons about what’s possible as people of faith.
God has given us talents to use, each of us according to God’s knowledge about our capabilities. He’s wasted nothing on us; all that we have is useful to God. The fact that we don’t’ have the same skills and abilities as our neighbor is only a sign of our diversity, something that God obviously values. God has already given us all that we need to do what we can; to step aside, to move to the sidelines and fail to do what we can because we can’t do it as well as someone else is not a sign of modesty – it is a failure to trust that God will use what we can do.
So here’s a question to talk about over lunch: What gift has been given uniquely to you? What talent do you possess, what treasure has God very intentionally placed into your hands, and how might you put it to maximum use? What opportunity exists, or what opportunity might you create? Maybe it’s an opportunity to do just one small thing, but it just might be the one small thing that God needs to have done today.
Now is the time, today is the day, to focus not on our losses but on our treasures, and to decide – decide – how to put it to use, for God’s sake. Amen.