Eric Lemonholm

November 13, 2011

Pr. 28 A

First Reading European Vacation Acts 16:16-34

Psalm Psalm 90:1-8

Second Reading 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Gospel Matthew 25:14-30

Talents!

 

Jesus told a lot of stories.

Sometimes, they’re hard to understand.  We have to wrestle with them, struggle with them, walk in their light for awhile.

Jesus is always helping us see something about God through his stories.

Each time we hear one, we may learn something new.  We’re stretched, our vision is expanded.

Today is no exception.

Let us begin with a prayer.

God, grant us wisdom and insight into your word this day.  Guide our hearts and our minds.  Grow us in your promised grace, grow us in trusting you, grow us in love for your people, grow us in hope for the coming kingdom of God.  In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, the great storyteller, we pray.  Amen.

 

This story from Matthew’s Gospel is the source of the English word “talent.”  A talent was a lot of money in the Roman Empire.

So, a master gives three slaves a bunch of money

To one, he gives, say 5 million dollars.

To another, he gives 2 million dollars.

To a third, he gives 1 million.

And then, the master leaves and goes far away.

While the master is gone, the first slave puts his five million dollars to work in the stock exchange, trades them with others, and earns five million more.

The second slave also gambles his two mill with others and earns two more.

The third slave, however, was afraid.

What if he invested the one million and lost it all?

He was trapped by fear. 

Barbara Brown Taylor says this about fear: 

“Fear is a small cell with no air in it and no light.  It is suffocating inside and dark.  There is no room to turn around inside it.  You can only face in one direction, but it hardly matters since you cannot see anyhow.  There is no future in the dark.  Everything is over.  Everything is past.  When you are locked up like that, tomorrow is as far away as the moon.”

The third slave was afraid, trapped in his small cell of fear.

Do you remember Martin Luther’s definition of sin as being curved in on yourself?  It sounds a lot like fear, doesn’t it!  When you are curved in on yourself, you are closed to the future, closed to hope.

The slave’s fear was like that.  It closed him off from the community.  He was afraid to trade with the stock exchange, or even to put the money in the bank.

Instead of investing the million in relation with others, the slave’s fear caused him to bury it in the ground.

 

And you know the rest of the story.

The master returns from his long journey.

The first slave’s millions were multiplied, and she was rewarded – the master told her, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”

The second slave’s millions were also multiplied, and he was rewarded and welcomed “into the joy of your master.”

Then the third slave came forth.

“Master, I knew you were harsh.  You reap where you did not sow, you gather where you did not scatter.  You scared me, and I was afraid.  So, I did the most prudent, conservative thing I could do to preserve your million for you – I buried it in the ground and sat on it.  Here it is!”

Needless to say, the master is not pleased with the slave who let fear rule his life.

He could have at least put the money in the bank and earned some interest.

So the master takes the million from the slave, gives it to the one who now has 10, and throws the “wicked and lazy slave” out.

Let me put a twist on this story.

Conventional wisdom in the ancient world said that the safest thing to do with a treasure was to bury it in a field.

So, from a realistic, 1^st century perspective, it’s not that the third slave’s idea was wrong.

 

People in Jesus’ audience would have had a lot of sympathy for this third slave.

In the ancient world, economic growth came very slowly. 

In the first century, if you doubled your wealth in a short period of time, you were probably benefiting at the expense of the poor, who were losing their shirts.

It was not a capitalist society.  If someone became rich, others were probably becoming poor.

That’s how Jesus’ friends saw the world.

They would have been skeptical about the first two slaves.

There’s a story:

A company, feeling it was time for a shake-up, hires a new CEO. This new boss is determined to rid the company of all slackers, so on a tour of the facilities, the CEO notices a guy leaning on a wall. The room is full of workers and he wants to let them know he means business! The CEO walks up to the guy and asks, “And how much money do you make a week?”

A little surprised, the young fellow looks at him and replies, “I make $300.00 a week. Why?” The CEO then hands the guy $1,200 in cash and screams, “Here’s four weeks pay, now GET OUT and don’t come back!”

Feeling pretty good about his first firing, the CEO looks around the room and asks, “Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-off did here?” With a sheepish grin, one of the other workers mutters, “He’s the pizza delivery guy.”^[ii]

In these troubled times, the rich are getting richer, at everyone else’s expense.

Since 1982, the share of America’s income held by the top 1 percent of the population has more than doubled. Today the top 1 percent of Americans holds 39 percent of the nation’s wealth and takes in 25 percent of its annual income.^[iii]

From the end of World War 2 until 1980, the average income for all Americans rose at similar rates.  After 1980, almost all the increase in wealth and productivity has trickled up to the super rich.

William McDonough, a retired CEO of a major bank, had this to say:

“In 1980, the average large company chief executive officer made 40 times more than the average employee in his or her firm.” By 2000, the multiple had risen to over 400 times.  In other words, over the course of 20 years, the multiple CEO pay went up by about 1,000 percent. 

“There is no economic theory, however farfetched, which can justify that increase.  It is also grossly immoral.”^[iv]

 

Does anyone really believe that the numbers are fair? 

That’s what Jesus’ listeners would have wondered about the first two slaves, and that’s why they would have had more sympathy for the third slave than we usually do. 

They would have been suspicious of the master – who, in our day, would be a CEO flying around in a Leer jet.

 

But remember, this is a story that Jesus is telling, a parable about God and us, God’s children.

Jesus uses a situation his followers understood – the relation between a master and his slaves – to share a deeper truth.

It’s about living our Christian faith, while we await the coming of our Lord and Savior.

It’s the good news that God has given each of us great gifts.

Imagine a CEO who gives all her wealth to her workers just to see what good they can do with it.

Each of us has ‘talents’ that are valuable to God.

And God wants us to share them, invest them, with others, in the bank of the world.

 

Use your talents – don’t hide them, or bury them in the ground.

Share them for the good of your neighbor and God’s creation.

God will multiply your talents.

Ultimately, our talents are the gift of God’s love.

What does God give, but love? – grace, forgiveness, peace, faith, justice, hope are all expressions of God’s love.

The very next story Jesus tells in Matthew 25 is the prophecy about the sheep and the goats, where we are all judged by how we share God’s love with the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the imprisoned.

The stories are connected.

What are our talents but God-given opportunities to help others, to make a difference in the world?

What keeps us from using our talents but fear?

That slave buried his talent in the ground out of fear, so no one benefited from it.  It did not multiply.

The others shared their talents, and they multiplied and returned to them.

Isn’t it the same with love?  The more you give it away, the more it comes back to you, the more it grows and spreads in the world.

Back in 1997, my grandparents Bud and Bea had copies made of a saying they had on their wall and gave it to everyone in the family:

Our Family is a circle of strength and love.  With every birth and every union, the circle grows.  Every joy shared adds more love.  Every crisis faced together makes the circle stronger.

What a great image: Our family is a circle of strength and love. 

We are stronger together than we are alone, because the Lord, the God of love is our strength. 

We share good times, we share struggles, we learn and grow and laugh together.  That’s a family – and that’s the kind of family Bea and Bud grew.

But there’s one thing missing in that image of the family as a circle of strength and love: do the members of the circle face inward or outward?

Does fear of change or differences or the unknown cause your family to circle up, to close out the world?

Or, does being in that circle of strength and love give you the courage to move out into the world, sharing God’s love through your talents?

Gandhi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  That’s the kind of courage our Lord Jesus is talking about.

 

Risk something for God.  Devote your talents to God’s work.  Share God’s love.

That’s what this church family, this large “circle of strength and love” is called to do.

We have talents to invest, gifts to multiply, love to share, a future for which to build, a mission to continue in this community.

We are stewards, caretakers of all that God has given to us.  What a privilege!  What an adventure!

 

Prayer:

O most loving Father, you who will us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of yourself and to cast all our care on you who cares for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal and which you have manifested unto us in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.^[v]