Proper
28A 2014
Father Adam Trambley
November 16, 2014 St.John’s Sharon
This morning’s gospel is Jesus’ parable of talents. The word talent here means a huge chunk of
ancient Roman money – usually about a seventy pound piece of silver or
gold. One scholar said it would be
approximately equivalent to what one person would earn over their entire
life.
The story is familiar to us.
The wealthy master calls in three slaves to take care of portions of his
huge fortune while he goes away on a trip.
One slave gets five talents, another two and a third one. The first two slaves work with the money and both
of them double it. The third one buries
it in the ground, which might have evoked a chuckle among the farmers in Jesus’
audience who knew how to grow things and knew you couldn’t plant silver and
make a silver tree come up. When the
master comes back, he commends the first two slaves, saying, “Well done, good
and trustworthy slave,” or, in the older translations, “Well done, good and
faithful servant.” Then he promises them
that they will be in charge of many more things and they should enter into the
joy of their master. The “joy of their
master” is another metaphor for eternal life or life in the Kingdom of
God. We’ll talk about the many things
they might end up in charge of in a few minutes.
Then the third slave, who for simplicity’s sake we’ll call
“Curly,” comes forward and says some harsh things about the master, who
upbraids him for not at least giving the money to the bankers for a little bit
of interest, and then casts him into the outer darkness. This rather unsympathetic interaction with
the master and Curly raises a few questions.
We might hope that Curly would at least get credit for not losing the
money. He returns what was given
him. There were no FDIC insured bank
accounts in those days, and the people who offered interest on borrowed money
were generally money-changers, shop keepers who were buying inventory now in
hopes of selling it for a better price later, or the kind of charlatans,
con-men and other scoundrels that make great villains in Western movies. Curly could have been commended for avoiding
them and keeping his money intact. But
instead he is punished, and not just because Moe and Larry made better
investments in matzo futures.
The key to understanding this parable comes as we translate
the master’s highly-valued money into what is actually of value to our Divine
Master in real life. If the increase is
all about buying power and we are just talking about greedy acquisition, then
this story should bother us. But if
Jesus’ point is about using everything we have to invest in the Kingdom of God
and to get good returns, then Curly’s lack of initiative is appalling. Given the state of the world, we can’t
justify sitting on our hands and keeping safely to ourselves. We have to invest whatever we have and use it
to obtain the best return possible. Moe
and Larry both get a good return, and God rewards them for going out, taking
risks, and finding a way to increase the wealth of his Kingdom, a wealth that
for us means helping people turn their lives around and live into the Kingdom
of God.
Now given the framework of the parable, I have what may be
some bad news for us here at St. John’s.
We have been given a lot of talents.
We have beautiful buildings that many people, including many of you,
have kept up over the years. We have
held onto to a liturgical heritage that still touches lives in a sanctuary that
has been filled with years of prayers. We
have financial resources and community connections and clergy with strong
seminary training and a tradition of doing things well for large groups of
people and perhaps a millennium’s worth of combined experience in this
sanctuary with prayer and outreach and sharing our faith. We are at least the five-talent servants of
the Lord. What we are called to do is
what we have been trying to do: throw everything we can into any investment we
can find that could increase our yield for the Kingdom of God.
We are directing our investments in the avenues described by
our strategic directions: creative, passionate and beautiful worship; building
loving relationships; strengthening youth and families; meeting people’s basic
needs; and participating in the revitalization of our wider communities. St. John’s collectively is using many
different resources including building space, our time and our expertise for a
variety of initiatives, and as individuals we are also committing much of what
we have to offer. I would take a minute
here, though, just to highlight a few resources that I think we are always
tempted to bury and protect rather than to invest expecting a return.
One of our often underutilized talents is our family, and
especially our children. What I mean
here is that I think we often view our young people as fragile, vulnerable
entities who need to have church stuff poured into them until they grow
up. Yet our children are some of the
best ministers we have. Children’s
compassion, energy, acceptance and love can be huge gifts to other children and
to adults. Our young people are actually
on the front lines of ministry with their peers, many of whom are facing unbelievable
struggles. They are proficient with new
technology that connects them and the world in new ways, they are looking for a
purpose worthy of their lives, and they have the energy to create new
life-changing ministries. Our job is to
lift them up and send them out to do the work God gives them to do. We are called to recognize the importance of
their unique ministries, coach, encourage, equip, and support them, and find a
valuable place for their work within our church community. What I’m talking about is more than just a
youth group or Sunday school, or even getting youth together to do something, as
important as some of those activities are to lay a foundation for them. We also need to expect them to bring light
into all parts of their lives in creative, dynamic and loving ways, especially
in those parts of their lives that seem to have little to do with church. This is not the way we have always done
things, but it is likely the way we will need to help our children and youth in
the future. And to you young people
listening, I am serious. You have an
important work to do for God right now, with the people you know and spend your
time with. Be a friend. Get your buddies together and make a difference. Change the world. Ask God for the guidance and courage to do
what he is calling you do to, and let us know how we can help.
Another underutilized resource is prayer. So many people and so many places receive
much less prayer than they need. Our time and attention and desires and
imagination are all pieces that we can either dedicate to prayer or allow to
run amok along avenues of fear, gossip and hysteria. The more we pray that troubling situations
are turned into beachheads for the coming Kingdom of God, the more we will see
our invested talents reap significant returns.
I can’t think of a single thing we have accomplished here over the past
five years that did not happen after focused and often sustained prayer. We can learn to develop habits of prayer for
ourselves so that whenever we feel anxious or afraid or hear about depressing
or bad news, we lift it up to God. By asking
for God’s peace and love in the midst of a difficult situation, by thinking
about God’s presence descending and God’s light shining where it hasn’t been
realized previously, we begin already to make a difference and open the path
for other practical forms of problem-solving and assistance.
I’m sure all of us can think of many other contemporary
correspondences to the talents of the parable.
Whatever our resources, the important point is to deploy them for the
growth of the Kingdom.
Then our master says to us, “Well done good and faithful
servant. You have been faithful with
little, so I will put you in charge of much.
Enter into the joy of your master.”
On one level, the increased responsibilities and rewards can be
immediate in this life. Once we know how
to help a few people in some way, we can teach and oversee others to help many
more people in the same way. We also can
know the joy of being used by God for fruitful ministry and see the Kingdom of
God expanding. But on another level,
this reward is also part of the eternal reward of the Kingdom of God in ways we
may not usually think about.
A number of people were talking about this idea in the
lounge last week after church, so I think it is worth mentioning. Before the fall in the Garden of Eden, human
beings were placed in the Garden to till the soil. Our natural state is to be productive,
working on worthwhile things. We are to
engage in good work that helps us build community, that includes proper time
for Sabbath, and links us more closely with God and one another. We might almost think of it as playing in the
garden, but the fruit of the labor does indeed matter. Since we were working before the fall, there
is no reason to think that after the resurrection we won’t also have work to
do. Again, that work will be good work,
work that doesn’t hurt our backs or dull our senses or alienate us from our
labor. But the Kingdom of God is not
described as an eternal golf game or lying around on cloud pillows watching
reruns of “Touched by an Angel.” The
new, eternal Jerusalem is described as a heavenly city about the size of half
the continental United States with a vibrant, dynamic life. When we die there may be a time of peaceful
rest, but the eternal resurrected life will be much more creative and fun and
fruitful in all the best ways. If God
says that we will be put in charge of much, we can probably expect our
post-resurrection life to be engaging and amazing indeed. We can’t really say much more specifically,
but don’t expect the good work we are doing now to end because we die. Instead, it is likely to get much better,
with increasing returns on the talents we invest.
So invest your talents well on behalf of the Kingdom of
God. May all of us someday hear, “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.”
