16 November 2008

Matthew 25:14-30

The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew is unrelenting. If you’ve got one of those bibles that prints Jesus’ words in red (which of course is how he spoke; in red), the entire chapter, all forty verses, is in red. It’s all Jesus, all the time.

This chapter is divided into three sections. We heard the first section last week. If you remember, that was about the wise and foolish bridesmaids or virgins, some of whom didn’t have enough oil for their lamps and are then locked out of the wedding feast due to their lack of prudence. You might recall, if you were here or read my sermon online, that I said that that parable was about the endtimes; about the waiting of the church, especially the early Christian church in the later decades of the first century. They were expecting Jesus back and a good follower of The Way needed to be prepared.

The middle section is what we heard today. It too is a parable that speaks of the endtimes and how the faithful (or unfaithful) will be treated when that moment arrives. And just as last week’s parable was not an etiquette guide for those going to weddings in the ancient Near East, neither is today’s reading going to be helpful to anyone who seeks to understand economics (and I understand that there are actually people who do understand economics). This story from Jesus is not about how to invest and I doubt if it will help anyone out in the current fiscal, um, shall we say, ‘unpleasantness’ in which we find ourselves.

I suppose you’re wondering about the final third of this chapter. Well, it’s the lectionary reading for next week. I don’t want to give anything away therefore so you’ll just have to return to find out what’s next. I will say though that the relentlessness continues and again, no one is let off the hook.

No, if you are looking for the easy-way faith, don’t expect to find it in Matthew twenty-five. It’s not for the faint of heart really. I should think that any new converts to the faith, if they read this chapter right off, would turn on their heels and run, if they knew what was good for them and if they really understood what was going on in these verses.

You can’t really blame Jesus though. Chapter 26, the very next words after all this chapter, begins with Jesus telling the disciples that he’s going to be crucified when they get to the observance of Passover in two days. He’s got a lot on his mind, I would guess, and the thick density of his disciples and followers may have been utmost; and by thick density, I’m not saying that they were crowded together into a small room, if you catch my drift. They’ve been shown as needing way too much explanation…they were a little slow at times in the uptake.

Jesus needed to pack plenty in his teachings in these his last days with them and knew it. So he hit them hard with the cold hard facts of faith, unsettling as it might have been. And of course Matthew knew his audience too. He includes these parables because this need to grasp the difficult parts of faith was paramount in the minds of the original audience of his gospel.


So…we have these three servants…or slaves as they are called in the translation we heard. One is extremely trustworthy and is given five talents. Another is a little less dependable it seems, at least in his master’s eyes, and is given two talents. And then there’s the third one who’s barely trusted and is given the least amount of all: only one talent.

I read one translation of this passage in which the translator changed the amounts to $5,000, $2,000 & $1,000 but I don’t think that does it justice. For one thing, it takes away from us our imagination of just how much we’re talking about here. Evidently, this parable is referring to ridiculously large sums of money. No master is going to trust any slave with these amounts…no matter how trustworthy and reliable. It’s a ludicrous story to begin with, with preposterous amounts of money involved. But that’s exactly Jesus’ point and we lose that sense if we assign too small a value to what we’re talking about here. God’s grace and care and love for us are also ludicrously out of proportion to our own dependability and soundness. We, mere slaves as it were in the ongoing history of faith and the realm of God, are entrusted with enormous, massive amounts of talents ourselves by God. They’re just given to us, handed over, undeservedly and unconditionally.

That, in and of itself, is a pretty good sermon to hear and I could stop right here right now and hope that you go away a little more convinced of God’s grace and that you are a beloved child of God. That’s not a bad message to get for most of us. And if you’ve ever dealt with the more rigid faith proclamations from pulpits across Christianity that repeatedly remind you and everyone else just how worthless you and we are, then this is a good message to take away.

But, alas, there is more. And if we stop here, feeling all warm inside about ourselves, well then we don’t quite get the whole of it. So hold onto those warm feelings and remember that indeed you are loved; loved enormously, stupendously, beyond all reasonable expectations by God.

But let’s turn back to our parable for this morning. The master, this spendthrift, beneficent master, goes away. We don’t know why, we don’t know where but we do know it was for a long time. And in this absence these three slaves treat their talents differently. The first two trade and invest and are able to not only increase but double the amounts they were given. The third one though just buries his; he puts it in a safe place. He doesn’t want the responsibility or the work involved in doing what the other two are out doing.

We all know what happens next. The master returns and asks for an accounting of the money. The first two bring the original amounts that they were given (I guess we would call that the principal today) as well as the amounts that they got in return for their efforts. And they are handsomely rewarded as they are invited into the joy of the master. But our third slave…well, this third slave digs up the one talent that had been buried and returns it, and essentially tells the master that he’s not all that easy to deal with in the first place and here’s the money back but nothing more.

The master is outraged…infuriated…livid. From a theatrical point of view, I actually think he overplays this scene. “What’s the fuss?” I want to interject, “you got your money back. It wasn’t frittered away or spent on cheap booze, easy sex, or even the latest electronic gadgets. Relax, would ya?” Of course, part of that is my discomfort with conflict and my desire to help the underdog, but there’s 21st century therapy for that sort of thing.

But the master reacts as he will, as all masters and mistresses do, and takes the one lousy talent, gives it to the slave who originally had five and then orders that this third slave be thrown out; out into the outer darkness. There’s wailing there and there’s gnashing of teeth; it’s not a pretty place to be.


So, how’s that warm feeling inside you doing now? Has it chilled a little perhaps? I know mine has; it does everytime I hear this parable, from when I first remember hearing it in Sunday School in the basement of that rural Methodist church until this very day.

Then, back in the Orange Methodist Church Sunday School, a rather young Gerry Brague heard this story and felt badly for the third slave, thinking the master had done a great injustice to my new friend, this third slave. I didn’t get the fact then that parables meant more than they are. I wasn’t always perceptive of the line between fact and fiction (I thought cartoon characters were real people for quite a long time) and wasn’t very aware of the moral-to-a-story device.

Of course now I have a degree after my name; letters with periods. So I not only am able allegedly to dig deeper into the story but I get to stand here and expound on it, theologically of course. But frankly, I don’t feel much better, even with those letters and periods following my name and that young Gerry Brague’s reaction is not far off from this supposedly scripturally-astute one. Because if in fact the master is sitting in for God in the parable, I look at the rest of the story and at myself and find way too many similarities between me and that third slave than I do with the other two slaves and there goes that warm feeling.

I am much too quick to take whatever God has given me and hide it all away, thinking it’s mine to do with as I please and not an investment on which God expects, no, on which God demands a return. I am digging holes all over the place secreting away riches galore. Sure, I’ll return them, pretty much untouched and unused, some may even still be in their protective wrapping, but then it will be too late. Then I’ll find out that there was supposed to be more that I brought back; more than the original amount; more than what God gave me to begin with.

And if you think now that that warm feeling has dropped a goodly number of degrees, Fahrenheit or Celsius, just think what will happen to it in the cold, outer darkness. Brrrrr. It sounds worse than North Dakota in February and we all know how I feel about northern winters.

And so, like Ebenezer Scrooge, who awakes Christmas morning crying out something along the lines of “did I miss it, did I miss it?” I look around me and realize that I’m still here on this earth and I can dig up whatever has been given to me and that I’ve hidden and I can begin to use them and make them multiply, right here, right now.

If you’ve been hiding, squirreling away, veiling, burying, covering, or concealing the gifts, talents, and resources that God has given to you and continues to imbue in you, then I urge you to think about these final lessons from Jesus’ time on earth. And bring them out so that you’ll see a vast increase in your, no, in God’s investment.