With COVID-19 cases spiking again, this week we’ve moved back to online-only worship for the remainder of the year. In our online worship service today, we’re looking at the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30 and what it might reveal about God’s generosity to us. We’re also looking at 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. Thanks for joining us for worship today, and special thanks to Keith Christensen for reading and to Christin Flucke for sharing music.
For this sermon, I found helpful David Lose’ reflection on his website, Mark Lee’s commentary in Feasting on the Word, pg. 307, and Phillip Martin’s sermon on this parable here.
That’s quite the parable Jesus tells, isn’t it? Three years ago, I ended my sermon on this story by giving a dollar bill to everyone at church. Maybe some of you watching were here that weekend. Maybe you even remember it – it’s a little unusual to get paid to come to worship!
The point was to challenge you to be like the wise slaves, to do something good with the money you were trusted with, give to a good cause, or invest and somehow double it to have more to use, or combine with others. I don’t know how many people followed through, but I remember hearing a couple stories: someone used their dollar to buy a card and mail it to a lonely friend, a couple people gave their money to the food bank.
Well, obviously, I’m not going to hand you money this week – sorry! Don’t worry, even if we were able to be together in the church building, I wouldn’t have used the same illustration again today, so you’re not missing out!
This is still a great story about our call to be good stewards and use wisely the gifts God has trusted to us, but I want to go a little different direction today. Jesus doesn’t say if he intends the master in the story to represent God or not, and if not, you can go some other interesting places with this story, but for now, let’s assume the master is God, and think about what this it says for God to trust us with gifts and talents in the first place.
By the way, we hear talent and we automatically want to jump to thinking about our modern definition of talent, things you’re good at, like maybe you’re talented at dancing, or solving crossword puzzles, or maybe you’re good at small talk, or playing football.
But linguistically, the word talent first meant a large amount of money, a particular measurement. Our modern understanding of talent actually comes from the way the word is used in this parable – talk about the Bible having an influence on our modern world!
Anyway, we’re not talking about small amounts of money in this story. A single talent is about $1.5 million dollars. It’s a lot to be trusted with!
And the master in the story just hands it over to these three slaves, 10 talents to the first one, 5 to the second, and 1 to the third. And notice, the first two slaves are open to receiving. They don’t seem concerned about what might happen. They take the opportunity they’re given and they go out and do something with it. I don’t know what exactly they invest in, maybe a new breed of sheep or something, but their investments go really well, and both of them double their money.
The third slave is evidently much more pessimistic about the stock market, so he goes and hides his talent in the yard. A talent as a measurement is roughly around 75 pounds of gold, literally a big chunk of change.
One challenge in this story is that this third slave’s actions are not necessarily wrong. He’s obviously fiscally conservative, but that’s ok. The problem, perhaps, is that he’s acting out of fear, and—I don’t know if you noticed this—Jesus doesn’t tell us if his fears are justified. The third slave says the master is a harsh man who reaps where he didn’t sow and gathers where he didn’t scatter seed, and so he’s afraid.
But it’s not at all clear in the story if he’s right, and the other two servants don’t seem to share his fear. They accept the generosity of the master. They are willing to take some risks, to take what they have and try to make something with it. In return, the master commends them, and invites them into his joy. Telling the story, Jesus doesn’t give us any evidence that the master is as harsh and vindictive as the third slave claims.
Of course, after the third slave gives his report, the master kicks him out, but I wonder if that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The slave who looks for a harsh, greedy master finds what he’s looking for, while the other slaves who see their master as generously giving them an opportunity also find what they’re looking for. He misjudges his responsibility because he misunderstands his master. He acts out of fear, rather than gratitude.
C.S. Lewis—the theologian who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia—wrote about eternity in his book The Great Divorce, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
Today as you listen, I wonder, where do you see yourself? As I said, there are other ways to interpret this story. Perhaps the landowner here doesn’t represent God at all, and the third slave is really a whistleblower, the only one not acting in collusion with a greedy master and making money off of exploitative investments. Or maybe it’s a moral lesson on how important it is to use the gifts you’ve been given.
But for today, if we go with the idea each slave finds in the master the characteristics they’re looking for, where do you see yourself in the story?
Are you a pessimist who worries whatever you have is going to be taken from you? Or maybe do you see God as just giving you what you deserve, what you’ve worked hard to earn? That’s a little harder for me to get to with the ridiculous amounts of money Jesus talks about, but lots of us see God that way sometimes. If you look for God’s judgment and wrath, I suspect that’s what you’ll find.
Or, can you see yourself as simply blessed by God? Can you see God as a generous master, who gives us an abundance so we can take risks, so we can live with courage and boldly do God’s work? Can you see God as God truly is, as your Creator who made you and loves you and will do anything to be in relationship with you?
Similarly, in the first reading from 1 Thessalonians, how do you react when you hear about the day of the Lord—the day of judgment—coming? Paul says the end will come like a thief in the night, suddenly, like labor pains come upon a pregnant woman.
But for those in Christ, the day of judgment is good news, whenever it comes. Paul’s point is about how we live while we wait for Jesus’ return, not about when the end will come. We belong to the day, and, he writes, “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul’s message is meant not as a threat (watch out so you don’t get destroyed), but as encouragement (keep on living in faith and love, hold on to the promised hope of salvation).
God offers you the gift of salvation—eternal life—which is a more generous gift than all the talents in the world. The question is, how will you respond? What will you do with the gift?
Will you treat the giver of life as a threatening tyrant, who’s looking for any opportunity to strike you down? Will you make the gift into a burden? Or will you receive God’s grace as a generous gift from the one who loves you, who created you, who wants you for all eternity? And given the gift of life, how will you use it?
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, you love us so much that you came into the world to redeem us. You give us far more than we could possibly deserve or earn, your very life so we could be forgiven. Open our hearts to receive your grace with gratitude, and give us boldness to share your amazing love with the world.
Amen