Take a Risk For the Kingdom

This sermon was preached at Christ Church Cathedral, Lexington on the 23rd Sunday After Pentecost.  The Gospel reading for the day was Matthew 25: 14-30.

On Saturday, November 15 the Diocese of Lexington held its second annual Ministry & Gifts Fair at Emmanuel Church in Winchester. It was a great celebration of the new and exciting gifts being offered by our diocese from the coalfields up to the river.  But as I headed home yesterday I wondered:  what if the diocese had decided not to have such a sharing of gifts?  What if we had stayed home, keeping our gifts to ourselves?  What if we had said those same 6 tiresome words 'we've always done it this way' and resisted any new ideas being presented?  Blessedly, the diocese did none of these things.   

                                                           

But have any of you ever heard that phrase, 'We’ve always done it this way'?  They say those are the last 6 words of a dying church.  Because those words are symptoms of a toxic, fearful disorder that  holds us back from seeing what new things God is doing in our lives.

The parable that we hear today in Matthew’s gospel speaks to this.  It was a reality in Jesus’ day, just as it is in ours.  We often refer to this story as the Parable of the Talents, yet another of Jesus’ tales that are meant to paint a picture of what the kingdom of heaven is like.  Here he says that it is like a master who gives his servants talents to take care of while he goes on a journey.  It should be noted that Jesus is not talking about talents in the way that we know the word--like one's ability to sing or dance--nor is he talking about money.  The Greek word used is talanton, which is a unit of measurement, roughly equivalent to 113 lbs.  Think of it like a scale for balance.  And it only appears here in Matthew’s gospel, most likely because Matthew was a tax collector and would’ve used such a scale in his own work.  So here the master is giving a very big measurement of something to each of his servants.  Some theologians have suggested that that something was silver.  A talent of silver would be worth roughly $500.  One servant receives 5 talents, another 2, and another 1.  The first two servants both invest their talent, doubling their amount, and they are rewarded.  The third does nothing with what his master gives him.  He doesn’t invest it, he takes no risk at all, and while the master does still get his original talent back, he chastises the servant for not being more proactive with what had been given to him.

The third servant was a victim of ‘we’ve always done it this way.’  Scholars like William Barclay have said that the third servant represents the scribes and Pharisees, those in Jesus’ time who had been given the gift of God’s law but had sought to hoard it, to hold onto it, even when Jesus, the living embodiment of the law, was standing right in front of them.  They, like that servant, refuse to take a risk for fear of losing what they already had.  The chastisement of the servant's attitude in the parable is thus Jesus’ own chastisement of their fearful attitude, the attitude of ‘we’ve always done it this way.'  They lack adventure and risk. They squande the gifts given by the master.   

The talents that are in this parable may not be talents in our modern sense, but they are gifts.  And so this parable speaks a very real truth, that God gives each of us gifts.  The amount does not matter-- notice that the master does not speak more highly of the servant who made 10 talents than he does the one who made 4.  So the amount does not matter, what matters is what we do with those gifts.  The first two servants did something with what was given to them.  They didn’t know what was going to happen.  It was a risk.  It was scary.  What if they failed?  What if they lost what the master gave them? Yet in spite of the risk, they stepped out in faith, and look what happened.  The third servant, however, takes no such risk. 

There is a sentence in this gospel reading that is difficult to hear, one that I myself would’ve preferred we skip because it’s so hard to understand.  But we Episcopalians do not skip hard passages, we tackle them head-on! Jesus says, “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.”  It sounds really harsh, as though Jesus is going to take away what little we have.  But what Jesus is saying is that the only way to really keep a gift is to put it to good use, to work with it.   If we leave it alone, we will inevitably lose it. It would be as though we never received it in the first place. It'll be an insult to the one who gave it to us in the first place.  Just sitting there, useless, pointless. Jesus is calling each of us to use whatever we have for the good of others and to the honor and glory of God, inside our own churches, yes, but especially out there in the world.  Sometimes it’s a risk.  Sometimes it means stepping out in faith and doing something that we never considered doing before.  It's scary.  And yes, there certainly are those moments when we find it easier to just say, "No, we’ve always done it THIS way.  And we're going to continue doing it THIS way!"  It's always easier to give in to our fears of the unknown.  But that’s not what Jesus is calling us to do in this parable.  Jesus understood that fear is the corrosive thread that runs through every fiber of our being.  It can cripple us.  Jesus is calling us today to action, to not give in to fear and hoard our gifts--our talents, if you will--but to take the risk in offering them up to the good of others and the glory of God.

So what gift has God given to you, brothers and sisters?  What have you been entrusted with from the master?  What will you do with it? Don’t just sit there.  Don’t bury it.  Use it.    Take a risk for the kingdom of God.  You might find yourself doing something that you never thought possible.  Amen.