Sermonstudio

For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, "Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents." His master said to him, "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." And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, "Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents." His master said to him, "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." Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, "Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours." But his master replied, "You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. 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. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

In 27 BC, Augustus Caesar became the ruler of the Roman empire. Petty kings came from near and far to plead for reappointment to their kingdoms. Among them was Herod, king of the Jews. He had to leave his kingdom temporarily in the hands of others while he sought continuance of his rule. Those to whom he entrusted the kingdom were responsible to Herod for how they administered the kingdom in his absence. If they did poorly and he was returned to power, they stood to suffer. If they served him well but Herod was not reinstated, they stood to suffer from Herod's enemies. The best solution was to be absolutely loyal to the side to which they were committed, and at least they would be able to do whatever they did in good conscience.

Jesus told a story that may have been based on just such an event. A man had to go away for a while and he entrusted his goods to his servants. To one he entrusted five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent. A talent was a measurement of weight and if the item measured were, for example, silver, the value of the talent might be $1,000. That may not sound like an enormous sum to us in our inflationary times, but consider that as recently as 2005 the average worker in India earned 91 cents an hour. One thousand dollars would have been equal to a year of income. Similar conditions existed in Palestine when Jesus told this story. Even the man with one talent would have been considered well-endowed in the estimation of his contemporaries.

Interestingly enough, it is from this very parable that our English word "talent," meaning "a natural gift," has entered the language, and I think it is appropriate for us to read that meaning into this word, as well as other kinds of endowments. Let us consider, then, some of the things this story has to say to us.

The first thing this parable acknowledges is that all humans do not have the same number of gifts. In the parable, one person is given five, another two, and another one talent. And some persons' gifts are intensified because they have received them all in one field. Surely Shakespeare must have received five in literature, Michelangelo five in art, Edison five in inventive ability.

Faced with these kinds of persons who are so richly endowed, the one-talent person is apt to feel "What can I do? I am so poorly endowed I can't make much of a contribution to life." But in fact, every talent is needed in the economy of things. The one-talent person is the foundation upon which most of our social structures are built. We have a piano at home on which there is a particular key that periodically fails to strike. When that happens, my wife asks me to fix it. I point out that she has 87 other keys to choose from. They ought to be enough. But she insists that without that key making its contribution she cannot play what she needs to play. We humans are like the notes on a piano keyboard: If we hold back our contribution because we only have one sound, then we are responsible for an incomplete and unsatisfying performance.

Therefore, instead of being negative about the inequality of our endowments, let us be positive about what we can do with what we have. Remember that favorite children's story "Stone Soup"? Some hungry soldiers came into a town looking for food. Everyone in the town was afraid to share, so they claimed to have no food. The soldiers got a huge kettle, filled it with water, threw a large stone in the pot, built a fire under the kettle, and began to stir. When the curious townspeople asked the soldiers what they were doing, they answered that they were making stone soup. "This soup is delicious," said one soldier, tasting the soup. "What it needs is a little cabbage." One villager said, "Well, I can provide a cabbage," which he did. Item by item the soldiers told the curious villagers what would make the soup better: a few carrots, some celery, turnips, potatoes, onion, salt, parsley. One by one the items were brought forth. Finally the soldiers announced that a piece of meat would make the soup exquisite, and a family brought forth that treasure. Indeed, the soup was exquisite. All had overcome their fear, invested the one thing they had, and there was plenty for all.

Norman Cousins, in his assessment of Albert Schweitzer, said that when Schweitzer decided to go to Lambarene, Africa, he knew well enough that thousands of doctors could not adequately meet the needs of Africa. But the fact that he could not do everything never stopped him from doing something. No one person could be the total answer, but one person could be part of the answer.

Our gifts differ not only in number, but in kind. One person may be endowed with wealth. Someone told me that anyone can become a millionaire if he keeps clean, rises early, works hard, and has a rich uncle who dies and leaves him a million dollars. The last part is the hardest part. Yet there are those who have become millionaires without it. Regardless of how wealth is acquired, the question addressed by this parable is: "How are you using what you have received?"

Some have the gift of time. In a congregation where I served there were quite a number of retired men. Some of them gathered at the church on Monday mornings and provided services that kept our church in working order. They were not necessarily trained in carpentry or plumbing, but they did things in those areas and saved the church thousands of dollars. Others took training in how to teach people to read. They were not necessarily trained as teachers, but they gave of their time to help others. They told me of the satisfaction they felt when a student of theirs became self-reliant.

The endowments that other people possess are their skills. Two nurses at that church volunteered to establish a parish nurse program in the congregation. Using training they already had, they provided a health ministry to people associated with the congregation.

For still others, the gift may be robustness of body, sharpness of mind, eloquence of speech, or wide-ranging influence. Our gifts are not the same but to focus on the differences may only smother initiative. The final reckoning is not based on how much we started out with, but on what we have done with what we had. Our responsibility is proportionate to our gifts. All of us have received something.

Another thing this parable appears to encourage is risk-taking. The fellow in the story who received one talent to invest hid it, made nothing of it, returned it to his master intact, and was condemned for so doing. That may seem rather harsh to us. After all, he didn't squander the money; he didn't abscond with it; he didn't spend it on himself; he didn't use it to hurt others. He was just being cautious, prudent, and protective. If the truth were known, he was just plain scared. He couldn't cope with the possibility of losing it, so he took no chances and wound up gaining nothing. The implication of this parable is that it is better to try at a venture and fail than to play it safe and show no improvement of the gift one has been given.

Early in his career, Ernest Borgnine was working with Spencer Tracy on a film titled Bad Day at Black Rock when he was offered the chance to play the lead in a small black-and-white film written by an unknown television writer named Paddy Chayefsky. Borgnine, frustrated with always being cast to play heavies, told Tracy that he was leaving for New York to do the part. Years later Borgnine recounted on a television talk show that Spencer Tracy thought this would be a big mistake and Borgnine should be content to be making a good living as a character actor. "You're gonna make a little black-and-white film," he lectured Borgnine, "no one's ever gonna hear of it, you're gonna think you're a star, and you're not gonna be a star." "Spence," Borgnine told him, "if I don't try it now, I'll never know." Borgnine went on to make the film Marty and was nominated for an Academy Award along with Tracy. As Borgnine went up to collect his Oscar, he passed Spencer Tracy, who said to him: "You never listen, do you?" Perhaps Borgnine did listen, but to a different voice.

The theologian Reinhold Neibuhr tells a parable about Jesus' parable. It is the story of a young man who left his home in Kansas to be a sailor on a tall-masted sailing ship. On the third day out to sea, the new sailor was commanded to take the watch in the crow's nest, high up the mast. After climbing about halfway up the mast he stopped. He was frozen in fear, not able to finish climbing up, and too proud to slink back down and admit in front of the seasoned sailors that he was afraid of heights. So he simply clutched at the mast and did nothing with the responsibility he had been given. In the story Jesus told, the servant who was given the stuff of life and told to invest it, to risk it for the sake of his lord, could not bring himself to do anything. He froze. He only clutched the talent, never giving it or himself a chance.

Jesus' parable gives a further warning that if we fail to use what God has given us, we lose it. The fellow who didn't invest his talent eventually lost it. That is not an arbitrary sentence on the part of an unfeeling judge, it is simply an observation about the law of life: the singer who doesn't use her voice loses it, the trumpeter who doesn't play the trumpet loses his lip. Most of us are probably exposed to a foreign language, but unless we use it, it is probably gone. There was a time when I used to be able to do geometry, but I haven't thought about geometry for 45 years. Now I would be lost if asked to demonstrate a theorem.

It is the same with regard to career decisions. A member of my family spent most of his life as a house painter, but his favorite thing in the world was to read the business opportunities. He wanted desperately to do something else. But he was afraid. He had a family to support. He had been through the Depression. What if he quit painting and put his meager savings into a business that failed? He always entertained the fantasy and traveled to many places looking at possible ventures, but he never took the chance, and as he got older the likelihood became more remote until the possibility disappeared.

It is the same with our opportunities to show love. In his book Living, Loving, and Learning, Leo Buscaglia speaks of one of his students, a girl who shared a poem she had written. She titled it "Things You Didn't Do." She says this:

Remember the day I borrowed your brand new car and I dented it?
I thought you'd kill me, but you didn't.
And remember the time I dragged you to the beach, and you said it would rain, and it did?
I thought you'd say, "I told you so." But you didn't.
Do you remember the time I flirted with all the guys to make you jealous, and you were?
I thought you'd leave me, but you didn't.
Do you remember the time I spilled strawberry pie all over your car rug?
I thought you'd hit me, but you didn't.
And remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was formal and you showed up in jeans?
I thought you'd drop me, but you didn't.
Yes, there were lots of things you didn't do.
But you put up with me, and you loved me, and you protected me.
There were lots of things I wanted to make up to you when you returned from Vietnam.
But you didn't.

If God has situated you in a relationship where you have the opportunity to express love, the opportunity is a gift. Seize the moment. Do it now.

This parable also speaks of accountability. The stewardship of one of the servants was found wanting. There is no way to skip judgment. One way or another, we must turn in a report.

We may think this accounting for how we have used our endowments is something that comes at the end of life, but the accounting process is going on continuously during life. We do not have to wait until the end of life to know how we are doing. We pay our bills monthly. We pay the IRS as we go. We pay the utilities regularly. It's easy to know how we are doing in our responsibilities to those people. All we have to do is to check the statement. That same process can help us know how we stand in regard to the Owner of all things.

Ray Knudsen, an Episcopal priest in San Fernando, overheard his three small boys talking about what they would like to inherit when their father died. The oldest son wanted his dad's watch. The middle one wanted his ring. The youngest son said, "I want all of Dad's checks." The oldest boy responded: "Mark, you wouldn't get a thing! They are worthless. There is nothing of value there." Pastor Knudsen thought perhaps his oldest son had heard the old song:

There's nothing left for me
From last month's salary.
I live in memory
Among my canceled checks.

But as Pastor Knudsen reflected on that, it occurred to him that perhaps there was something in his checkbook of greater value than his oldest son was aware. "Actually," he thought, "in my canceled checks there is the story of my life -- the only autobiography I will ever write: A record of my hopes and dreams; a record of my values and priorities; a record of purchases and expenditures." How about your canceled checks? They are a monthly accounting of your values, priorities, and life. How are you investing those talents God has put at your disposal? (reported in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 9, No. 4, p. 24).

While the parable is told in such a way that we focus on the missed opportunity of the one-talent servant, the responsible use of endowments by the other two servants is rewarded. The reward for work well done is more work to do: "You have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things," says their master (v. 21). The more we exercise a gift or proficiency, the more we are able to tackle. Each of us finds it so in life. The reward for investing our gifts is more to be responsible for, not less. One part of us would like life to become easier, but another part of us responds to the call of new challenges.

Some years ago I called on a lady who attended the church I was then serving, and I invited her to become active in our church. "Oh no," she said, "back in Iowa I did enough for the Methodist church to last two lifetimes. Why, the road to heaven is paved with all those apple pies I baked for church dinners. Now I'm going to rest." Well, I wouldn't for one moment want to detract from yesterday's service, and I don't dispute the need for a change of pace in what we are doing, but if we still have reasonably good health, and if we have been fortunate enough to have rendered service in the past to God or humanity, then our call is to continue and not to stop. That same lady called me subsequently and told me that she wasn't getting as much out of her relationship to our church as she did from her church in Iowa, so she wanted something to do. No more apple pies! But she wanted to be useful. She began calling on shut-ins instead and found it to be rewarding. She was getting back in proportion to what she was putting in.

I close with this. A guest preacher in a rural church arrived at the little church early and went into the narthex, where he noticed a little box affixed to the wall. He thought that it was one of those boxes to receive offerings for the poor, so he put in a dollar. At the close of the service at which he preached, his host took him out to the narthex and explained to him that the church was so small and so poor that they didn't have any money to pay guest preachers, so they put that box on the wall for people to make contributions. As he opened the box he said, "You've done better than most -- there's a dollar in it today." That preacher went home and at dinner that day, he told the incident to his family. One of his children said, "Gee, Daddy, if you'd put more in you would have gotten more out."

That is what it comes down to for every one of us. When confronted with our opportunities, if we will put more in, we will get more out.