Investing In God's Future
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
(Note: At the time of reading this passage to the congregation, explain that a single talent was worth more than fifteen years' wages of a laborer [per NRSV footnote to Matthew 25:14] -- in other words, easily a cool quarter of a million dollars in today's terms!)
"I was afraid," quavered the third servant, "because I knew that you were a ruthless businessman, expecting profit even when it is impossible. I was so afraid of losing your money that I put it in a box and buried it. Here is your money, exactly what you gave me."1
I was so afraid of losing your money -- or maybe I was so afraid of having your money.
Marianne Williamson wrote:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.2
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful -- that we have a quarter million dollars worth of impact -- or maybe more.
And it is true.
You can see it at funerals. Why do people attend a funeral? It's because the deceased person has had some impact on their lives. Every person I have ever buried -- even the mentally handicapped person who had been in an institution for fifty years -- is remembered by dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of people whose lives have been affected by that life. There are people around that grave who have deeply loved and been loved by the person who has died. There are those who have been caregivers through the declining years, who have given up a part of their lives to sustain the life of this one. There are those that this person has cared for -- raised, perhaps, or guided, mentored -- people this person has laughed with, played with, worked with ... changed. And, though you don't usually find them at the funeral, there are the people this person has hurt, the lives that have been injured or bent out of shape by the failings, sins, and errors of this person in their life. Every human being who ever lived has the kind of impact a quarter of a million dollars has. And some of us have much more.
That's a frightening thought.
Many of us spend much of our lives trying to pretend it isn't so. We refuse to think about the true impact of what we're doing, about the depth of our effect on others. Or we try to avoid having an impact -- we hide away the deepest springs of our lives, trying not to touch or be touched; we resist taking the risk of living and loving and getting involved. We try to bury the money.
And God says to us, in this parable, "Oh no you don't! I gave you all you are for a reason." As theologian Walter Brueggeman says, "What God does first and best and most is to trust people with their moment in history."3 God trusts us with our moment in history. It's ours to do something with.
Does that mean that the investment will always work out? If you read only this parable, you would think so. The two servants who did invest their master's money made handsome returns. But does it always work like that in life?
Has it always worked that way in yours?
Someone once wrote in to an online discussion about this passage: "The only real risk is to risk not taking the perceived risk."4 There's nothing to fear in investing for God; in God's economy it will all come out right.
And someone else wrote in to disagree.
Life is not [always] as cooperative as the parable. I [once] risked taking a leadership I believed needed taking, and came out alive but burned to the bone, with much of what should have been good work seriously screwed up. [It's] still unresolved several years later. I personally have grown a great deal through this, but the "investment" is still in bad shape! Praying God isn't finished with this yet, I nonetheless have to say that the risk is quite real, and that, for reasons both controllable and uncontrollable, some investments do sour quite badly, and people do lose their master's shirts!5
Maybe you know the truth of that all too well.
There are reasons why we are afraid. There are reasons why we try to "bury the money."
But do we have the right?
Jonathan Kozol once interviewed a young man living in the South Bronx, and the topic of evil came up.
"Evil exists," [said the young man,] not flinching at the word. "I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil. Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people -- that is my idea of evil."6
Somebody has power.
We all have power. We all have impact -- the kind of impact a quarter of a million dollars has over our lifetime, and maybe more. Pretending we don't have that power, pretending we don't have that impact, avoiding our responsibility to use that power to help people, to build God's kingdom, that is evil -- not, trying and failing and screwing up hopelessly. That is tragic, but it is not evil. Evil is having the means to do something, and choosing not to.
Clarence Jordan, a famous activist in the southern States, and author of the Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament, wrote:
I've heard so many sermons preached on this idea: "Give your talents to the Lord." They got that thing backward. The Lord gives the talents to us ... What are these talents? Are they money? No, Jesus had no money to give. What did he have? What is the stock-in-trade of a great teacher? It's his ideas, his concepts, his teaching. He leaves them to his followers. All these three years he has been talenting them. Now he's saying, "You want me to come in here and pull some angels out of the sky and set up a revolution? Oh, no. I've been giving you, over all these months together, the currency of the kingdom, and if it comes, it's gonna come by your doin' business with what I've turned over to you."7
It's going to come by your doing business with what I've turned over to you.
Jordan continues:
To us he says, "I've turned over to you the idea of brotherhood."
And some of us can say, "Yes, Lord, I got out and dealt with that idea and multiplied it."
But others of us turn in an accounting like this: "Yes, Lord, I remember you talkin' about brotherhood but, You know, I was scared. I started to preach a sermon on race relations one Sunday, but Deacon Jones said, 'Hmmm.' You know I didn't want to upset the deacon. No point breakin' up your church. Besides, Deacon Jones, he's one of our major tithers, and he got something to tithe. So, Lord, I was scared, I was scared of the whole proposition and I buried this idea of brotherhood."
[And Jesus says,] "I gave to you the idea of peace."
[And some of us say,] "Yes, Lord. But you don't understand the civilization we live in. You gotta talk force. Force is the only language most folks understand today. Really, it's the only language people know how to talk. So, Lord, I had a chance to witness for peace, but I was kind of scared somebody might identify me with those flower children, and I jes' buried the whole thought."8
I jes' buried the whole thought.
I had the power and wouldn't use it.
That's the evil. That's what God condemns.
If the kingdom comes, it's going to come by our doing business with what God has turned over to us. The resources of our own individual character and gifts that God has created in us and that experience has shaped; the resources of faith and love and Christian virtues, given us by the Spirit of Christ; the central resource of the vision of God's kingdom, and the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to fulfill it: These are our treasures, to multiply or to bury -- our spiritual capital, to do business with or to reject.
When the offering plate comes around today, I want you to take something out as well as put something in. You will see in each plate a stack of "gold ingots" -- little pieces of gold paper. I invite you to take one, and on it prayerfully to write down one thing God has given you -- a talent, an attribute, a material resource, a deeply held value, you name it -- some part of God's capital in you. Write down one thing that is part of this quarter-million dowry that you are. Take that "ingot" home, place it on your refrigerator or your mirror or your dashboard, someplace where you'll see it in the course of daily life. For the next six weeks I want you to do business with that gift of God. I want you to see how you can strengthen and expand it, how you can use it to make a difference in the lives around you, how you can give some of it to those who need it. I want you to invest what God has given you.
And then on the Sunday before Christmas, or at whichever of the Christmas services you will be attending, I want you to bring that ingot back, with an accounting. Staple it to a 3x5 card on which you've written a brief account of how you've invested that gift, and what has come of it. You don't have to write your name -- God already knows that. Just bring your gift and your accounting, and make that part of your offering on Christmas Sunday.9
Let us not be afraid. God has trusted us, and God will empower us. So let us go out and do business for the kingdom. Amen.
___________
1. From a recast in business terms by Reverend Allen Hulslander of Towanda, Pennsylvania. Posted (note #26) to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org by Bob Stump.
2. Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), pp. 190-191. Posted to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org (note #19) by Robert Stuart, mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela. Correct attribution supplied by Charles F. Brumbagh in note #95 of same meeting.
3. Walter Brueggeman, source not indicated. Quoted in The Whole People of God adult study for Nov. 14, 1999, p. 2A-33.
4. Jeffrey Jackson in note #12 of sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
5. My note #25 to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
6. Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace, p. 23. Quoted by Rob Stuart in note #19 to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
7. Clarence Jordan, source not indicated. Quoted by Richard Bolin in note #78 of sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
8. Ibid.
9. Idea from Nancy Jo Kemper, described in notes #112 and 132 of sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
"I was afraid," quavered the third servant, "because I knew that you were a ruthless businessman, expecting profit even when it is impossible. I was so afraid of losing your money that I put it in a box and buried it. Here is your money, exactly what you gave me."1
I was so afraid of losing your money -- or maybe I was so afraid of having your money.
Marianne Williamson wrote:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.2
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful -- that we have a quarter million dollars worth of impact -- or maybe more.
And it is true.
You can see it at funerals. Why do people attend a funeral? It's because the deceased person has had some impact on their lives. Every person I have ever buried -- even the mentally handicapped person who had been in an institution for fifty years -- is remembered by dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of people whose lives have been affected by that life. There are people around that grave who have deeply loved and been loved by the person who has died. There are those who have been caregivers through the declining years, who have given up a part of their lives to sustain the life of this one. There are those that this person has cared for -- raised, perhaps, or guided, mentored -- people this person has laughed with, played with, worked with ... changed. And, though you don't usually find them at the funeral, there are the people this person has hurt, the lives that have been injured or bent out of shape by the failings, sins, and errors of this person in their life. Every human being who ever lived has the kind of impact a quarter of a million dollars has. And some of us have much more.
That's a frightening thought.
Many of us spend much of our lives trying to pretend it isn't so. We refuse to think about the true impact of what we're doing, about the depth of our effect on others. Or we try to avoid having an impact -- we hide away the deepest springs of our lives, trying not to touch or be touched; we resist taking the risk of living and loving and getting involved. We try to bury the money.
And God says to us, in this parable, "Oh no you don't! I gave you all you are for a reason." As theologian Walter Brueggeman says, "What God does first and best and most is to trust people with their moment in history."3 God trusts us with our moment in history. It's ours to do something with.
Does that mean that the investment will always work out? If you read only this parable, you would think so. The two servants who did invest their master's money made handsome returns. But does it always work like that in life?
Has it always worked that way in yours?
Someone once wrote in to an online discussion about this passage: "The only real risk is to risk not taking the perceived risk."4 There's nothing to fear in investing for God; in God's economy it will all come out right.
And someone else wrote in to disagree.
Life is not [always] as cooperative as the parable. I [once] risked taking a leadership I believed needed taking, and came out alive but burned to the bone, with much of what should have been good work seriously screwed up. [It's] still unresolved several years later. I personally have grown a great deal through this, but the "investment" is still in bad shape! Praying God isn't finished with this yet, I nonetheless have to say that the risk is quite real, and that, for reasons both controllable and uncontrollable, some investments do sour quite badly, and people do lose their master's shirts!5
Maybe you know the truth of that all too well.
There are reasons why we are afraid. There are reasons why we try to "bury the money."
But do we have the right?
Jonathan Kozol once interviewed a young man living in the South Bronx, and the topic of evil came up.
"Evil exists," [said the young man,] not flinching at the word. "I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil. Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people -- that is my idea of evil."6
Somebody has power.
We all have power. We all have impact -- the kind of impact a quarter of a million dollars has over our lifetime, and maybe more. Pretending we don't have that power, pretending we don't have that impact, avoiding our responsibility to use that power to help people, to build God's kingdom, that is evil -- not, trying and failing and screwing up hopelessly. That is tragic, but it is not evil. Evil is having the means to do something, and choosing not to.
Clarence Jordan, a famous activist in the southern States, and author of the Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament, wrote:
I've heard so many sermons preached on this idea: "Give your talents to the Lord." They got that thing backward. The Lord gives the talents to us ... What are these talents? Are they money? No, Jesus had no money to give. What did he have? What is the stock-in-trade of a great teacher? It's his ideas, his concepts, his teaching. He leaves them to his followers. All these three years he has been talenting them. Now he's saying, "You want me to come in here and pull some angels out of the sky and set up a revolution? Oh, no. I've been giving you, over all these months together, the currency of the kingdom, and if it comes, it's gonna come by your doin' business with what I've turned over to you."7
It's going to come by your doing business with what I've turned over to you.
Jordan continues:
To us he says, "I've turned over to you the idea of brotherhood."
And some of us can say, "Yes, Lord, I got out and dealt with that idea and multiplied it."
But others of us turn in an accounting like this: "Yes, Lord, I remember you talkin' about brotherhood but, You know, I was scared. I started to preach a sermon on race relations one Sunday, but Deacon Jones said, 'Hmmm.' You know I didn't want to upset the deacon. No point breakin' up your church. Besides, Deacon Jones, he's one of our major tithers, and he got something to tithe. So, Lord, I was scared, I was scared of the whole proposition and I buried this idea of brotherhood."
[And Jesus says,] "I gave to you the idea of peace."
[And some of us say,] "Yes, Lord. But you don't understand the civilization we live in. You gotta talk force. Force is the only language most folks understand today. Really, it's the only language people know how to talk. So, Lord, I had a chance to witness for peace, but I was kind of scared somebody might identify me with those flower children, and I jes' buried the whole thought."8
I jes' buried the whole thought.
I had the power and wouldn't use it.
That's the evil. That's what God condemns.
If the kingdom comes, it's going to come by our doing business with what God has turned over to us. The resources of our own individual character and gifts that God has created in us and that experience has shaped; the resources of faith and love and Christian virtues, given us by the Spirit of Christ; the central resource of the vision of God's kingdom, and the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to fulfill it: These are our treasures, to multiply or to bury -- our spiritual capital, to do business with or to reject.
When the offering plate comes around today, I want you to take something out as well as put something in. You will see in each plate a stack of "gold ingots" -- little pieces of gold paper. I invite you to take one, and on it prayerfully to write down one thing God has given you -- a talent, an attribute, a material resource, a deeply held value, you name it -- some part of God's capital in you. Write down one thing that is part of this quarter-million dowry that you are. Take that "ingot" home, place it on your refrigerator or your mirror or your dashboard, someplace where you'll see it in the course of daily life. For the next six weeks I want you to do business with that gift of God. I want you to see how you can strengthen and expand it, how you can use it to make a difference in the lives around you, how you can give some of it to those who need it. I want you to invest what God has given you.
And then on the Sunday before Christmas, or at whichever of the Christmas services you will be attending, I want you to bring that ingot back, with an accounting. Staple it to a 3x5 card on which you've written a brief account of how you've invested that gift, and what has come of it. You don't have to write your name -- God already knows that. Just bring your gift and your accounting, and make that part of your offering on Christmas Sunday.9
Let us not be afraid. God has trusted us, and God will empower us. So let us go out and do business for the kingdom. Amen.
___________
1. From a recast in business terms by Reverend Allen Hulslander of Towanda, Pennsylvania. Posted (note #26) to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org by Bob Stump.
2. Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), pp. 190-191. Posted to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org (note #19) by Robert Stuart, mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela. Correct attribution supplied by Charles F. Brumbagh in note #95 of same meeting.
3. Walter Brueggeman, source not indicated. Quoted in The Whole People of God adult study for Nov. 14, 1999, p. 2A-33.
4. Jeffrey Jackson in note #12 of sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
5. My note #25 to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
6. Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace, p. 23. Quoted by Rob Stuart in note #19 to sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
7. Clarence Jordan, source not indicated. Quoted by Richard Bolin in note #78 of sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
8. Ibid.
9. Idea from Nancy Jo Kemper, described in notes #112 and 132 of sermonshop_1996_11_17.topic@ecunet.org.
