Scripture Matthew 25:14-30
The scene: a children’s message. The pastor asks the little ones, “What is brown, has a furry tail, and stores nuts?” Silence. The pastor asks again: “What is brown, has a furry tail, and stores nuts?” Again: No response. Finally, a wise little girl pipes up: “Umm … I think the answer is supposed to be Jesus. But it sure sounds like a squirrel to me!”
As we approach this widely-misunderstood parable in the gospel today, let us remember: We may think that the master is supposed to be Jesus – though it sure sounds like something this. Not a squirrel. More like a rat.
As you know, this is Stewardship Season. Time when the pastor tag teams with others to inspire us to financially pledge, and pledge generously, for 2015.
And every three years, in our church lectionary cycle, this passage drops in the pastor’s lap as preaching manna on stewardship. And – like a lot of pastors – I used to give profuse praise to God for this gift.
My thoughts would turn to the three servants in this story, and their different responses to the talents they were given. Many of us have well know the stewardship mantra of the 3 Ts: time, talents, and what? … treasure. Well, voila! – here, in this story, we have two of the three! We have talents, and we have treasure! The talent being – well, a monetary unit actually, the Greek talantan: one talent representing 15 years of day labor: a lifetime in those days. And yet, this word sounds like what I should be exercising with my life, to wit: How I should be investing my talents – taking risks in my discipleship venture. How I should be multiplying my return for my Lord.
Until a casual comment about this parable at a ministers conference two decades past led me to do some peeking behind the story’s curtain. To follow the money, that we might better follow the spiritual meaning contained within.
The master delights in the slave he entrusts with ten talents – 150 years’ labor! – giving him back twenty – 300 years. Let’s follow the money here. How much of that 300 years of salary does the slave get? Nada. As for the one with five talents who gives him back ten? Nothing. “Enter the joy of your master!” The master cries to each. “I will put you in charge of many things!” His joy. His things. This master who openly admits what the third slave accuses: He reaps what he does not sow.
And that’s the Lord I am to worship? The One I am to follow? One who would give me the equivalent of 75 years of wages, or 30, or at least 15 – and then I would wind up where I began: without worth?
Doesn’t sound like our Jesus or our God to me. Sounds more like a cash-cropping, family farm-eating, imperial absentee landowner pathetically common in Palestine in Jesus’ day. Someone who was about his debt slave servants serving money – so that he would be the only one served.
Imagine these three slaves, after receiving their great riches, taking a reflective moment. Imagine them asking themselves two questions, supremely spiritual and economic both: “What am I really worth?” and “What is really my value?”
It seems to me that the first two slaves felt they were worth very little. They felt compelled to trade on the talents given to them, to gain more and more and more for their master, read: the master of their identity. Always trying to prove themselves of value, although their new-found riches would be bled from them in the end. Seduced by the riches of a maleficent parasite, versus trusting in the abundance naturally bestowed upon them by a beneficent God.
As for the slave given one talent: He knew what he was worth. He knew of his own value. He knew that even one talent from the hand of someone who would be his lord – who would be his master – who would control and manipulate his destiny – would compromise his integrity, his stewardship … his identity. For there is really no worth – no value – that this unearned lifetime of fifteen years’ wages could have over him. He is infinitely more worthy and valuable than that. He would have none of it! He cannot be bought.
And so this one-talented slave the brutal master intuitively would not trust with his greater riches to begin with decides to take his talent and practice a little street theater. This laborer of the land – entrusted with dominion over God’s good creation – “plants” the talent into the ground. As if to say, let’s see if this huge chunk of change from this absentee landlord – this man who would be master over my life – springs forth from God’s soil! See if this obscene amount of money has any worth or value, now!
“After a long time,” we are told, the absentee landlord returns. (Fascinating how they do that: They return only when they want something from someone for themselves.) “You wicked and lazy slave!” he snarls to the one-talented “beneficiary”. “You knew, did you not, 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.” My, my – MY – I, I, ay! And, and by the way: What a “worthless slave” you are!
Worthless, to this master … because the slave had set himself free. Because the slave knew – he really, really knew – his real worth in the eyes of a living and loving and abundant God.
A God whose love and joy won’t be bought. A God we learn in the next story in this gospel does not side with ruthless landlords, but with the allegedly “worthless” ones, “the least of these.”
Those “worthless” ones …
The earliest Christians, buried like that talent, underground in the catacombs, who knew their true worth from an abundant God.
Faithful oppressed peoples today – around the world – whose hospital wards are often buried underground to protect their patients from enemy shelling, including “bunker buster” bombs.
Those anywhere and everywhere who find they must bury their allegiance to the powers-that-be, that they might liberate themselves to serve others and not money.
Those who bury a painful memory so deep in shame – who cry out for us to accompany them toward healing and wholeness.
Which of these three slaves do you think act as their master’s extension agents? Making 100 percent profit for The Man – most likely through exploitation and graft? Slaves enslaved to serving the monied?
And which of these slaves do you think acts not as the master’s impoverished agent, but as a disciple of our abundant God – standing, literally standing, on the principle (principal) of money serving people?
Which will it be for us – today? Will we be slaves enslaved in anxiety and fear: to serving the monied? Or servants set free to serve the people?
What are you worth? What is your value?
And what is the worth and value of our church’s calling as a Place for Healing, to you?
Each of us can rest assured that our church board, the Session, will see to it that the funds we pledge next Sunday for 2015 will be used grounded on one principle – and one principle alone: as money serving people – and not people serving money.
Money serving people through the calling God has given our congregation. Not to provide a place for good people to get better – no, no, no. Our gospel is so much more powerful and richer than that! Why stop with providing a place for the good to get better? God calls us instead to do something greater: to provide a place for the weary, the worried, dare we say the broken, to get well. To become whole and experience wholeness, midst the alienating mania that is metro DC. God’s calling to us: to be a Place for Healing.
Money serving God’s people, among and around us: People who want wellness and wholeness in their lives. Not us as a people serving the bottom line – all the while unhearing of our call.
Will you join me next Sunday in pledging generously for 2015? Let me be transparent about my own pledge. I intend it as no secret that each Sunday in 2014, I have been putting an $80 check in our Offering plate. I am saddened to say that is not a tithe – a tithe being 10% of income, what our scriptures mandate. But I am getting there. And toward that end: I plan to increase my pledge in 2015 to $90 a week. Because I have full faith this money will be used to serve others – beyond just ourselves. Because I have full faith we are serving an ever-present lover in whose abundance we invest, versus an absentee landlord in whose riches we divest.
This coming year, I will be increasing my pledge $10/week. Life’s circumstances permitting: Will you join me in increasing your pledge, as well?
