2011-11-13

Giving, Receiving, and Giving Again.

As I indicated three weeks back, when we concluded our sermon series on mission, we are going to hear from members of the finance committee at the conclusion of today’s service. They will update on our budget. This is done annually as part of the preparations of the budget for 2012. I will not steal their thunder here. I will say that the situation is serious.

Serious enough, in fact, that I would rather not have this Gospel as the Gospel for today. It can lead to so many misunderstandings—of Christ, who is the Master in the story, of his disciples, who are the three servants, and most of all, of wealth and its use.

But—and this is a good thing—this is the Gospel that we have been given. We have been given it, I believe, in God’s providence for it gives us the biblical and theological foundation on which we can set the remarks of the finance committee in a few moments. So, to the story.

The story begins with the words “For it is as if. . . .” They tie this parable to the previous one, the parable of the ten bridesmaids and its theme of preparedness. Since the bridesmaids do not know when the bridegroom will come for them, they are wise to prepare for a long wait and be watchful for a short one. This theme is then continued in the second story.

In this second story, a Master goes away for a long time, but first he gives out ridiculously large amounts of money to three of his servants. A talent, you will remember from a few weeks ago that 1 talent was worth 15 years’ wages for a common person.  This Master is both generous and trusting with his wealth.

He distributes his wealth unequally—each servant receives according to his ability. We are left with the notion that, with all the talents being the Master’s to begin with, he may dispose of them as he sees fit.

So the first servant receives 5, the second, 2 and the third, 1. And having made his disbursements, the Master goes away.

The first two servants put the wealth to work—investing and trading—and soon double their Master’s money. The third buries his and keeps it secret.

After a long time, the Master returns and expects a reckoning. The first two servants are rewarded. The third harshly rebuked. Stripped of his talent, he is thrown outside—into the “outer darkness.”

Well, where to begin? I think it wise to begin with what this parable does not say.

First, it has nothing to do with our own natural gifts and abilities. I confess here that this was a theme in my house. If I did not want to sing in church, I could expect to hear some variation of, “You know what happened to the servant who hid his talent.”

Second, while it does force us to ask just what Jesus has invested in and with us, his modern day disciples, there is no easy connection to modern money, either.

So let’s set those two aside.

Most importantly, this is not a story about reward for hard work—as though all that talk about grace being God’s unmerited favour was finally false.

Well then, if the disciples and we are the servants and Jesus is the Master, what on earth are the talents? There are some things we can say—they belong to Jesus. They are not naturally ours. They are given by Jesus according to our own gifts and abilities. They are given to be invested. And finally, they are invested not for our own sake, but for his. But what are the talents?

I think we are wise to understand the talents of the story both in the light of the overall theme of preparedness and watchfulness and in the light of the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel, in which he commissions his disciples to make yet more disciples, through teaching and baptism.

The talents, it seems to me, have to do with Gospel itself and its spread. Like the Master in the parable, Jesus has generously entrusted us with his life-giving Gospel and commissioned us to “invest it,” so to speak in the lives of others. He calls us, in other words, to emulate his own generosity to us as we interact with other people.

Does that mean we are all firebrand preachers or evangelists, or—after all, we are Anglicans, priests or deacons or social workers or doctors? No. Each servant is still given according to his or her abilities. There is no ability that is excused; all abilities are called into the Son’s mission of reconciliation. Some of us will be called to do more; some of us less; all of us, differently. Each according to his or her ability.

Christ commissions all of us to put our abilities to use as vehicles to  give to all the transforming Gospel of grace, the Good News that while we were sinners, Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification. We are to be generous with ourselves—to use the theme from a few weeks ago, with our time, talent and treasure. In so doing, we are emulating the Master who has been so generous with us.

Why then is the last servant judged so harshly? Why is he named wicked and lazy and worthless? Why does the parable end with the words “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have in abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away,”?

Those are harsh words, to be sure.

It is hard to read them and see that the speaker is our Lord Jesus who gave himself for the sake of the salvation of the world. Some of us might even want to sympathize with the third servant. We want to stick up for him. “Give him a break, Jesus!” We might want to say. After all, he returned to you just what was yours in the end, didn’t he?

But we need to be clear about this servant’s problem is. At bottom, this parable is about abundance and generosity. Jesus generously gives to us his abundant life. This parable suggests that he expects his disciples to imitate him in that generosity. We are to put our abitilities to work for the sake of the Gospel so that others can come to encounter the Savior and share in his life and love.

This servant’s problem was not that he was too poor to engage in investment. Rather, his problem was that he kept for himself what was meant to be given away and in so doing, he lost what he had.

If you have ever seen the TV programme Hoarders, you will easily grastp the dynamic that’s going on here. Here are people desperate to hang on to love, to life, to things. They are so fearful of loss that they let nothing go. And in the end, they lose the very things they wish to keep. For they alienate family, friends, and flee from the help they so desperately need.

In a similar way, the third servant  out of fear of loss clings too tightly to what is not his. And in the end, his very effort to keep the talent safe causes great pain.

Finally, what does this story have to do with us—on this Sunday of all Sundays?

Well, I do think it is a timely and important reminder about how to think about the challenges that lie ahead of us.

Jesus has been generous with us. We celebrate that generosity, we give thanks for it, and we are drawn into it, every time we come to the Lord’s Table. Eucharist means “thanksgiving.” We are sent from that Table to emulate that generosity in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We are not sent away in fear to hoard what little we have. We are sure to lose the very thing we wish to keep if we act in that way!

We come to the Table in thanks and we go away rejoicing. Freely we have received; freely, we will give.