Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, 11/16/2014
Sermon on Matthew 25:14-30, by David H. Brooks
In his autobiography The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, author Bill Bryson tells a story of talents-or lack thereof. In his description of his parents (both newspaper columnists) he emphasized that his mother, who was the Home & Fashion editor for the Des Moines Register, had no business being in a kitchen. Only Mr. Bryson says, in their home, it was not called the kitchen, but rather "the burn unit." Mr. Bryson reports that his mother kept regular subscriptions to magazines such as Good Housekeeping for her work; clearly there was a disconnect for, he says, none of the magazines showed pictures of kitchens such as he understood them: "no black circles on the ceilings above their stoves, no mutating goo pushing over the sides of their forgotten saucepans...no children ordered to ‘stand back' every time they opened their oven doors."
Whatever secret was contained in those books and magazines remained hidden away from the elder Mrs. Bryson.
You may be thinking that she had a kindred spirit in the hapless servant who brought back the one talent to his master. The parable begins with a note that the master distributed his wealth to his servants according to their abilities, and it seems that this last servant does not have the "talent" to multiply talents. Still in its dirty jar dug out of the yard, the last servant simply lays it at his master's feet, although not without a stab at him for being a "harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed."
But is that fair? After all, this master entrusts unimaginable wealth to these three servants. Commentators who calculate out the relative value of the distributed talents say that the first servant receives a sum equal to 100 years worth of earnings; even the last servant receives a twenty year equivalent. This is not simply giving charge of an estate-this is sharing out three lottery winnings! And what of the work of the first two? They come reporting back that they have doubled their master's holdings through trading, but what does that mean? There is no discussion of what they had to do to earn such a return. Perhaps the "risk" is of the same type as the asset itself-farcical, ridiculous. Not only does this master have fabulous wealth to distribute out freely while he disappears, it doubles itself without effort! In fact, you have to work hard and hide it to make sure that it does not achieve a return on investment.
This parable cuts to the very core of our position before our Lord. We are the faithless servant, seeing God as a harsh and stern master, reaping where he does not sow, gathering where he does not scatter. We measure all things by the wisdom of the world, which says that if you have, I do not; if I succeed, you are diminished. We treat our life as the Church the same way: we are jealous of our roles, our positions, our relative place here. How many of us look on newcomers as a problem, as a threat, as a demand? How many of us hold ourselves back, not investing ourselves in this community? We hear the invitation of Jesus to follow and all we see is risk, danger, loss. We see the cross and turn our faces away in shame. We hear the laments and sorrows of our world and we say nothing of our Lord who is so kind and good. Better to bury what we know and what we have been given.
But God is generous, and desires for all to enter into the joy of the kingdom. The gifts God gives are not diminished when they are shared or even given away-in fact, they multiply, they abound! The only thing better than joy is joy that is shared. And God's joy is abundant beyond measure-there simply is no lack of it, and no risk of losing it. What God gives will multiply when we engage others with what we have been given. It doesn't depend on our "talent:" rather it depends on our simple willingness to take what we have been given and share it with the world. After all, I know the story of one woman who nearly killed her family every day with her cooking and still managed to get a book lovingly dedicated to her. I think she knew a better secret than the ones contained in books and magazines.