Pentecost 24 [Proper 28]

Pentecost 24 [Proper 28]  15 Nov. 2020 | Matthew 25.14-30 | by Richard O. Johnson |

Text:  Matthew 25.14-30

Jesus said, “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.’” (Matthew 25.14-30 NRSV) 

It was August of 1978, and I was getting married. An hour before the wedding, I was putting on the fancy European suit I had bought for the occasion, and I suddenly realized that the only black belt I had was too thick for the belt loops. Frantically I turned to my best man. “What do I do now?”  “Don’t panic!” he said. “I’ll find you a belt.” He proceeded to walk up and down the motel corridor, which was pretty well filled with people in town for our wedding, knocking on doors and searching for belts. When he came to John’s room—one of my groomsmen—he discovered that John had already left for the church, but his wife Lynda said, “I think John’s got an extra belt,” and sure enough, she produced one that fit both my waist and my belt loops perfectly.

In the aftermath of the wedding, I neglected to give the belt back, and after our honeymoon, I put it in the mail to him. He wrote right back to say it had arrived safely, and then told the following story: It seems that Lynda neglected to tell him that I had borrowed the belt. They had planned a vacation trip immediately after our wedding, and he spent the entire trip chiding himself for apparently having forgotten his favorite belt. When they got home, he searched for it and of course didn’t find it. At last he confided his frustration to Lynda. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” she said. “Someone borrowed it at the wedding.” In his letter to me, John made this comment: “There are two lessons to be learned from this. One is that, even in the best marriage, communication sometimes breaks down. The other is that you should always lock your suitcase.”

This morning’s gospel lesson tells a familiar parable. A man going on a long journey entrusted money to three servants. To one he gave five talents, to the second he gave three, to the third he gave one. In his absence, the first two servants invested their talents, and they doubled what they had been given. The third buried his talent in the ground, and made nothing. When the master came for an accounting, each of the three explained what they had done. The first two were praised by the master for their effective and responsible management, but the third was condemned because of his timidity in using what the master had entrusted to him.

Two parables

Two stories, one a parable of Jesus, the other, the story about the belt, also a kind of a parable—more about that in a moment. But first let’s talk about giving thanks. It’s the season for thanksgiving. Many churches have special services with thankofferings in this harvest time. Many others focus on stewardship in the fall, often with a theme of thanksgiving. Our thoughts this time of year naturally turn to this topic of thanksgiving. In America, we will soon celebrate Thanksgiving Day. We remember the Pilgrims, the first Americans to set aside a day to give thanks to God, and we respect them greatly for their spiritual acumen in doing so.

What we sometimes forget is that God didn’t give them that first Thanksgiving dinner on a silver platter. They had worked and worked and worked, all the year long, planting, watching, caring for crops. When they celebrated Thanksgiving, they were blessing and thanking God, to be sure—but no doubt they were also aware that God’s blessing had gone hand-in-glove with their own investment of time and effort. Their rich bounty was the result of God’s wonderful and gracious gifts—but also a gracious return on their faithful stewardship of those gifts. They did not just take what God had given them and sit on it, but they used it. There was risk involved, to be sure, not least the risk of trusting God’s guidance to travel to a new world. But at that time of harvest, they recognized God’s wonderful faithfulness, both in giving them the gifts in the first place, and in blessing now the fruits of their labors. Their story is quite like this parable of the talents, you see. There is joy and thanksgiving in the hearts of those who have received God’s gifts and have used them faithfully.

Now the problem most of us have is this: We often would just as soon bury our treasure in the ground. In real life, we are often like my friend John—we learn to keep the suitcase locked! We’d rather not share, rather not use what has been given, rather keep it all locked up, just in case we might need it in the future.

Burying our treasure

We do this in a multitude of ways. Given a choice between going out to dinner and contributing the same amount of money to Interfaith Food Ministry, most of us will pick going out to dinner every time. God has given us so much, but we so often keep that bounty locked up in our lives, our own needs. We lock the suitcase, bury the treasure.

We have the same tendency with sharing talents and abilities. There is so much in this world we could do if we could climb out of the box of self-interest in which most of us live.   When my wife and I were first married, my grandmother was in a convalescent hospital. We had gone to see her one day, and before we left, we sang a little song for her. She was very pleased with this, but the woman in the next bed was absolutely fascinated. She perked up and listened closely, smiled at us, told us how pretty it was. A few weeks later my mother commented that the lady had died just a few days after we were there. “You know,” she said, “when you were singing that day, that’s the only time I ever saw that poor woman show the slightest interest in anything. Most of the time she just sat there, lost in her own world. But when you sang, she seemed to come to life.” A two-minute song, such a simple thing for us, but what a wonderful thing it seemed to be for her.

If each of us were conscious of how much good we could do in such simple ways; if we were only aware of all the people in our community who desperately need friendship, care, attention—things we could give so easily if we only knew. But so often we lock the suitcase, bury the treasure, and do not give our time and our talents.

Did you ever pay much attention to second servant in the parable, the one who is given only three talents? He is important, but he gets lost. He has not been given as much as the first servant, and he ultimately doesn’t produce as much, in terms of real money. But he, like the first, is praised and commended by the master. The point, you see, is that even though he didn’t have much, he still invested it freely, used it fearlessly. What mattered to the master was not so much the end result, but the willingness to give himself, his time, his talent, his treasure, for the sake of his master.

The risk of giving

Giving isn’t easy. C. S. Lewis once remarked that it is very difficult for Christians to learn how to give of themselves. “I’m afraid the only safe rule,” he said, “is to give more than you can spare.” He wasn’t just talking about money. Time, talent, treasure—the Christian way of giving is to take a risk, not to lock it in a suitcase, or bury it in the ground. What we’re called to do is difficult.

I once read about an interesting study of butterflies. Two scientists watched the caterpillar weave a tightly knit cocoon, and then observed the metamorphosed butterfly struggle its way into the world. It seemed as if the butterfly struggled so, trying to get out of the cocoon. The scientists wondered if there might be some way to make it easier. They took a number of cocoons and carefully cut a small slit so that the cocoon would come apart more easily; the same number of cocoons served as a control group, with no slits. When the time came for the butterflies to emerge, the scientists watched the control group struggle and struggle to get out of the cocoon; but when they finally emerged, they flew away with ease and grace. The butterflies in the slit cocoons slid easily out, but then they fell flat on the table. Even with prodding and prompting, not one of them was able to take flight. The scientists concluded that the struggle it takes to get out of the cocoon is what gives the butterfly the strength in its wings to fly.

It is like that with us. Learning to give “with joy overflowing” is difficult; it challenges us, sometimes, it seems, too much. We think we just can’t do it. It is easier, safer, to bury the treasure, lock the suitcase. But that is a recipe for failure. When we take the challenge seriously—when we struggle to give, and give, and give again what God has given us—then, well, we take flight.  We enter into the joy of the master.  Giving—and thanksgiving—becomes a way of life for us.

Robert Lansing Edwards was a Congregational minister in Connecticut. He wrote a hymn that has made it into a number of hymnals called “God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending.” Unfortunately the last verse of the hymn has often been omitted, but it echoes our parable and it’s well worth pondering:

Lend your joy to all our giving,

Let it light our pilgrim way:

From the dark of anxious keeping,

Lead us into generous day.

When our years on earth are over,

Rich toward God and neighbor too,

Lord, fulfill beyond our dreaming

As we yield our lives to you.

Pastor Richard O. Johnson

Grass Valley, CA

roj@nccn.net