Proper 28 Year A

I never want to pray to an old ogre. . . d0 you?

Matthew 25-13-30

There’s a great story about a time when John Wesley was preaching on this week’s Gospel, and after the service, a really hot-headed woman approached Wesley and said, You know what my talent is?  My talent is to SPEAK MY MIND, and she had her finger right in the preacher’s face. Wesley paused and then very calmly said, Madam, God wouldn’t care a bit if you would BURY that talent!

Well, you read the Gospel.  Are you asking the same questions I have been asking myself all week?

Have I buried my talents?

How well have I invested my talents?

Am I a one-talent servant or a two-talent servant?

Surely, I couldn’t be a three-talent person. . .  could I?

Did you notice any consistencies in those questions?  Did you notice the common thread that ran through them all?  In all of them the first-person singular pronoun was used repeatedly: five times in four questions.

There really is a strong temptation for us to find ourselves in the characters of Jesus’ parables, and that’s not an altogether bad way of doing biblical exegesis – IF we don’t forget about God.

This parable of The Talents is so very much about God and God’s method of dealing with creation, dealing with each of us!

Notice how the parable opens: It opens with three servants who had differing numbers of talents.

If you are like me, you immediately become concerned with the numerical differences.

Why did one have three, while another had only one? How was this distribution determined?  What was the criteria?

Personally, I have come to believe that the actual number of talents is immaterial and irrelevant to the main theme of today’s Gospel.  What isrelevant is that the master freely and indiscriminately GAVE.  That’s right: GAVE those talents away to his servants.  There were absolutely NO conditions given or stipulations attached. He just turned them over on a silver platter.

It doesn’t matter that some of us are ONE-talent people while others are FIVE-talent folks. It doesn’t matter because all the amounts are extremely outrageous, radically generous, and drastically unselfish.

Depending on which commentary you read, and how you account for inflation, one Talent is worth approximately a half million dollars by today’s standards. The master gave each of those servants an incredible compliment by virtue of his confidence and trust in each of them.

You don’t entrust a half-million dollars to someone you don’t trust.

If you’ll pardon a little Greek word study here, the word translated as gave in this parable isn’t the standard verb for to give. It implies a giving up of control. The talents actually became the property of the servants. He never asks for them back. 

You might also want to take note that when that one talent was taken back, it was not kept by the master, but given to another servant.  God trusts us; God wants us to go forward and be as indiscriminate with our talents and gifts as possible. Isn’t that good news?  We don’t have to worry about failing, as long as we try.

The old adage about giving an A for effort was invented by the master in Jesus’ parable this morning.  It was invented by our God of LOVE!  If we invest in the market of God’s people and that market crashes, God won’t come down on us.

Here’s something that one might find unbelievable on the first read of this week’s Gospel.  I don’t think that the master was all that offended by the fact that the one-talent servant buried his trust.  If you read it closely…… I mean with your magnifying glass in hand…… you will see that’s not the real cause of the master’s disappointment in the one-talentservant.

Let’s focus on the part where this servant throws a blow at his relationship with the Master:

The one-talent servant says, Master, I knew that you were harsh. . .  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. . . 

This is where it goes sour.  Now, listen to the master’s response:

So…. you knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?  So that’s what you think of me?

I entrust so much of what I have to you; I loved you that much; I made my talent your talent, and when all is said and done, you can only think of me as some ‘Old Ogre’ to be feared – some tyrant who demands a pound of flesh – some oppressor who cares more about talents than people?

Do you see what has happened in this parable? Jesus has shown clearly that our view of God and the use of our talents are directly proportional.

The one-talent servant’s mistake wasn’t that he had only one talent; his mistake was a terribly misguided and mistaken image of the master possibly given to him in an adult education class or worse yet – in a sermon!

If you truly believe that your master is an Old Ogre, then your ability to invest your talents for his kingdom will be severely paralyzed.  

I have often seen this in my own ministry over the years.

—- Let me tell you about one instance.  

Early in my ministry, a friend of mine, who was just a few years older than me, had been married about 15 years to his wife, and it was a happy marriage.  He was absolutely devoted to her. . . and she to him.  She was diagnosed was with a vicious kind of cancer, and she died inside of a year.

My friend had never enjoyed church much, but he was always around helping because it was important to his wife. He worked and he gave.  I assisted at his wife’s funeral and even made a follow-up visit at his home.  It was there that he looked at me, a priest only a few days into his ministry, and said, Bill, you can come visit any time, but don’t pray with me, and don’t even mention the word ‘god.’  What kind of God would cause this kind of misery?

What kind of God would take away my only care in life, my only love?  Why should I even care about a God who would snuff out a life on a whim?

I wish I, or someone, had shared more of their precious gift of knowing who God really is with my friend because somehow, he had missed that death isn’t God’s design. Death is God’s enemy.  Death is an inevitable part of a world created in freedom.  God doesn’t call anyone to their death: God stands only for life.  God has invested everything in life, and although death will come, God will have the last word, and that word is ‘Resurrection’.  

A talent is worth a half-million dollars, but the Gospel is priceless.

My dear friends in Christ, it may not be very apparent in a close and loving church community, but the Old Ogre theology is very much alive and well out there in there in the world.   For some, addressing God as ALMIGHTY is to equate God with an evil like Darth Vader and God’s kingdom with the Klingon Empire.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that is comical and yet just a bit haunting for me this week. It read, when you do a good deed, get a receipt in case heaven is like the IRS.

I know that sometimes I’m guilty of this outlook. When I picture God as someone who is more concerned with keeping a list of my wrongs rather than patting me on the back for my talents.

I assure you; God does not keep a list; nor does he check it twice.  God loves you whether you are naughty or nice.

I know that I sometimes let others who have the Old Ogre view of God sway me from my convictions, and I make the horrible mistake of burying my talent in the soil of silence.

We Christians, we people of the Gospel – the Good News – we should do everything we can to eradicate this debilitating Old Ogre theology.

My friend who lost his wife to cancer was paralyzed, just as the servant in our Gospel was paralyzed by his conception of the Master.  He had buried his talents, and when he needed them the most, he didn’t have the energy or the will to dig them up.

I guess the old saying is true: You can’t climb uphill by thinking ‘downhill’ thoughts. We can join the ranks of those who live in fear of the Old Ogre– unfortunately such fear is all too common an occurrence in the church – or we can commit ourselves to the One who claims that love is the most powerful force in the universe. 

When we become willing to share this pearl of great price, this Gospel of unconditional love, with a daring zeal; when we’re willing to ask outright, What part of unconditional do you not understand?  Then, and only then, will others come to know that God is more interested in magnifying our talents than in tallying up our shortfalls.

May God bless us all in this effort.