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‘A’ // Pentecost 28 // 11-16-08 // Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian
Scripture Matthew 25:14-30
The Abundance of God:
People Serving Money … or, Money Serving People?
Part 6 of 6 in a Stewardship Series:
"The Abundance of God: Prosperity, Partnership ... Peace"
Prayer: Our stewardship letter from our Session this past week, O God, called us to “feet on the ground” outreach. Going deeper – into the very soil and soul of our mission – in this coming year of witness to your justice and your love as a church, and as your individual disciples within it.
What to do today, then, with a servant who goes so deep as to bury his talent in the ground? What to do with this servant’s witness – which might actually call forth our own?
And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be receptive of you – O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Some of you may remember this story from several months ago. It bears repeating today:
During the children’s message, the pastor asks the kids, “What is brown, has a furry tail, and stores nuts?” Silence. The pastor asked the question again: “What is brown, has a furry tail, and stores nuts?” Again: No response. Finally, the wisest of the wee bunch piped up, “I believe the answer should be Jesus. But it sounds like a squirrel to me.”
As we approach this parable in the gospel today – one of the most misunderstood parables, in my experience, in the church today – let us remember: When we encounter the master in the parable, we may think that the master is Jesus – though it should sound like a squirrel to us.
Or in this case: The master sounds like nothing more than a rat.
This is Stewardship Dedication Sunday. And – like a lot of pastors, I would discover – I used to give profuse praise to God for the arrival of this gospel lectionary gift on my doorstep every three years at this Stewardship Dedication time of the year.
A time when parishioners are deciding prayerfully, “What do I want to financially dedicate to the church for the coming year?”
And 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 heard of the stewardship mantra of time, talents, and treasure. Well, voila! – here, in this story, we have what seems to be the last two of these! A Roman monetary unit that’s conveniently translated in English to sound like what I should be doing with my life. How I should be investing myself – taking risks in my discipleship venture. How I should be multiplying my return unto God.
And how I should listen to what the Wizard of Oz notoriously once said: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
The man behind the curtain. The master in the story.
The one I blithely had believed for years to be Jesus. Or God.
It took a casual comment about this passage at a ministers conference over a decade ago to lead me to do some researching on that master behind the curtain.
The same man who delighted in having the one with ten talents give him back twenty talents – leaving the slave with nada – and having the one with five talents give him back ten talents – leaving that slave, as well, with zilch.
The same man – in the words of the man given one talent – who reaped what he did not sow.
Gee: What a nice guy! Give that first man the equivalent of over 75 years of a laborer’s wage, and the second over 30 years of wages. And then let them double it, and return it all … all, to him!
Doesn’t sound very much like Jesus or God to me.
Sounds more like a cash-cropping, family farm-eating imperial landowner pathetically common in Jesus’ day. Someone who was about his servants serving money – that he, in turned, would be the only one being served.
Imagine for a moment, if you would, each of the three slaves taking a reflective moment after receiving their great riches from their master. Imagine them asking themselves two questions, supremely spiritual and economic both: “What am I worth?” and “What is 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 all be taken away 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 stewardship and his integrity. For there is really no worth – no value – that this unearned five years of wages could have over him. He is infinitely more worthy and valuable than that. 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 … or, better put perhaps, some “summer stock”. For this laborer of the land – this good creation of God, entrusted with dominion over the rest of the good creation of God – “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 land! 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 talent “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! And, he adds, what a “worthless slave” you are!
Worthless … to this master … because the slave knew his real worth in the eyes of a living and loving God.
A God we will learn in the next story in this gospel – next Sunday’s lectionary lesson – who does not side with the landlord’s lackeys, but with the allegedly “worthless” ones.
The “worthless” ones …
· Those earliest Christians, buried underground in the catacombs, who knew their true worth from an abundant God.
· Those contemporary Palestinians, whose hospital wards are often buried underground to protect their patients from Israeli shelling.
· Those anywhere who find themselves burying their allegiance to that which cannot possibly contribute to the health and well-being of the community.
Which of these three slaves do you think act as their masters’ extensions – perhaps the German word doppelganger is more appropriate? Making 100 percent profit for the master – most likely through exploitation and graft? People serving the monied?
And which of these slaves do you think acts not as an extension for the manipulative master, but as a disciple for our abundantly graceful God – standing for the principle of money serving people?
This past week, you received – I trust – an inspirational budget that our Session, our church board, has proposed for 2009.
This is a moral document, based on the abundance of God. This is a moral document that, like any household budget, provides a template for what we think we, like the one-talent slave, are worth, as well as what we value in this world.
This is a moral document – not about people serving money and an institution, but about money and an institution serving people.
This moral document is about stewardship. It puts our ministry at the highest bottom-line figure in my ten years here – and in a troubled economy, yet – because your Session is trusting in the abundance of God when that abundance counts the most.
The abundance of a God those considered worthless or less worthy by the world more often than not seem to know the most about …
A biblical scholar had taken a Bible study class to inmates in a maximum security prison in New York State. After struggling with the parable of the talents with them for awhile, the following exchange occurred:
Scholar: Which of those three guys in the story do you like the best?
Inmate (after a pause, and with a little smile): Why, Prof, I like that third guy.
Scholar: Okay, go with that. How do you feel about this boss who gave you all this money to invest for him?
Inmate (pausing): Why that SOB! He’s tryin’ to use me to make his money for him. And I get the rap in the end if I lose it.
Scholar: So is he God?
Inmate: Of course not. Who said that anyway?1
Tell me: What are you worth?
Tell me: What is your value?
And what is the worth and value of our church’s ministry, to you?
Is it about the stewardship of taking a stand for what you think is right about this congregation’s call – a call from this undistinguished building to and with the underside in this world? Is it about our pledges serving people – people doing ministry, as well as people we are doing ministry for and with?
Per our purpose statement: Is it about the joy of doing justice, and being liberal in love?
I hope it is. I trust it is.
Then again: Is it about us serving money? About another joy – per today’s scripture, “entering into the joy” of a most unloving master?
Well, of course not.
Who said that … anyway?
Benediction …
Answer these questions to yourselves with the spiritual heart God has given each of us, if you would – and not with your economic head:
“What am I worth?”
“What is my value?”
“Where do I put my trusts?”
“Where are my bonds?”
“To whom am I in debt?”
“Where do my savings lie … so that they may be redeemed?”
Where your treasure is … there your heart is, also.
Go out into the world in peace, to love and serve our servant Lord.
1As told by Walter Wink in Larry Hollar, ed., Hunger for the Word: Lectionary Reflections on Food and Justice, Year A (Collegeville, MN: Order of St. Benedict, 2004), p. 196.
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