Today's Sermon

I struggle with this story from the gospel lesson for today. It feels to me like I've witnessed a crime, a travesty of justice, an overreaction of the greatest degree. Third strike punishment for a first strike offense. So let's see if we have all of our facts straight.

A land owner, an apparently rich land owner, decides he is going to take a long trip. A really long, long trip--so long that it requires dividing up his assets so that they'll be protected while he is away. This apparently would not have been all that uncommon. So he is going on a trip and he summons three of his slaves to him. We don’t know if these are his only slaves or if they are merely his most trusted or his top three. But there are three. He divides up his assets this way. He gives the first slave 5 talents. He gives the second slave 2 talents and he gives the third slave one talent. (I'm guessing that many of us have heard this sermon preached as talent meaning any gift that we possess, such as playing the piano, singing ability, or the ability to beat Drextel Robinson in the 100 yard dash. Maybe that last one was just me. But no in this story Jesus means that the talents were actual money. A talent would have been roughly equivalent to 15 years wages. So 5 talents would have been equal to 75 years ways and 2 equal to 30 years wages. That is a lot of money! More money than any of the slaves would have ever seen before.) So he divides up the assets and he heads off.
After a while he returns and he calls the three slaves back together so that he can get back his money. The first slave, the one who had been given 5 talents, returned having doubled his 5 talents. That means the slave went down to the market place and bartered and traded until he had doubled his masters assets. Now remember this is a slave. This is someone who is uneducated dealing with sums of money that he has never seen before. This would be someone like my father, a blue collar worker. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. He finally got his GED when I was in grade school. But he was largely uneducated. This would be like him taking a million dollars and investing it in the stock market and doubling his money. The likelihood of this happening is not impossible but it is highly unlikely, highly unlikely. So essentially this slave got lucky. And he was rewarded for it. Likewise the second slave came to the master and he too had doubled his money. Again, he basically got lucky! Or let's not even diminish what the first two slaves did. Let's assume that they did not just get lucky, but they actually had some street smarts. They had watched the landowner do business and had learned a few things. But still the likelihood that they would actually double the money is pretty slim. But both the first and second slaves were rewarded. The master said to them "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." Now all in all up to this point in the story, I’m still with him. Doesn't necessarily seem all that fair but it at least seems satisfactory. No harm, no foul.
Then comes the third slave. This is the one who was given one talent. A lot of money, but not as much as the first two slaves. And I'll give you that this was probably not the smartest way to explain to the master his results. He basically says I know you are mean and hateful and I was really afraid of losing all your money so I didn't invest it. And he held out his hand and gave the master back the one talent he had been given, the one talent that was probably still covered somewhat in the dirt from the hole in which the slaved had buried it. That's right he buried it. Now I sort of understand this. There are people in the world who are risk takers--like the first two slaves. They are willing to roll the dice and take the chance that there work and investment will be rewarded. Then there are people like the third slave who are more cautious. People who know that playing the market is risky. The person who believes that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. At least you have the one talent. There is no chance that you are going to lose it. You will return the talent to the master exactly as he left it. So he wasn’t a risk taker, is that really such a crime? Well apparently to the master it is. Because this is what he says, "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." Then he says that the one talent should go to the first slave who had 10 talents and that the slave should be thrown out into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the point where I say, "whoa." Come on, wicked and lazy? I'll give you maybe lazy, but wicked. It seems to me that he is protecting the master's assets. And should he really be cast out into the darkness--basically the master said, "you can go to hell."
Now if the parable is to speak to a great truth what is it? Is the master God? And I really wanted to use this sermon to talk about money, which is how it is often used. It is placed in November because this is when most churches are doing their stewardship campaigns. But the problem with that is that all throughout the Bible we have God siding with the poor and not the rich. This parable cannot possibly be about money, because if it is then what it is saying is that if you invest your money in God's kingdom then it will be returned to you two-fold. Isn't that the message many of you have heard before--I know I have. It's what folks who preach a gospel of prosperity say all the time. Just send in your 10 dollars or your 100 dollars or your 1000 dollars now and God will double it. My grandmother's church several years ago did this thing where they gave everyone one dollar and told them this was God's dollar and that they should take it away invest it and bring back the results at the end of the month. My grandmother used it to buy flour and eggs and baked cakes that people then bought. As I remember it my mother and sister were there too and they all three pooled their funds--my sister and mother becoming the salespeople. And their investment was fruitful.
Or if you are not paid back in money then it will be returned to you in other ways. So give your tithes to the church and it will be returned to you in generosity, love, etc. But all of this still points to the rich getting richer. It also suggests that only part of it belongs to God to begin with. That one dollar is God's dollar but all the other dollars you have those actually belong to you. I heard an author on the Daily Show this week talking about ways that we can address the energy crisis in the United States by decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. And you all have heard the suggestions, natural gas, electricity, and wind. And he actually said that we should reduce our dependence on foreign oil by using only these things that belong to us, our natural gas, our wind. Our wind? Can we really say that the wind belongs to us? That is about as ridiculous as saying our air space. Actually it is more ridiculous than saying our air space. In the end none of it belongs to us. It all belongs to God.
So that brings us back to this parable. What does it all mean? If it is not about how we invest God's money then what is it about? To which I'll say I don't know fully. But I can offer a suggestion. If we look at the gospel parable right after this and the gospel parable right before this then we might have a clue. The story right before this is about a bridegroom who comes looking for the bridesmaids and finds that only half of them are prepared. And the gospel parable after this is the familiar story of the separation of the sheep and the goats. You know the I was naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me, and so forth and so on. And right in the middle of this you have today's story, a story about extravagant generosity and incredible responsibility. The bridegroom can come at any moment--he may meet us as a prisoner, or as a hungry person, or as even the person sitting next to you and when he comes to you remember that you have been granted a generous portion or love or wealth or whatever it is that is being asked of you. And instead of burying and hoarding that love and wealth away, give it away. You'll still have enough left over, as a matter of fact you'll have more than enough left over. And in the end I think this for us is a little about money. Jim Wallace says that budgets are moral documents. They reflect our values and our beliefs. That is budget, both governmentally and locally and personally. How we spend our money reflects what we believe. Particularly as we enter a season that has been often seen as a time of gross over-consumption, what are we saying about what we are buying. How much we are spending? I realize that people are feeling a financial crisis these days. We saw this week that retail spending was down. So people are saying we are spending less, but are they thinking any more about what they are spending on. Or are they merely burying their talents in the ground because they are afraid of losing it all? As to the weeping and gnashing of teeth, into the darkness. I'd say we often cast ourselves out into the darkness. We chose to live in the place of fear. We choose to live in a place where we are so hardened that we can't love or be loved. It is our choice. Let us choose love. Let us choose generosity. Let us choose our neighbor. Let us choose one another. Let us choose God. Amen.