I Dare You!

a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers

Psalm 123

Matthew 25:14-30 

We are heading toward many things.  Our Stewardship Campaign is geared up and traveling toward next Sunday when we pledge.  We’ve got Thanksgiving the Thursday after that and the following Sunday is the beginning of Advent.  If you are in the shops or the mall, you’ve probably noticed that Thanksgiving is hardly a blot on the landscape as department stores and shop owners have put out Christmas decorations and merchandise before Halloween even.

We are also heading toward the end of our liturgical calendar which finishes next week with Christ the King Sunday and the new year begins the following week with our anticipation of the celebration of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Day.  That is the context within which we see the scripture lesson for this week.  We are heading toward the end of Jesus’ life when he will die and be resurrected, recognized as who he is, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, the Sovereign Lord over all.

Jesus is preaching and teaching for the last time in the synagogue and he is warning the people that they need to prepare.  They need to step up to the plate and turn their lives around to face God.  They need to look at who they are and what they are and ask themselves who God intends them to be and what God intends them to do.

Last week, we looked at the parable of the ten virgins.  The lesson there was to be prepared.  This is the parable immediately following and the emphasis doesn’t seem to be on the need for preparation, per se, but instead upon what it means to prepare.  Jesus started the first parable with the words, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this…”  This parable begins with the words: “For it is as if a man, going on a journey…”  Clearly, Jesus is continuing his explanation of the kingdom of heaven.  And in these last few days of his life, his message gains an intensity, a fervor that it has not had before.

A man, going on a journey, calls his three slaves together and gives his property to them – five talents to the first, two to the second and one to the third.  How much exactly is a talent, you ask?  A talent was a large sum of money, the equivalent of 30,000 denarii.  That doesn’t explain much, does it?  Alright, a single denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer, so five talents was equal to approximately 15 years annual salary, two talents worth about six year’s wages and one talent about three.  Can you imagine the feelings that these slaves had when entrusted with these huge sums of money?  Imagine someone walking up to you and handing you $50,000, $100,000 or even $250,000.  What would you do?

Well, the man who receives the most money, takes it out and wheels and deals and doubles his money by the time his wealthy master returns.  The same is true of the second slave.  But the third is nervous.  It is an awful lot of money, after all, and what if he loses it?  He goes out into his backyard when no one is looking and he takes a spade.  He digs a hole deep in the ground and buries the money.  He fills the hole and perhaps even plants something on top of it to cover his tracks.  He still is not able to rest easy, but worries day and night over the money and its safety, trying not to give away its position to any of his friends or family.

A long time goes by, Jesus tells us.  A long time.  The early Christian community believed that this parable was telling them of the coming judgment, so it was also letting them know that Jesus wasn’t coming back just any minute.  Remember, Jesus had said that “no one may know the hour,” not you, not me, not even Jesus, but only the Father, of when he will return, and these few little words reinforce that statement.

“After a long time, the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.”  Now the first one has used that time wisely and well.  He has been out in the marketplace; he has wheeled and dealed and has doubled his money.  Upon his master’s return, he hands over the money to his master and is told, “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.”  What fabulous words to hear, huh?

The second guy must be feeling pretty confident at this moment, for he has done the same.  He has gone out and used his gifts in the marketplace in some way so that it, too, has doubled.  The master says the very same words 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.”

Now the third slave is probably sweating it out about this point.  He has not used the gifts that he might have in any way, shape or form, but instead has dug this hole and buried the talent he had for all the long time that his master was gone.  On the other hand, at least he didn’t lose it, he’s probably thinking.  For upon hearing of his master’s return, he went and dug up the talent and comes forward to his master, 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 is furious with this.  He cried out: “You wicked and lazy slave!  If you were so all-fired afraid of me, why didn’t you at least take the money and put it in the bank?!  Then I would have gotten the interest if nothing else!”

He takes the talent away from the third slave and gives it to the first, saying, “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.”

This seems a pretty harsh indictment of the man who hid the talent away, but there are a couple of points I’d like for us to take away today.  First of all, only those two who were able to truly receive the gifts, who truly believed that the five and the two talents were given to them, were able to go out and multiply them.  Quite often, we say, “I’m too old” or “I’m too young,” “I can’t cook” or “I can’t sew” or “I don’t know how” or “I don’t have the time” or “I don’t have the money” without recognizing what we do have.  Yes, we are old or young or kitchen-impaired or very busy or on a fixed budget or any variety of things, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have gifts to give.  We simply haven’t accepted the fact that we have them.  We haven’t received the gifts that are given to us, so we cannot use them in God’s service.

The enemy of accomplishment is not inadequacy, but perfection.  Let me tell you something, folks: not one single one of us is perfect.  Not one of us is going to write the perfect book or sing the perfect son or make the perfect egg casserole to serve at the “State of the Church” breakfast – I’ll bet they’ll be pretty fantastic, but not one will be perfect – not one of us is going to treat our loved ones with perfect kindness much less the people we don’t like as well, not one of us is going to make perfect decisions all the time about how to spend our time, our talents, our money.  But each and every one of us has gifts, has talents, both material things like being mechanically inclined or having a good head for numbers or musical ability or a love of children as well as financial gifts – we live in the U.S. of A. in the most affluent period in all of history and have stepped up to the plate when there was a need such as the victims of the hurricanes of the past year or the tsunami before that – we all have plenty and more even though it is true that we will all have to tighten our belts a bit because of current energy costs and rising costs of living.  Nonetheless, there is no one on this planet that lives better than we do in America and with this gift also comes with responsibility.

I’m going to confess something to you here.  I’ve already told the folks in my small group last week at Bible Study this story, so I apologize that they’ve got to listen to it again, but I’ve really been thinking a lot lately about the nature of receiving.  About how hard it is for us to say “yes” to a gift being given to us.

I have never owned a china service.  I won’t go into the whys or wherefores of this hole in my possessions; I simply don’t have a set of china, nor has that fact particularly bothered me up until the last few years.  Recently, I’ve really been taken by the idea of having a beautiful set of dishes to use for special occasions such as Thanksgiving upcoming or Christmas and so on.  I’ve begun looking in department stores such as Macy’s in the china section and a couple of years ago, I actually selected a pattern that I really liked.  I was given a Macy’s gift certificate and I decided that that was what I was going to use it for.  I was going to go in and buy one place setting at a time, or maybe even simply one piece at a time, and if it took me five or ten years to come up with a full eight place settings, then so be it.

I went in to buy the first place setting or at least the first dinner plate and I got a saleswoman who was determined that I walk out with the whole set.  She was really pushy about buying it on time and I’d get the first six months with no interest and then I could use it for that upcoming Christmas and so on and so forth.  Well, I really wasn’t planning on making a purchase that big and the whole thing made me so uncomfortable that I left the store.  Later, I spent the money on something else that I really needed and that was that.

My next birthday, I received another gift certificate to Macy’s and I decided this time I was going to go in and buy a plate with it.  I was not going to get pushed around or made uncomfortable about how much I wanted to buy at the moment.  I was going to be strong in the face of the salesperson and get just what I wanted.  Do you know I went into the store and the pattern I wanted was gone?  Not only that, but the new and different ladies working the section didn’t know it.  We looked in the Waterford/Wedgewood book, but I couldn’t remember the name of it anymore and we couldn’t find it.  So I spent the gift certificate on other things I needed and went on from there.

Fast forward three weeks.  I’m in Laura’s kitchen, a dear friend who lives in Wilton, CT, telling her this story.  “I have a full set of china that I never use,” she says.  “I don’t know if you’d like the pattern or not, but you’re welcome to it, if you want it.  I have eight, maybe ten, place settings.  It’s up in the attic all boxed up. – Wait, I do have the sugar and creamer and serving plate and bowl down here; you can look at the pattern and see if you like it.”

She goes to the cupboard and pulls out a beautiful serving platter, that is not my pattern, but oh so close in color and design.  “It’s Waterford or Wedgewood,” she says, “I can’t remember which.”

I was dumbfounded.  “Oh, no!” I exclaimed.  “You can’t do that!  Do you know how much that china is worth?  You can’t just give it away to me!”

“But I never use it,” she countered.  “I would be happy if it were being put to use, especially by somebody I love.”

“It’s too expensive.  Maybe I could pay you over time for it…” I said.

Long story short: Laura and I went upstairs to the back of the attic and brought down boxes of china, filled up my car with it and I brought it home.  We left it that I would use it and we’d figure out payment later.  I was telling the story to a clergy colleague about a week later, so excited to have this beautiful china in my hutch and able to use it for the holidays even though it’s not truly mine when she looked at me and said, “Rebecca, why didn’t you just say ‘thank you’?”

If you don’t accept that you have received a gift, you can’t use it in service of the Lord.  The first two slaves in our story today got this.  They truly accepted that the talents their master had given to them had been given to them.  They received them and therefore were able to do something with them.  The talent that the third slave got never belonged to him in any meaningful way.  He didn’t truly receive it and so he couldn’t do anything with it.  Whatever it is that we are given – big or small, loads or little, we are to take it and use it.

I’m sure that there are people in the great wide world out there who have more than we do, who have a better chance of making a greater impact, who have suffered more or who have had more blessed lives than we.  None of that matters.  What matters is that we take the gifts that we have in all realms – physical, material, financial as well as intellectual, thinking, practical as well as spiritual, emotional, intangible – and we use them.  We don’t bury them; we don’t hide them; we don’t obscure them.  We risk what we’ve got, trusting that God will use them and multiply them and make them manifest to those near and far.

How can we trust enough to do this?  This speaks to the second point I’d like us to notice.  Let’s look at the way the slaves perceived their master and how that impacted the way they handled their responsibilities.  The two slaves who were given the most, saw their master as someone who wanted them to risk, to step out in faith and perhaps even withstand the possibility of losing – we don’t know if these two ever did lose and then make up that loss, but it is likely given the lengthy time that we know the master was gone.  Considering the Bible tells us that they were trading in the marketplace, it is quite probable that they both made money sometimes and didn’t others.  They purchased items from traveling caravans that didn’t sell and ended up with overstock.  Or they were able to sell the less popular items, but had to mark them down so that they ended up losing money on the items instead of gaining.

Where might they have gotten both the knowledge of how to trade and the guts to go out and do it?  Perhaps they learned from or through their master.  Why else might he go away for lengthy periods back in the time of Jesus except that he was a merchant himself?  Perhaps they even saw their master as someone who stepped out and tried new things, didn’t always do what others did – a risk-taker, a radical, a rebel.  Those are all three words we could certainly use to describe Jesus.

The third slave, meanwhile, tells the master upon his return that “he (knows) him to be a harsh man, reaping where (he) did not sow, and gathering where (he) did not scatter seed.”  He perceives the master as someone who is judgmental and punitive, so what does he get upon his master’s return, but judgment and punishment.

If we look at Jesus ourselves, what do we see?  Do we see a man who inflicts judgment upon us and who awaits our failures?  Or do we see someone who risked everything, even his own life, out of love for us?  Are we willing to step out in faith and risk as fully and completely as he has for us?  Are we willing to take the talents that we’ve been given, no matter what they are, no matter where they might take us, no matter what might happen and use them, risking that our lives might be irrevocably changed?  Are we able to see that we are loved by a risk-taking God, a God who not only desires, but requires that we risk in return, that we take the talents that we’ve been given and that we spread them around, use them in our communities and beyond, trusting that they will not be minimized with usage, but the opposite will happen.  That they will grow and flow and shower the church and its people, the community and its environment, the world and its needs abundantly.

This is the story of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a woman who it looks like will become the first female president of the African country, Liberia which is a small country along the Ivory Coast.  In winning this apparent victory, she will also become the first female president of any country in Africa period.  She is an amazing woman: Harvard-educated, once a finance minister in her country, a United Nations official and World Bank officer.  But she has also been through incredible peril and risk in running this campaign in her war-torn country.  A country in which she was once sentenced to ten years in jail for speaking out against the military regime in power at the time.  When she got out of jail, she went into exile – that was when she began working as an economist for World Bank – and built a good life for herself.  But a comfortable life wasn’t enough.  She was committed to her country and she went back and ran for president against George Weah, a 39-year-old soccer star whose rags-to-riches story has inspired the majority of the unemployed male youth of the country.  He is currently contesting the election results and the ultimate decision won’t be known until November 23^rd, but no matter what, Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf, or Mama Ellen, as she is known to her constituency, is pledged to staying in Liberia and working for the common good of her country.  This kind of courage and risk-taking is surely God-inspired – and inspired by a God who encourages us to dream and to strive and to do more than we ever thought possible by ourselves.

Now, as you ponder your pledge to the Presbyterian Church of Sweet Hollow this season, I ask you to remember what God has given to you.  I ask you to look at your life and the riches that you have: the talent, the time, the financial wherewithal.  I ask you to honestly assess your situation – only you truly know what you are capable of giving.  Where you might tighten your belt or carve out some time or create some space to benefit those here in this community and beyond.  Only you know what God is asking of you and how you might responsibly act in response to God’s request.

Meanwhile, I ask you to reflect upon the abundance that you have and recognize the duty and the privilege that we have to give generously in return, it is a matter of faith and trust and servanthood.  It is a matter of saying “yes” to the gifts we’ve been given and to the risks we are asked to take.

Finally, look at the story we heard today.  Who do you feel called to emulate in it?  Servant Number One, Servant Number Two or Servant Number Three?  Just as Jesus was throwing down the gauntlet to the people of his day, demanding that they trust him and risk it all in return, I ask the same of you.  No, I don’t ask you… I dare you!  I dare you to step out in faith and commitment.  And I promise you that if you do, your pledge will be magnified, multiplied, mount up in ways that we cannot even imagine.  Amen.