So today's Gospel reading is known as the parable of the talents.
Talents just so we're all on the same page here, we're a sum of money, a very, very large
sum of money.
One talent equaled about what a worker could expect to make in 15 to 20 years.
So we're talking about a lot of money here.
This parable comes as the middle of three teachings that will become the last that Jesus
will share with his followers before his betrayal, his arrest, and his death.
We are only hours from the last supper in this scene.
This parable, like the two stories around it, are called stories or parables of judgment.
The central focus in this parable is not the two workers who get it right, but the one
who fails.
Like most Episcopalians, we probably aren't that comfortable with the idea of judgment,
and indeed it is not a concept that we spend a lot of time on here in church.
So if you find yourself uncomfortable with this story, please know that you are not alone.
This parable is pointed, it is heavy, as we might expect from someone who is acutely anticipating
his own death.
Jesus has predicted it several times leading up to this moment, and he knows what the future
holds even if his disciples do not.
Through this parable, Jesus is asking us to look at our considerable gifts and resources
given to us by God, to sincerely look at how we use them to build up the kingdom of heaven
here on earth.
The work is immense, but Jesus tells us that giving up or failing to try at all is not
an option for those who would truly seek to follow him.
In this parable, a wealthy man calls together a group of servants, and to each he gives
a sum of talents equivalent to the ability of the workers.
The wealthy man then leaves and goes on a long journey.
In the meantime, two of the three workers get to work.
They are using what they have to create more.
The third, though, in his fear decides to bury the money, decides it will be better
to preserve what he has rather than seeking to make something with it.
Upon the landowner's return, he calls all the workers together, and the first two eagerly
present their earnings to the master, who celebrates their intrepidness and invites them
to share in his joy.
The third, though, is a vastly different story.
When he comes forward, he attempts to offer the man exactly the sum of money he was gifted,
the single talent.
The master is incensed.
The third worker is called lazy and wicked, and is thrown into the outer darkness with
weeping and gnashing of teeth.
In our Bible study on Thursday this week, most of us express some degree of sympathy
with that third worker.
And in truth, he doesn't seem like a bad person, like many of the other negative examples
in the parables of Jesus.
He doesn't hurt anyone.
He doesn't lose the money.
He doesn't spend it on bad things.
If anything, this is just a man who is afraid, and his fear keeps him from deciding to act.
Perhaps he's afraid that if he tries, he will fail.
Perhaps he is afraid, our story tells us of the master, who he calls a harsh, greedy,
and uncompromising man.
But our parable does give us reason to doubt his view of the wealthy man.
If the master is greedy, he still decides to share his wealth with his workers.
If the master is harsh, he still decides to join the other two men in celebrating in joy.
So perhaps this third worker's view of the master isn't as accurate as he thinks it is.
Perhaps he's afraid that if he tries to make more from his gift, he will not have enough.
Perhaps he's afraid of scarcity.
Perhaps he's afraid that he will lose even what he does have.
If he spends it on other people, will there be enough left for himself?
Perhaps the man is afraid of his own capabilities.
The master clearly believes that he is capable, but what if he sees himself as too small, his
abilities too little to take on the world's biggest problems around him?
Can he really take what he has been given and make more out of it?
I think this third worker is such a sympathetic character because so many of his fears are
relatable.
So many of his fears are our fears.
Fear that there isn't enough.
Fear that we will fail.
Fear that we are just small people with small gifts facing big problems in a hurting world.
What has kept this man from using his talent to build up the kingdom of God?
What has kept us from using our talents to build up the kingdom of God?
There are so many reasons that this third worker may have chosen the best course of
action as simple in action, but Jesus' use at the parable shows us that there are no
good excuses left, nothing good enough to reason away not doing the work that is set
before us.
To be clear, this parable is not about a return on investment.
The fact that the other two double what they were given is great, good for them.
Bravo.
But that's not what matters.
What matters is that they tried at all, that they went out into the world and that they
tried, that they took what they had been given and worked to make it mean more, to matter
more, to help more.
The third man's sin is not that he doesn't give back his master more.
It's that he failed to do anything at all.
Through this parable, Jesus gives us a glimpse of how God would like for us to use the precious
gifts that we have been entrusted with in our own lives.
It is not enough for us to sit on them, to bury them, to sit in our fear of losing or
fear of failure.
Our gifts from God are precious.
They are priceless, and they are so very needed in the world around us.
And they do come with a great cost.
The cost is no less than the entirety of our lives, the whole of who we are.
It is not enough for us to present ourselves back to God at the end of our journey and
say, here we are.
That's nice.
But what God is asking for us to do, the real question is how have we used what we've been
given to minister to people around us?
How have we used what we've been given to build up the kingdom of God?
How have we taken the moments of our lives, the good and the bad and the terrible and
the mundane, and used them to bless the people around us?
I do promise you, my friends, that every moment of your life can be used to build up the kingdom
of God, can be used to minister to other people.
I remember a time when I was in seminary, and I planned to spend the summer doing a required
course called Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE.
It was required to graduate, and we would hopefully hone our pastoral care skills over
a summer.
I was going to work in a hospital.
And not one week into the program, I was diagnosed with a pretty nasty case of pneumonia.
And I couldn't take off the time that I needed to recover and still stay in the CPE program.
So I had to leave it.
And I cannot tell you how anxious and upset and sad and scared that I was.
I was so worried this was going to be some red mark on my resume, that it was going to
throw off my plans for graduation, for ordination, for the classes I wanted to take while I was
in seminary.
So I made an appointment to meet with our Dean of Students, Bishop Jim Mathis.
And I walked into his office that day, I'm sure, crying.
I spent a lot of time crying over those weeks.
And I sat down in his office right across from him, and I told him what had happened.
And he said, let me stop you here.
He said this to me.
I also left a CPE program about 30 years ago.
He to this day is the only other person that I know who left a CPE program.
He said that memory in his life was also terrible, also unpleasant, also full of anxiety and
planning and second planning and second chances.
And he said it wasn't until the moment that I sat down across from him 30 years later
that that moment in his life became ministry, that he could sit with me 30 years in the
future because of what he had gone through all those years in the past.
His own anxiety, his own fears became a place from which he could be with me truly in my
anxiety.
God takes all of our moments.
God takes all of our experiences, all of our gifts, and gives us ample opportunity to
use them to build up the kingdom of God here on earth.
So I would ask you, my friends, to take stock of your gifts.
What are you good at?
You have them.
I know you have them because God created you and God gifted you with them.
How can we use the gifts that we've been given if we can't name what we're good at?
What are you good at?
What brings you joy?
What does the world need you to do?
No gift is too small.
No single gift so unimportant.
No moment in your life so unimportant that it can't be used in building up the
people around you.
Nothing is wasted with God.
Everything we go through will help us walk with others, will help us bless others.
In this parable, God closes all the loopholes.
There is no way out anymore.
Here at the end of Jesus' life, Jesus tells us that if we are really, really serious about
taking up the cross and following after Jesus, if our lives truly have been transformed, irrevocably
altered, then there are no more good excuses for us not to get to work, not to set about
transforming the world around us.
I don't think God is concerned with what we bring back.
I don't think God's concerned with quantifying the return in your ministry.
We plant seeds, we water, we work, but as Paul reminds us in his letter to the Corinthians,
God gives the growth.
The growth will come.
The call for us then is just to go and do, to use what we have, to use what we've experienced,
to use what we've learned in our own journeys and to bless those around us, to be with each
other truly, to share with each other, and to know that in simply trying and simply having
the courage to say yes to the work that God has set before you, you are exactly where God
wants you to be.
Amen.