Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 13, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I’ve said this before, but much of the time Jesus’ parables, especially the parables that the Gospel of Matthew attributes to him, leave me saying: "Huh?" Or worse. Sometimes they leave me saying "No way!" Sometimes I just find understanding them really difficult. I find myself thinking: Why didn’t he just come out and say what he meant? I find it comforting, actually, that I’m not the only one who’s had those thoughts. Having trouble with Jesus’ parables has a long and venerable history. It goes all the way back to the time of the Gospels themselves. Matthew reports that even the Disciples asked Jesus why he always spoke in parables. Apparently they had trouble understanding them too, and they probably figured that if they didn’t get them, the other people Jesus spoke to probably didn’t get them either. Jesus’ answer in Matthew doesn’t help much. It seems to me to suggest that we aren’t supposed to get them. Matthew reports Jesus saying: "The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’" Mt. 13:13 Well, maybe Matthew thought we aren’t supposed to understand, although I doubt it. It seems to me that we have to try to understand them anyway. As Christians, we have to try to discover some meaning in them for our lives today.

It won’t be easy with the parable we have this morning. When I read Matthew’s parable of the talents last Sunday in preparation for this morning I wrote in my notes: "Forget it! No way!" Matthew’s parable of the talents is one of those parables to which my first reaction is: No! That’s not how it is! That’s not fair, and I don’t believe God or the Kingdom of God is like that. I’ve got lots of problems with this parable, probably as many as I have with any of Jesus’ parables. Maybe you share them.

The first problem I have is with the master’s praise of the servants who invested the money he gave them and doubled it. Now we probably see that as good thing, but look at it again. The master didn’t ask them to invest the money. He didn’t say he expected a return. They doubled their master’s money, which means they either invested wisely or were lucky, or both. But any investment is risky, especially in the days before the FDIC. Investments with the potential for a large return are especially risky. What if the investment had gone bad? What if they’d lost the money, doing something with it that its rightful owner hadn’t asked them to do? How would this master with his quick and violent temper have reacted then? Their actions are praiseworthy because they worked. But were their actions justified any way other than in hindsight? It doesn’t look like it to me.

And then there’s the master’s rejection of the servant who was given the smallest amount of money. He protected it and returned it to the master wholly intact. The master nonetheless explodes at him: "You wicked and lazy slave!" Wicked and lazy? Maybe if the master had told him to invest the money, but as we’ve seen he hadn’t. It seems to me that this servant was perfectly justified in assuming that the master had simply given him the money for safekeeping. He kept it safe. He gave it back. Job well don’t, or so it seemed to me. But not to the master in this parable.

And then there’s the punishment of this servant. What he has is taken from him and the master has him thrown "into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." That seems so unfair, so unjust, so undeserved. And the parable has even worse in it. There’s the profoundly puzzling and troubling line "from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." That sure doesn’t sound like the God I know in and through Christ Jesus, love, and seek to serve. So what are we to make of all this troubling stuff?

We start with the fact that this story is precisely a parable. The story begins: "For it is as if...." "As if." That tells us right from the start that the story isn’t just, or better isn’t really, about what it appears to be about. That’s the whole point of a parable. It makes us think about what Jesus is really talking about, since even the most die-hard literalist will concede that Jesus’ parables aren’t just factual stories about something that actually happened. So we have to ask: What do the different elements of the story represent in reality? A couple of things are pretty obvious. The master represents God, and we’re the slaves or servants. So the story tells us that God entrusts something to us, albeit in different measure to different ones of us. The story calls that something "talents." Now talent here doesn’t mean artistic or any other ability. A talent in Jesus’ world was a sum of money. It was a very large sum of money, one talent being worth more than fifteen years’ wages for a laborer. Matthew’s use of talent here rather than a smaller amount like a denarius, which was worth one day’s wage for a laborer, suggests that we are to understand that God has entrusted each of us with something of great value. We may have that thing, whatever it is, in different measure, but even those of us who have the least of it have a real treasure. God has entrusted us, all of us, with God’s treasure. That, it seems to me, is the first thing we learn from this parable.

But what is it that God has entrusted to us? It is something that is God’s to begin with, and it is something of great value. It seems to me that the thing that most fits that description is the thing that Matthew was trying to give us all along, namely, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ comes from God. It is the wisdom of God given to us in and through Jesus. And it is a treasure above all earthly treasure. To use an image from another parable, it is the pearl of great value that it is worth our giving everything else we have in order to possess. It can give us what nothing worldly can. It can give us hope in a world of despair. It can give us joy in a world of gloom. It can give us peace in a world of strife. It can give us God in a world of doubt and cynicism. We may have it in different measure, as the parable suggests. It seems more real to some of us than to others. Some of us perhaps cherish it more than others. But as Christians we all have it to some measure, even if only one talent’s worth. And even if we have only a little of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is indeed of immense value.

So, God has entrusted the Gospel of Jesus Christ to us. What else does the parable tell us? We have in the parable two models of what we might do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with the treasure that God has entrusted to us. One model is to hide it. To bury it. That model keeps it safe. It preserves it. It doesn’t waste it or lose it. It doesn’t risk it. It doesn’t grow it, but it doesn’t diminish it either. The other model is, in the words of the parable, “to trade” with it. What does that mean? “Trade,” it seems to me, is a metaphor here for sharing the Gospel with others. Trade involves interaction with others. It involves going out into the world, contacting other people, communicating with them, dealing with them, making agreements with them. It means going out into the world, offering what you have to others, and taking risks in hope of a return. Doing that with the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the other model that the parable gives us.

Then there’s the denouement, the bottom line. The parable tells us that God rejects the play it safe model of handling the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s why the master in the parable explodes at the servant who had his one talent and returned it but not more to the master. In the parable itself, the master’s charge against this servant that he is wicked and lazy seems unjustified. It seems to come out of nowhere; but remember this is a parable. Our job is not to argue with it but to understand what it is trying to tell us. The master’s rejection of the play it safe way of the servant with one talent says that is not God’s way. I hear the line about what they have being taken from those who have nothing and the line about casting this servant into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (which is language that appears in Matthew and no where else) as a parabolic way of expressing God’s rejection of the play it safe model. Those lines aren’t to be taken any more literally than the rest of the parable. And they aren’t about taking meager belongings way from poor people. I’ll have more to say about that next week. The parable tells us in metaphoric terms that God approves the other way, the trade with it way, the way of risk that has us take the Gospel to the world and share it with others. And it tells us that when we do that it will work. We will spread the Gospel. We will grow it in the world. Our efforts will be rewarded. Our efforts will please God.

What does that mean for us here at Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ? After all, we have a different vision of the Gospel of Jesus Christ than most if not all of the other churches in this town. We have a vision of the Gospel as inclusive of all of God’s children. We have a vision of the Kingdom of God as being about peace and nonviolent persistence in the cause of peace. We have a vision of God’s dream for justice for all people and not just for people like us or people of whom we approve. We believe that that vision is truer to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to God’s will for the world than the narrower, more judgmental and more legalistic visions of the Gospel that prevail among us Americans today. This parable is telling us that we need to continue to take that vision of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to this community and to the world. We need to spread it. We need to shout it. We have done it some, and it is growing and renewing this church. This parable tells us that we need to keep on, we need to persist. We need to expand our efforts. And it tells us that if we do, that truer version of the Gospel will spread, our faith will grow, and our church will prosper.

We have God’s treasure, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We may, as Paul says, have it in earthen vessels, ( ) but we have it. God wants us to trade with it, to invest it, to grow it, to spread it abroad in our land. If we keep the faith, if we continue to support our church, if we continue to tell others the good news about what we’re doing here, our investment of God’s treasure will flourish and grow, and so will we. Let’s get on with it. Amen.