Nov 15 2020 Sermon

P25A 2020 Matthew 25:14-30
I love to cook because I love to eat, but although I love to eat baked goods, I have never
gotten the hang of baking. I used to blame it on the temperature of my oven not being calibrated
properly, but that can’t be true of the ten ovens in the ten kitchens in all the apartments and houses I’ve ever lived in. Fortunately, I have two good friends who are fantastic bakers. I happened to mention to the one that I was going away for the weekend with a few friends and we were planning meals and snacks by potluck. Although she knows I can epic fail a box of brownie mix, she still suggested that I bake the cake that she had just made for her last get-together and sent me the recipe.
It was from the Great British Bake Off. And among the other guests for whom I’d be baking it was
my other really talented baker friend. Her Christmas cookies belong on the cover of Good
Housekeeping magazine. And so I started worrying about whether I could make this cake up to her
standards. I considered doubling the recipe and making two identical cakes so I could try one and
see if it tasted OK. I thought about maybe making something else entirely, something easier. I
finally decided that I would try it, so just hours before I was supposed to leave the house, I looked
closely at the recipe, only to see that since it was British, so everything was in grams instead of
ounces, and a couple of the ingredients were things that not only did I not have but I didn’t even
recognize. I didn’t have time to get a scale and make an extra trip to the store for ingredients I
wasn’t even sure I could find. So I showed up at the potluck with a six pack and no cake. That
really talented baker did brings some beautiful cupcakes and delicious cookies, but everyone else
brought bags of chips and pretzels and fun size candy bars. And although the homemade desserts
were excellent, we all ate plenty of the store-bought stuff, and nobody judged anybody for not
making their snacks by hand. But I was so worried about baking badly, I ended up not contributing
at all.
This is a familiar yet misunderstood parable. What it says is that three slaves are given money
to manage according to their ability, not according to their disability. Yet in the church we don’t
always follow that model. It’s true that sometimes others see gifts in us that we fail to see in
ourselves, but if you’ve spent much time in any church community, you’ve probably experienced
being approached to serve on a committee that in no way matches your interests, or being asked to
take a turn as lector when you’re terrified of public speaking, or being assigned to arts and crafts at
Vacation Bible School when a hot glue gun is a deadly weapon in your hands, or being asked to help
with a funeral meal when your own kitchen is disaster zone. Somehow we’ve taken this parable to
mean that every warm body has a little bit of talent, so use your meager skills badly for the Lord. On
the contrary, it’s OK to say “that’s not my thing”…but…God did give each of us some abilities with
the expectation that we use them for the kingdom.
This parable, like all parables, makes a comparison between two things which in some ways
are alike but in some ways are very different. We should not uncritically equate the master in the
story with God. After all, God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt and created a the Law to govern
a free society where there were no slaves—yet the man in this story owns slaves. And the man is
filthy rich. Ever wonder about that phrase—filthy rich? Mad rich by dirty money? In Jesus’ day just
like in ours, people didn’t get ridiculously rich without exploiting someone else—outright cheating
others or paying poverty wages while keeping all the profits. This man is wealthy enough to own at
least three other human beings, and just one of the talents that he entrusts to them is worth 20 years
wages for a day laborer. He doesn’t use that money to pay laborers; he invests 160 years worth of
wages to make even more money for himself. And we might wonder how ethically he expects his
managers to act as they engage in trades that double that unimaginable wealth. Even the master’s
suggestion that the third slave should have at least banked his talent for interest violates the Torah’s
prohibition against usury, loaning money for profit. So although this character might be a successful
business man by worldly standards, he doesn’t sound at all like the God of scripture who casts down
the mighty, lifts up the lowly, feeds the hungry with wondrous things and sends the rich away empty.
But whatever we may say about this character, he’s apparently not as bad as the third slave
assumes. The master answers that slave sarcastically, “Oh, you know, do you, that I’m a harsh man
who reaps where I did not sew? If you know how demanding I am, then why didn’t you at least
try?” That last slave judged the master so harshly it made him afraid of failing, afraid of making a
bad investment and losing some of the master’s money. So he took all of that incredible wealth and
did absolutely nothing but bury it in the ground. What was he doing that whole long time the master
was gone if not working for the master’s business?
As we think about how we are called to use our talents, money or abilities, we remember that
our God is not a harsh master who reaps where he didn’t sew or gathers where he didn’t scatter. Our God is infinitely more generous, gracious, just, and forgiving than the master in this story. Therefore we have no need to be afraid. You might remember Martin Luther famously saying “Sin boldly” which sounds very strange out of context. But Luther was encouraging a fellow reformer who had become so concerned about messing up, about his actions turning out to be wrong and sinful, that he had given up trying to act at all. Luther reminded him that even if he failed in his attempt to serve God, the God he was trying to serve is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God had given him resources and opportunities with the expectation that he would be a good steward of those gifts—that he would use them to do something, not nothing, for the sake of the kingdom. What’s the worst that could happen? Act boldly, and if it turns out badly, remember that grace abounds.
It’s not about what or how much we’ve been given, it’s about our trust in the Giver. Whatever
our talents are, they were given to equip us for kingdom work. We’re called to be good stewards;
what we have is not our own—we’re not working for ourselves. If we’re intimidated into inaction,
we have to ask ourselves, Why are we afraid? The One for whom we’re working knows us, has
entrusted us with work to do and resources to do it, and is ready to forgive us when we need it. What are we waiting for?