Saint Matthew 25:14-30
This may surprise you but over the last few months I have developed a grudging respect for politicians. Admitting this makes me also, and exceedingly glad that you and I are separated by some distance – you at home and me alone again naturally in the sanctuary. If you were here I would be afraid that you would be rushing the pulpit right now to pummel me about the neck and shoulders.
Think about it. The first thing you have to do as a politician, is to start raising money, lots of money. Essentially you become a beggar hitting first on family, then on friends, then on total strangers asking for a handout.
In order for them to part with a buck on your behalf you have to convince them to believe in you and your cause. It’s like “Shark Tank” only instead of four sharks there are schools of them.
Then you have to go out and ask more people to believe in you by holding meetings, coffees and, if you become popular enough, rallies where you give the same basic speech over and over again.
Then you loose control of not only your schedule but your life.
Chasten Buttigieg talks about this at great length in his book I Have Something to Tell You. He writes that when his husband Mayor Pete’s campaign took off he was in the hands of handlers, professional campaigner managers and their minions, who told him not only what to do and where to go but what he could or could not say without “running it by them” first.
Can you imagine living your life like that? Having to worry about everything you say or do.
Still men and woman run for office and they do so believing they might win but knowing also that they might loose. That must be the hardest part of all. Once you’ve lost suddenly you have nothing to do.
Again Chasten Buttigieg remembered having a million things to do one day and then, after withdrawing from the campaign, finding that the next day the only thing on their schedule was making dinner and walking the dogs.
Still, men and woman are willing to try. They are willing to put it all on the line and run for something from dogcatcher to the highest office in the land. In so doing they risk losing.
That’s the fear that keeps most of us out of high stakes games like poker and politics. We are afraid to loose. Sometimes that fear is rational and sometimes it is not.
Jesus told a story about irrational fear once in a story that has lost some of it’s punch because the word “talents” has been mistranslated and therefore cheapened.
How many sermons have you heard where the preacher took the modern day use of the world “talent” and then listen to them ask while they grinned: “What talents has God given you? Use them for the Lord, don’t hide ‘this little light of mine’ but ‘let it shine.’” I’m groaning or snoring already but Jesus original listeners must have been slack-jawed when they first heard Jesus say this.
“The Greek talanta isn’t an ability. We should translate talanta as “a huge bucket full of solid gold.”1
So, to the first slave the man gives control of about one hundred years of wages. The second slave gets the equivalent of forty years’ wages, and the last slave about a year’s worth. So, in the end this isn’t just like leaving the neighborhood kid in charge of the plants and cat food. These are vast sums of money, and with them comes vast responsibility and authority. Jesus says the man entrusts the slaves with it. One translation says he “handed over” his property to them, which means it is implied they are supposed to do something with it. In fact, it sounds like they are supposed to do with the man’s property whatever he would have done with it while he’s away.2
The first two slaves did very well. They invested wisely and made their master a little dough. In fact, they doubled the guys money! And he rewards them by inviting them to become, in effect, partners. And who wouldn’t want these two guys as partners? They believed that, no matter what, there was a bull market out their somewhere and, if there was, they were going to find it.
The third guy has let his fear of losing win the day. He digs a hole and buries the money. His fear is based on a total misconception of his master. For whatever reason he sees him as harsh, unscrupulous, “reeping where he does not sow,” and so he becomes afraid to do anything. His fear has paralysed him to the point that he couldn’t even bring himself to bring the money to the bank, buy a CD and at least earn a little interest. He takes the safest route and comes up more than empty all because he fundamentally misjudged his master.
Mike Ditka once said of the late George S. Halas’ payroll philosophy. ''He throws nickels around like they were manhole covers.''3
The master Jesus tells us about it just the opposite. He invests in the lives of his servants so that they can enter into his joy. The only thing that held one back is fear of failure, the fear of losing what he had been given and labelled a loser.
Without a doubt these are fearful times we are living in.
A virus is running rampant through our land and keeping us apart from each other which is why I’m here and you’re there. In this case fear is a good thing. Nobody wants to be responsible for infecting another person.
Painful as it may be we may miss the big Thanksgiving gathering this year. If we went “over the river and through the woods” to grandmother’s house she just might slam the door in our face and make us sit on the stoop until our rapid result test came back.
We may fear the loss of income. We may fear for the health of a loved one. We may fear that the divisions in our land might never heal.
But we are not losers.
For God is the master in this story just as God is the master of your story and mine. God is the one who has given us everything we have, had, or are. And the best news is that this is not something we have to campaign for. God has given us grace upon grace and God’s grace, God’s love, is something that we can never lose.
This parable in not about our talents or even gobs of gifts represented by the word talanta it’s about the whole of our lives, our heart, our joy.
It’s about being a partner in God’s good work and hearing God say to us, come in and be a part of my joy. A joy that can make winners of us all.
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1. James D Howell, “James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions,” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 1, 2020), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.
2. Philip Martin, “Parable of the Talents,” A Sermon For Every Sunday (A Sermon for Every Sunday, November 11, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Phillip-Martin-Parable-of-the-Talents-1.pdf.
3. Dave Anderson, “The Bear Who Really Was One,” The New York Times (The New York Times, November 2, 1983), https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/02/sports/sports-of-the-times-the-bear-who-really-was-one.html.
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