“Whose Talents”
26th Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 25:14-30
Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about the way we look at things. “In a certain village the school bell rang at 8:30 a.m. to call the children to class. The boys and girls left their homes and toys reluctantly, creeping like snails into the school, not late but not a second early. The bell rang again at 3:30 p.m., releasing the children to homes and toys, to which they rushed at the very moment of the tolling of the bell. This is how it was every day, with every child except one. She came early to help the teacher prepare the room and materials for the day. She stayed late to help the teacher clean the board, dust erasers, and put away materials. And during the day she sat close to the teacher, all eyes and ears for the lessons being taught.
One day when noise and inattention were worse than usual, the teacher called the class to order. Pointing to the little girl in the front row, the teacher said,
‘Why can you not be as she is? She comes early to help, she stays late to help, and all day long she is attentive and courteous.’
‘It isn’t fair to ask us to be as she is,’ said one boy from the rear of the room.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she has an advantage,’ he replied.
‘I don’t understand. What is her advantage?’ asked the puzzled teacher.’
‘She is an orphan,’ he almost whispered as he sat down.”[1]
I love the way Jesus tells a story. This story is full of possibility, intrigue, fear, suspense. The four characters are notable – the master, John D. Rockefeller IV is taking off on the European vacation, first to the south of France and then to the Italian Alps. He’s going to be gone a long time – not sure really how long. Let me pause for a minute to thank you for my second week of vacation. I’ve always noticed that I have to work harder the week before I leave and the week I get back from vacation. Some years ago, I commented to my brother about this, and he had noticed the same thing, and he shared sage wisdom from a friend who said that one should always schedule two weeks of vacation back to back – his theory – that when an employee is gone for a week, nearly everything can wait on them until they return, and stuff just gets dumped on their desk until their return. But hardly anything anymore can wait two weeks, and so if you’re gone that length of time, someone else, by necessity, must pick up the slack. Neither he nor I have yet tried his friend’s theory. Anyway, the master’s going to be gone for a long time – too long to let things go while he’s away, and so he chooses three servants to entrust with his personal savings accounts – Smith Barney, Edward Jones, and I.B.Diggin. Old Smith, he’s really a great investment broker. Most of the folks in town know that if you want to make a profit on your investment that Smith’s the one to use. He’s got most of the business in town, and he gets most of John IV’s business on this little venture – five talents. Edward – well, he’s the up and coming star in the investment business, but he hasn’t really made a name for himself yet, and so John IV only invests 2 talents with this guy. But what to do with the other talent?? Quite the dilemma. He’s been workin’ with old I.B.Diggin for a lot of years – trying to help him get his business off the ground. “Certainly he’ll respond admirably to an opportunity as tremendous as this one – I’ll drop off one-eighth of my portfolio on his doorstep, and he’ll come through with flying colors – I just know it.”
You know, how we see things often depend on our perspective. Let me offer a rather mediocre illustration - if you’ve watched carefully over the years, you’ve noticed that, as the parent of a mentally handicapped child, I have what perhaps might be described as a more tender heart than some toward those who are mentally handicapped. I can weep at the drop of a hat toward their state of being, the pain their parents must feel, and the eternal struggle they must have. But if you watched even more carefully, you perhaps have noticed that I have a greater intolerance for the behavior of some who are mentally handicapped, and certainly a fear of many of the ordinary things of life that are associated with mentally handicapped people. These actions and feelings on my part are borne out of genuine pain and angst that has accompanied 25 years of personal experience. I am not proud of my feelings – nor am I necessarily ashamed. No longer do I judge myself harshly, and I certainly don’t judge other parents of mentally handicapped children – at any level.
All of us have fears that are a part of our lives. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced the kind of disabling fear that the one talent servant exhibited, and that has cause some of us to re-write this particular Gospel story. You know how we’ve re-written it, don’t you. We’ve re-written it the same way that old I.B.Diggin did – he looked ahead to the day that J.B. IV came back from his European holiday. He looked ahead to that day, and he knew that the stock market was volatile, and he knew that he didn’t know as much as Smith or Edward, and he just knew that he was going to be compared to those two guys, and he knew that if he lost money - heavens forbid, what if he lost it all – that Mr. Rockefeller would shoot him and tell God he lost him, and that would be the end of that. And so he did the only really safe thing – I.B.Diggin went to diggin’. He dug him a big hole – as big, really as all his hopes and dreams and pride and self-worth, and he buried that one-eighth of old J. B. Rockefeller IV’s money, and then he went back to playing solitaire on the company computer during office hours. That’s how we’ve re-written this parable. We suppose that had any of these guys failed at their investment strategy that Mr. J. B. Rockefeller IV would have seen to it that they were put out of business, and for good.
I’ll say it again – if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced the kind of disabling fear that the one talent servant exhibited. At least one of the reasons we react that way to this kind of opportunity is because of our perspective. I’ve watched it in the church for years. People who seem to be blessed by God with all kinds of talents – five talent kind of folk - are more than willing to accept other opportunities. They step up to the plate - they sing a solo, teach a class, drive a bus, chair a committee, even stand up to preach if they’re really needed. We applaud them, we value them, we trust them, and in some ways, we envy them. They aren’t so very different from the two talent folks – just more tried and proven. The two talent folks are the up and coming church leaders and fellow servants. They’re willing to try anything, and what the parable doesn’t speak to is that they fail from time to time, but God keeps handing them opportunities. And then there’s the one talent folks – I’ve heard it literally hundreds of times over 30 years of ministry – “Pastor, I couldn’t possibly do anything like that. I’m not talented. I can’t sing, or preach, or talk in front of others. You’d better ask someone else to do it.”
You know, they’re right. They’re not talented. But God is. They are God’s talents. That’s where we get things wrong. That’s where our perspective gets skewed. Ask any one of them – ask any of the five talent people, or the two talent people, and they’ll tell you right up front – they aren’t their talents – they’re God’s talents.
Barbara Brown Taylor says that fear and belief are our only two options. “They can fear, or they can believe. They can panic and fall overboard or they can ride out the storm. They can despair or they can wait, very quietly, for sanity to return. They can be afraid or they can believe. Judging by my own experience, it is almost never a matter of either/or. I do not know anyone who believes all the time, but I do know how both fear and belief feel, and that there is a palpable difference between the two. Fear is a small cell with no air in it and no light. It is suffocating inside, and dark. There is no room to turn around inside it. You can only face in one direction, but it hardly matters since you cannot see anyhow. There is no future in the dark. Everything is over. Everything is past. When you are locked up like that, tomorrow is as far away as the moon.”[2]
Just the other day, I got myself lost in the woods on my hunting lease in Texas. Now, I’ve been on that lease for 15 years now, and I’ve tromped through nearly ever square yard of the place. But I got myself turned around, and for the briefest of moments, I was lost. Panic set in, and then I paused and remembered two important things. One thing I thought, and the other thing I knew. I thought (believed) that the road was one certain direction. And I knew that there was a fence all the way around the property, and that pretty much any direction that I followed long enough would get me to someplace that I was familiar with.
One of my favorite books is a West Texas story about a boy named Speck who is coming of age in the early part of the 20th century. His father constantly tells Speck that he has to “risk the bait.”
My own paternal grandparents knew something of that. Tom Dunn Sr. worked for Terrell Labs over in Muskogee during the Depression. Not once, but twice, all of their retirement savings was wiped out. Finally, Tom and Effie started their own saving account – under the mattress. But eventually, they gathered enough money to risk the bait, and they bought two quarter sections of prime cotton land south of Lubbock that eventually supported my grandmother in her retirement years.
Our perspective can change. Even the one talent kind of servant can come around to the perspective that his or her talent is really God’s talent, invested in them, for the good of the church. The best motivation – every Christian is called of God to use those talents which God has invested in them for the growth and betterment of the Kingdom of God. We serve God best by serving one another with what we have.
Only God knows what may come as a result.
Richard W. Dunn, PhD.
[1] Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard Ward, eds. (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001), p. 16.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “One Step at a Time” in The Preaching Life (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1993), p. 93
Matthew 25:14-30
Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about the way we look at things. “In a certain village the school bell rang at 8:30 a.m. to call the children to class. The boys and girls left their homes and toys reluctantly, creeping like snails into the school, not late but not a second early. The bell rang again at 3:30 p.m., releasing the children to homes and toys, to which they rushed at the very moment of the tolling of the bell. This is how it was every day, with every child except one. She came early to help the teacher prepare the room and materials for the day. She stayed late to help the teacher clean the board, dust erasers, and put away materials. And during the day she sat close to the teacher, all eyes and ears for the lessons being taught.
One day when noise and inattention were worse than usual, the teacher called the class to order. Pointing to the little girl in the front row, the teacher said,
‘Why can you not be as she is? She comes early to help, she stays late to help, and all day long she is attentive and courteous.’
‘It isn’t fair to ask us to be as she is,’ said one boy from the rear of the room.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she has an advantage,’ he replied.
‘I don’t understand. What is her advantage?’ asked the puzzled teacher.’
‘She is an orphan,’ he almost whispered as he sat down.”[1]
I love the way Jesus tells a story. This story is full of possibility, intrigue, fear, suspense. The four characters are notable – the master, John D. Rockefeller IV is taking off on the European vacation, first to the south of France and then to the Italian Alps. He’s going to be gone a long time – not sure really how long. Let me pause for a minute to thank you for my second week of vacation. I’ve always noticed that I have to work harder the week before I leave and the week I get back from vacation. Some years ago, I commented to my brother about this, and he had noticed the same thing, and he shared sage wisdom from a friend who said that one should always schedule two weeks of vacation back to back – his theory – that when an employee is gone for a week, nearly everything can wait on them until they return, and stuff just gets dumped on their desk until their return. But hardly anything anymore can wait two weeks, and so if you’re gone that length of time, someone else, by necessity, must pick up the slack. Neither he nor I have yet tried his friend’s theory. Anyway, the master’s going to be gone for a long time – too long to let things go while he’s away, and so he chooses three servants to entrust with his personal savings accounts – Smith Barney, Edward Jones, and I.B.Diggin. Old Smith, he’s really a great investment broker. Most of the folks in town know that if you want to make a profit on your investment that Smith’s the one to use. He’s got most of the business in town, and he gets most of John IV’s business on this little venture – five talents. Edward – well, he’s the up and coming star in the investment business, but he hasn’t really made a name for himself yet, and so John IV only invests 2 talents with this guy. But what to do with the other talent?? Quite the dilemma. He’s been workin’ with old I.B.Diggin for a lot of years – trying to help him get his business off the ground. “Certainly he’ll respond admirably to an opportunity as tremendous as this one – I’ll drop off one-eighth of my portfolio on his doorstep, and he’ll come through with flying colors – I just know it.”
You know, how we see things often depend on our perspective. Let me offer a rather mediocre illustration - if you’ve watched carefully over the years, you’ve noticed that, as the parent of a mentally handicapped child, I have what perhaps might be described as a more tender heart than some toward those who are mentally handicapped. I can weep at the drop of a hat toward their state of being, the pain their parents must feel, and the eternal struggle they must have. But if you watched even more carefully, you perhaps have noticed that I have a greater intolerance for the behavior of some who are mentally handicapped, and certainly a fear of many of the ordinary things of life that are associated with mentally handicapped people. These actions and feelings on my part are borne out of genuine pain and angst that has accompanied 25 years of personal experience. I am not proud of my feelings – nor am I necessarily ashamed. No longer do I judge myself harshly, and I certainly don’t judge other parents of mentally handicapped children – at any level.
All of us have fears that are a part of our lives. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced the kind of disabling fear that the one talent servant exhibited, and that has cause some of us to re-write this particular Gospel story. You know how we’ve re-written it, don’t you. We’ve re-written it the same way that old I.B.Diggin did – he looked ahead to the day that J.B. IV came back from his European holiday. He looked ahead to that day, and he knew that the stock market was volatile, and he knew that he didn’t know as much as Smith or Edward, and he just knew that he was going to be compared to those two guys, and he knew that if he lost money - heavens forbid, what if he lost it all – that Mr. Rockefeller would shoot him and tell God he lost him, and that would be the end of that. And so he did the only really safe thing – I.B.Diggin went to diggin’. He dug him a big hole – as big, really as all his hopes and dreams and pride and self-worth, and he buried that one-eighth of old J. B. Rockefeller IV’s money, and then he went back to playing solitaire on the company computer during office hours. That’s how we’ve re-written this parable. We suppose that had any of these guys failed at their investment strategy that Mr. J. B. Rockefeller IV would have seen to it that they were put out of business, and for good.
I’ll say it again – if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced the kind of disabling fear that the one talent servant exhibited. At least one of the reasons we react that way to this kind of opportunity is because of our perspective. I’ve watched it in the church for years. People who seem to be blessed by God with all kinds of talents – five talent kind of folk - are more than willing to accept other opportunities. They step up to the plate - they sing a solo, teach a class, drive a bus, chair a committee, even stand up to preach if they’re really needed. We applaud them, we value them, we trust them, and in some ways, we envy them. They aren’t so very different from the two talent folks – just more tried and proven. The two talent folks are the up and coming church leaders and fellow servants. They’re willing to try anything, and what the parable doesn’t speak to is that they fail from time to time, but God keeps handing them opportunities. And then there’s the one talent folks – I’ve heard it literally hundreds of times over 30 years of ministry – “Pastor, I couldn’t possibly do anything like that. I’m not talented. I can’t sing, or preach, or talk in front of others. You’d better ask someone else to do it.”
You know, they’re right. They’re not talented. But God is. They are God’s talents. That’s where we get things wrong. That’s where our perspective gets skewed. Ask any one of them – ask any of the five talent people, or the two talent people, and they’ll tell you right up front – they aren’t their talents – they’re God’s talents.
Barbara Brown Taylor says that fear and belief are our only two options. “They can fear, or they can believe. They can panic and fall overboard or they can ride out the storm. They can despair or they can wait, very quietly, for sanity to return. They can be afraid or they can believe. Judging by my own experience, it is almost never a matter of either/or. I do not know anyone who believes all the time, but I do know how both fear and belief feel, and that there is a palpable difference between the two. Fear is a small cell with no air in it and no light. It is suffocating inside, and dark. There is no room to turn around inside it. You can only face in one direction, but it hardly matters since you cannot see anyhow. There is no future in the dark. Everything is over. Everything is past. When you are locked up like that, tomorrow is as far away as the moon.”[2]
Just the other day, I got myself lost in the woods on my hunting lease in Texas. Now, I’ve been on that lease for 15 years now, and I’ve tromped through nearly ever square yard of the place. But I got myself turned around, and for the briefest of moments, I was lost. Panic set in, and then I paused and remembered two important things. One thing I thought, and the other thing I knew. I thought (believed) that the road was one certain direction. And I knew that there was a fence all the way around the property, and that pretty much any direction that I followed long enough would get me to someplace that I was familiar with.
One of my favorite books is a West Texas story about a boy named Speck who is coming of age in the early part of the 20th century. His father constantly tells Speck that he has to “risk the bait.”
My own paternal grandparents knew something of that. Tom Dunn Sr. worked for Terrell Labs over in Muskogee during the Depression. Not once, but twice, all of their retirement savings was wiped out. Finally, Tom and Effie started their own saving account – under the mattress. But eventually, they gathered enough money to risk the bait, and they bought two quarter sections of prime cotton land south of Lubbock that eventually supported my grandmother in her retirement years.
Our perspective can change. Even the one talent kind of servant can come around to the perspective that his or her talent is really God’s talent, invested in them, for the good of the church. The best motivation – every Christian is called of God to use those talents which God has invested in them for the growth and betterment of the Kingdom of God. We serve God best by serving one another with what we have.
Only God knows what may come as a result.
Richard W. Dunn, PhD.
[1] Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard Ward, eds. (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001), p. 16.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “One Step at a Time” in The Preaching Life (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1993), p. 93
posted by the sojourning pilgrim | 2:46 PM
1 Comments:
I really enjoyed this sermon, whose talents? That's a question i'd not considered.
Good to have you back.
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