2017-11-20
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30
Mary and I went out to dinner with friends at a Chinese restaurant on Friday evening. When the meal was finished, the server brought fortune cookies to the table. This was the fortune I discovered in mine: “You will soon unlock the secret of immense wealth.” I’ve been waiting for this! Now how a propos could such a fortune be when the scripture passage we’re dealing with this morning is the parable of the talents, with its two servants who do precisely that! I mean, really! I wanted to say to God, “Aren’t you just being a little too obvious here? Show off!”
So here’s what I’m thinking: if the master could just give me a sizable chunk of money, I could earn quite a bundle more with it—make some investments and watch it grow by leaps and bounds. After hearing my fortune cookie, you’d give me riches, wouldn’t you? I’d perform my magic, then return the original loan to you, with maybe a little profit, and keep the rest for myself. Everybody wins! And it sounds so easy! Any takers? You can let me know after worship!
We hear this story of money and investing, and of course financial issues come right away to mind. But that isn’t really what Jesus is talking about, is he. It’s a striking analogy, this story about financial investment, but Jesus isn’t talking about money here, not really. Deep down, what Jesus is talking about is life and God and how to live as fully and richly as possible. On the surface the subject is money. But down below that surface, the subject is living fully alive.
There’s a certain imaginary woman—perhaps you know her—who feels put-upon. Little things gnaw at her. She resents her aging father’s pinched affection. Work is not exactly what she had hoped it would be, her colleagues sometimes distant, sometimes judgmental, sometimes unduly competitive. And what is it about her marriage? She and her spouse speak regularly about the details of life—who will pick up the butter and eggs, what time they’ll be arriving home after work, the errands each will be doing on the weekend. But there is little if any flame there. The children seldom call, TV seems rote and lifeless, church is just a space-filler. Not much of a life. Just going through the motions, a thinly veiled boredom and resentment souring every corner of her days.
When you look at this woman’s routine, what possible connection could it have to the parable of the talents? How does that strange story about money and investing speak to an average, everyday life? One thing that’s notable, it seems to me, is what this woman doesn’t see. In the flat haze of her tedium and resentment, she misses out on the vast blessings and privileges that surround and fill her. Look at her: she’s materially comfortable; she has a partner for her life; children have been given to her; she lives in a land of boundless beauty and opportunity; she’ll be able to retire with little or no debt; she eats delicious food; her health allows her to walk and swim and bike. Why doesn’t she notice these gifts? Why has her life become so flattened and dull?
I suspect she’s not all that different from many of us. So often we take life for granted. We may be frustrated or resentful or disappointed with our lot in life. We may not notice the remarkable qualities of our days. Our gaze may simply pass over the countless gifts that come to us and shape us and offer the possibility of hope and contentment.
“For it is as if someone, going on a journey, summoned servants to him and entrusted his property to them, giving to one servant [$10 million (the gifts in Jesus’ parable are that immense)] to another [$4 million], to another [$2 million]” (Matthew 25:14-15. What happens to these servants? They are entrusted. With riches. All three servants are given gargantuan gifts, hugely greater than the average gift. This is the place the story begins: all three are the recipients of lavish, overflowing generosity. Before all else, they are beneficiaries.
And this is where our lives begin, as well. Before all else, we have been given unparalleled prospects and beauty and daily bread. The hypothetical woman we mentioned earlier? What most distinguishes her, spiritually, is that she is largely unaware that she has been showered with gifts and privilege and opportunity. Whether she knows it or not, the beginning of her story is blessing. Whether she sees it this moment or not, her life has been overlaid with a holiness beyond compare.
We can guess why she doesn’t feel grateful, can’t we? She may well be like the third servant in the parable: ‘I received only $2 million. Why didn’t I get $10 million? Or at least $5 million? Just a paltry $2 million! I’m disgusted. Life isn’t fair!’ This, we have to confess, is the way it sometimes is for us, as well. We didn’t get as much as so-and-so; why should we be grateful? What we may need is new eyes, and a new heart.
On Friday, I felt somewhat weighted down. No obvious cause, just a heaviness, a lack of spark. Sermon preparation going nowhere—as you may well be thinking to yourself as you listen to this! Duty beckoning. The sparkle and fizz having left the soda can. I imagine you’ve had such days yourself. So to break my sullen mood, I walked up to the post office to mail a letter. I just needed to get outside. As I walked, I took in the somewhat stiff breeze and its bracing freshness. An older couple, only barely able to take one step after another, were out walking slowly around the block. As I approached them, they both beamed and offered a hearty greeting. As I got to the post office, I met a church member in the parking lot who greeted me with a huge smile and great warmth.
Later that evening, Mary and I had dinner at the aforementioned Chinese restaurant. Before we ate, the woman we were with said grace. And this is the way she began that grace: “God, we give you thanks for another one of your perfect days.” It hit me like a bulldozer: “another one of your perfect days.” All these little God-moments had rolled in on me like a tidal wave all day long. And I finally remembered to do what I had been neglecting that afternoon and evening: I said “Thank you. Thank you God for this community and for the depths of our connection and for a purpose beyond myself. Thank you God for work I love. Thank you God for family and friends and succulent food. You really have outdone yourself!” As Friday’s shadows lengthened, something shifted in me. With Thanksgiving just days away, I have been prodded to remember and celebrate the boundless gifts I have received. As with the servants in the parable, it doesn’t really matter what others may have been given. I have been entrusted with riches.
Entrusted with riches. Not a day should go by without my itemizing those riches to myself. I pledge before you to be more grateful each day, and to tell God specifically what I’m grateful for. Ignatian spirituality teaches us to do what’s called an Examen at the end of each day, to relive the day’s highlights, to bask in its blessings. Thank you, God. I have been entrusted. With riches.
As I live with that parable, though, I realize that’s not all. I become aware of something that goes along with that trust, something that follows that gratitude. The two servants who do right by their riches get a strange greeting when the master returns. When the master sees how well these hedge fund managers have done making his money grow, he says: “Well done, good and trustworthy servant; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things” (25:21, 23).
I confess that, if I were one of those two, this is not exactly how I’d like to be greeted after I’ve done such exceptional work. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a little break after my brilliant investment strategy has paid off so handsomely? No. The reward for my skills is not a new BMW or a nice sojourn in Cancun or Prague. Instead what I’m given by the master is yet more responsibility. I’m not sure I like where this is going.
We all know this in any number of organizations of which we’re a part. The ones who do the work get asked to do even more. They’re the ones we know we can count on. They’re the reliable ones. And if they’re that good, then we’re going to keep asking them to do the things that need to be done. It may not seem fair. But it’s understandable.
What Jesus points to in this bracing story is that a good life is not necessarily an easy or unstressed life. A good life is one that remembers its gifts and strives to pass those gifts on to others. Yes, we’ve been entrusted with incredible gifts. But along with that comes the need to share the wealth, to pass it forward, to bring blessing where it may not have been before, or where it may be in short supply. As Jesus says elsewhere: “from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Luke 12:48). Just what we wanted to hear!
This urge, this command, to responsibility is one we hear with a peculiar force in these weeks of such an onslaught of revelations of men behaving terribly with women. Piled onto Bill Cosby and Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, we now have Harvey Weinstein and Al Franken and Louis C.K. and Roy Moore and Brett Ratner and Kevin Spacey and Mark Halperin and on and on. And these are evidently but the tip of an iceberg. My guess is that a number of you here today could tell similar stories, stories of being abused and taken advantage of by people in positions of power who used that power to control and harass and intimidate. To be given more responsibility, as the parable has it, means at least this: that those who have physical or political or gender or financial or workplace advantage will not use that position to exploit, sexually or otherwise, those in their orbit. Responsibility means honoring and respecting all others as children of God. Period.
So along with the riches we have received—monetary but also non-monetary—goes the responsibility to use those physical and figurative riches generously and well. The people in our lives, all of them—strangers and friends, family and co-workers, sales clerks and fellow church members—are never to be violated or exploited, but only honored and respected.
So we’ve been entrusted with untold riches. And we’re to use those riches with responsibility and care. This parable of the talents makes that abundantly clear. And there’s one more thing. As we give thanks for our riches, and make sure to exercise our gifts responsibly, we’re invited to “enter into the joy of the master” (25:21, 23). Being a follower of Jesus is never just about dry duty. It’s not only about heavy responsibility. It’s ultimately about sharing in the joy of God.
A week or so ago, the journalist Charlie Rose interviewed New York Times columnist David Brooks. At the end of a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion of politics, Brooks shifts gears and begins to talk about life from a different angle. I would say it’s a spiritual angle. Citing the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, Brooks talks about life being divided into two halves. In the first half, we climb the mountain we think we need to climb. We try to achieve something significant and make a mark and satisfy our ego. In the second half of life, though, we begin to see that we may have climbed the wrong mountain. We may have been too rule-oriented and too driven by satisfying our own needs. So in healthy people, the second half of life takes on a new emphasis. Now it’s not about what we can achieve for ourselves or our families. It’s about what we can share. It’s not about building things up; it’s about giving things away, pouring ourselves forth. It’s not about being safe; it’s about taking a risk for something larger than ourselves—note the undercurrent of risk in the two successful servants’ investments. The second half of life is about realizing that life is bigger than we are. It’s about coming to see that shared privilege is what matters, that a rising tide lifting all boats is what’s paramount.
And it’s this that elicits the joy. Brooks talks about how crucial it is to be seized by something greater than ourselves. It’s not something we create or make happen. Something comes over us, and we recognize that agape, or selfless love, is what is going to most fulfill us and the world. It’s like being part of a great dance. It may be difficult. It may have enormous challenges. But it’s about seeing how interconnected we all are and seeking a kind of common welfare. Brooks talks about the joy he sees in the Dalai Lama. He talks about the movie Hidden Figures, a story of African-American women working for NASA in the 1950s. And he says that, while that movie is not exactly a happy story, there was an energy and a purpose and a deep joy that pervaded their work together. “They were doing something important, and they were doing it together.” Joy, he says, “comes on the far side of selfless service.” He talks about a rabbi who marched with Dr. King across the bridge in Selma. The rabbi says that marching across that bridge “was the most transcendent experience I’ve ever had. There was a feeling of oneness, a feeling of deep intimacy with one another, a feeling that history could change and that we could make a change.” Joy, says Brooks, comes from “common movement. People who are joyful are dancing together, they’re moving together.” They’re “breathing in unison,” they’re sharing a vital purpose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YJr0Jco8Go).
The parable of the talents: gratitude for extravagant riches, shared responsibility, and a deep, transcendent joy. That’s kind of it in a nutshell, isn’t it. May those of us who have ears to hear, hear.