SERMON -- PENTECOST XXII
November 13, 2011
+In the Name…
Jesus said, “For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (St. Matthew 25:29).
Once again, as has been the case so many times in the past few months, we again have a Parable of Jesus before us this morning. It’s known as “The Parable of the Talents.” It is a story of good and bad stewardship -- in and for what God gives to us; in and for what He entrusts to us.
Specifically, the Parable (as you heard) is about the use of money entrusted to three servants before their Master leaves for a journey. The money entrusted to them was measured in “talents.” A “talent” was equal to more than fifteen years’ wages of a laborer. So, it was a goodly sum of money for any servant to receive from his Master, to be used for the Master’s benefit.
We hear that one of the servants was given five talents; another servant; two talents. We’re told that these two servants, “went at once,” and made prudent investments with the respective number of talents entrusted to them by their Master -- with success in making double the amount they had been given.
When the Master returns and learns of what they had done, He praises both of them, saying personally to one at a time, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.” He was very pleased that they had been very good and productive stewards of His bounty.
Now the third servant who had been given one talent displeased and angered his master, because he had done nothing with the talent he had been given. This servant had hid the talent entrusted to him in the ground. The talent sat dormant, and possibly had lost some its value while the Master was away.
The third servant tries to justify his action, when called to give account, in saying, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”
The Master responds to this rather lame excuse, “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”
Wow! Talk about anger and frustration, and about the dire consequence of what the third servant brought unto himself.
You see, this parable is about what God expects of those who have been given and entrusted with things that are not their own. They had been given gifts and opportunities for the Master (God) and themselves (us) to profit – the profit of growing, enlarging, and developing to bear fruit.
The third servant, the one whom the Master called “wicked and slothful,” had misjudged his master as one who was a “hard man,” and whom this particular servant accused of reaping what he did not sow, and gathering what he did winnow -- meaning that this servant had judged the master as a man who was out for himself, and as one who profited from other’s work.
Sounds to me like what psychology calls a “projection” – which means that one’s failures, inadequacies, and motives are projected upon another person. In so doing, one can play the victim and fail to be accountable for one’s own life; and for those things that one needs to deal with, and for which, possibly, one is responsible. Possibly, as Fr. John Bartenuk states in his book, The Better Part, this third servant thought that “the mission with which he was entrusted seemed too demanding, too unreasonable.”
The third servant after stating his estimation of his Master, says to his Master, “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.”
Now that didn’t help anyone, did it? – himself or his Master. It was and is the sign of a person not living in the present moment as a recipient of something that has been given -- failing to do something positive with what he had been given, staying stuck with old issues and old fears. It does indeed sound so incredibly harsh for the Master (God) to say to the servant that he is “wicked and slothful,” but so he is – because he did not put himself in tune with what God was asking him to do, in what had been given; being slothful (lazy) to have things change, improve, and develop for himself for the sake of his Master. In other words, he was stuck in a rut – a rut of his own making; and the rut that he had put himself in (which is distant from the will of God), had dire and eternal consequences.
Remember that the Parables of Jesus, which are allegorical, and which use human situations and occurrences as their themes, are about God’s relationship to man, and man’s relationship to God.
What man is to know about God is that God is love. And because God is Love, and because He loves us for our good, His loving of us is to manifest itself in the giving of all that we are and have, to and for Him. We are not our own, and we really have nothing that we can claim as our own, except (as I said a few Sundays ago) our sins!
The Parable calls us to understand something very critical, as Fr. Bartenuk puts it: “Our eternal destiny depends directly upon how much our talents have contributed to the growth of the Kingdom. There will be no room for excuses: if we have tried to invest our talents, we will be welcomed into the Kingdom forever; if not, we will be thrown into darkness.” He continues: “To the extent that I use my talents for these purposes (and he cites earlier in his analysis our willingness to work ‘to overtake the remaining bastions of sin and greed, and [to] dismantle every work of the devil’), I will achieve the purpose of my life, please the king, and prove myself his worthy subject, one who has responsibly administered the great gifts I have received.”
I want to expand on what Fr. Bartenuk states, in saying that, when we are given anything by God, from Whom St. James in his Epistle states, “…every good endowment and perfect gift comes” (1:17), what we have been given is to develop. If we have been given faith (which we all have), that faith is to grow. Such expected growth by God is dependent upon a day-by-day connection with God in humility, dependence, and prayer that causes growth in one’s faith. We have been given life in the Church, but we need to have that life develop, in asking ourselves, “What is the Church?”, and “What am I to understand about the Church founded by Jesus, and commissioned to Peter and the Apostles?”
With what we have been given, there is to be growth of it. It is to develop and mature. It is not to remain stagnant; and it is not to fall prey to our own use, construction, and application of it. It is not to be something we receive and then bury, without allowing it to grow and mature into something larger and more fulfilling; or something (in the case of the gift of the Church) that we self-construct, self-define, and self-determine. With what we receive as a gift from God, we are to allow God to develop it by the action of the Holy Spirit for our further understanding and benefit, as the same Holy Spirit moves the Church in its development and perfection.
With the gifts and talents God generously gives to each and every one of us, which affirms the specific value and investment He makes in each and every of us, we ask Him to take control of these gifts and talents for His greater glory, and for the benefit of others, for the common good of the community of faith to which He has placed us. He wants us to invest ourselves in Him and others by allowing Him to guide and direct us in how our gifts and talents are to develop and in how they can best be employed.
Let us truly think upon the words of our Lord at the end of the Parable: “For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
These sobering words of Jesus appear twice in the Gospel of St. Matthew. They are also found in Mark and Luke. In them, Jesus is telling us that when we employ the gifts and talents of God given by Him for Him, more will be given. If we do not, we lose them – they will wither. He makes it so very clear in the statement: “but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” The message of Jesus is that we really don’t have specific gifts and talents if they are not attributed as having their origin in and from God. Yes, sobering and necessary words for all of us to ponder, as men, women, and children to whom God has been and continues to be so gracious and merciful. What He has given is His own.
So with what we have been given by God, let it be used for God’s glory. Let us all pray that He further grows what we have received for His greater glory,so that we see the work of Him who is the Divine Gardener. Let us all claim the Truth of what Jesus, who is the Truth, said: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (St. John 15:5).
+In the Name…
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