You Knew?

A sermon for Sunday, November 15, 2020, based on Matthew 25:14-30.

Would you pray with me?

God of the faithful and God of the faithless, thank you for bringing us here to this time and this place. By your Spirit, make your presence known here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Today’s parable, like last Sunday’s parable and next Sunday’s parable, is a difficult one to decipher. As we said last week, it’s a gem that you can twist and turn and see the light shining through it in a different way each time. You’re under no obligation to hold to the interpretation I offer you this morning; in fact, I invite you to carry this parable home with you throughout the week and ponder it anew for yourselves. One way we can fill up our lamps and show our faithfulness is to come again and again to scripture and trust that each time, God will speak to us.

And let me also say this from the top, because I want to be sure that you hear it: you, all of you, are the faithful servants in this parable. You’re the ones who have been gifted with five or two talents. You have taken what you’ve been given and you’ve be faithful with it. I see this in the way you care for one another, the community around, and this church building. I see it in the love and kindness you show one another. You’re doing the best you can and that’s more than enough for this moment. If you take nothing else away from this sermon, I want it to be that: well done, good and faithful servants. You are enough, just as you are. Rest in the comfort of this knowledge. Carry it with you as a light as you go throughout your days this week. You are enough.

Now, if that’s all your spirit needed to hear this morning in order to feel lifted up and encouraged, then I release you from the rest of the sermon. Feel free to doodle in your bulletin for the next ten minutes or go wash your dishes or play a song that you can dance to, because this is a valley sermon. I’m going to start you off high and then take you down a little and raise you back up in the end. If spending a little time in the valley isn’t what your soul needs this week, then put a pin in this sermon and come back to it some other time down the road. Remember that you are good and you are faithful and you are enough. That’s the key takeaway today.

In fact, there’s every indication that this parable is truly meant to speak to those disciples who had done their best and remained faithful through difficult season, to prepare them for the difficult season ahead when Jesus would no longer be with them. Remember that Matthew organizes his parables according to theme and, as we saw with the Sermon on the Mount, often pairs together a parable featuring women as the main characters with a parable featuring men as the main characters, like the woman with the lost coin and the shepherd of the 99 sheep. Last week, we had a parable aimed at women, reminding them to keep awake, to stay faithful to the task at hand, because no one knows when Jesus is coming back. It’s a similar theme this week. The servants are to be faithful in their task until the master returns.

And there’s another indication in the number of talents each servant is given that this parable is, at its core, aimed at encouraging the faithful. One servant is given five talents, another is given two. This paring of five and two isn’t found often in the Bible and, in fact, the only other time we have these two numbers together is the five loaves and two fishes Jesus uses to feed the crowd. If we were reading the gospel of Matthew straight through, these numbers would call back to mind that moment of the abundance that grew out of faithfulness. Really, what we see in this parable is Matthew tying together some of Jesus’ greatest hits in order to make us pay attention to this parable. It is, after all, the next-to-last teaching Jesus will give.

Now, there’s some debate about how much a talent is worth, and friends who came to Bible study two weeks ago, I got it wrong. I had said that a talent was worth about a year’s wages, but it turns out that a talent is worth about 6,000 denarii, which comes out to about 16 years’ wages for your average laborer. These are large sums of money that the servants are entrusted with. Even the low-ball estimates assume that the first servant would be getting several year’s wages when being entrusted with five talents. And the master gives this money to servants he knows are capable of managing it, each according to their ability, so these servants must have been men who knew the market well.

We know how the story goes. The first servant gets five talents, makes five more, well done, enter into the joy of your master. The second servant gets two, makes two more, well done, enter into the joy of your master. The third servant gets one talent, hides it in the ground, gives it back, is called wicked and gets thrown into the outer darkness. Again, it’s a cautionary tale. Keep using what God has given you in order to continue the work that God has put before you, because we need you to continue to be faithful.

But I can’t help but get caught up on this third servant. The parable is structured to make us pay attention to him. He’s the one with the conflict and the action, the one who doesn’t fit the mold of the parable. He’s the one who’s challenging the master and stirring up trouble. He’s the interesting one.

I mean, can you imagine the bravery he had to have in order to defy a man with this much money, his master, no less? This isn’t something you do out of spite. This is something you do out of conviction. If he had been truly terrified of the master, he would have at least done as the master said and invested the money, so that there would be some return, some tangible evidence of his loyalty and faithfulness. But he doesn’t even do that. He hides it, keeps it safe, and returns it, in an act of rebellion against the master. This servant must really and truly believe that the master is reaping where he did not sow.

Why else would he take this risk, especially in this public way? Why would he denounce his master like this? He knows that he has nothing to gain from it. He must know that there will be some kind of punishment for not being faithful as the other two servants were. So why, why would he do this? Why would he confront his master? What makes him do this?

Well, he knows that his master is a hard man, reaping where he does not sow and gathering where he did not scatter seed. He knows that his master is a hypocrite and a thief. He knows that serving such a master faithfully would cost him his integrity, his well-being, his soul. He’s not willing to trade this for anything.

What if we take this third servant seriously? What if we trust that he really does know that the master isn’t good? Well, that would turn the parable on its head. The third servant is truly the hero here, the hero who gets crucified for standing up for what’s right while other sycophants receive the temporary joy born of their corruption. It’s tragic but powerful.

And here’s this Sunday’s hard pill for us, church. There are so many, many people in the world today who see themselves as the third servant in this parable, as the hero of the parable. And they’re not wrong.

This parable hinges on who you think God is, who you’ve experienced God to be. Have you experienced God as a good and giving God, abundant in love, grace, and mercy, who is worthy of your faithfulness and your efforts? I think that we all have and that’s why we’re here, why we return Sunday after Sunday. We’ve met our God who is love, the one who draws us in and holds us fast and that is who we come to seek each week.

But so many others have not experienced God this way. They have not met a loving God. They haven’t even met a decent God. They’ve met the God of hypocritical Christians, a God who is too concerned with rigid rules and unreasonable expectations to care for the poor and the hungry, the lost and lonely, the downcast and the downtrodden. They’ve met a God who seeks power and money, not a God who surrenders everything in order to bring humanity back to God. They’ve met a multilevel marketing God with his own PR firm and publishing house, living in many mansions while others starve. They want nothing to do with this God. They know that this God is a harsh man, who reaps where he didn’t sow and gathers where he did not scatter seed.

And if that was the God you knew, wouldn’t you stand against him too?

Now, back in Matthew’s gospel, in Jesus’ day, time is of the essence. Jesus is urgent in these parables, as we said last week. There’s not time to reach out to those disgruntled servants who don’t know who God truly is. There’s no time to sit down with them, to hear them out, to guide them back to an understanding of a loving God. If Jesus is coming back tomorrow, there are some who just aren’t going to be able to return to God before then. So, Jesus encourages his listeners to do all that they can to remain faithful because that’s all they can do.

But friends, we aren’t living in Jesus’ day. We don’t have that same urgency. The Lord in his kindness has given us what the early church always wanted. He’s given us more time. Sure, Jesus could come back tomorrow, but while we’re here, while we’ve got these moments, this time, it’s our job to reach out to those who see themselves in the third servant. We have to reach out to them, to listen to them without fear or agenda, and to understand why it is that they want nothing to do with God. Who have they experienced God to be?

And here’s the difficult part, the part that is so, so hard but even more essential: we have to be willing to apologize to them. The church has done great harm in the name of God, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. When all another person has known is the hurt the church can do, it’s our job to see that hurt and pain and apologize. That’s a part of our task as Christians in the United States. We have to understand deep in our bones the pain that others have felt, pain that was visited upon them in the name of our God, and we have to make it right. No, we likely didn’t do the hurting. No, someone else’s mistake shouldn’t be our responsibility. But the hurt that some have felt at the hands of other Christians has thrown them out into the outer darkness and it’s going to take more than holding the door open to get them to come back in.

Friends, you are good and faithful servants with strong hearts and enduring spirits. You are kind and loving. You are empathetic and understanding. You are God’s beloved children, given unending mercy, love, and grace, and nothing can ever change that. If there ever was a group of people who could help welcome in those who have been cast out and heal them as Christ has healed you, it’s this group of people. You are more able than you know.

And it’s likely not this moment when you open your hearts up to this work. There is so much going on in our world and it’s enough to get through this day. But I invite you, in the days and weeks and months ahead, to ponder this parable, and this poor third servant who does not know God for who God is. Love this servant as you yourselves have been loved by God. If we do this, if we’re able to reach out to the world and show everyone the truth of God’s kindness, then we will find that our investment only multiplies. And on that day when we stand before God, we can be assured, even more than we are today, that we have been faithful over a few things and will be met with the words we long to hear, this day and all days: Well done, good and faithful servant. Well done.

Amen.