Pentecost 22A
November 13, 2011
Matthew 25:14-30
How much do you tell people when they ask about your weekends? Are there certain people that you are willing to tell anything to? Are there others to whom your only response is “it was good”? Rachel, Nick and Sidney, what will you tell your friends about what you are about to do this morning? Will you talk about the details of what confirmation is and how God was at work this morning? Or will it just be something you did at church? And what will the rest of us tell folks about what we are about to witness these three young people do and God do in them?
I ask these questions because the stories we tell on Monday morning about what happens on Sunday morning speak volumes to the power of how God is at work on Sunday mornings…that is, if we let them.
When we meet up with Jesus this morning, he is in the middle of a series of teachings that began in chapter 21 of Matthew. There are responses to questions and parables and the further he gets into this discourse, the more and more he speaks of the end times and the quicker he segues from one parable to another as if he knew he was being timed and that time was about to run out so he has to squeeze everything in that he had planned to say into this short amount of time. And it’s near the very end of this discourse that Jesus tells those who are with him the parable of the talents.
For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. When he returned, the slave with the five talents came back with ten, and the slave with the two talents came back with four…but the slave who had been given one talent returned with only that one talent after having buried it in a field to keep it safe so that he wouldn’t lose it while his master was gone. The two slaves who returned with more than they had been given were praised…while the one who hid his talent had it taken from him and was cast into outer darkness.
Some text for confirmation Sunday, isn’t it? Nothing like Reformation Sunday where the texts lift us up, speaking of God as our fortress and our rock and about Jesus being the truth that sets us free.
But, here we are, a master, three slaves and some talents. Happy Confirmation…
Actually, there is a lot of good news in this story…but it’s one of those where you have to dig a little deeper to get to the nugget of the good news that it very present. When the master goes out on his journey, he entrusts these three slaves with gifts…each talent representing about one year’s worth of wages. Just imagine what you would do if you had been given five years’ worth of wages, or even two or even one year’s wages…all in one shot. Now, pull this parable into modern times. Say the slaves who had been given the five talents and two talents played the market…and what if they lost it all?? It would be a totally different parable, but given the times we live in, it would have been a distinct possibility with stocks fluctuating on a daily basis. And yet, they took those risks, played those odds, and came out on top…doubling the gift that their master had given them, and they are told to enter into the joy of their master. The slave who had the one talent, however, was so afraid of what his master would do if he lost the talent, that he played it safe and hid it in a field until his master returned…and it is this one who gets the short end of the stick, as it were, losing his talent and getting tossed into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Is there good news there? There sure is…but like I said, we just have to dig a little deeper to get to it.
You see, if you take a look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole, you will find that there is a certain element of subversion to them…a kicking back against the established order of things…and that’s what gives Jesus’ teachings the power that they have. Jesus wasn’t afraid to question the status quo and then he offers something better. This parable comes right before Jesus’ arrest, his trial, his death and resurrection. He knew his time was at an end when he began his discourse and so he just keeps talking and talking and hoping that someone will soak things up. And so, when read in the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this parable oozes good news…it oozes good news because the ultimate gift that we receive as servants of God is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can play the market all we want with our talents, allowing God to use them to change the world…or we can squander them and keep them hidden…but the gift of life through Christ and the joy of our Lord is something that we will never lose.
This is what gives what we do and what God does on Sunday morning its power…and makes us subversives along with Jesus. I mean, think about it…where else do we celebrate a king who gained his victory by dying? Where else do we talk about a Lord who teaches us about the importance of caring for the poor and reaching out to the outcast? Where else do people bring their children so that they can be bound with Christ in his death and, in essence, enact a dying to sin and rising to new life, as St. Ambrose once said “we’d baptize you with dirt, if it didn’t kill you”? Where else to people come to a table to eat and drink the body and blood of their savior and do so next to people that they wouldn’t have anything to do with the rest of the week?
Where else, do teenagers…still at the beginning on their lives…come and stand before their faith family and re-affirm the vows that their parents made at their baptism…vows that join them in Christ to his death and resurrection?
When you were baptized, your parents brought you forward to have you washed in water…but it was much more than that. In that moment you were joined with Christ into his death and brought to new life in Christ, one where you have the freedom to live and trust in God’s love that has been working and will continue to work in you to make you the people that God made you to be.
As confirmands, you will stand before us shortly and be subversives…young people challenging the status quo by affirming the vows made for you the day you died to sin and were made alive again in Christ through his own death and resurrection. The day you were free to live in the joy of your master. This is not the end of something, it isn’t a graduation of sorts…but rather a beginning, where you will continue to grow and be challenged and be changed by the love of God.
So, what story are going to tell tomorrow at the water fountain, the coffee pot, the lockers? Are going to going tell a quick story that hints at what happened today, or are you going to tell the story of the transforming power of the love of God, who has given you the ultimate gift in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, so that you may live as his servants and trust that God is going to love you from death into life and God is going use you and your talents to transform the world?
Amen
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