November 15, 2020 Sermon Rev. Peter Hofstra
“For it is as if a
man…” So begins our passage. What is it? This is the second parable in a sequence, the
first being last week’s passage. That
one opens “Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like this…” before going on to
talk about the ten bridesmaids. So this
one too is about the Kingdom of Heaven.
We did a whole sermon cycle about
the Kingdom of Heaven. This kingdom is
the result of the Plan of God, ushered in with the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. It began at that moment
and continues forward, ever expanding, to this day. It will be fulfilled at the
End of Time, at the Final Judgment. At
the present, God continues to reveal this plan, as it progresses in the
world. Last week, Jesus made clear in
his parable the distinction of those who live the faith versus those who simply
pay it lip service, those who live into God’s promise of sanctification, and
those who do not.
And this is an important distinction
that must be emphasized especially here.
When we read God’s Word, we read ourselves into the text. What do I mean? I mean, when listening to the parable, what
roles do we assign? The man going on the
journey, assigning money to his slaves to work with in his absence, can we see
the Lord in this character? The Lord
gives to the slaves according to their talents.
Then he goes away on a trip. The
listeners, on the ground there in Jerusalem, may not have made a particular
association with that trip, but we, in the church, certainly do. Jesus ascended into heaven and Jesus will
return again. Such is the time that the
slaves have with the gifts they have received from their Lord. And who are we? We are those who have received the talents
from our Master. We are living in that
time right now, as the Kingdom of Heaven continues to grow upon the earth. When the Lord returns, then is the time of
reckoning for each of us who have received from Jesus. Such is the conclusion of the story for the
one with five and the one with two talents.
What their master says is what Jesus will say to us at the end. “Well done good and faithful servant, enter
into the joy of your master.”
But what have we received and what
are we supposed to be doing with it? Our
salvation was given to us at the resurrection of Christ. We are forgiven our sins and renewed as the children
of God. That gift is there for everyone
who comes to our Lord. And while I do
not particularly like the notion of being in the role of the slave, this is
Jesus’ parable. But understand, because
we are in the role of those who received the talents, this is not everybody in
the world. We believe in Jesus and Jesus
knows us. Jesus is speaking to an
audience of believers, who know its expectations and obligations-originally
those of the Jewish faith, and now, for those raised in the Christian faith,
who, now, know its expectations and obligations.
The talents we have received, such
is God’s sanctification, his expectation of holiness, laid out within us. Here is where the word ‘talent’ can get
confusing. Jesus is referring to a
monetary unit, a rather significant monetary unit. Often, this gets confused in the English
rendering with the ‘talents’ as abilities that God has given to us. Translating from parable to real life, these
talents are the opportunities we have in this life that God opens before us to
express God’s love to another. The
expression of God’s love, that is as good a definition of holiness, of
sanctification, as I can give to you.
So this parable is about what we, as
believers, have been sanctified with; the opportunities we have been blessed
with; to show God’s love in the world.
Where this parable can go off the rails is when one of God’s children
cries out in protest, “He got a bigger piece than me.” Why does this one get five talents, this one
two, and that poor schmuck only the one?
That runs against our sensibilities as Americans where all people were
created equal. But this parable compares
sanctification to financial matters. And
some people are better at finances than others.
Don’t get caught in the limits of
the story. I like what Albert Einstein
said. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to
climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.” We are all God’s children. We are all created in the image of God. We all have gifts from God to do things. I think Einstein is right, everybody is a
genius, but nobody is a genius at everything!
Whatever example Jesus used, some would be better than others. Push beyond thinking in financial terms, to
all our human abilities. We all have
abilities given to us by God. There are
some things we are good at, and there are others that we are not. But the takeaway of the parable is not about
who has received more or less talent, or talents. It is about how those talents are used in
service to God. It is about the exercise
of the holiness invested into us by God.
The second half of this parable is
all about the servant with the one talent who buried it. Another way of thinking about this is the Sunday
School song, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine…” How does the verse go? “Hide it under a bushel, NO, I’m going to let
it shine.” The light, the talent, these
are the sanctification we have received from God. This servant defied the song. He took his light and hid it under the
bushel.
When this servant, the talent
burier, the light hider, when he is confronted by his master, he blames the
master. “You are a harsh man, reaping
what you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” We could spend the next hour doing a
comparison of Jesus’ agricultural parables in light of this charge against the
Almighty. But that would be incredibly
boring. The guy is making excuses. He is a servant of the Master, but he does
not want to do anything in the Master’s name.
To this, the master responds that
the servant did not have much to do. The
master had no expectation of the servant going out into the marketplace to buy
low and sell high, had no expectation of seeing his money doubled. The servant could have put it in the bank and
at least the master would have gotten interest, would have gotten
something. Now, of course, in the
current financial market, it would have to be a savings account or money market
account, because checking accounts are paying nothing…
Wait. Hold on.
I am off track, headed back into the financial language of the
parable. But that is not without
precedent. There are Christian leaders
who have sought to parse out of this particular comment what exactly it means
for a Christian to have ‘earned interest’ in Jesus’ name. On the one hand, this gets us stuck in a
consideration of what is the minimum I can get away with in Jesus’ name.
On the other hand, this parable gets
used and misused in ways that Jesus’ more agricultural metaphors do not because
it connects to the capitalist, free market economy that we are familiar with in
a way that the agricultural metaphors do not, because there are just not as
many of us on the farm any longer. What
that means is we can easily lose sight of the forest for the trees. We become so interested on the particular
details of the parable that we lose sight of the lesson of the whole parable.
That really comes into play at the
conclusion of the parable. The one
talent is given to the guy with ten, the lazy servant is tossed out into the
outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. If we go back about a month or six weeks,
this poor servant will meet the guy who did not dress for the wedding banquet
of the king. He was also tossed out
there. What is that place? That place is hell. That is for those who have nothing, even what
they have will be taken away. Those who
have more, to them will be given an abundance.
In this case, the lazy servant is deprived even of his status as a
slave.
Reading into this parable on
financial investments has caused a gross misinterpretation of Jesus’
conclusion. There is a way of thinking
about God that is popular in some areas of the Church called ‘prosperity
theology’. A number of the big and
swanky TV preachers preach this theology.
It warps sanctification. For this
theology, sanctification translates to economic prosperity in this life. That is how God’s holiness is reflected in
us, by the material gifts of the world.
That is their brand of sanctification.
So, those who have a lot will get more.
Believe in God and you will get more, get more talents. And in this rendering, talents definitely
refer to money and investments. And
there is the flip side. The poor will
get nothing, because poverty is equated to lack of faith. Thus, when pressing the logic, rich people
must be faithful, and poor people not so much.
What is happening here is that the
sanctification that comes from God is being misappropriated and conflated with
the goal of capitalism, to make more. I
love the cliché that sums up this way of life, “Whoever dies with the most,
wins.” Because that is all they are
going to have. But death is not the end,
but a gateway to the afterlife, where our material goods mean nothing.
So what is Jesus really saying in
this parable? He is talking to people of
faith, so this does not apply to the unbeliever, they are a law unto themselves
according to Paul. And people of faith,
we receive gifts from God. This is our
sanctification, this is our holiness.
And the work of the people of faith, as the servants of God, is to
exercise that sanctification, is to use that holiness. It is what we render unto God. It is governed
by the law of loving God and loving neighbor.
Another
way of looking at it is that faith changes our life. We do things differently. The servant who buried that one talent did
nothing differently. When the master
tells him that he could have at least deposited the talent for interest
payments, I hear the frustrated voice of Jesus telling us, “Do something,
anything. You don’t all have to be the
pope. You don’t all have to be John
Calvin or Martin Luther, or Martin Luther King Jr., but I died for you and I
love you and that changes how we live.
Jesus
is telling us that when we turn five talents into ten or two talents into four,
we are extending the Kingdom of Heaven here on the earth. We are sanctified when we receive the gifts
of God to extend upon the earth. Look up
Galatians 5: 22-23 to see the Fruit of the Spirit and we see practical
definitions of what this sanctification, what this holiness truly is.
It
is unbiblical to argue that our sanctification shows up in how prosperous we
are in this life.
What
is more important than the list of fruit however, is the fact they are of the
Spirit. This is a whole other sermon
series, but look to the Pentecost story, to the Holy Spirit coming down upon
the first generation of church leaders, coming down on all subsequently, and
that is how God is with us to lay out the gifts of sanctification in our
lives.
So
I was about to say is that believing is not enough, we have to act on what God
has given to us. But can we even claim
to truly believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior if we are not acting on what God
has given to us? Because salvation is
multi-faceted. We are justified, we are
sanctified, we are glorified, we are adopted, and faith is manifest in all
these expressions. So I am going to back
off that statement about believing. We
can pay lip service to believing in God.
But if it is not showing up in how we live, who are we kidding?
Thus,
the mark of the Kingdom of Heaven is the giving of opportunities by God,
through the Holy Spirit, to live out holiness, to live out the law of God, to
humbly walk with our God, to, as Jesus says elsewhere, do unto others as we
would have them do unto us. And Jesus’
promise in this parable is that the joy we share in the sanctification we have
received will be rewarded with even more joy, even more happiness, even more
satisfaction in being a child of the living God. Such are the blessings of the Kingdom of
Heaven, now and always. Amen.
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