We know we’re in a tough economy these days, and it seems
like there’s nowhere you can put your money where you know it is safe. Banks
have failed, your 401k or pension is losing your money rather than gaining it,
and the amount of interest you’d get on a savings account is so negligible that
it’s not worth the amount of money you’d pay for in gas to take you to the bank
to deposit the check.
Many people, in fact, are thinking about taking their
grandparents’ advice from the days of the Great Depression: stick your money
under the mattress! Of course, this being the 21st century, we’ve
upgraded that strategy. While people generally still use the bank for most of
their money, many are hiding more of their discretionary cash around the house
these days.
According to a 2012 Marist poll, 27% think the best place to
hide their cold hard cash is, well, in the freezer, while 19% of people sock
away cash in, you guessed it, their sock drawers and 10% put their dough in a
cookie jar (I’ll stop there).
If the third slave in the parable we just read had had it
available, he certainly would have frozen the assets he was given by the master
next to the Tater Tots in the fridge. As it was, he buried the talent he was
given—no small amount of cash given that a talent was equal to 15 years worth
of wages for a day laborer. Burying money to keep it secure was considered to
be an acceptable monetary strategy in the first century, and most people would
have commended the slave for being wise with the money his master had entrusted
to him.
But like most of Jesus’ parables, this one sets conventional
wisdom on its ear. Jesus tells this one as the last of a string of three
parables about the kingdom of God coming in the “last days.” In 24:3, after
Jesus foretells the destruction of the temple, the disciples ask him to tell
them, “When will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the
end of the age?” (Notice, it’s the end of the age, not the end of the world).
Jesus gives them a string of images and metaphors about the coming kingdom,
culminating in these three parables that are all about a master who goes away
and then returns to judge what his servants have done in his absence.
In the first parable about the unfaithful slave (24:45-51),
the master leaves a slave in charge of his household. If the master returns and
finds the slave faithfully at work managing the master’s assets and caring for
the other slaves, he will be given more responsibility. If he sees that the
master is delayed, however, and begins to squander the master’s resources and
mistreat the other servants, when the master returns unexpectedly there will be
hell to pay (literally). In the second parable, ten bridesmaids are waiting for
the bridegroom to return for the wedding feast to begin. Five of the
bridesmaids were ready with oil for the lamps in case the groom came at night,
five blew it off and took a nap. When the bridegroom showed up, those who were
ready got to go into the banquet, while the others were shut out. They are
parables about being diligent in preparation for the master’s return—Jesus’
return—being faithful in his absence. Failure to manage the master’s affairs
will lead to ruin for the unfaithful and unprepared.
The parable of the talents, then, wraps up this theme with
stark contrasts. The departing master this time leaves his servants some of his
money—a great sum of it, in fact. One servant receives five talents (75 years
worth of wages), another 2 talents and the third servant, one talent. Each
servant is given what the master thinks they can handle. It’s not unfair that
each servant is regarded differently, what matters is how each of them regards
the talents with which they’ve been entrusted.
The first two slaves regard their trust in the master’s
property as an opportunity to please him. Without needing instruction, they
“went off at once” and began working with it. The NRSV here in 25:16 says that
the slave “traded with them,” but a better translation would be that he “worked
with them.” The Greek word is ergasato,
the root from which we get our word “ergonomic.” The slaves aren’t passively
dropping the money in the bank in order to get a modest return. You can’t
double your money in a short time like that. You have to really go to work.
Jesus doesn’t tell us what they did, but he implies that they had to make a
serious effort to get that kind of return. Like the wise bridesmaids and the
diligent servant in the first two parables, these two slaves see their master’s
absence as a time to continuing doing what he would do, working to increase the
master’s success and expand his holdings. They looked forward to the master’s return
because they wanted to give a good accounting of their work and re-gift the
master for his trust in them.
The third slave, however, has a very different attitude
about the master. Rather than loving the master and wanting to please him, this
slave operates out of fear. Nothing in the parable gives us any indication that
the third servant had a reason to fear the master. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The master still entrusts this slave with a huge sum of money—not something you
do to someone you can’t stand! The third slave’s fear isn’t really about the
master, but about himself. Where the first two assumed that the master’s money
was a gift to be used, the third slave assumed that he had been given a gift
that could only be lost or used up. He feared losing what he had been given, so
he turned the gift into a possession. The first two knew that the more they
tried to secure the master’s gift, the more likely it would be lost. They knew
that the master’s pleasure would come not from protecting his assets, but by
using them for the master’s purpose and glory.
Notice what happens when the master returns. The first two
servants have worked hard and done well with the master’s gift. They approach
the master with joy—“Look what I did with the talents you gave me!” they say.
They can’t wait to tell him the story. The master responds to each in turn: “Well
done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things , I
will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master” (v.
21).
The third servant comes to the master with a talent that’s
caked with dirt, or still frozen from the freezer. He approaches the master not
with joy, but with blame! “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping
where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was
afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is
yours” (v. 24-25). He is more concerned about preserving himself that pleasing
his master. In fact, he seems to have contempt for the master, even though the
master had given him a great gift to manage just like the others. The master
calls him “lazy” because he didn’t even take the passive step of investing the
talent in the bank where he could have at least gotten half a percent of
interest and a free pocket calendar. Where the others “worked” their talents to
maximize the master’s talents, the lazy slave does nothing with what his master
has given him. As a result, he has his talent taken away and given to the slave
who has the most capacity to do maximize the master’s gift.
There are lots of texts we could use to talk about financial
giving, which is this week’s topic in the series, but this one puts our
giving—not only our financial giving, but the way we spend our whole lives—into
a larger perspective: the perspective of God’s coming kingdom. Last week we
talked about witnessing and one of the points we made is that disciples of
Jesus are to have a sense of urgency about the coming of his kingdom. Jesus elaborates
on that here toward the end of Matthew’s gospel—that the time is coming for the
master’s return and, when he comes, what will he find us doing? Will we be
sitting on our assets or will we be using them in ways that promote the
master’s cause and increase his glory?
Throughout Scripture, God is always inviting his people to
invest themselves in his work. Indeed, God constantly reminds them that
everything they have isn’t really theirs—it’s a gift from God that they have
been given to manage, not for their own security but for God’s glory. The
concept of first fruits and the tithe, the first ten percent of the harvest
given back to God, was a reminder that, ultimately, God was the one who had
provided for them. Giving tithes and offerings back to God was and is a
response of gratitude to the one without whom we have nothing.
Failure to do anything with that gift other than keep it for
themselves was as good as burying it in the back of the freezer next to last
year’s Thanksgiving leftovers. In Malachi 3:8, God sounds a lot like the master
who has discovered that his slaves have been lazy with his property.
“Will anyone rob God?” God says to Israel. “Yet you are
robbing me!” How are they robbing God? By failing to give their tithes and
offerings, keeping them buried in the backyard rather than presenting them and
their increase as an offering to please God. They are “cursed with a curse,”
but I don’t think God is the one who is cursing them. They are cursing
themselves just like the lazy servant did. Their fear makes them lazy and
useless.
But God does not leave them there. Look at Malachi 3:10 and
the promise of a God who will take the investment of his people and multiply it
exponentially: “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be
food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I
will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you and
overflowing blessing.” The servants who work for the master will see their
investments grow!
Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting, like some prosperity
gospel preachers suggest, that the more we give the richer God will make us
individually. That’s not the point here, though I would say that when we are
faithful, God is faithful. The point here is that the more we work at and
invest the gifts God has given us, the more we begin to see the whole world
blessed—the “windows of heaven” and the joy of God’s kingdom raining (and
reigning) on the earth. The more we do that, the more we work and give in light
of the coming kingdom and the master’s return, the more likely we are to hear
those words of blessing: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the
joy of your master!”
You know, I think that the place where we can invest in
God’s kingdom most effectively is the local church. It’s in the local church
that we can begin to see the return on our investment most immediately: a
building where people of all ages and stages of life can gather to hear the
Word, to worship, and become disciples of Jesus; mission projects that change
the lives of people here in the community and around the world; staff that help
our children, our youth, and adults become equipped to serve God; every parking
space, every classroom, every worship service, every paycheck, every cup of
coffee, every thing and person you can think of in this church contributes to our
mission: making disciples of Jesus Christ for the work of his kingdom—a mission
in which all of us participate. Every dollar you invest in the offering plate
represents a use of the master’s gift. Will we invest in ways that please the
master and reflect his generosity, or will we keep those assets frozen because
we’re afraid?
All of us have a different amount of talents, just like
those slaves in the parable. Some are gifted with much, some with very little.
The amount doesn’t matter, only what we choose to do with it. God is less
concerned how much we give than with the attitude in which we give it. Do we
offer it with joy, or do we offer it out of obligation and fear? Paul says that
God loves a cheerful giver, and the parable seems to prove that as a truth.
I wonder what would happen if every family
at TLUMC decided that, this year, they weren’t going to keep their talent
hidden—that we would all take the step of faith to tell God what we plan to do
with his blessing and gift? My guess is that we would see an abundance—“a good
measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over” as Jesus says in Luke
6:38—an abundance to be used for his kingdom.
Times are tough, but experts tell us that even in tough
times we should be investing since the market tends to trend upward over the
long term. There’s no better investment that trends upward, however, than
investing in God’s kingdom!
