“Risk-Taking Discipleship”
Matthew 25:14-30
Today’s parable is about a wealthy man who goes away on a long journey.
Before he leaves, he apportions his wealth to his three servants.
And it’s a lot of gold.
The first servant takes the gold to a wealth management firm and invests in high-risk ventures.
The second servant does the same thing.
And both of them do very well.
When their master returns, he is very happy with them, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” he says and then promises them that they will be given even more responsibility in the future.
The third servant takes a very different approach with his master’s gold.
He digs a hole in the ground and hides it there for safe-keeping.
And for his efforts he is treated as harshly as anyone in the whole Bible.
What do you suppose this is all about?
What did he do wrong?
Of course, this is a parable.
And the parables of Jesus are seemingly simple and memorable stories, often with imagery, that teach a lesson for our daily lives.
And although these parables seem simple, the messages they convey are deep, and central to the teachings of Jesus.
And in this parable the wealthy landowner represents God or Jesus.
We are represented by the servants.
And since Jesus doesn’t appear to be all that concerned about making money…there must be something else to this.
It turns out that the point here isn’t really about doubling your money and getting rich.
It’s about living.
It’s about investing.
It’s about taking risks.
It’s about Jesus Himself and what He has done and what is about to happen to Him.
Mostly it’s about what Jesus hopes and expects of us after He is gone.
It’s about what it means to be a faithful follower of Christ.
And the greatest risk of all, it turns out, is not to risk anything, not to care deeply and profoundly enough to invest deeply, and not to give our heart away in the process.
The greatest risk, it turns out, is to play it safe, to live cautiously and fearfully…maybe even lazily.
It’s normal to identify sin as pride and egotism.
However, there is a whole other lens through which to view the human condition.
It’s called sloth.
Sloth is one of the ancient church’s seven deadly sins.
Sloth means not caring, not loving, not rejoicing, not living up to the full potential of our humanity…
…investing nothing of ourselves…
…digging a hole and burying our time, talents and money—our very lives-- in the ground.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the sin of respectable people is running from responsibility.
Bonhoeffer’s sense of responsibility cost him his life.
I wonder if we treat our personal faith as a “high-risk venture.”
Or do we think of it more as a personal security zone.
Is faith to you and to me no more risky than believing ideas in our heads about God and Jesus, a list of beliefs to which we more or less subscribe to intellectually?
Is it about getting our theology right and then staying out of trouble, living a good life by avoiding bad things?
Is it pretty timid?
Is it like something we are given, and then we dig a hole and bury it in the ground for safe-keeping?
Or is it about doing the right thing even if it is not the popular thing?
Is it about standing up for the down and out, the marginalized, the lowly?
Is it about giving our money and also our time, and most importantly our love for the sake of a lost and broken world?
Is it about taking the chance of being seen with all the wrong people…
…taking the chance of offending the modern day Pharisees and being called a “sinner” just as Jesus was as a result?
Is it about standing up to the establishment if the establishment is not standing up for love, mercy and grace?
That is what Martin Luther King Jr. did.
And it was really, really risky.
And, of course, it cost him his life.
But look at the return on investment.
Look what he achieved for God and for those whom God loves.
Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord [our] God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind.”
And to, “Love our neighbor as [ourself].”
He says, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
It’s what the whole shabbang is about.
It’s everything.
And it’s hardcore.
And that is because of the little three letter word Jesus inserts there.
And that three-letter word is “all.”
He doesn’t say “love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself with some of your heart, mind and soul” but rather with “all your heart, mind and soul,”—
---in other words, with everything you’ve got—with your entire life.
And that is a lot.
And so, sloth is a very terrible thing.
It is the opposite of the greatest commandment.
When the servant who had received one bag of gold came to the master and said, “I knew you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.
So, I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground…”
That guy’s problem was that he really didn’t know the master—he didn’t trust the master…
…he didn’t love the master and he didn’t know the master loved him.
So, he did nothing.
He risked nothing.
And he wasted all he had been given.
He took no chances for the sake of God and the sake of others.
Author Dan Kimball is quoted as saying: “You can’t do nothing.
Whatever it is that you try, at least you will be able to stand before Christ one day and say ‘We gave it our best shot…we never quite figured it out, but we certainly did try!”
And that is all God asks of us…
…that we use what He has entrusted to us for His Kingdom, His mission in the world—for the sake of love.
Let’s all ask ourselves this morning and at the end of each day: “Is the world a better place because of my love for God?”
That’s what this is all about.
This parable insists to us that no talent, no life, no effort is too small to be insignificant, and that all gifts from God are precious and are to be used to the fullest extent possible.
Each of us have a pledge card in our bulletins this morning.
It is that time of year when we are asked to call on God and decide with Him what our financial gift will be to the church in 2022.
Do we trust God enough to risk investing what He has entrusted to us for His service—His Church?
Many of us have heard people excuse themselves from upholding the church by their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service and their witness by listing the things they don’t have:
… “I’m not rich. I don’t have a lot to give.”
“I’m too old.”
“I’m too young.”
“I’m too busy.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“I could never do that.”
When God asked Moses to tell Pharaoh to let His people go, Moses used a number excuses as well:
… “Who am I that I should go…?...”
“Suppose they don’t believe me.”
“I have never been a good speaker.”
After listening to Moses’ complaints, God said to him: “What is that in your hand?”
In other words, God was saying, “Moses, I am not interested in what you do not have; I am interested only in what you do have…reach out your hand…and certainly I will be with you.”
Moses decided to believe God and look what happened.
We are called to be people of faith, not people of fear.
1st John tells us that “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them…
…there is no fear in love.
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.”
One thing that strikes me in the parable for this morning is how deeply affected the third servant is by his perception of the landowner.
There is no clue ahead of time about the character of the landowner.
We don’t know if he is harsh or loving, merciful or unmerciful.
The first we hear about it is from the lips of the third servant: “I knew you were a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed.”
Neither the first nor second servant seem to feel this way.
And notice the retort of the landowner is in the form of a question.
It’s like, “If you thought I was so awful, then why didn’t you at least put my money in the bank to draw interest?”
I wonder how often we imagine God as an enforcer of rules, and we get hung up by the legalism of religion.
Do we visualize God as stern and unbending—just waiting to punish us—just awful, really?
If we think God is like this, we are unlikely to take risks, to think outside the box, to be all we can be and all God created us to be.
If we think God is like this, how can we be free to love—to love everyone freely with grace, mercy and forgiveness…
…the grace, mercy and forgiveness which God has shown to us?
We can’t, can we?
As Christ followers we are called to imitate Christ.
If we think Jesus is a resident policeman, that might just be who we try to be as well.
And in doing so, we will fail to share the gifts of mercy and love He offers us to others.
Jesus tells this parable just days before He will give His life on the Cross as a testimony to just how far God will go to communicate God’s love for us and all the world.
Jesus has spent His life and ministry proclaiming God’s kingdom, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, offering forgiveness, and welcoming all who recognize their need into the loving embrace of God.
And for that He is crucified.
That’s how much God wants us to know of God’s love.
And just in case we miss or underestimate that message, God raises Jesus on the third day so that we might know that life is stronger than death and love is more powerful than hate.
Do you believe this?
Do you believe God is this good, loving and merciful?
Is that the faith God has given you?
That’s what Jesus is really talking about here—Faith.
There are three different people in Jesus’ parable, entrusted with three different amounts of resources for building up the Kingdom of God, two showed faith and one didn’t.
We do stupid, ridiculous things when we go with fear over faith.
But, even more, we lose sight that even through all the risks of failure, and all the failures themselves, God is with us and routing for us.
We don’t go through failure alone.
And on the other end, God turns our failures into things we couldn’t even imagine.
The two faithful servants couldn’t have acted so boldly if they hadn’t trusted the master.
If they believed the master would punish them for every mistake, they would not have felt free enough to do what they did and accomplish what they accomplished.
They acted in confidence, not just in themselves, but also in their master.
And so, the question for us this morning is do we have confidence in not only ourselves, but in God as well?
Do we believe God is loving and merciful or hard and unbending?
Do we love God or just fear God?
Do we love God so much that we want others to come to know God’s love?
If so, will we risk being misunderstood?
Will we risk erring on the side of love, mercy and grace—the same grace which has been lavished on us?
The Gospel with which we are entrusted with is the Good News of God Who risked even His own Son to redeem humanity.
God now expects and calls us to use our resources—the resources which are actually His—great or small—to boldly proclaim His all-encompassing love and justice, even in the face of those who might hate us for it.
So, what’s it going to be?
A person once observed, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.”
So also is a Christian safe who buries what God has entrusted to him or her—but that’s not what Christians are for.
I might add that Pearl Harbor proved that ships in harbor are not really safe after-all.
And this parable shows that Christians who bury their God-given gifts are not really safe either.
God calls us to risk-taking discipleship for the transformation of the world.
If you think you aren’t up to the task, remember and meditate on the Words of Saint Paul who wrote and testified with his life: “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.”
May it be so with you and with me.
Amen.
