On one of our trips to Louisville to see about my mother-in-law, we stayed at a motel right next to a Baptist church. It happened to be a church which had been started as a mission congregation by my home church back when I was a teenager. I told Margaret that I remembered that vacant lot between the motel and the church, because that’s the lot where we used to come out and play church league softball. And I had played, or tried to play, out there on that very lot.
As I reminisced with her about that, I began to remember more than I wanted to. I remembered that, yes, we were supposed to be having good, clean, Christian fun playing softball, but that even in good, clean, Christian softball the object of the game is still to win. Not just to enjoy knocking the ball around the field, but to win the game. And I am afraid that I could not contribute very much toward that aim. I was and still am just about the most non-athletic person that God ever put on this green earth. But I was playing softball, sort of, for the church team.
Well, the way they dealt with that was to put me in deep right field, way, way out there where I would be all alone and could do relatively little harm. Right field, because usually that’s where only the left-handed batters hit, and there weren’t too many of them; and then deep right field, because we played under a special set of rules that put players in near right and near center field, along with the shortstop in near left field, and then the regular fielders went deep. The idea was to give more people a chance to play. So I went to deep right field, where maybe, on a good night, the ball would be hit only two or three times. It was so quiet out in deep right field that I took my copy of “War and Peace” and read the whole thing out there.
However, every now and then somebody would get a piece of the softball and it would come out my way, usually not so that I could catch it on the fly, but at least could get the grounder and throw it somewhere. The trouble was that I was so far out in deep right field that when I did manage to get the ball (usually after kicking it a couple of times and stumbling over it once or twice) .. when I did manage to get the ball, I couldn’t throw it to any place that mattered. The runners were too far ahead, or the distances were too long, or my glasses had fallen off .. or whatever. In other words, I was a total disaster even in deep right field.
Now have you figured out that it was not only my total lack of athletic ability? It was also that I was set up to fail! I was programmed to mess up! I was expected to do poorly. They put me so far out there, with my weak eyes, skinny arms, and clumsy legs; they expected me to fail, and I did! I did not disappoint them! I did exactly what they set me up to do: mess up! Yes, it was a setup!
It was a setup, not just because of my lack of ability, but also because the system put me in the wrong place. It was a setup, not only because the system put me in the wrong place, but also because I was afraid. I was afraid of what I was supposed to do, and just about prayed, every inning, that no balls would come my way. If I could just avoid having to risk anything, you see, I would come through unscathed. I knew it was a setup, and I was afraid. That’s a potent formula for disaster!
Just a whole lot of us stumble through life, dealing with feeling set up to fail, programmed to foul up, and the issue is not only the system that does that to us. The issue is deeper, the issue is spiritual. The issue is that we are afraid of something. Maybe afraid of ourselves. That’s the setup.
As recently as a generation ago, within the lifetimes of some of you in this very room, lots of people in America were set up to fail. Segregation laws created circumstances guaranteed to make achievement hard. No high school for black students in your county? Well, tough. I guess you just don’t get high school, or else you have to travel on a rickety old bus over to the next county, if the bus shows up! That’s a setup! No professional jobs for African-Americans, even though they had college degrees? Here, can’t you just be happy with shining shoes or delivering groceries? It was a setup. And it would be perfectly understandable that under such circumstances people did fail, people did get crushed. You could understand it if men would have their spirits broken and women their bodies abused. Racism is an institutionalized setup, it is an arrangement to guarantee failure.
But you know the other stories too, don’t you? You know the other stories, some of you have lived them: stories of people who had every reason to fail, but did not. People who were set up to lose, but who won. People who got that education, found that job, bought that home, raised that family, put it all together. How did they do that? Against such overwhelming odds, how did they accomplish that?
It has to do with trusting God and not being afraid. It has to do with growing what God gave you.
In Jesus’ parable, which is somewhat different in Matthew’s Gospel, there are three different people who are given resources by the Master of the household. Three differently endowed people, with differing responses to the way their boss has set them up. The key element for each one of them is the way he handles fear.
I
The first servant is given, at least in Matthew’s version, five mina, or five talents, and is told to use them while the Master is away. Now if one mina is about three months’ pay for an average worker, five mina is well over a year’s earnings. A very tidy sum of money. In other words, the first servant was well equipped. He was set up with a very good deal What was he to do with the Master’s resources?
The parable shows him, when the Master returns, having been able to double his gift. His five mina have become five more. He has taken the advantages he was given and has multiplied them greatly, and he is praised for that.
Well, you say, of course. If somebody wants to give me forty or fifty thousand, I could put that to work and make a lot of additional money out of that. What’s so great about being set up with plenty and making plenty more?
What’s so great about it is that sometimes people who are well equipped seem afraid to use what they have. People who are resourceful are reluctant to invest themselves. Have you noticed this? Five-talent people are so afraid to risk their talents, and so they hide them. They don’t want to appear to be too pushy, and so they hold back. They want to hoard, and they hold back. They are -- what’s my key word? -- they are afraid to use all they have. But the servant in the parable who had plenty to start with was bold about it. He took some risks. He went by the rule, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”. And he won the Master’s approval.
You are a very capable people. I can look out over this congregation this morning and see plenty of five-talent people. You know, pastors get together and talk about their congregations. We meet for lunch or coffee and we start talking about the place where the Lord has sentenced us, I mean, has called us. And sometimes I will hear from one of my colleagues a long languid litany of complaints: my people can’t teach, they can’t witness, they don’t know anything, they won’t give any money, they won’t, they don’t, they can’t. But I want you to know that when that happens I find myself talking about the people here who can do and will do. We have somebody here who can do just about anything that the Kingdom needs done! Or if you don’t know how to do it, you know somebody else who does know! I am proud of you and I count it a privilege to serve you. Five-talent people. You must not be afraid to risk what you have. You must not feel as though others will criticize if you let your light shine. You must not hold back your time, your talents, or your financial resources, because the Master expects you to give back what you have received.
Don’t be afraid, five-talent people! Don’t make up fancy excuses! The world needs for you to be running on all cylinders. The church needs for you to give it all you have,
Martin Luther King, I would call a five-talent person. He was not only a brilliant civil rights leader; he was also a marvelous speaker, a solid student, and a caring pastor. One of you has told me that you think he could also have been, if he had gone that route, a very effective evangelist. He had all kinds of gifts. But, you know, there were other young men with gifts. There were other young preachers with abilities. What made the difference? Didn’t Dr. King also suffer the indignities of racism? Didn’t he get pushed around and called boy and worse? Of course. Of course. But in his book Stride Toward Freedom he tells us that even though there were nights he had reason to be afraid, because death threats had come; even though there were days he could have been thoroughly scared, because funds had dried up; even though there were moments when he might have been overtaken by fear because even some of his own lieutenants were ready to give up .. still, King says, because he knew that God had given him great advantages, God would not desert him in the breach. Because he knew that to whom God had given much, of him was much required. And more, that God had not set him up for failure, but wanted him to succeed. The world might have tried to set him up for failure, but he was not afraid, for he believed that God had set him up for victory.
Don’t hold back, five-talent people. Don’t be afraid. Trust God, who made you who you are!
II
But then there are the two-talent people. There are the ordinary, the middle of the road folks. There are those of us who may not be able to do lots of things, but we can do some things. We are just your average, ordinary, folks, two-talent people. Is there anything wrong with that?
Well, in Jesus’ parable the servant with the two talents reported to the Master when the journey was over, “I have taken the two talents you gave me, and I have doubled them. I have made two talents more for you.” And this too brought the Master’s smiling “well done.” This too brought satisfaction.
Here, however, is where a lot of us fall down. We know we are two-talent people, ordinary, average, and we are afraid -- key word again, afraid - we are afraid that that is not good enough. We are afraid that that doesn’t stack up well against five-talent people. So we don’t develop our two gifts. We are afraid we’ll be outdone by somebody else. Average people are afraid to be average!
But I will tell you this morning that God’s kingdom has been built on the labor and the gifts of ordinary, average, two-talent people. God’s kingdom has been moved forward immeasurably by thousands of people whose names are not in any history books, whose faces are not immortalized in stained glass, and whose stories merit only a paragraph or two in the newspaper when they die. God’s kingdom is founded on average people who are not afraid to give what they have, who are not intimidated by the fact that somebody else may be better than they are. God’s kingdom depends on people who do not care that they were set up just to be average. That’s still not set up to fail.
On that lovely day in 1863 when they were to dedicate the battlefield at Gettysburg, a famous orator, Edward Everett, was engaged to bring a three-hour speech. He was acclaimed by everyone as the foremost speechmaker of his time. And so the President of the United States, an average man with an average gift for eloquence, was asked to bring just a few average, appropriate remarks. But because Abraham Lincoln, who himself once said that God must have loved the common man because He made so many of them .. because Abraham Lincoln was not afraid to use his ordinary gifts, today schoolchildren memorize “Four score and seven years ago”, but no one knows or cares about the five-talent speaker that day. God’s kingdom is built around ordinary folks who do everyday things faithfully, and are not afraid to do so.
Eleanor Roosevelt may have been born into a wealthy and prominent family. But she herself had very little going for her. As a young woman, she was shy, awkward, unhappy, and, by most people’s measurements, just plain unattractive. But in her memoirs, written when she was about 75, Mrs. Roosevelt said that she had only a few things going for her: a keen interest in learning and self-discipline. Interest in learning and self-discipline. I translate that as not being afraid. She was not afraid to try, not afraid to fail, and what if circumstances had set her up? She would find a way to live beyond and not be afraid!
Average, ordinary, two-talent people don’t have to be afraid. You may never achieve what others have, but, by the grace of God, we can build the Kingdom, and the Master will smile upon us, two-talent, average folks. They were right down at First Baptist Church when they built their stained-glassed windows. Among all the saints and sages, the greats and the near-greats, they put in a stained glass window of an ordinary-looking guy, wearing an ordinary-looking suit, carrying some kind of nondescript briefcase, and said that this window commemorates the average Baptist, by whom the church was built. Two-talent people, do not be afraid. You are precious in God’s sight. You have not been set up to fail.
III
Oh, but the one-talent man. What a tragedy! What a painful sight! To one person the Master gave only one small measure of resources, and said, “Now let’s see what you can do with this.” And this one took what the Master gave him and hid it. Buried it. Kept it out of circulation. Did nothing but warm the pew and keep out of sight.
And when the Master returned and asked for an accounting, what did this one say? “Master, it was a setup!” I had only this one little old gift. And I was afraid ... stop right there. There is the word I have been playing with all morning. I was afraid. I was afraid of you, I was afraid you wouldn’t like it if I lost your money, I was afraid you wouldn’t be satisfied, I was afraid.
And the Master’s harsh tongue lashed out. You wicked servant. You foolish man. You ignorant Christian! You scream because I did not give you five gifts or two gifts, but you did nothing with the one gift I did give you! You did not develop the one so that it could become two! You did not take what little you had so that the Kingdom could use it! You complained because you do not have what others were given, but you do have something! You must give it! You must use it! You must grow!
You see, we who are one-talent people, we are afraid of ourselves. We do not want to look stupid, so we say nothing, do nothing. We do not want to be conspicuous, so we hide behind our limitations and do so very little. I tell you, there is no one in this congregation who is a no-talent person. Every one has at least one gift, but that gift must be grown. It must be grown. The Master will not be satisfied with anything less. Yes, you were set up. But you were not set up to fail. God has done better than that. God has given you opportunity. Even the one-talent person must grow, for growth is the law of life.
In this coming year we are going to focus on the truth that growth is the law of life. Growing, deepening, learning, becoming, these things make us what God wants us to be. Our vision statement says that we are to be inquiring in mind, learning to live and equipping ourselves to serve. Let no one be satisfied with who you are now or what you know now. We must grow. Let no one be afraid to risk what you have now or what you know now, for growth is coming. God may have set us up, some with more than others, but God set none of us up to fail. Growth is the law of life.
Come to think of it, there was that softball game, when I was daydreaming out in deep, deep right field, thinking how I was afraid that even one well hit ball might come my way. Hey, all of a sudden the others were yelling my name! The ball was high in the air, way overhead and looking like it might come down around me. But with my weak eyes and my skinny arms, my stumbling legs and my glasses about to fall off, I lost track of where that silly sphere had gone. All I could do was shut my eyes, stick my glove up in the air, and wait.
When they carried me off the field on their shoulders, because I had caught the game-ending out, I knew that even if you think you are set up to fail, every now and again heaven drops a gift into your glove.
