What You Do With What You’ve Got
Matt 25:14-30: July 27, 2003
Intro:
I’ve titled today’s sermon “What You Do With What You’ve Got,” and if you’re Calvin, my favorite comic strip character, what you “do” is entertain us with what you’ve “got” which is a wonderful perspective on life. For example:
Context:
We’ve been spending the summer looking at how Jesus described the Kingdom of God, by studying some of the parables He told. The reason is simple: living in the Kingdom of God is what our lives need to be all about. The Kingdom of God, according to Jesus, is what we are to “seek first” – it is to be the thing we seek above everything else. It is to be the thing we live for, we make decisions based on, we commit to and pursue. To see God’s Kingdom come, as Jesus taught us to pray.
So we are seeking God’s Kingdom together. Seeking to understand what it is like, how it means we are to live, how we are to relate to God and to each other and to our world. Our church vision is about seeking God’s Kingdom – we seek it in a festival of worship, we seek it in community that nurtures growth towards fruitfulness like a greenhouse, and we seek it for a world that is broken and dying through the picture of a hospital.
It is all about God’s Kingdom – which is the reign of God in our lives today. So what is God’s Kingdom like? We’ve looked at how God’s Kingdom might look small and unimpressive like a seed or a small pearl, but is priceless and full of power and worth giving up everything for. We’ve seen how God’s Kingdom is one of incredible generosity and grace, which makes all of us equal before God. Last week we saw that God’s Kingdom is about forgiveness – which we experience from God and must then pass on to others who have hurt us.
Today we are going to see that God’s Kingdom is about us being faithful and taking risks with that which God has made us stewards. Turn with me to Matt. 25:14-30.
Matt 25:14-30
Does anyone remember last week’s currency conversion lesson? A “Talent” was the highest currency value, equivalent to about 6000 day’s wages, or roughly $600 000 today. The “Master” hands these huge sums of money – 5 talents ($3M) to one, 2 talents ($1.2M), and 1 talent ($600 000) to the third, with the obvious assumption that they would use them, “according to their ability,” to increase the value of the Master’s estate. And then the Master leaves.
As the story continues, we learn that the first two double the money given to them. We need to understand that this would have been normal performance, and something that the servants should have been able to accomplish in that economy – it wasn’t extraordinary, super amazing results. So of course the Master is pleased and rewards them for doing their job.
The point of the parable is in the contrast with the third servant, who as we read took the cash and buried it in the ground, and then experienced the wrath of the Master.
That is the basic plot of the story. So what does it tell us about the Kingdom of God, which we are to be seeking to live in and seeking to see become a greater reality in our world?
The “interim” time is to be productive
We recognize the “Master” as Jesus pretty quickly, and it is clear that the time between the “going away” and the “returning” is the age that we are living in now. It is the time between Jesus’ first coming to earth and His second coming to earth. We recognize that at the time of Jesus’ second coming, there will be a period of judgment, or “settling of accounts” in the language of the parable. We know from other passages of Scripture, including the one that follows this one, that the most important thing at that point in time is whether or not we know Jesus and He knows us – that is the crucial question. But this parable teaches us that there will be another question as well: “what did you do with what I gave you?”
And just to be clear that this is not a salvation-by-works kind of thing, or a reward-for-good-deeds kind of thing, let us assert from the start that what we are given is this: life in Christ – new life, abundant life, Spirit filled life – and a response that pleases God is one that multiplies that life. We are given freedom, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power to live as God desires, and – and this is the key – we understand our responsibility to actually live that life in our world and see how it multiplies and God’s Kingdom grows. With that life comes gifts and abilities for sharing that life, more to some than to others – the point is that we use what God gives us.
So this is the main thing I learn about the Kingdom of God from this parable: we are to be faithful stewards of the life God gives us. We are to do something positive that shares that life, we are to live like we have been given the stewardship of an incredible gift, and our whole goal is for our Master to be pleased upon His return.
What that means is living for something more than ourselves. It means joining the great adventure of being a part of something far bigger and more significant than each of us as individuals, of having as our purpose in life to use and maximize all that we have been given to the glory of our Master and to the advancement of His Kingdom.
Our culture preaches this: “live for yourself, seek pleasure now.” Jesus preaches this: “live for me, ‘share my happiness’ for eternity.” I’m sure it was hard work for the first two servants – they had a big responsibility, they had to make decisions and choose wise investments and solve problems and deal with people trying to cheat them. But they were faithful, and they were rewarded.
I hope you have at one time or another memorized the words the Master speaks to these first two: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” Those are powerful words of hope and affirmation. Those are words worth living towards, that will be the ultimate blessing for all of us to hear at the end of time, “well done, good and faithful servant.”
I learned an interesting thing in one of my resources: “Jesus may well have used the Aramaic term for ‘joy’ that also means ‘festival’” (Craig Keener, IVP Bible Background Commentary NT). That is the invitation and reward – “Come! Join the festival to celebrate the life I gave you and how it has multiplied!!” That will be quite a party!!!
The other side of the parable
Jesus drives home the point of the parable with the contrast. The third servant did nothing. He treated the gift with contempt, and hid it in the ground. He took the responsibility given to him and ignored it, and instead of expending his effort in the growth of his Master’s estate, he dug a hole, dumped it in, and walked away and lived his own life for the entire time. He was not faithful, and was punished.
Let’s look at what the third servant says to the Master when he returns (vs. 24-25): “Then the man who had received the one talent came. “Master,” he said, “I knew that 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 talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.” Basically, he says, “I know you (or at least I think I do), I was scared, so I did nothing.”
What was he afraid of? He was afraid of losing some of the money, he was afraid that if he didn’t “perform” a certain way he might see a decrease and then get into big trouble. He was afraid of taking a risk with what had been given to him, and so he decides it is safer to hide it in the ground and walk away.
What he missed is this: the Master expected him to take those risks. He empowered him to take those risks, He equipped him with the capital to go out and use it in a profitable way. Yes, the Master expected a profit and He had a right to, that is why He entrusted the money to His servants. Notice this very significant statement in the Master’s reply: “you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.” (vs. 27). Even putting the money in a savings account would have been a whole lot better than digging a hole! It would have been ok for him to be conservative, as long as he had still been productive.
See, I believe the punishment was for taking the gift and treating it with contempt. To extend the application of the parable, this last servant took the gift of the life of God and then did nothing with it – he never told anyone about what he had experienced, he never joined a community and loved others, he never had a second thought about what he should – or could! – do with the incredible gift he had been given. He showed contempt for his Master by hiding the gift in a hole. He lived for himself rather than for his Master. He refused to be a steward. And as a result, he faced a horrible punishment.
The parable warns us that fear leads to contempt, and contempt leads to punishment. The servant says that his actions were based on fear. What about you? Are you afraid of God, afraid of living the life that He has given you in your world? Have you taken the gift of God and buried it in the ground, afraid to risk God’s displeasure and so done nothing? Are you like this third servant? Or are you like the first two?
The Question:
Jesus’ parables confront us with some rather direct questions. This one is a question of stewardship – are we being faithful stewards of what God has given us? That is the question: are we being faithful stewards?
I love that in the parable it doesn’t matter how much we think we might have been given – it is not even an issue. One gets 5, one gets 2, one gets 1, doesn’t make any difference. The one that made 5 more gets exactly the same reward as the one that made 2 more. The issue is the question: are we being faithful stewards of what we have been given?
Are you being a faithful steward of the life in Christ that you have received?
Are you being a faithful steward of the time you have been given, for God’s Kingdom?
Are you being a faithful steward of the relationships you have been given, at home, at church, in your friendships?
Are you being a faithful steward of the financial resources you have been given, for God’s Kingdom?
Are you being a faithful steward of the gifts God has given you for service in His Kingdom?
The Risk Factor:
I recognize the risk involved. Thinking like this requires us to analyze our entire lives under a different set of rules than our world – being a steward of God’s resources for the sake of His Kingdom, rather than living for our own comfort and convenience and security. We haven’t been taught to think like that – our first response to any change in our lives is almost always “how is this going to effect my life” rather than “how can this further God’s Kingdom?” But that is the place the parable brings us to: will we ignore the gifts we have been given for the Kingdom of God, put our heads in the dirt and live for ourselves, or will we get to work, take risks, live for the Kingdom of God and for the praise of our Master?
Let me get a little more specific with this idea as I close. As we head into the fall as a church, we (staff and elders) are recognizing a need to focus on living as the community of God, on being connected deeply in relationship together, instead of feeling disconnected from one another and from God. I recognize that many of us take the summer months to recuperate and to make decisions about how we are going to spend our time in the upcoming year, and so I want to leave you with the question of the parable: What kind of a steward are you? And as you think about the fall, will you consider taking the risk of sharing the gifts of God with all of us here at Laurier as together we seek God’s Kingdom. And note that I’m not thinking about money when I ask you to take this risk – money is a small part of stewardship. I am thinking about taking time to build relationships together as God’s children – to connect deeply, to love one another with depth as Christ loved us, to choose to spend significant time in relationships, to risk opening up and sharing our joys and our struggles. Here is what I’m asking: will you commit to steward the gifts God has given you so that together we can become a community that can heal people’s broken relationships with God and each other, like a hospital. So that together we can become a community that nurtures and cares and grows, like a greenhouse. And so that together we can become a community that can experience already the reality of the Master’s words: “come and share your master’s happiness”, and build a festival.
