Jesus MAFA, Parable of the Three Servants, or, The Talents
On Sunday, November 19th, we considered the parable of the talents. This is a challenging story. I don't particularly like this story, because it seems so very unfair. It also makes God's judgment seem unfair. What do we do with stories like this?
Sermon
Good morning. I had an interesting and fulfilling week. It
included a conversation about a baptism, a hospital visit, a pastors’ retreat,
and a presbytery meeting. The retreat was the event that I was most looking
forward to. But would you believe that the highlight of the week was actually
the presbytery meeting? Seriously! I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.
The retreat was at a little farm house near Ligonier. Most
of the guys are retired pastors and they have an amazing bond of faith and
friendship; they served with one another for over thirty years. I got invited
to join this group last year and the fellowship that we shared was amazing. I
got nuggets of wisdom from these guys and I came back energized.
It was a little bit different this year.
One of the pastors asked if any of us had officiated any
funerals for people who had died from heroin overdoses. I said I had officiated
two. Most of the other pastors had also officiated funerals for overdose
victims.
One of the retired pastors in the group came out of
retirement to cover for a pastor who was out on medical leave. That
congregation is going to be closing in a few months. He was very depressed
about the state of the church and he was having trouble shaking that feeling.
Most of these guys were ordained in the 1970s, when the pews and the collection
plates were full. They didn’t have to struggle to get people to come to worship
or to serve on committees.
As I thought about those problems, I also thought about
this morning’s lesson from the Gospel of Matthew. I thought I might give you a
sermon about sharing your talents, a sermon that would close with a call to
pledge your service to this congregation. But somehow, a sermon that calls on
more of you to serve on committees—it didn’t feel right. Why?
First, I have to say, I hate this parable. Or at least I
used to hate it. It seems so unfair. The master gives five talents to one of
his slaves, and that slave doubles the master’s money, and he’s rewarded. The
master gives two talents to another slave, and he also doubles the master’s
investment, and that slave is also rewarded. And finally, the master offers but
one talent to the third slave, and that slave returns exactly what he was given
to the master—yet he’s cast into the outer darkness; he’s condemned to weeping
and gnashing of teeth! For what? For not making the master richer! But he’s
already a slave! Isn’t that punishment enough?
The parable of the talents comes right after the parable of
the bridesmaids and right before the parable of the sheep and the goats. The
twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is all about God’s judgment, and that
makes all of these stores uncomfortable. The parable of the talents is a
difficult story because it seems unfair. It seems like God’s judgment is
unfair. In fact, this story is unfair! The world is unfair! The world is
hopelessly broken, the Church is struggling to stay afloat, and still, Jesus
calls us to step into the breach and mend this broken world! And Jesus calls us
out for squandering our talents.[1]
But, Jesus, we don’t have enough members! We don’t have
enough money! We’re not like those big churches in Mt. Lebanon and Upper St.
Clair and Wexford! We don’t have the resources. We are the slave with only one
talent. We feel like we’re not up to the task. This is why a sermon that calls
for you to join the finance committee or the personnel committee or the program
committee is simply not enough.
We are the slave with only one talent, and we are called to
do more! We are called to do so much more than simply returning the little bit
of wealth that we have. Yes, committee service is important, but it’s only a
little bit more than handing back a single talent to the master.
Yet I am not willing to give up hope. I believe we have the
talents that we need to live into Christ’s call. And I was reminded of this at
the presbytery meeting yesterday.
We heard an excellent sermon from the Rev. Sue Washburn.
Sue serves at Reunion Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant and she is currently
the Moderator of Redstone Presbytery.
In her sermon, Sue spoke about a committee meeting that she
attended. Many of the pastors on the committee were older. They expressed the
same concerns that I heard on my pastors’ retreat. Most of the clergy were
ordained thirty or forty years ago; they all remembered how church used to be.
Then one of the younger pastors spoke up. She was ordained
more recently. She said that the church she grew up in was always half full—on a
good Sunday! She had never been in a full church; she said she felt called to
serve the Church as it is right now. She still felt the call to serve, even
though she never experienced the glory of the Church of the past!
Sue said she felt the same way. Sue is involved in the
Redstone Addictions Ministry Network. This is a group of pastors and
congregation members that are working to address the addiction crisis in our
society. Now that may seem like an overwhelming task, but the members of this
network are convinced that the Church needs to be part of the response to this
crisis. And that gives them energy. They are also convinced that they have the
talents to begin this work.
The work of the Redstone Addictions Ministry Network is
very much in line with the spirit of the parable of the talents. Too often, we
think about our talents as personal blessings; we use our talents for our own
benefit, and hey, if it helps other people, that’s great, too. But that’s not
what Jesus is telling us: “what you do with what you have been given is never,
ever, for your benefit alone, but for the sake of the poor in spirit, those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness, so that we might actually embody the
promise of Immanuel—being the salt of the earth and the light of the world.”[2]
I came out of that presbytery meeting feeling energized to
do the work of ministry. And then I heard the most amazing story on the radio
as I drove home.
A young couple, Ross and Sarah Gray were expecting a baby—twins
actually.[3] Then they got the horrible
news that something was wrong. One of the babies wasn’t developing properly.
The baby had a condition called anencephaly, it is the absence of a major
portion of the brain, skull, and scalp. It is a terminal condition, and it
endangered the life of the other baby, too.
The doctors recommended a procedure called selective termination.
That is, they wanted to terminate the pregnancy for the baby with anencephaly.
They said it would increase the chance that the other baby would survive.
Before agreeing to the procedure, Sarah consulted her
priest. The priest said that if the procedure would save the life of the other
twin, then it was acceptable. Sarah and Ross told the doctors to go ahead with
the procedure.
The date was set for the procedure. The medical team did
more imaging. They found that the position of the placenta had shifted and any
procedure would endanger both babies. Still, the emotional roller coaster was
not over.
Both babies were delivered, but the healthy baby had to be
rushed to intensive care, along with the mother. Ross held the other baby,
Thomas. He cried, like a normal baby. His tiny fingers grasped his dad’s
finger.
Sarah and the other baby were later stabilized. Ross and
Sarah went home and they decided to take Thomas home, too. Thomas died six days
later. Remember, he was terminal; Thomas was never going to make it.
Sarah wanted Thomas’s life to mean something, so she donated
his organs to medical research. Thomas’s tissues went to the top research
institutions in the United States: Harvard, Duke, the University of
Pennsylvania. And this is where the story gets really interesting.
Sarah and Ross spent the next year grieving the loss of
Thomas’s life. And then Sarah decided to reach out to the scientists at the
various universities. This was challenging. Nobody really does this with medical
research. Yes, all of the institutions have donor relations departments, but
those are for financial donors, not organ donors.
Eventually, she met one of the scientists who received
Thomas’s eye tissue. She asked him if the donated tissues made a difference. The
scientist said, you don’t understand, most of the eye tissue that’s donated
comes from older people. A baby’s eyes are very different; the cells
regenerate, they have very different properties. The scientist said that a baby’s
eyes are worth their weight in gold; Thomas’s eye tissue would lead to unknown
breakthroughs, the scientist said.
Every scientist that Sarah spoke with told a similar story:
Thomas’s tissues advanced research on many fronts, and all the scientists were
grateful that Sarah had decided to donate his body to science. They all
acknowledged the extraordinary gift they had received.
Thomas’s life mattered and it would have mattered even if
Sarah hadn’t donated his body to medical science. But because Sarah decided to
give freely, to share her gift with so many scientists, many more people will
benefit from Thomas’s short life. Thomas’s life mattered more because Sarah, in
the midst of unbelievable pain and grief, offered that gift.
Jesus calls us to give everything we can—even when it’s
hard to see what we can give. The antidote to hopelessness and fatigue is to
give more and work more on the things that matter. The parables call us to look
within. They call us to examine the uncomfortable places in our lives. They
call us to examine the ways in which we come up short, the ways we fail to live
into Christ’s call to be the Church. Let us heed this call to self-examination,
so that we can live more fully into Christ’s call. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world today. We are
called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and love and reconciliation.
Do not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by
God, and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth
and be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus
Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!
[1][1]
Karoline Lewis, “Entrustment,” retrieved from: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4998
[2]
Lewis.
[3]
This story appeared on Radiolab. The
audio is available at: http://www.radiolab.org/story/donation-and-mutation/
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