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Sermon Nov. 13, 2005 |
A Sermon Preached at
Preacher Fred Craddock tells the story of the village school in which most of the children lived for the afternoon dismissal bell. They dragged themselves into school reluctantly at 8:30 every morning and spent much of their day dreaming they were home again. Then at 3:30 every afternoon the bell would ring and all the kids would race home rejoicing—well, all would race home happily except one little girl. This child couldn’t wait to get to school in the morning. She came early and helped the teacher get ready for the day, and at the end of the day, she would stay late helping the teacher dust the erasers and put everything away. During the day she would sit close to the teacher, paying attention to the lessons. One day, Craddock relates, the class was even more unruly than usual and the teacher forcefully called the children to order. Pointing to the little girl in the front row, the teacher said, “Why can’t you be more like her? She comes early and stays late to help and she pays attention all day long. Why can’t you be more like her?” “That’s not fair,” said one boy from the rear of the room. “You can’t expect us to be like her.” “Why not?” asked the teacher. “She has an unfair advantage,” the boy replied. “I don’t understand. What is her advantage?” asked the puzzled teacher. “She is an orphan,” the little boy whispered as he sat down.
If we understood our situation in this world better, we would all see that we have the same advantage as that little girl. We are orphans and for reasons quite beyond our control someone has taken an interest in us, loves us, and wants the best of everything for us. That is the message of the kingdom of heaven: the overwhelming good news that we have the most precious gift in the world, we have been scooped up out of the mud by the creator and given a place in the universe only a little bit lower than the angels. Jesus told a lot of stories about the kingdom of heaven, all of them trying to help us understand just what an incredible gift we have been given. The kingdom, said Jesus, is like a great banquet given by a king to which he invited all the ordinary people off the streets. The kingdom is like a pearl of great price or a treasure found in a field—something you’d give up everything to possess.
Today, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like the rich man who entrusted a fortune to his servants. It is a long story and we tend not to follow it very well. It sounds like Jesus is talking about something we know a lot about: investing your money. When we focus on that part of the story, it is a no-brainer. Everybody knows that if you get a little extra cash you ought to invest it. Everybody knows it isn’t smart to bury it or to put it under your mattress. Everybody knows you ought to take a little risk and earn some interest. All of that is true in Jesus’ story.
As far as it goes, it’s a great little story, and it makes a great object lesson during stewardship and capital fund drive times. I know of at least one church that enjoyed tremendous success by taking Jesus’ story literally. The minister handed out a sum of money to everybody in church, told them it was God’s money, and then told them they had three months to make something of it. Folks did some really creative things with what they were given. Some, it is true, just gave it back untouched, but most did projects. Someone bought the ingredients for a bake sale and sold pies. Someone bought seeds and at harvest time opened a farm stand. Some painted watercolors to sell. Several invested in stocks. At the end of three months the money had grown—maybe not a hundredfold, but quite significantly.
If it helps you recognize that the gifts you have been given all belong to God—and especially if it helps you recognize the obligation we all have to give back to God the bounty we have been given—if it helps you, that’s a fine way to read the story. However, I’d like to suggest that even that is not quite what Jesus meant. I’m indebted to James Howell writing in the Christian Century Magazine for pointing out that the sum of money entrusted to the servants in Jesus’ story was astronomical. The Roman talanton that Jesus was talking about was a bar of gold weighing about 75 pounds. Each one was worth about 25 years’ salary for a comfortable middle class person. So each of the servants in Jesus’ story received more money than they were likely to see in a lifetime—the equivalent of winning the Power Ball Lottery. Jesus’ whole point here is that nobody among his hearers would have the faintest idea of what to do with that much money, and most people would be likely to hide it away, though a better thing to do would be to invest it.
And don’t forget, that the gift Jesus was talking about was not just our “talents” our special ability to bake or teach or sew or sing or to conduct business. Jesus was talking about THE gift: the kingdom of heaven, the love of God. The kingdom, says Jesus is like an overwhelming windfall—good news too amazing to get our heads around. Most of us don’t have a clue what to do with it, but the best of us would want to spread it around. When we do, he says, it comes back to us a hundredfold or more. I think he was right. If we really “got” what wonderful news it is that God loves us, we’d feel like orphan children suddenly taken in and loved. Some of us would just hold onto the news for ourselves, but most of us would give back. Most of us would be like the little girl in school, doing whatever we could to make the teacher proud. We’d use our talents, to be sure, pouring out all that God has poured into us. We’d be generous with our wealth, giving to the Church as if money were nothing. But most of all, we would love with all our hearts. It is to those who love like that that the master says, “Well done.” AMEN