A Sermon for St. John’s Episcopal Church, Charlestown, Massachusetts

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18 1, Thessalonians 5:1-7, Matthew 25:14-30

Today, on this Commitment Sunday, we will be invited to bring our pledges of time, talent, and treasures for the year 2012 here to the altar. On this Sunday when we talk about those things, we are presented in the Gospel with of all things, a parable about talents — about those who receive them, those who use them, and those who do not. It is another one of those odd parables from Matthew’s gospel with its tones of judgment — there is only one more, next Sunday, and then we will be hearing from another gospel.

A property owner goes off on a journey, and he gives out talents to each of his slaves. A talent here is not some skill or gift, but an amount of money. Indeed, a talent was an enormous amount of money – what would be equivalent to about 15 years of income for the average laborer of that day. We are not talking about small change here, and so we are not talking about small consequences.

One slave receives five talents. He goes off, trades it, and when the property owner returns, he has earned five more. Likewise with the slave who received two. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now you will notice that when you come to offer your talents today, there are no shovels up here near the altar.

But we do know, like that one slave, that if we bury a talent, at least it will be safe. There we know it is – where it can be found and returned. But there, or course, it yields nothing.

At our vestry meeting this week, we had a bible study about this parable, and our reactions were as varied and different as the people around the room. Those reactions reminded me that parables have a way of engaging each of us as we are. They are like a many faceted gem. Each of us may see a different facet, and as we look, we see not only a reflection of ourselves, but perhaps some glimmer of God’s word for us. And so it is not my job today to say “this is what the story means.” But perhaps my own engagement with the parable can inspire you to consider what it means for you to hear Jesus speak about the use of talents.

The experience of that slave who hid the talents catches me up short, because I know that I can be quite tentative in the investments that I make. I can, when things seem risky, want to play it safe. But was Jesus really trying to be an investment advisor here?

The parable reminds me of a story my aunt told at a family wedding a few years ago. She and her two sisters, including my mother, grew up in Tuxedo Park, New York, a wealthy enclave about 40 miles north of New York City. (It’s the place where the Tuxedo jacket got its name.) For close to 30 years, my grandfather was a butler and head of the household at one of the estates there. He and the family lived in a small servant’s cottage on the estate. My aunt recalled that one day, when she was about five years old, she, took one of her mother’s silver spoons out into the backyard. It was not the best tool for digging in the dirt, but it was certainly handy. And she went out back and engaged in that typical, joyful act of playing in the dirt, without a care in the world. That spoon was not the best tool for digging, she found out, when upon hitting a rock, she bent it.

And she was afraid. She was afraid of how her mother would react if she brought in that bent spoon. So she buried it. She dug a hole as deep as she could in the back yard and she buried it. Now I knew my grandmother. She loved her daughters, and she loved her grandchildren. But she was a formidable figure, and hearing that story, I could understand perfectly why my aunt had done what she did.

My grandmother eventually discovered that a spoon was missing, but my aunt never revealed to her the truth. One of the rituals I remember after Christmas dinner at my grandparents’ was that we always had to count the silverware before it was put away, lest a wayward fork or spoon be tossed out with the garbage. Over the years my aunt would remember that spoon, and whenever she did, all sorts of emotions would rattle around in her: some fear, some guilt, and long after my grandmother had died, a sense of puzzlement as to why she had done what she did all those years ago and never said anything.

To return to our parable. Listen again to the servant when he is asked to explain his decision:

“I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground.”

“I was afraid,” said my aunt, “so I went and hid what I had done in the ground.”

Perhaps the great spiritual dilemma in this parable is not the choice about being a saver or an investor, but instead the choice about how we will participate in the work and life of God when fear grips our hearts. We all know what it means to experience fear.

And we can try to bury things that make us fearful. Instead of a spoon, what happens when we bend or break another’s heart, or wound and hurt another? One response is to deal with the consequences Or, we may try to bury the hurts and the harms, fearful of what it would mean to acknowledge what we have done. But we’ll not find the healing and reconciliation that leads to renewed life.

And if we bury our torments, the parable reminds us that we can also bury our talents. You and I have each been given the most incredible gift – a unique and precious life. No one in the whole of creation has been given the particular life and the gifts inherent in it that you possess. And yet there can be those times when the magnitude of this gift is so great that it causes us to step back from the full expression of what God intends for human life. For what if we make a mistake? What if we don’t get it right?

Jesus tells this parable about talents, and there at the center of it is a person who says, “I was afraid.” And that slave stands out for us, in part because the story of Jesus himself is so often about moments of overcoming fear.

“Be not afraid.” Those are the words we hear ringing throughout the story Jesus’ life and death. They are the words we hear spoken by the angel Gabriel, when she announces to Mary that she will bear a son. They are the words proclaimed by an angel chorus to shepherds who are the first to visit Jesus at his birth. And when the disciples are in the midst of a storm on the Sea of Galilee, those are the words they hear as they see someone coming across the water to calm the seas and calm their souls.

“Be not afraid.”

They are even the words that an angel proclaims at that place where the fear of the world has buried the very body of Jesus in a tomb.

“Be not afraid. He is not here. He is risen.”

Today, we bring before God our pledges of talent, time, and treasures. As we have thought about and prayed about our pledges today, there may be some fears.

Perhaps there is some way you have thought about offering yourself here in this place, but wondered whether your presence or your gift might be accepted.

Be not afraid.

Or maybe you have considered making a considerable increase your financial pledge, and are already wondering what impact that will have on your budget.

Be not afraid.

Or perhaps you think your financial gift is not enough, or that your talent is insignificant in God’s eyes.

Be not afraid.

No one else in the world has the gifts that you possess. No one else in the world has the opportunity to give them away, however risky that may feel.

Besides, it is not as if we can simply put things away and pretend we will never see them again. Two years ago at Thanksgiving, my aunt took two of her sons back to Tuxedo Park to visit the places she had known as a child. The son of my grandfather’s employer graciously welcomed her into his home and they reminisced for the afternoon. He then arranged for my aunt to go to the cottage where she had grown up, which now was owned by others. The new owners showed her around, and discussed how they had recently taken down some old, decrepit greenhouses in the backyard. As they walked down a hallway, they pointed to a shelf where they had recovered some old artifacts in the midst of digging up the backyard – a couple of old bottles, some pottery, and, a tarnished and bent spoon. My aunt stared in disbelief, picked up the spoon, and in that moment, was five years old again.

She was so overcome that she refused the offer of the owners to take the spoon with her. Of course, as soon as she got home and said to her sons, “Why didn’t I take that spoon? A few weeks later, a small Christmas gift arrived in the mail, and in the box was that spoon, with a note that said, “This really does belong to you.”

She realized she needed that spoon. For in reclaiming it, all the guilt, all the fear, all those emotions that had rattled around for years were somehow released, and she was filled with a sense of gratitude for her mother and for their relationship. Yes, my grandmother was a formidable person. But more importantly, she was someone who loved her daughter, and surely would have forgiven her those many years ago.

The gifts, the skills, the talents that God has given us – they really do belong to us. They belong to us so that we might go out into the world and use them, offer, them and even give them away. They belong to us so that might be lavish and even careless in the way we put them out into the world. They belong to us so that we might live in the world more like a child who is delightfully and joyfully digging in the dirt, rather than one who is fearful that we might make a mistake or be “found out.”

And so, whatever the gifts that we bring to the altar today, be they great or small, I pray that each of us will offer them with a kind of eagerness, enthusiasm, and love, so that we too, might hear these words:

”Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Master.”

Amen

Preached on the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
November 13, 2011
by the Rev. Thomas N. Mousin