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Fear That Fits Like A GloveNovember 16, 2008 Commitment Sunday; If ever a biblical story seemed to fit its context like a glove, surely the one we just heard, known as the Parable of the Talents, fits our time and location. Ostensibly a very short primer on risk venture capitalism, the fact that it pops up in the church calendar during an intense economic upheaval in our national and global markets – as well as for our specific purposes here at Christ Church on a day we call Commitment Sunday – is sheer serendipity, or comedy or tragedy, or some crazy combination. Let’s summarize the short plot of Jesus’ story: Before leaving on a journey a wealthy owner entrusted his property, in the form of talents, to each of three slaves – five talents to the first, two to the second, and one to the third. A talent was a very sizable sum of money, equivalent (depending upon which scholar one consults) to the total life wages of a person who labored from somewhere between 15 to 40 years. In other words, it was an amount that was beyond the ken of the average first century person. A really, really big number. One writer likened it to the reaction of the average Afghan to the $25 million dollar reward the United States announced for Osama Bin Laden. Asked “what they would do with that amount of money, one suggested, ‘Buy a new horsecart?’ And another wondered, ‘Have enough food for a year?’ They knew it was a lot, but had no idea just how much.” [1] So think of what, for you, would be a big number for a lifetime of wages and then double it. For our purposes, that’s the value of a talent. The slaves with five and two talents worked them in the markets and doubled their holdings. The slave with the one talent buried it. On a quick first reading it would seem to serve nicely as a very condensed case study for an Intro to Econ in any American University. Of course, the irony is that in today’s climate burying one’s horde seems the ascendant wisdom. Who wants to really take a risk? Isn’t that the fundamental problem the government is having with banks? Wanting them to let go of their cash and put it to work in the system? Interestingly, glancing through a variety of commentators addressing this parable, I noted that many referenced Wall Street in throw-away lines, as though the reader would have an immediate visceral response consistent with the writer’s perspective, ranging from bemusement to disgust to irony. And it dawned on me that interpreting a story like this plays differently in Manhattan than, say, Detroit, the epicenter of the meltdown in American car manufacturing, or in a small, rural town in Iowa. And it might play differently for those who more nearly identify with the one talent guy than the five talent guy. As a result, interpretations run all over the place, with most giving at least a passing nod to the easy moralism about the importance of “not burying one’s talents.” By the way, our modern definition of the word “talent” derives from centuries of broadly interpreting this story, shifting its meaning to non-monetary gifts or endowments of one sort or another. In John Wesley’s notes on the Bible, about this passage he wrote, “[The slave] that had received one [talent] made his having fewer talents than others a pretense for not improving any. [He] went and hid his master's money – Reader, art thou doing the same? Art thou hiding the talent God hath lent thee?” [2] Meaning, everyone’s been given good stuff of one sort or another and we’re meant to make good use of it whether or not some have more. And that’s hard to argue with. It just makes good, common sense and has a natural cadence as an easy moralism. We can find this message in this story without straining too hard. Still, as I’ve sat with it I don’t think that’s the essential point. Jesus wasn’t on his way to the cross for the sake of assembling a short list of pithy proverbs. The bite of the story pertains to the reason the one-talent man gave for burying the fortune, even preventing a modest return from the bankers. He misunderstood his patron’s intentions and thought it best to simply hold what had been given. Here’s what he said: “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” (25:25) “Here take it away and good riddance,” he might have added. “I never wanted it in the first place. All it did was make me very afraid.” The pressure point here has to do with fear, not about how hard one works or how much money one makes. Truth is, we don’t know that the other slaves worked hard for their return. All we know is that they took what had been entrusted to them and risked putting the talents to work, in this case, to do business. Maybe they bought lottery tickets. And other than the one-talent slave’s opinion in the matter, there’s no clue that his patron means him harm of any sort. In fact, it appears quite the opposite. He leaves on a long journey and graciously entrusts his slaves with his wealth, the implication being that his wealth was meant to be risked – after all, wasn’t he risking by completely entrusting it to his slaves in the first place? I’m thinking that this patron would have been satisfied had the one talent man played his cash and lost it. That we get all hung up in which one got the most and earned the most has more to do with our petty conceits. The patron showered his slaves with his wealth and seemed to say, “Go play the game! That’s the important thing.” As Robert Farrar Capon interprets the patron’s intentions, “All that matters is that you play. Not that you play well or badly. You could have earned a million with the money, or you could have earned two cents. You could have blown it on the horses for all I care: at least that way you would have been a gambler after my own heart. But when you crawl in here and insult me – me, Mr. Risk Himself – by telling me you decided I couldn’t be trusted, well…..” [3] This is a story about fear and trust. In Matthew’s gospel it comes near the end of Jesus’ life. He’s about to be hauled off to crucifixion. That’s the appropriate lens in which to read it, I think. Jesus was God’s astonishing gamble with humanity. Jesus himself, the one given talents to exploit or bury, spending out his life in trust, perhaps the greatest risk-taker of them all. I don’t have to tell you that there is a tremendous amount of fear and mistrust in our world – maybe these are the most ubiquitous commodities traded in global markets. There’s even a lot of fear and mistrust in our individual lives – that’s certainly the case for me; some has come into this room with us today. Now I think that’s a good thing because if it hadn’t come in with us we’d miss the chance to leave it here when we go home. That’s the silver-plated opportunity we have. I think that’s what Jesus intended with his friends. He invited them to let go of their fear and live confidently in faith with the God who was pleased to shower them with every good thing. Can you sense the freedom you would experience if you could spend out your life confidently trusting that everything coheres in God’s economy, whether or not on the short run you won or lost? That God has been pleased to grace you with the gift of life and the abundance of the whole creation in which to live and move and have your being? The only thing asked of you is to receive the gift as an opportunity to spend it out in gratitude, come what may? I’m guessing it wasn’t the chili competition following the service that brought you here this morning. That’s just a little added bonus. You were after something else, maybe something you couldn’t quite define. Here’s a suggestion: If you walk forward and place an envelope in the basin at the end of our service offer up your fear as well, as best you can. That would be a far greater offering than anything else you write on the card. In fact, if you were to write on the card, “I pledge, as best I can, to give up my fear, take on trust and spend out my life in gratitude,” you will have accomplished the largest thing possible. By the way, if you do this, I promise to join my prayer with yours. Visitors, feel free to write this on a card and join the parade. Imagine if we had a roomful of people willing to write that down and sign their names – I pledge to give up my fear, take on trust and spend out my life in gratitude. I tell you we’d have quite a raucous time of it. There’d be no holding us down or back on behalf of the God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs and inflated our lungs with breath. That would really be something....
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