The Reverend Richard
R. Topping, Ph.D
Richmond
September 4, 2011
Acting Dean of Studies, Vancouver School
of Theology
Professor of Studies in the Reformed Tradition
Loving God, may
your word be to us a light to our path
and a
lamp to our feet;
In the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Use it or Lose It
A
Master with large holdings goes on a journey.
He leaves; the servants stay.
In his absence, he entrusts his assets to three of his employees.
They steward the Master’s holdings while he is away.
A steward, says the Dictionary, is “a person employed to manage the
affairs of an estate.”
While
the Master journeys elsewhere, the steward is responsible for the
disposition of assets. The
assets are not his or hers, they are the Masters; the steward oversees them
until the Master returns. When
the Master comes back, stewards give an account of their stewardship.
The steward keeps on his toes, for just around the corner, the Master
comes, and on that day, there will be a forensic audit.
And isn’t this where our parable is slightly confusing.
The Master entrusts his property to three stewards and then leaves.
This Master has some sense of who can handle what – and so he
apportions his estate according to the ability of the steward.
He seems to know that some are capable of more responsibility and
some less.
But did you notice at the reading of the story no
investment advice is given.
The Master does not give any instruction to his servants about strategy -
the level of acceptable risk, investment vehicles or terms.
Our lesson says only “he entrusted his property to them.”
He gave one five talents, one two talents and one a single talent.
Then he went away.
If I were one of the servants, a recipient of such a
trust, I would lay awake at night over this one.
What’s the responsible thing to do?
And what a lot of money he gives to them.
The parable is called the parable of the talents because a talent is
a denomination of ancient money, a lot of money.
A talent was a measurement of weight, equivalent to about sixty of
seventy pounds, and used to measure silver.
A
talent of silver given as a lump sum would equal about 15 years of labour
(At minimum wage over $100,000).
The Master entrusts everything he has – $500,000 to one, $200,000 to
another and $100,000 to the last, and then leaves.
He leaves the better part of a million dollars to his servants,
everything he has, without any explicit investment advice!
Wouldn’t any responsible steward be worried about this
one? Everyone knows you have
the money. It’s a matter of
public record that the cash is with you.
The Master will be back, you know not when, and on that day, you will
get called on the carpet. The
recklessness of this Master is matched by the anxiety of his stewards.
What do I do?
What do we do? with so great a treasure entrusted to us?
Be smart, be responsible, play it safe, don’t put all your eggs in
one basket – especially in these uncertain times.
Right?
Jesus tells the parable to his disciples.
We are Jesus disciples.
It is a redescription of our situation.
“It is as if a man (Jesus) going on a journey (the ascension)
summoned his servants (that’s us) and entrusted his property to them.
In the absence of the palpable presence of Jesus, in the time between
the first coming and the coming again of the Master, we are entrusted with
treasure.
God gives talents – abilities and opportunities and
privileges and resources – to us.
Sometimes we think we’re just lucky or fortunate or clever; but the
story says “no” – it’s all a gift.
We’ve been entrusted.
God has invested in us.
Richmond Presbyterian Church sits here with huge assets –
people, property, traffic going by the building.
All of this is entrusted to you . . .
I can remember nights in Montreal, as the Minister
of another Presbyterian congregation, laying awake at night thinking about
opportunities God laid before us and what and how to make the most of them.
And yet when we read our parable for this morning, we
aren’t given much guidance on what to do with this great trust.
The Master gives freely, generously and bountifully to us, and then
he leaves and leaves the disposition of His assets to us.
Such a
massive investment on the part of the Master in us is a fearful thing.
For Jesus also said, “to whom much is given, much shall be required.”
And like the stewards in the story, we also live under the prospect
of a forensic audit, when “he shall come to judge the living and the dead.”
One day
we will give account for what we’ve done with the Master’s investment in us.
The recklessness of the Master can be matched by the anxiety of his
stewards. What’s the
responsible thing to do? Be
smart, play it safe, hang on to it, be careful.
Right?
Look at the story.
Only one of the three entrusted with the Master’s treasure plays it
safe. Following the common
sense of his time, he buries his talent in the ground.
He’s not a bad man at all.
This is a careful, prudent, cautious investor.
According to rabbic law, burying is the best safe guard
against theft. And the one who
buries entrusted money is free from liability.
If you leave it hanging around the house, you’d be obliged to restore
if it went missing.
The third servant doesn’t take a chance with the money.
No way! He buries it.
He won’t lose a thing – he also won’t gain a thing – but he won’t
lose a thing. He doesn’t think
about potential gain. He thinks about potential loss.
He’s not imagining making the most
of the trust.
On the day of reckoning, he smiles broadly; he has every
penny, when the Master returns.
Finally, he’s relieved of this great trust.
There’s a little dirt on the cash, but it’s all there, nothing
more, nothing less. He’s a
conservator of the investment entrusted to him, a great maintenance man.
He’s kept the status quo in tact exactly.
Passed on exactly what he got.
He never felt exhilaration over what he had, only relief
now that it’s no longer his responsibility.
His great fear was that he would make a mistake.
Now he gets to give it up and give it back and he’s glad.
Not only does he have the same amount, he has the very
same coins –nothing has changed but the world around him.
He’s proud. “Look here
it is all safe and sound.” The
goal was safe keeping, and he’s reached the finish line.
All those hearing the parable in that time and place would
have praised the third Steward.
He did what most cautious investors would have done.
He played it safe.
But Jesus didn’t praise him.
He is treated as harshly as anyone in the whole of the Bible.
His Master doesn’t commend him for prudence and caution.
He calls him wicked, lazy, takes the money away from him, calls him
worthless and puts him out of the house, off the lot.
Never was a man more mistaken about his Master.
He believes his Master to be tight fisted, exacting and
harsh. He thinks that what his
trust was for conservation and safe-keeping; but he is completely mistaken.
He was afraid . . . anxious . . . worried about doing anything with
the sacred trust because he simply
didn’t know the Master. “I
was afraid and so I went and hid . . .”
The third servant is investment challenged.
His caution and prudence turned to sloth and inaction.
He sits on his talents . . . hids them in a dark hole for safe
keeping. He missed one
opportunity after another with the cash in the ground where it did no one
any good. It didn’t even
accumulate interest so far was it from useful real world circulation.
The Master gave him a shot at high stakes investment, and he turns
out to be a cautious coin collector.
He has no dreams, has no visions, takes no chances.
He just waits it out between the time of the Master’s departure and
the Master’s return. He has the
same chances as the other two but suffers a failure of nerve.
The possibility of joy doesn’t move this cautious and
miserly, never-felt-alive-inside-his-skin, inert investor since he doesn’t
understand the present and what has been given to him as a gift, an
opportunity, an invitation to adventure.
And the question that has got to be asked of him is this: what’s
the difference between such cautious inactivity and just being dead.
Jesus warning is that the outcome of playing it safe, not
caring, not loving passionately, not investing yourself, not risking
anything is something akin to death, like being banished to darkness.
It is all rooted in what he thought of the Master.
He didn’t know the Master, and so the best he could do was
play it safe.
Servant number one, the servant with the most entrusted to
him, wastes no time at the Master’s departure.
“The one who received the five talents went off at once and traded .
. . he’s there for the opening bell on the floor of the stock exchange.
He makes the most of the time accorded.
He’s out to make good – to risk and invest, to wheel and deal what
he’s been given in the service of the Master.
We don’t know how long the Master was gone, but doubling his
investment would have meant taking some risks in the meanwhile.
At his return the Master says, “well done, good and
trustworthy servant.” And in a
passage that reflects, all too well, the reward for a job well done, he gets
greater responsibility. Great
job, now here’s more responsibility.
But remember this is responsibility in the service of the
Master; and with added responsibility he also gets joy. The joy of spending
life in the service of the Master’s good work in the world.
Servants one and two seem to know the Master.
They didn’t get investment advice, but they know whom they serve, and
that is enough to motivate risk and guide high stakes adventure.
Jesus told this story in the middle of his own high-risk
venture. It was during the last
few days of his life. This
story about risk taking servants is told by one who gave everything for the
love of the world. Jesus is on
his way to Calvary, where he invests
everything, gives it all, holds nothing back.
He’s given his servants everything.
This is a story of extravagance told by the most extravagant one of
all. He risked it all – and while it
looked like all would be lost - God raised Jesus from the dead.
And that’s what guides every Christian ever since in what to do with
what’s been entrusted.
In the church’s time, disciples (you and I) are engaged by
the Master for the sake of the world.
The church never exists for its own sake, just to service itself.
The church is not a conservation society, trying desperately to keep
what we have, hang onto the past as it came to us.
Disciples of Christ must invest – use the gifts and
opportunities given to us, and that always means risk.
For a talent to grow it must be put to good use.
For even the greatest talent, the best gift, if it is not practiced
is as good as no gift at all.
Our story then is not really about doubling your money and
accumulating wealth. Our story
is about the life of the church, our church, our lives.
It’s about investing, taking risks in the service of the Master, whom
we know laid down his life for his friends.
It is strange how faith and church life has not always
seemed like a high-risk adventure.
We can think of church as all comfort and security, both here in this
world and the next.
Christianity is a pretty timid, non-risky venture.
Maybe that’s what the first disciples thought too.
And that’s why they were stunned as we are too, when we discover how
God sent his Son on a risky and passionate venture of love for the world,
all the way to Jerusalem and the cross
holding nothing back.
He invites us to be his disciples, to live our lives as
fully as possible by investing them, by risking and expanding our
responsibilities for the sake of the world in the service of the Master.
To be a Christian, one baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ, is to accept responsibility for the lives of those around us, in
this community, our country and the world.
It is to be bold and brave, to reach out and to care deeply.
It is to risk solidarity with left out and the left over.
It is to hurt and to help when others hurt and need our help.
It is to speak up and not to let opportunity for service past
unnoticed. It requires the risk
of holy impatience at evil and injustice so that we weep at the world’s
brokenness and resist inhumanity with all our might in the name of the
Master.
In conclusion: Listen to George Bernard Shaw:
“This is true joy in life, the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead
of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the
world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the
harder I work the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no brief candle to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the
moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it
on to future generations.”
It seems to me that the greatest risk of all for disciples
of Jesus Christ is not to risk anything.
The greatest risk of all is playing it safe.
God give us the grace to take up the life of Christian discipleship
in our place in this time, to share in the responsibility and in the joy of
the Master. Amen.
Let us pray:
Loving God,
you have blessed us with every spiritual blessing
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Give us in our service to the church and the world
the same generosity we have witnessed in him
who laid down his life for his friends;
that we may spend and be spent in your service;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Reverend Richard R. Topping, Ph.D
Richmond
September 4, 2011
Acting Dean of Studies, Vancouver School
of Theology
Professor of Studies in the Reformed Tradition