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St.
Luke's Episcopal Church |
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Twenty-seventh Sunday after Pentecost
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Zephaniah 1:7,12-18 |
I would like for you to think with me for just a moment about those things that you are good at. Just be honest with yourselves. What are your talents? I am not going to pass around a stewardship paper. So relax. Just be honest. What are your talents? And you might also think about the things that you are not particularly good at. Think about those as well. As I was thinking about this passage this week, I was thinking about some of the talents that I have. I am not going to name any of them. But there are some things I am pretty good at. There are some things that I do without a lot of effort, or a tremendous amount of strain. I have just got some aptitude for certain things. And there are some things I can’t stand to do, and have no aptitude for whatsoever. I could list a lot of those things. Like technology that you take for granted, I have no idea what you are talking about. If it has a gigahertz or a megabyte, I don’t even know what you are talking about. I have no clue. I just glaze over when you are talking about stuff like that. And when you show me your Blackberry or your ipod, I wouldn’t even know how to turn one on. Really, I would have no idea how to even turn the machine on. I was thinking this week about when we last bought a DVD, or VHS, or VHVCR, whatever! I am not trying to be funny about that. The DVD/VCR thing. The antique one we had just simply would not work any more. So I had to get a new one. I go to Best Buy in Chattanooga, I take a deep breath, and I tell the young man what I want. He was half my age. We looked at one of these things we thought would work for our modest television. Now remember, it had been years since I had bought a VCR player thing. I look at this young man, and say, “How does the tracking work? How do you adjust the tracking?” The kid just kind of cocked his head, and said, “What?” I said, “The tracking.” He said, “I think I have heard of tracking, but, sir, it is all automatic now. You don’t have to do that anymore.” I said, “Oh, cool!” I had no clue that these things had automatic tracking. I had no idea. When I got it home, and got it out of the box, I thought OK. I am a reasonably intelligent person. I should be able to hook up a DVD/VCR thing. I should be able to do this. I read the instructions very carefully. I put the green thing to the red thing. Whatever it said to do, I did. Or, so I thought. Then the moment came. I get the remote, and I point it toward the unit, and I saw nothing! Nothing! How could this be? I have read the instructions. I took my time. How could this possibly be? So I hit it again. Nothing. I called a friend who is wiser about these things, and said, “I tried so hard. Really, I tried. I read the instructions.” He said, “Oh, Father, don’t worry. I’ll be right over.” He comes over. He does one thing, and, whoosh there it is. It works. I had missed one step. I am just not good at it. I am just not good at things like that. When we look at this passage, I want us to think in terms of what am I good at? What are you good at? This is passage is about the end of time, and how we are to live our lives between the time Jesus left the disciples, and when the kingdom comes in its fullness. It comes from a section of Matthew’s Gospel we call the eschatological discourse, Chapters 24 and 25. That means Jesus’ teaching on the end things. What will the end of time be like? Matthew shows us that in Chapters 24 and 25. Talents in this section is a transliteration of a Greek word which was originally a measure of weight. A talent was a weight. Eventually it became a denomination of money. A talent was worth six thousand denarii. A denarius was a day’s wage for most people. So a talent by this time in history when Jesus told this story was worth six thousand days’ pay. Five talents was a lot of money. One talent was a lot of money. The story makes it clear. The landowner gave to each according to his ability. That is very important to remember. The word for ability here in Greek is dunamis. It sounds like dynamite, doesn’t it? That is where the word dynamite comes from. It means power. So another way to translate ability here would be power. He gave to each according to his power. So these talents are distributed fairly. Talent here not only has to do with money. It can stand for gifts, the way we understand talent. So what happens is that the one with five talents makes use of what he has been given. The one with two talents makes use of the two he was given. But the person who was given one talent, and remember a talent would be worth six thousand days’ pay. It’s significant. Just because he didn’t get five or two didn’t mean it wasn’t significant. You can do a lot with six thousand days’ pay. If I offered you that today, would you take it? Or would you say, “If you don’t give me five, I don’t want it.” You would take it, right? I would. But this person with one talent hid it. He was afraid of the master. He was afraid that what he could do wouldn’t be comparable with what the people with five or two talents could do. So rather that simply taking it to the bank, and what we would say put it in a savings account, and draw a little bit of interest at least. He didn’t even do that. He hid it. Then when the master comes, there is judgment on this so-called wicked, lazy slave. There is judgment because what Jesus is trying to teach is, ‘After I am gone, use what you have been given to the glory of God.’ That is the teaching here. Jesus wants his disciples to know, “After I am taken from you, the work doesn’t stop.” If you read where this passage happens in context, it is just before Jesus is arrested. It is the week of what we call Holy Week. Jesus knows that he is going to be taken from the disciples fairly soon. They are in Jerusalem. This discussion happens at the Mount of Olives. It is just before what we call the Last Supper that last week. Jesus knows he will be taken from them, and he uses this very dramatic story to say to his followers, “Use what you are given to the glory of God.” And when there is judgment for this one servant, it is because he didn’t take what he had been given and put it to God’s glory. There is a phrase we use in our modern English. I am going to say it. I think it helps make sense of the final verse of this passage. I am not being flippant about this. Please understand that. We use this phrase in our everyday English language. The phrase is, “Use it or lose it.” That’s what is being said here in this last verse. From the one who has nothing, it will be taken away. That is not meant, I would argue, to be unendingly harsh. It is a theological way of saying what we say in every day conversation, “Use it or lose.” If you don’t use it, it will be gone. The first time I ever heard that phrase I was in the Air Force Chaplaincy. I was trying to make a good impression. I didn’t take a day off that summer. And my senior Protestant Chaplain, a wonderful Baptist minister, a wonderful person, a wonderful chaplain, said to me, “Son, use it or lose it. Take a day off. Go to the beach. Use it or lose it. If you don’t use it, you aren’t going to get any more.” And that is what is being said at the end of this passage. This isn’t meant to be unbearably harsh. But it does make the point. Whatever gifts we have been given, we are to take those gifts and use them to the glory of God. I want to finish with a quotation from a Bishop. Girault Jones was the Bishop of Louisiana many years ago. Bishop Jones lived to be in his nineties. He was in retirement at Sewanee, and still taking services in his late eighties or early nineties. I remember specifically at the Easter Virgil one night in All Saints’ Chapel, Bishop Jones was the Celebrant. So here is this Bishop, who was in his nineties and had seen so much, and had learned so much over his years in ministry. When he began to preach that Saturday night before Easter Day, he said, “The subject of my sermon, in the end is very simple. And this is it. Christianity is serious business.” That was the Bishop’s message that night. I remember it like it was yesterday. I can remember the inflection in his voice. You could barely see him over the pulpit since he was so short. He was up in that pulpit, and said, “Christianity is serious business.” That is what this passage is saying. With Jesus about to be taken from his followers, his message to them is, “This isn’t over. Just because I am taken from you bodily, doesn’t mean your work is over.” And he says to them, “Use what you are given. Take the talent that is yours, and use it to the glory of God.” Amen. |
