Sunday, March 31, 2019 | 8:00 a.m.

An Investment of Epic Proportions

Lenten Sermon Series: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Matthew

Lucy Forster-Smith
Senior Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 32
Matthew 25:14–30

To be more safe, nations at length will eventually become more willing to run the risk of being less free.

Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

The reading from this morning, the Parable of the Talents, is most often heard in the church year during the stewardship appeals in the fall of the year. Most of us have probably heard the well-crafted sermons that focus on the well-invested money that reaps rewards for the wealthy man, when that man gives a whopping sum of money to his servants. We’ve likely gone through the text hearing about the three servants who received the handsome amount of money (even one talent was the equivalent of thirty years of a person’s salary). The story unfolds with two of the three investing the funds and reporting their earnings to their boss. We have heard the beautiful response to them: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And then we come to the third man who buries his talent, the one he has been given. When asked what he did with the money, he says that he knows the boss is someone who is a “hard man,” who shrewdly reaps what he does not sow and gathers what he didn’t plant. So he was afraid and did what was a common practice in that time: he buried the talent in the ground to keep it safe. No gain, no loss. The boss flies into a rage and not only fires him but calls him a wicked and slothful servant. This servant lands out of work and in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Most likely at this point the preacher of that stewardship sermon underplays the weeping and gnashing and takes the congregation in the direction of how good investment results in great outcomes when it has to do with money. Of course the term talent also allows the preacher to enlarge the stewardship to time, treasure, and talent, putting the faithful in the position of making sure they let their talents contribute to the good life of God’s realm. I think most of us have heard that sermon.

But what happens when, as is true today, this parable lands on the Fourth Sunday in Lent? This is not the stewardship appeal; this is the journey to the cross of Jesus. This is Lent, as our bulletin states, “a time to embrace the faith journey by reflecting upon and deepening our relationship with God and by acting upon our Christian beliefs. During this season, we are invited to thoughtfully take up the gifts of faith—worship, study, prayer, and service—in preparation for Holy Week and Christ’s journey to the cross.” How do we hear, as a guide to our Lenten journey, the parable of the talents and the failure on the part of the one who buried his talent?

Three thoughts.

First, I suggest this is not a parable about money or even talent, really. It is, first off, a parable about the lack of trust between employer and employee. To be sure, the master who is going off on a very long journey bestows three of his servants with massive amounts of money. This is not an allowance, but this is winning-the-lottery kind of money. A talent was the equivalent of several years of salary. And each of the servants received a trust according to their ability.

The first two servants got it. They seemed to trust the master’s trust in them. They understood that he expected them to live fearlessly, to invest wisely, to venture into the markets of this life with bold assurance that the talents they were given would not only contribute to the world but, through their entrepreneurial initiative, launch great things on behalf of the master.

But the third servant was motivated by fear, not of losing the talents but fear of the master himself. It comes out when the master returns and calls the servant’s investment strategy into question. The servant makes an excuse for his behavior by trying to blame the master, stating in no uncertain terms that the master was a hard man, reaping what he didn’t sow and gathering what he didn’t winnow, and then the servant he spills it: “So I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here it is, intact.”

The third servant is a cautious investor. He is prudent, careful. He is not a bad person at all. And we can imagine the servant handing the master the weighty, dusty bag, having exhumed it from the ground, and turning to go. I cannot imagine his shock when the master lowers the boom, judging the man as harshly as almost anyone in the Bible.

This leads to the second thought I have about this parable: the lack of trust is not only between the employer and the employee, but it is about a lack of trust in God’s bounty as we live in times of great risk and considerable fear. It is, as our Pastor Emeritus, John Buchanan says, not about accumulating wealth but about living, investing, taking risks. Often fear and paralysis come when fear is rooted in a lack of trust. And fear quite often rules the day.

I’d say that we live in a day when fear abounds. We see it in situations large and small: fear is used to keep people silent in the workplace when misconduct abounds; fear arrests the human heart in families where outward appearances tell a tale of all is well while behind closed door things are rough. Fear abounds in the global context, as we watch daily species extinction and gray pollution haze hanging over cities, as we witness flooding and famine. It arises with the question, Do we have a future? And we also know that some people scare others into hating by vilifying them—inciting fear of another person or group. And, of course, there is the fear of losing what we have, of the most precious things we have being taken away from us.

With fear we do some pretty crazy stuff. I knew someone who was so fearful that her children would be hurt in a car accident that she had them wear crash helmets when they were strapped into their car seats in their Volvo station wagon, notably the most accident resistant of cars. So for those of us who tend toward catastrophic thinking, we understand the third servant’s actions. Out of fear of the most troubling outcome, we bury in a safe place what is most precious or most valuable; avoid the possible wrath of the hard master; and walk away with nothing lost, nothing gained. Safe, cautious, wise.

I have always wondered why some people are quite risk adverse while others live with a proclivity toward risk tolerance or even live with abandon? I have watched this dynamic in my family, in academic settings, in the workplace more broadly, on boards on which I have served. We see it most often with money management—those who see money as security, investment as assurance and insurance against uncertainty. When you go to the financial advisors for consultation, you take one of those assessments that puts you on a risk spectrum. But risk aversion also shows up in managing our possessions—like putting gates around one’s property or suspicion that someone is out to get you or, in the case of someone I knew, having guns loaded in his very tony suburban home in case someone broke into his house. Even stranger for him, in the off-chance that his ex-wife’s children came to load up the family piano that was left behind after the divorce, he threatened to start shooting. Extreme? Maybe. But there are signs of this kind of protection and fear that show up all over the place.

Again, I wonder about what fuels such fear, such aversion to taking risks? This parable comes in Matthew’s Gospel at a high stakes moment in Jesus’ ministry, when he is heading to Jerusalem from the safety of Galilee. He, himself, is facing the end of his earthly ministry, and he is about to take the ultimate risk: entrusting God’s message to those who will carry it forward in his absence. What is quite clear in the response to the third servant is that Jesus is taking risks, is deeply concerned that those who carry forth his message are fortified with the gifts of trust in him, trust that the talents they have been bestowed with are at the ready, fully, wisely invested. This is about risking our very lives for the call of discipleship.

There are many things that cause us to bury the gifts in our lives, both personally and in our institutional context. In my work with students I would often hear students shun their grandest dreams for diminished ones, understate their gifts, and apologize or defer to others, diverting attention and notice. What upset me was their willingness to let go of their aspirations or diminish them.

One spring a group of seniors and I went to Seattle, Washington, for a leadership conference. During our time we participated in a high ropes course. For those of you not familiar with ropes courses, there are a series of common tasks that groups must do from climbing up a 40-foot pole and jumping off to getting twenty people on a giant teeter-totter and trying to balance. It takes collaboration and communal thinking to negotiate these “opportunities.”

One of the challenges given to us began with an empty paint bucket into which we poured multiple cups of water. As we poured, we all stated what we dreamed about for our future. The bucket wound up full of our dreams—from dreams of going on from Macalester College to carry out justice in the world; to going to graduate school; to finding a life partner; to being a published poet. In the end the bucket was brimming to overflowing with our watery dreams. The group of us were then to get the bucket across about a 20-foot distance to a platform without spilling any of the dreams. There was a rope hanging down about halfway across that if we could retrieve it could swing from one platform to the other one. We were given a stick. But the one stipulation was that we couldn’t spill the dreams, nor could we touch the ground between where we were standing and the platform.

The group began tackling the problem, but after a while it was beginning to seem impossible. After about four failed efforts to connect with the rope that might swing the bucket and the accompanying students over the chasm, two of the students suggested that we spill the dreams out of the bucket—at least some of them, so it would be easier to get it across. There was little support for the idea, and with great determination we managed to get the bucket of dreams across the gulf and to the platform, along with all the students, not spilling one drop.

That evening, we were talking in the group about the day, and at one point the topic of the bucket and spilling the dreams came up. The leader of the ropes course asked us how we felt about the suggestion that we spill the dreams. We sat in silence, and then one student spoke of her own experience of continuously spilling her own dreams, of being willing to listen to family or friends or even the voices within her that said that she wasn’t worthy of her dreams or they were simply impractical. Heads nodded. Then the leader with a generous passion said, “You must never spill your dreams!” Though the odds seem overwhelming or there is pressure from those around you, though we know in the very marrow of our being that what we deeply want for our lives and the life of this planet is at odds with others, the word that bolts across the room and hits us like lightening in the core of our spirit is “Never, ever give up your dreams, your vision. your passion for this world and for the healing of our common life.” We must not bury them in the ground, playing it safe, guarding what we think might be judged for fear—yes, for fear of someone finding us wanting. This asks that we risk for the sake of the gospel of Jesus.

John Buchanan says in a wonderful essay on this passage, “The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is not to risk anything, not to care deeply and profoundly enough about anything to invest deeply, not to give your heart away and in the process risk everything” (Feasting on the Word, p. 310). Jesus is saying that playing it safe is akin to death, being banished to the outer darkness—weeping, gnashing of teeth. This is a matter of epic proportions.

Which leads to my last point: in our life here at Fourth Presbyterian Church we stand on the brink of some remarkable possibilities. We hold our legacy of nearly 150 years as a congregation here in the City of Chicago, and with such a rich and amazing history, we could rest on our laurels, bury our treasure in the ground, securing it for the future, intact, low risk, living in the comfort zone. But having arrived with you at this juncture of your history as a congregation, I am quite taken with the call from Jesus in this parable that is anything but risk-free, anything but cautious, anything that would have us spilling the dreams or even drip-dropping them away in a measured way.

It is a challenging call, this call of Jesus. It runs counter to the Presbyterian “decently and in order” mantra. But the call to lean into investing our lives fully is also far from a call to sloppy, undisciplined investing. The first two did anything but play it safe. They went out and put the money on the line. They ran the race of life fully, yes, allowing themselves to be in over their heads, taking the risk to face up and face on together. Together with unbounded energy, joy, love for each other and precious love for the One who leads us, we are asked to invest our whole life in the Jesus Way. This is a high-risk adventure. Will we take the easy path, playing it safe by burying the good, the gift that has been generously bestowed on us? Or will we trust the very source of our life itself, God’s call to serve, to risk, to engage our imaginations? Will we shrink back in fear or step forward in faith? Amen.