The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Robert Griffin at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, November 16, 2008.
One might wonder if Jesus, as a storyteller in our gospel reading today, is
well enough informed to be an economic commentator. One might even wonder if
the bible in general, and this story in particular, has anything to say about
our economic situation today.
However, our gospel reading this morning is about what could happen with
what we have been given; as you have heard in the gospel reading this morning
a business person was about to go on a trip. Before leaving he calls to him
three of his most trusted employees. To the top employee he gives five talents
= $100.00 dollars, which would normally take 100 years to earn; to the next
employee he gives two talents = $40.00, which would normally take 40 years to
earn; and then to the last top employee he gives one talent = $20.00, which
would normally take 20 years to earn. So needless to say the owner of this
company was a person of wealth, power, and privilege. The owner gave each
employee enough money to cover whatever may come up in their area of
responsibility until he returned. So, the employees were left to their own
devices with what was given to them.
Jesus’ story about a businessman who leaves town and entrusts his money
with his workers made perfect sense to his audience. Wealthy merchants and
business people often had to travel abroad and leave the business to others to
handle while they were gone.
However, the focal point of the story seems to fall to the employee who
buried the owners’ money and produced nothing. In the area of production, as a
farmer boy growing up in Alabama, I have planted seeds in the ground and
expect them to become productive because they obey the laws of nature. I have
benefited from planting seeds of corns, black eye peas, butter beans, squash,
baby lima beans, and okra and the task of planting those seeds resulted in
wonderful and bountiful meals. This is a result of those efforts. Cause and
effect. Effort and result.
However, planting coins or burying our talents does not obey the natural
law of growth or reproduction. The employees of our story represent us in
relationship with the Divine. We are expected to be productive with what we
have been blessed with. God entrusts us with gifts and grace and gives us the
freedom to use what we have been given as we think best. We won’t all make the
same choices, but we are each expected to do something for the good of our
world. We’ve been trusted with energy, intelligence, compassion, and skills
and we are meant to share these gifts for the common good.
This parable speaks first of the businessman’s trust in his trusted
employees. While he goes away he leaves them with his money to use as they
think best. While there were no strings attached, this may or may not have
been a test to see if the workers would be industrious and reliable in their
use of the money entrusted to them. Upon his return, the businessman rewards
those who are industrious and faithful and he punishes those who sit by idly
and who do nothing with his money.
The essence of the parable seems to lie in the servants’ conception of
responsibility. Each employee was entrusted with money and was faithful up to
a point. We might see this as a story of a boss expecting too much and being
too harsh. Or we might see this as a story lifting up those who use their
gifts to benefit others and shaming those who don’t do much for others. We
might see this story as a model for stewardship, showing that the more we give
to Godly work the more good is accomplished. But regardless of which view we
take of the story, it will always boil down to responsibility. In every
reading of the story, those who have gifts are responsible for using them in
ways that generate more good.
On the surface this parable may solely appear to be about money and what
one does or does not do with it. But what if we were to interpret this parable
today to mean and represent more than just a financial lesson? What if it were
about lessons in life, lessons on receiving and giving; what happens when one
does or does not use their talents, their gifts, what happens when one fails
to seize the opportunity that has been presented to them. What might happen to
churches or congregations if they fail to rise to their full potential of
being places and agents of change?
However one might identify with the parable this morning, I hope that we
won’t fixate on the thought that unless I give enough, and you get to fill in
the blank of what the enough might be, that God will not bless me. One of the
things that I’ve learned in my life is that attempting to bargain with God is
futile. God is going to be God without my attempts at bargaining to get a
better deal or a better blessing. What sheds light on this scripture today is
the realization that we are called, we are encouraged to be good stewards of
what we have been given by using our resources in a way that benefits all
people, and especially those who have been injured, left out or marginalized.
Recently it would seem that our margins continue to contract and expand so as
to define who’s in and who’s out. There seems to be a need to continue to
define whose relationships are legitimate and whose are not. Who is a true
American and who is not? Who gets to receive communion and who does not. Who
gets to celebrate their love and who does not.
Regardless of boundaries and other barriers, God can be represented in our
passage reading today as someone who makes an intentional investment in us by
giving us the ability to love, to long for justice, to respond with
compassion, to offer reconciliation, to learn from our mistakes and do better
each time. God has trusted us with divine qualities and we are meant to use
those gifts to bring honor to the God of goodness and to bless all of God’s
children. We’ve been given enormous potential. Do we sit on that potential, or
do we use it? The more we use it, especially as we use it to bless our world,
the more potential we seem to have. That’s how divine economics always works.
As one commentary put it, “God’s business is neither capitalist, communist,
nor anything in between. God is in the business of loving people, valuing
them, including them, providing for them, and growing them. God’s investment
in us is meant to be two-way traffic, not a one-way fast lane of
self-interest.”
If that is the case, then I wonder today:
- What would have happened if George Washington had buried his talents?
- What would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had buried his talents?
- What would have happened if Albert Einstein had buried his talents?
-
What would have happened if Alexander Graham Bell had buried his
talents?
- What would have happened if Eleanor Roosevelt had buried her talents?
- What would have happened if John F. Kennedy had buried his talents?
- What would have happened if Neil Armstrong had buried his talents?
- What would have happened if Ghandi had buried his talents?
-
What would have happened if Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had buried
his talents?
- What would have happened if Rosa Park had buried her talents?
- What would have happened if Ann Frank had buried her talents?
-
What would have happened if Billy Jean King & Wilma Rudolph had buried
theirs?
- What would have happened if Rev. Dr. Troy Perry had buried his talents?
- What would have happened if Nelson Mandela had buried his talent?
- What would have happened if Sally K. Ride had not used her talent?
- What would have happened if Ellen Ocha had not used her talent?
Luckily, what we do know is what DID happen because these ordinary human
beings chose to tap into their divine potential and share it with the world!
I shudder to think what would happen to Sunshine Cathedral if we buried our
collective talent. Because I believe that if we refuse to allow our talents to
be buried, that is, if we refuse to be less than we are capable of being, we
will continue to find ourselves becoming a congregation that reaches out with
the good news of God’s love for all people… and I believe people need that
message whether they have never heard it before or if they have heard it a
thousand times before. The message of God’s love for all is a message we must
share with our lives, and we do so as we allow ourselves to be all that we
possibly can be.
We have been entrusted as a congregation to continue to use out gifts and
talents to reach out and continue to confront poverty, sexism, racism, and
homophobia through Christian social action.
We have been entrusted to continue to make this a place a house of prayer
for all people.
We have been entrusted to be a place of hope for those living with HIV/AIDS
and other life threatening illnesses.
We have been entrusted to be a beacon of hope beyond our city and state and
country and hemisphere.
You have been entrusted with the gifts of God! Now what you do with those
gifts are up to you.