This reading from Matthew's Gospel has given us the English word talent as in Daniel Lincoln has a lot of talent. It means natural or acquired ability. In the original Greek, the word talent referred to a measure of weight, like ounce or pound. It then went on to mean the value in silver of a specific amount or weight. From there it went on to mean an ability that has value. She has a talent for investing. He is a talented communicator.
In Matthew's story, a landowner has a conference with three employees before going on a business trip. He gives each of them talents, often understood as coins, but more likely large containers of valuable gold or silver. Most likely a talent was about seventy-five pounds of silver, worth a lot of money. The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible footnotes the story and says that a talent was "worth more than fifteen years' wages of a laborer."
The landowner knew the capacity of each employee or slave and gave them precious metal accordingly: five containers to one employee, two to another, and one to the third. After his extended business trip, which Matthew said was "a long time," the landowner returned and asked the three employees for an accounting of their stewardship, or their management of what had been entrusted to them, which is what stewardship means.
Many of you know the rest of the story well. It has been used or over-used as the basis for many a stewardship sermon, in which the preacher reminds the congregation of the privilege and responsibility that is theirs to use their talents wisely and well. The implication is that a good steward contributes as generously as possible to the Church, which tries to carry out God's mission in the world. I strongly believe that that is true—that sharing one's resources as generously as possible, especially by giving to a spiritually healthy church, is an essential part of spiritual growth.
My predecessor here, Byron Shafer, and I both have emphasized stewardship while acknowledging that Rutgers Presbyterian Church is in the unusual situation of being able to carry out its significant mission without heavy reliance on the giving of its members and friends. I'm sure you understand how unique our financial situation is because of our owning significant real estate. For that reason I encourage your making a pledge this morning as a step in your continuing spiritual growth.
I confess to you on the basis of my fifty years in ministry that pastors and congregations come to Stewardship Sunday with a certain uneasiness—to put it kindly. Long ago I recognized a kind of wariness on the part of people in church on Stewardship Sunday. It was almost as though they were protecting their pockets or pocketbooks with their hands in order to keep the preacher from going where he or she had no business going, at least in their view.
In Princeton's Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, where I had a very happy year and a half as interim pastor, whenever I used humor in a sermon, the response was usually resonant laughter. On the second of my two Stewardship Sundays there, I said, "The good news is that this congregation has all the money it needs to do whatever it feels God is calling it to do. The bad news is that all that money is locked up in your checkbooks and wallets." Nervous smiles but no laughter. A young church member who has a Ph.D. in physics told me much later that that remark stayed in his mind and he and his wife have begun increasing their church giving considerably.
I am very much aware of the fact that this year many people find themselves in financial circumstances they never expected. You know my distaste for guilt and shame in churches, so you will understand my reluctance to say much more about giving to the mission of Rutgers Church, as strongly as I believe in that mission. I will encourage you to use common sense and let your pledge represent your personal and spiritual values as well as your responsible self-care.
What really interests me in Matthew's story of the talents, is what was said by the man who buried his one talent in the ground and simply gave it back at the return of the landowner. (I used to think that the man buried a coin, like a silver dollar. But now I realize he buried something that required a lot of work.) Three words he spoke keep echoing in my mind. After acknowledging that he knew the nature of the landowner's personality, he said, "I was afraid." I was afraid! Because of his fear, he was unwilling or unable to take a risk, even a conservative risk. In a sense he was unable to do what was in his own best interest as well as in the best interest of the landowner.
I hope you share my enthusiasm for the Nobel Prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. I try never to miss what he writes. His field of expertise is economics, but what he writes is sometimes translatable to others aspects of life. Recently he has been writing in that lucid style of his about the danger of the government's being too cautious in an economic recession or depression. He has said before that FDR almost wrecked the recovery he helped start during the great depression of the 1930's by trying to balance the federal budget too soon.
Two days ago Krugman wrote that in times like the one we are in now, the usual rules of economics don't apply. Whereas fiscal restraint on the part of government is normally a good thing, it is not a good thing in a major recession. I quote his column of last Friday:
To pull us out of this downward spiral, the federal government will have to provide economic stimulus in the form of higher spending and greater aid to those in distress—and this stimulus plan won't come soon enough or be strong enough unless politicians and economic officials are able to transcend several conventional prejudices.
He goes on to elaborate on what I mentioned earlier, the fear of what he calls red ink or budget deficits, which normally are unhealthy but in times of recession are part of the cure. When I read the word fear and its role in thwarting economic recovery, I thought about the way fear keeps people from taking the risks that can lead to emotional and spiritual well-being.
I remember when the precursor of Bowflex, the home fitness apparatus, first hit the market a few decades ago. The product's name was Soloflex and its mantra was No pain, no gain. A good motto for spiritual growth would be no risk, no gain. In the Gospels Jesus called women and men to follow him, literally and figuratively. He invited them to be journeyers, to be adventurers. In his living, he showed them what it was like to be vulnerable, to take the risks of trusting other people and trusting God. Risk was a big part of his ministry, the risk of confronting religious arrogance and the risk of using persuasion and personal connection instead of military power to achieve his purposes.
In my own life I remember significant milestones in my personal development and the risks they involved. I remember accepting my first ministry job in Houston, Texas, and when I arrived there, signing a one-year lease and buying furniture so that I couldn't resign easily and go back to Philadelphia if the loneliness became intense—and it did.
When I was growing up, I never heard about the social implications of the Christian gospel. In seminary my eyes were opened. A couple of years into my first solo pastorate, I went on my first march for justice. I remember standing on the curb, looking down at the macadam of the street and thinking, "I can't stand on the sidelines forever. I need to step down and start walking." It was a big deal for me. Other ministers were losing their jobs in the nineteen-sixties because they participated in marches. Now I know how good it feels to walk, or stand, or make a phone call for a cause.
I remember reading a book about emotional baggage and realizing I should enter into therapy. I stood outside the doctor's door for several minutes before going in, realizing I would have to share some truths about myself I had not shared with anyone else. I went in, said, "What the hell," and started talking. My life changed for the better.
At this stage of my journey, I read the story of the landowner and the talents through a lens that transcends the stewardship connection. I realize that God gives us all the makings of a life—our bodies, our minds, and our spirits or souls. God gives different gifts to different people, and we waste a lot of time wishing we had other people's gifts instead of our own. But when we come to our senses, we realize we have what we have, and that what we have is mostly good with some limitations thrown in.
Some people take what they have—the capacity for relationships, for work, and for love—and they develop it. They take risks, trusting that the benefits outweigh the cost. They get help if necessary in overcoming the fear that could easily paralyze them. They grow as persons. They flourish. They are the five talent people and the two talent people in the Gospel story.
Other people are unable to manage their fear for a variety of reasons. They are the one talent people in the story. They get stuck and have trouble taking risks of any kind. I am certainly not condemning or judging such people. But I know they are missing the wonderful joy of life, the deep satisfaction of coming to a healthy self-acceptance and the freedom to love and care for other people in a balanced way.
The good news in this morning's reading is that God, the God who loves us and wants fullness of life for each one of us, gives us the capacity for living meaningfully and well. And when things get tough, there is help if we ask for it.
Where are you on your journey this morning? It's never too late to take whatever risk awaits you as you open yourself to life with its wonderful possibilities. It's never too late. But then it's never too soon either.
Thanks be to God.