COMMIT YOUR WAY TO THE LORD – 3
Matthew 25:14-30 Psalm 37:1-9
Sermon presented on November 16, 2008
I’m finding the history of Grand Rapids fascinating. Many of you probably know this stuff already, but it’s all new to me. One of the more interesting characters I’ve been reading about was Moses V. Aldrich. He was born in upstate New York in 1829, and moved to Grand Rapids in 1850, when the city had a population of 2600. Aldrich was a successful banker, businessman and developer of our city. He financed and helped design the Flatiron Building, and helped his father-in-law William Ledyard build the Ledyard Building. He served a term as mayor, before dying in 1879, at the age of 50.
Moses Aldrich was prosperous and generous. His kindness of heart was well-known, and the charitable work he started and supported, much of it quietly, behind the scenes, was instrumental in the city’s early health and strength. He insisted that the institution serving indigents change its name from “the poorhouse,” a term he thought demeaning to its residents, and when the county ran out of funds to support it, no matter what its name, he paid for it from his own resources. He was a good steward. Having been blessed, he became a blessing.
But the thing about Moses Aldrich I most appreciate is this. He was happiest, friends recalled, when the circus came to town each year. He’d arrange for all the city’s kids to get into the big tent, where he would be, a big kid himself — mixing lemonade for the children, passing peanuts, gleefully sharing his abundance with others, while having the time of his life doing it.
(The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids, by Charles E. Belknap, 1922, pgs. 36-37)
This is a great way to be, don’t you agree — gladly sharing with others, while having the time of your life doing it? It’s also a holy way, a way commended in Scripture.
The New Testament passage before us today is a parable of Jesus, commonly known as the Parable of the Talents. It’s a difficult parable to quite figure-out. Presbyterian writer Frederick Buechner calls this, Jesus’ “strange, dark, harsh parable.” And Episcopal writer Phyllis Tickle characterizes it as “one of the most difficult and contrary passages in the whole Bible . . . [filled with] unattractive paradox.”
A prosperous man was leaving town for awhile. He entrusted various amount of money to each of three servants – five talents to one, two talents to another, one talent to the third. “Talent” here does not refer to a mental endowment, skill, aptitude or physical ability that a person might have. Rather, “talent” is an unsatisfactory translation of the Greek word talanta, signifying the largest imaginable unit of currency. A talent was worth an enormous amount of money, roughly the equivalent of fifteen or twenty years’ wages of a laborer, so the sums entrusted to the financial management of the servants were extravagantly large. The servant entrusted with the five talents, and the one entrusted with two, invested shrewdly, both doubling the original amounts. The third servant, however, buried the money, so the talent handed-over to him neither gained nor lost value. The master of the estate returned. He summoned the servants and asked each to make an accounting. He praised the two who’d turned a profit, and rewarded them with positions of greater responsibility. But to the third he unleashed a torrent of criticism — “You wicked and lazy servant!” – followed by harsh reprisal and punishment.
The parable is puzzling, in several ways. First: what kind of master simply leaves for an unspecified period of time, turning vast resources over to servants without specific instructions concerning their use? Second: what kind of master praises risk-taking behavior and punishes prudent, sensible, responsible behavior? And third: what kind of master insists that the actual destiny of his servants is determined by how they managed the abundant resources entrusted to their care?
To those of us who have been well-schooled in different principles than these, who believe that discretion is more to be honored more daring, and that it’s better to err on the side of caution than recklessness; for many of us, this parable is hard to understand. It’s great for the first two servants that they turned a profit. But were they smart or merely lucky?
The beginning of the basketball season calls to mind the movie Hoosiers. I think Hoosiers is the best sports film ever made. Maybe Field of Dreams is better. Slap Shot is great, too. A League of Their Own. But I love Hoosiers, about the little high school in Indiana that goes to the state finals, back in the days when all schools, of all sizes, competed in a single Indiana tournament. The new coach in town, Norman Dale, is committed to playing a disciplined, methodical offense. 5 passes before shooting. 5 passes before a player even thinks about shooting. Early in the season the players are challenging his authority. The team comes up-court, pass-pass, shoot, score. Next possession, one pass, shoot, score. Next: the guard crosses mid-court, pulls-up without passing at all, shoot, swish, all net, score. Coach Dale calls time out. He’s furious. The players are surprised that’s he angry, and also amused. What’s the problem, Coach? The shots are going in. But short-term results are not all he’s aiming for. Short-term success can actually have the negative effect of rewarding careless behavior and subverting long-term goals and purposes.
Well, the third servant in the parable might have played for Coach Dale in high school. Don’t we also share these values of prudence, restraint and self-control? So, why in the parable is he the one condemned, and the risk-takers rewarded?
You can see where this parable is going (can’t you?). The master is suggestive of God. It’s an imperfect comparison, but suggestive. And we represent his servants; or rather, the servants represent us. God has called us as His servants, entrusting us with his with vast resources. And he has granted us freedom to decide what to do with these resources – to risk it all or to play it safe; to be bold or bland, daring or cautious; to shoot or to dribble-and-pass. What, then, shall we do? How, then, shall we live?
The teaching of the parable, and the truth declared in all of scripture, is to choose the daring way, to commit your to the Lord.
That’s the theme of this season’s Stewardship Drive, which ends today – “Commit Your Way to the Lord.” It’s taken from Psalm 37, verse 5. “Do not fret,” the Psalm goes-on to counsel, in verses 7. Do not fret; but rather, “commit your way to the Lord.”
The word “fret” comes from the Old English freton, which means “to eat or devour.” To fret all the time – that is, to worry, to fear, to fuss or to be anxious and bothered – this will devour you, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. It’ll eat you up. A far better way is the way of commitment. The word “commit” comes from the Middle English comitten, which means “to bring together.” It’s the same root as the word “mitten.” A mitten brings all the fingers together. That’s what it means to be “committed.” It’s to come together with others in a community, such as a church, with a shared purpose. And commitment is also for a person to come together with God, in a shared purpose.
Psalm 37 teaches that we have a choice before us all the time, a choice between fretfulness and commitment. And the parable advances this idea, portraying the third servant as fretful – “I was afraid,” he admits to the master – while the other servants were committed.
Just think of the joy and gladness one misses by fretting! Commitment is a better way, better by far. It’s better, holier, worthier, more fun . . . better in every way.
That’s why we use the word “stewardship” in different ways. “Stewardship” can refer to a church’s annual fund drive, of course. Our Stewardship Drive ends today. Throughout November we’ve been informing you about our needs and wants, and encouraging you to support the church’s witness and work. Concurrent with the stewardship drive this year, our Project:Identity planning team has been meeting in homes with groups of church members, to receive your ideas about the present and future of Forest Hills Presbyterian Church. Over 200 members have participated in these gatherings, and a couple more have been added this week to accommodate the growing interest. You’ll hear a bit more about this at the Congregational Meeting, immediately following worship. I mention it now in order to highlight that these are exciting times in the life of the church, bristling with new energy and enthusiasm. Hopefully greater clarity will emerge concerning what God is calling us to do and to be, and greater commitment to living-up to this calling.
And this leads to the other understanding of “stewardship.” Stewardship is not just about raising money. It’s about raising Christians. “Stewardship” signifies a joyful lifestyle, a life of commitment, of daring service and risk-taking action on behalf of Christ. Stewardship is all about joy and gladness.
Friday night the Philharmonic shared the stage with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The audience, while appreciating the music, may not have known of Ellington’s deep faith, and the importance of faith to his life and work. Duke Ellington credited his mother with getting him to church, teaching him about God, and inspiring a deep confidence in God’s love and guidance. In her book, Ellington: A Spiritual Biography, Janna Tull Steed writes that, although Ellington had some bad habits and character flaws, as all Christians do, yet he maintained the faith his mother instilled in him. He read the Bible regularly while on the road; he kepy reading it “through,” Genesis-to-Revelation. Prayer was central to his life, as well, and he always wore a cross given to him by his sister. Ellington composed quite a lot of “religious” music, including Three Sacred Concerts, written late in life, and a number of earlier pieces, including the beloved “Come Sunday,” on which he collaborated with Mahalia Jackson. But the jazz standards and popular tunes by which he’s better known, some of which were performed at the concert here, were also “religious” in the fullest and most sublime sense of the word, in that Ellington considered all he did, a response to the experience of God’s grace in his life. He once wrote that, if you know that you are a child of God, then “you are strong and don’t have to worry.” No fretting there! He called himself “God’s messenger boy,” believing that God had called him to translate the music of the spheres into inventive jazz idioms and structures that express eternal themes of joy, sadness, reverence, beauty and wonder. He once composed a piece titled “T.G.T.T.”, for “Too Good to Title,” in praise of a God so amazing that no pronoun is good enough to reference him. (Christian Century, October 12, 1994)
This is the life of faith. The life of faith isn’t taking a break from ordinary life occasionally, in order to do something “religious.” The life of faith is to do all things religiously. And this is how stewardship is to be understood. This is how life is to be lived. Stewardship isn’t about fretting over a budget. Well, I guess it is, actually. That’s one way of thinking about stewardship, the way of the third servant, who was fearful and worried about a great many things. But there’s the better way – the way of making all of life a response to the experience of God’s grace, the way of joy and gladness. So let us set aside all fretting; and instead, trusting God to act, let us commit our way to the Lord.
