Unopened Presents
Matthew 25:14-30
The Gospel reading for today has special meaning for me. It has had more effect on the direction of my life than anything else I have ever heard or read. I think it’s safe to say that without this parable, I would never have taken the risk of becoming an author, and I would never have enrolled at seminary.
All pastors have stories about how they were called to the ministry. If you want to know my call story, it’s all in this parable of the talents from Matthew.
The story begins with a man who has a lot of servants. He is going on a journey, and will be away from home for an undisclosed amount of time. He entrusts his property to his servants.
When we hear that he gives them “5 talents, 2 talents, 1 talent” it doesn’t sound like much to us. It sounds like he’s giving them an allowance; some spending money. But a talent in those times was not chump change, it was equal to millions of dollars in our currency. The master is putting a vast fortune into their hands. Even the guy who gets one talent has got more wealth in his hands than he ever dreamed he’d see.
The master doesn’t give any instructions as to what they are to do with this fortune. He just gives it to them.
The one given 5 talents makes use of it to create 5 more talents. The one given 2 talents makes use of it to earn 2 more talents. The person given 1 talent digs a hole and hides the gift there for safe-keeping.
When the master returns, he is pleased with what the first two guys have done, and furious with what the third guy did. Notice that the third servant did not commit any crime; he did not steal anything. He kept the money safe and returned all of it. Obviously, he’s not a financial wizard, and not a real go-getter, but he did not break a single commandment.
And yet look at the punishment he receives. He’s thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth—that’s basically a description of hell.
What does it all mean?
The story is about stewardship, which makes it a nice coincidence that it happens to be our reading on the day we chose as Stewardship Sunday. People in this story are entrusted with gifts—that is what stewardship is all about.
We can view the talent in the story literally as money or wealth. God has given us wealth in the form of income, assets, and possessions, and we are expected to invest that wealth to make something happen. We are not to sit on it or hoard it or squander it all on ourselves; we are to invest it in God’s kingdom. That’s the monetary giving part of stewardship.
We can also view stewardship in the coincidental meaning of the word in English. Talent meaning special abilities. God has given each of us special abilities and skills and we are expected to use those abilities to make something happen. We are not to sit on them or let them lie dormant or use them only for our own benefit; we are to use those talents in the service of God’s kingdom. That’s the time and talent part of stewardship.
The parable reminds us that stewardship has to do with the simple question of what do we do with the gifts that God has given us.
It’s really tempting to hit the law angle hard on this story. To point fingers and say that the moral of the story is, produce or else! Return to the Lord the blessings you have been given, with interest, or else God will punish you. Use the talents and abilities that God has given you in the service of God’s Kingdom, or else God will cast you into the utter darkness.
But you can’t say that kind of thing and be true to the Gospel. The Gospel is not about squeezing as much money as possible out of people for the benefit of the church. The Gospel is not about recruiting reluctant people to do the work of the church that they don’t really want to do unless they are guilted into it.
The Gospel is about the love of God and about bringing life and hope where there is none. How do we read this story in the light of the Gospel? How do we understand stewardship in the light of the Gospel?
Dirk Lange, professor or worship at Luther Seminary, argues that the key to this story is in the seven words the master says to those first two servants: “Enter into the joy of your master.”
Why did the master entrust these tremendous gifts to these three servants? Was he thinking solely of his own bank account, his own personal fortune? Was it part of a scheme where he could get people to pad his portfolio for him, so that he didn’t have to do any of the actual work himself? Is God looking for savvy financial traders?
Or was this Jesus’ invitation to enter into the joy of the master?
The answer should be obvious. What does the Bible teach about God? Does it teach that God created people so that he could dominate and control them, and use their labor to extract wealth for his own pleasure?
Or does it teach that God created humans in order to share with us, to love us, to bring us into the joy of the master?
God gives us gifts and talents and wealth because giving is what God is all about. Because that is what brings God joy.
Since we are made in God’s image, the same thing that brings God joy will bring us joy. Sharing gifts and talents and wealth with others is what will bring us joy. The talents in this story are the servants’ ticket into the world of joy. All they have to do is use those gifts just the way they were given to them, and they will share in the master’s joy.
The first two servants used the gifts the master had given them in the service of the Kingdom of God. In so doing, they did not earn the joy of their master, they experienced it.
In using the gifts God gives to us in the service of the reign of God, we do not earn the joy of being with God—we experience it.
Every so often we hear about someone who died in squalor and poverty, living in a rundown house, without friends, and it turns out they had hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in the bank. People who were given great gifts in life and instead of using them, dug a hole and buried them. Never got any joy out of the gift; never experienced the joy of sharing the gifts. All the time they were alive, they never entered into the joy of their master.
The third servant did not fail a test. He did not earn punishment from God. But because he refused to use the gifts God had given him, he failed to experience the joy of the master. He threw away his ticket. He cast himself into the darkness, when the door was wide open for him to enter into the joy of the master.
At first glance, the parable seems like a disturbing tale of the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer. Why did Jesus choose the least gifted person in this story as the loser? Not exactly the champion of the underdog that we have come to expect.
I think the reason for that is to get across the idea that the amount of the gifts or talents we have been given does not matter. We often beg off, saying we don’t have nearly as much wealth as other people, we don’t have nearly the talent, we don’t have the leadership ability, the teaching ability, the musical ability, the organizing ability that others have, so we can’t really make a difference the way others more gifted can.
The parable says that the amount of the talent doesn’t matter. Whether our gifts are great or modest makes no difference. All the third servant had to do to enter into the joy of the master was to use what gifts he had. Had he done that, he would have experienced God’s joy in exactly the same way that the most gifted of the servants did.
If this is not a story about punishment of the stingy, then why the extreme outrage when the third servant did not come into the joy of the kingdom? Why is the master so distraught, so upset?
I read this week a letter from a woman whose father had just died. They lived on opposite sides of the country, and so the daughter was not able to visit her father on a regular basis. Just a couple of trips each year.
Nonetheless, she tried to stay as close to her father as possible. She called frequently, and sent him gifts to brighten his days. She sent books that she knew he would like to read. She sent him a cd player and cds that she knew he would enjoy listening to. She spent time knitting hats and scarfs and sweaters for him to keep him warm. She painted a picture of the two of them sitting on a couch in the living room of the home in which she had grown up. She spent time using her gifts to share joy with her father.
Upon his death, she went to her father’s apartment and looked through the things in his closet. And there she found all the books she had sent, still in their wrappings. She found all of the cds, still in their plastic. There was the cd player-- never used. She found all the hats and scarves and sweaters she had knitted for him in a pile, all unused. There in a corner of the closet was the picture she had painted, back in a corner where no one could ever have seen it.
The woman was crushed. All the gifts she had sent to make her father’s life more joyful. All the gifts she had sent so that the two of them could experience the joy of relationship with each other. All sat unopened; unused. What a wasted opportunity!
When I read the story of this woman’s devastation at the indifference toward the gifts she had sent, I began to get just a small idea of the pain that God must experience far too often.
How many gifts has God sent to his children that lie unopened and unused?
How many fine voices has God sent that never sing?
How many strong hands has God sent that don’t help their neighbors?
How much wealth that doesn’t go anywhere, but just sits in a pile in case we might need it some day?
How many loving hearts that are never opened to lonely and hurting people?
How many gifts and talents of young people that never see the light of day because of alcohol or drug abuse?
How many talents and gifts that lie buried under selfishness, false modesty, or laziness?
At the end of our lives, how many of the gifts that God so lovingly and painstakingly made for us will God find stuck in a closet with the wrappers still on them?
I don’t like to dwell on the negative, and neither does this parable, so let me try one more illustration with a positive spin.
I was told back when I started writing that there is nothing like the feeling of seeing your first book in print, of seeing an idea and all that effort become reality, of holding that first book in your hands and seeing your name on the cover.
And yes, it’s a wonderful feeling; it’s a fantastic gift.
But I discovered that my advisors were wrong. It turns out, the feeling of seeing your first book in print is just a preview of the joy of the master. The temporary euphoria of that moment is nothing compared to the feeling an author has of walking into a library, finding one of his books on the shelf, and seeing the cover worn and ragged from use.
Getting gifts is wonderful; giving gifts is fantastic. But the joy of those moments pales compared to the joy of seeing the gifts worn and ragged from all the use they have gotten.
Why did I choose to become a pastor so late in life? The answer is simple—I was rooting around in the closet of my life, and I found some gifts that God had given, lying unopened and unused. And I believe what this parable says about entering into the joy of the master. That’s all there is to it.
Stewardship Sunday is a day for rooting around in our closets. It is a day for taking inventory of all the gifts that God has given us. It is a day for remembering that when we use the gifts God has given us in the way that God hoped we would, that is when we truly enter into the joy of our Master.