“Good and Faithful Servants”

Matthew 25:14-30

Rev. Sandra Moon

I know what you're thinking. Wow, weeping and gnashing of teeth ... eesh. Why would a guest preacher choose this passage? This is a challenging text, but I'd ask that you bear with me and listen with an open mind.

It is such a joy to be worshipping with you here today. Again my name is Sandra Moon, and I am your Ministry Relations Officer, which is basically a regional representative, at the Presbyterian Foundation. If you're not familiar with the Foundation, we are one of the 5 denominational agencies of the PCUSA. The Foundation was established in 1799 to safeguard the long-term financial interests of the Presbyterian Church. In my role, I work with congregations, mid- councils, and other PCUSA entities like colleges, seminaries, and camps and conference centers by providing information, education, and coaching around stewardship and generosity.

While I'm not new to my role as a Ministry Relations Officer, I am relatively new to the Pacific Northwest. My first Presbytery of the Cascades meeting was last November when you all hosted the meeting, and  the warm hospitality that I received was an excellent first memory of serving this region.

In my role at the Foundation I do a fair amount of guest preaching. I was catching up with another pastor friend and I mentioned that I would be preaching on the Parable of the Talents. Knowing what my work at the Foundation centers on, she responded, "way to be subtle, Sandra."

In my call, I talk a lot about money and finances and investments, and on the surface it seems that our New Testament scripture for today is about money and finances and investments. These are things that may make us feel uncomfortable talking about in church, but Jesus loved talking about money and possessions-one in ten verses in the New Testament involve money and possessions. But Jesus' many messages about stewardship at their core actually aren't about money, and neither is this parable. Rather, this parable serves an instruction on how we are to live as people of faith by putting to use the gifts God has generously entrusted to us as opposed to living as people of fear and hiding these gifts away, scared that we will lose them.

This parable is located in a section of Matthew's Gospel known as the Judgment Discourse and it occurs near the end of Jesus' ministry before his crucifixion. If we backtrack a few chapters, in Matthew 21, Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey and cleanses the Temple. At the end of chapter 21 and in chapter 22 Jesus addresses religious leaders-the temple priests, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. In these verses religious leaders try to test Jesus, and Jesus responds with things like "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's" and this is also where we hear the greatest commandment-Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. In Matthew 23 there's a shift, and Jesus moves away from addressing religious leaders to addressing a crowd including disciples with some warnings and woes, and then in chapter 24 there's another shift from Jesus addressing a crowd, to addressing just his closest disciples and this is where the Judgment Discourse begins.

In these chapters, Jesus shares parables and warnings to tell his disciples of what is to come-namely that there will be a time of separation followed by a time of judgment.

Most of you are likely aware of what a parable is-a parable is like an extended allegory-it's a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson, and we know that Jesus loved to teach his disciples using parables.

So let's go back to today's text. In this passage, Jesus hints that there is a time to come when he won't be with the disciples, and he uses this parable to help teach the disciples how they are to live as his followers while he is gone.

In the Parable of the Talents, the master called his three servants and entrusted his property to them. He gave one servant five talents, another servant two talents, and the third servant one talent. What is a talent? We use that word today to describe an exceptional skill or gift that someone has. Each of us have been gifted by God with various talents.

In this parable though, a talent refers to a sum of money. New Testament Scholar Eugene Boring describes that a talent is a large sum of money equal to the wages of a day laborer for fifteen years. It's hard to estimate exactly what a talent would be equivalent to in today's economy, but if we just take minimum wage at $7.25/hr, working 40 hours a week, every week for fifteen years, that's around $226,000 as a sample comparison for what the value of one talent may have been in biblical times. No matter what the exact math is, you get the picture that we're talking about a substantial amount of money.

But roughly using that math, let's say that one servant was given around a million dollars, one was given about half a million, and the other was given around a quarter of a million dollars, and then the master went away. There's no indication that the master gave the servants any instructions on what to do with the talents. All the parable tells us is that he entrusts these talents to his servants, then he went away.

And without instruction, the first servant immediately took his five talents, worked that capital, and doubled what he was given. And the second servant, he did the same thing and doubled what was entrusted to him. When the master returned and settled up accounts, he praised these two servants as being good and faithful.

But the third servant. What did he do with the large sum of money that the master gave him? He buried it. He said "Master I knew you were a hard man .. .I was afraid so I hid your talent in the ground." This servant characterizes the master as a harsh and unjust man who only inspires fear and caution. But as the hearers of this parable, don't you wonder where these feelings came from? From what we know in the parable, the master was extremely generous and trusting. There is no indication that the servants did anything to deserve being entrusted with the talents or that they earned it in any way. But maybe this third servant feels this way because he brings his own baggage into his understanding of who the master is. In other translations of this passage, instead of the word servant you'll find the word slave. With our country's sinful history of enslavement influencing my understanding of slave/servant and master, I read this passage with empathy for this third servant. If I'm honest, reading this passage even causes some uneasiness with the language of master, which conjures up images and feelings of oppression. This servant was scared. He didn't want to incur the master's wrath by losing the one talent entrusted to him.

And the master's response seems a bit harsh-he calls him a "wicked and lazy servant." This servant was condemned because of his inactivity motivated by fear.

Matthew reads this parable as an allegory of Christ's second coming, and what the nature of the Christian life should be during this time of waiting. Eugene Boring describes that as followers of Christ, being "good and faithful" is not mere theological correctness, passive waiting, or strict obedience to clear instructions, but active responsibility that takes initiative and risk. Each servant must decide how to use what the master has entrusted to him for the glory of the master.

Stewardship is at the heart of who we were created to be, and who we are continuously called to be. We know from the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis that we were created in God's image and that we have been entrusted by God to care for all of creation. And how do we live out this call? We do this by sharing our time, talents, treasure AND testimony, recognizing that all we have is a gift from God. We are called to an active faith-to take risks in living out the greatest commandments of loving God with our entire being and loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to share the good news of Jesus Christ and the gift of discipleship.

There are some Christians who think faith is about following a set of rules-don't do X, Y, or Z, and you have a ticket to heaven. They live in fear of being punished because just like the third servant they have mischaracterized who God is, and so they don't take risks in their faith. They take the gifts that God has given them, and because of their fear they hide them away. But this parable tells us that that's not good enough. This parable tells us that we are to use the gifts that God gives and to grow those gifts for the glory of God's kingdom.

A couple of years ago I was at a presbytery meeting and the guest preacher was Rev. Mark Eidson, who authored the book "We Aren't Broke." This book looks at the richness of the church and his personal ministry experiences of risk and growth. In 2006 Eidson and his wife Rev. Erica Liu accepted a call as co-pastors of Pres House, the Presbyterian campus ministry at University of Wisconsin Madison. This was the couple's first call after graduating from seminary. This call was interesting because for all intents and purposes, the campus ministry was dead. When they arrived, they had zero students and a building that was in disrepair. They did have an endowment and some faithful donors, but there was no life in this ministry. The gifts that Pres House had been entrusted with had been buried for years, and the ministry slowly died.

But the Pres House Board had a vision, and they wanted to try to breathe new life into this once thriving campus ministry. Mark writes in his book about the risk that the board took in hiring him and his wife with a ministry that needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, the risk the board took in borrowing 17 million dollars to renovate their historic chapel and to transform a parking lot into student housing, and the risk that their Synod took in giving Pres House a substantial loan so that they could complete their project.

Pres House used the gifts entrusted to them, and instead of burying them, they took risks to follow where they were being called. Today, Pres House serves more than 800 students and young adults each year through Sunday worship, large campus events, small groups, service and justice activities, and intentional communities in the Pres House Apartments.

Eidson shares that one example is their Next Step program for residents in addiction recovery that helps heroin addicts stay in school and rebuild their lives. Other communities are themed around vocational discernment, wellness, volunteer service, Christian practices, and mental health wellness. The demand is so high for their intentional living communities that there are waitlists each year. Pres House was faithful and bold in answering God's call, and today they are actively equipping disciples and transforming lives.

In my role at the Foundation, I work with a lot of churches and ministries that are that are struggling financially and with membership. In reality, many churches will continue to close in the years to come, but at the same time, new ministries and opportunities for discipleship continue to be birthed. The church is changing, and that can be scary.

But God is always doing new things and calling us in new ways. It's easy to get stuck in a scarcity mindset, fearful to not lose what we have. But don't let that fear dictate your discipleship. Don't hide away the gifts that God has entrusted to you because you're afraid of what you may lose.

What are the gifts that God has entrusted to you? God calls us to not only use our gifts, but to grow those gifts for the glory of God's kingdom. Take time to prayerfully discern what you're able to meaningfully give of your time, your talents, your treasure, and your testimony to support ministries that touch not only the lives of those in this congregation, but in your community and in the world at large.

Stewardship is at the core of our calling as children of God. In gratitude for all that we have been given by our generous and loving God, may we be bold in our actions, and be willing to take risks to build up the Kingdom of God, so that one day, God will say to us too, "well done, good and faithful servant." Amen.