Proper 28 -- Zephaniah 1: 7, 12-18; Psalm 70: 1–8, 12; I Thessalonians 5: 1-10; Matthew 25: 14–15, 19-29
A homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at The
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Springfield, Illinois on Sunday, November 16, 2014.
“SERMON #4: TAKING RISKS IN
ORDER TO BRING THE KINGDOM INTO BEING”
(Homily text: Matthew 25: 14–15, 19-29)
Let’s begin
this morning with a bit of humor…..
A new man
is assigned to an Army unit. As he is
being introduced to the unit, its mission, and the other personnel in the unit,
the sergeant takes him to the barracks and shows him his bunk. It is located near the corner of one of the
old barracks, the kind which was a large, open room.
After
lights out that evening, as he and his fellow soldiers were waiting for sleep
to descend, he noticed that one man would call out a number, and everyone would
laugh. Not a long while later, another
soldier would call out a number, and everyone would laugh. The new man thought this was quite unusual.
So, after
having been in the unit for a few days, and having experienced this same
behavior each night before sleep descended, he mustered up his courage and
asked the guy in the bunk next to him what the business of calling out the
numbers was all about. The other guy
said, in response, “Well, you see, most of us have been together in this unit
for a long time. We know each other
really well, and one thing we know about each other is the jokes we tell. We know those jokes so well that we decided,
one night, to simply call out a number, and everyone would remember the joke
from the number. So that’s what that’s
all about.”
“Fair
enough, makes sense to me,” said the new guy.
So after a
few days, the new guy decided to try his hand at telling jokes. He called out a number: “32,” he said. But nobody laughed, not even a little. So he called over the guy in the bunk next to
his and said, “How come nobody laughed when I called out ‘32’?” To which the other guy said, “Well, some
people just can’t tell a joke!”
Now if you
and I are together long enough, we might get to the point where the members of
this congregation will figure out that I have only about four basic
sermons. (In fact, many preachers will
say that they have – in reality – only that many basic sermons.) What it works out to is a pattern of having a
basic theme, with variations on that basic theme.
So perhaps
I could shorten the process by calling out, “Sermon #4,” and all of you would
know that the topic of the sermon is going to be something about “Taking risks
in order to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Well, OK, I
should hasten to add that I don’t intend to get into the pulpit and call out a
number, so you can remember what the topic of the sermon is going to be. After all, if I did that, how would the
variations – that is, the various details - on the basic theme ever reach our
ears and our minds?
That
reality aside, today’s parable, usually entitled The Parable of the Talents, is
all about taking risks in order to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. So, it is a fitting passage of Scripture for
Sermon #4, which is, indeed, all about taking risks for the kingdom.
Let’s
explore some of the details of this parable….
The first thing
we notice is that the man three servants are entrusted with differing talents.
This word, in and of itself, is worthy of some comment…..
A talent
was a large sum of money. In modern
terms, it was worth about $600,000.00, if we calculate the value of an hourly
wage at $15.00/hour.[1]
Nowadays,
of course, a talent has to do with a person’s natural abilities and gifts.
Notice that
Jesus’ parable has to do with the actions of each of the three servants, once
they have been entrusted with this treasure:
The first two go off and invest wisely, doubling their returns on the
investment they’ve made. In Jesus’ day,
there were no banks, but it was permissible for a person to set up a business,
and – when dealing with Gentiles – to charge interest on the debts
incurred. (Charging interest to another
Jew was forbidden by the requirement set down in Deuteronomy 23: 20.)
But now
notice what the third servant has done:
He goes off, finds a secure place, and buries the talent in the
ground. This action may seem strange to
us, but it was – in Jesus’ day – the common practice and the recommended course
to take if a person wanted to secure their treasure. After all, there was no Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC). There were no safe
deposit vaults.
But Jesus
condemns the safe alternative in today’s parable. In essence, what He is saying is that, to
take the safe route is not how the kingdom will be built. Building the kingdom will involve risks.
Jesus lives
out - by His death on the cross - the risks of building the kingdom. It is evident that Jesus could have taken the
safe route, either by slipping away into obscurity so that the authorities
would have no reason to try to destroy Him, or to overcome the powers of evil
by asking His heavenly Father to send twelve legions of angels[2] to
prevent Him from being taken and killed.
But playing
it safe isn’t the way the kingdom is going to come into being. Only by risking everything, as Jesus does,
will the kingdom come into being. Only by Jesus’ death are we able to enter the
kingdom and to become citizens of it.
Only by taking the risk of putting ourselves in God’s love and care are
we ready to go out and take the risks that will be necessary to spread the Good
News of what God has done in Jesus Christ.
The kingdom involves risks.
Jesus goes
before us, modeling by His behavior what He asks us to do, as well. Nothing that the Lord commands us to do, or
asks us to do, is ever put before us without the Lord’s having done it Himself
first.
And so, the
Lord asks us to take risks, to be willing to give for the spread of the Good
News, to be willing to take the risk of reaching out to those who do not know
the Lord and who are not part of the Lord’s kingdom as we find it in this
Cathedral Church. Only in this way will
the kingdom by built among us.
And so,
dear friends, here we come to the end of Sermon #4, whose theme is “Taking
Risks in Order to Bring the Kingdom into Being.” Thanks be to God. AMEN.
[1] In Old Testament times, a talent was a unit
of measure, about 75 pounds in weight, and the word originally referred to a
measure relating to weight. Eventually,
it became a unit of monetary value, equal to about 3,000 shekels in ancient
Palestine, or 6,000 drachmas in ancient Greece, which was the equivalent of the
annual wage of a day laborer for 20 years’ work.
[2] Jesus says, in Matthew 26: 53, “Do you think
that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve
legions of angels?”
