All or Nothing

It is extremely difficult for me to NOT preach on our passage from Judges today.

For starters, it is the only time in our Revised Common Lectionary that we have a passage from Judges appear on a Sunday.

That means that unless you follow the readings from the Daily Office, our shared resource for daily prayers, or pick up a Bible and read the entire Book of Judges for yourself (which I seriously encourage you to do), then this passage is all you will ever hear of those figures who judged and led Israel between Joshua and Solomon.

We get a glimpse today of Deborah, a comparatively rare female leader whose story and tradition might date, along with Moses’ and Miriam’s, as some of the oldest oral history recorded in the entire Bible.

I so want to compare her tale to the superhero stories that are so prevalent in our contemporary world, and to explore how the chronicles of strong women like Jael, Judith, and Mary Magdalene deserve more attention and focus.

I so want to preach about the power and influence of necessary female leadership in government and the church and draw attention to the new movie on the Philadelphia 11, those women who were consecrated priests 50 years ago and gave the entire Episcopal church the gift of the wisdom, experience, and balance it had been missing for generations.

But—I just can’t allow the parable of the talents to pass us by during this season of stewardship.

Let me begin by saying that there is a lot about this parable that bothers me.

I cringe at the way that Matthew’s Gospel is so comfortable with the institution of slavery, and naturally recoil when hearing the kingdom of heaven compared to a scene involving a master, his slaves, and his property.

I find Matthew’s focus on punishment and exclusion—the weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness— to run contrary to the fuller picture of Jesus that arises in conversation with the other Gospels, with Paul’s writings, and with the rest of the New Testament.

I tend to be more of a “Grace guy,” guided by the vision of the God who called the sinner Saul into kingdom service rather than simply seeking vengeance for his persecutions of the early Church.

On top of that, I am all too aware of how shallow and suspect preachers in the recent past have attempted to use this parable to peddle that all so perverse and dangerous “Prosperity Gospel”—the idea that Jesus’ call aligns perfectly with the ethic of capitalism: that it is right for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

We have all seen manipulative pastors get their flocks to give what little money they had to fund excessive lifestyles, and to use the parable of the talents to justify their claims that with more faith comes more wealth.

So, I know it is dangerous to wade into these waters.

But even with all this baggage that can’t be fully unpacked in our time together, it is worth making the journey into the heart of this parable of the talents.

Are you willing to go there with me?

If so, say Amen.

Ok, so let’s start with what a talent is. 

A talent is an extraordinarily large amount of money[1].

One talent is about 20 years’ wages for a day laborer, so five talents is about 100 years’ worth.

We are talking about institutional amounts of money.

Which should make us wonder—if this master has eight talents to entrust to his servants, then how many talents is he worth in total?

Rather than seeking to calculate the master’s net worth, I’d say it’s fair to conclude that the master has an infinite amount of talents at his disposal.

Which then makes the whole exercise of making more talents less about increasing the net worth of the master, and more about the character and actions of the servants.

The praise the master gives for the servant who got five and made five, and the servant who got two and made two is less about the amounts they made and more about the way in which they used what was given.

The third servant receives harsh criticism and punishment from the master because he fearfully buries the talent he was given instead of using it or investing it.

The master seems especially outraged at the third servant’s justification for his actions—”I knew you were involved in risky behavior so I fearfully held this back so it wouldn’t be lost.”

And it is that fear of loss and the resulting action of withholding the talent that draws the punishment of the master.

“So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

As I said earlier, if we try to equate the master directly with Jesus or try to justify capitalist ethics in our churches from this parable, I think we are treading into dangerous waters.

But with the backdrop of our last few weeks’ of readings, including the instruction to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God’s what is God’s” and the parable of the wise bridesmaids waiting with extra oil and the foolish ones without, the larger message of Matthew is reinforced by this parable of the talents.

It’s all or nothing.

Each of us have been given gifts in this life—some by the accident of where we were born, our family of origin, the color of our skin, the language that we speak, the country of our birth—and some gifts that arise through the choices we make, the practices we pursue, and the indwelling “wolf that we feed[2]” within our souls.

Doing justice and loving mercy means working toward a world where the accidental kinds of gifts become less important than the God-given ones and the ones we cultivate as we anticipate the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.

But whatever kind of gifts we have at our disposal, the God we worship asks us to risk them all for the sake of a reconciled and resurrected world.

I could stand up here and tell you this is a sign for you to make a sacrificial giving estimate to St. Paul’s and the JNRC this stewardship season, or to follow the QR code in today’s bulletin to make a big recurring gift to our church.

I would love to see that happen, so have at it if you feel so called!

However, the larger call that I hope you heed today is that God is not looking for a percentage of your gifts, your wealth, or your time.

God wants it all.

This is why we spend so much time practicing how to let go in the church.

To let go of our preconceived notions about who is worthy of God’s love and who is not.

To let go of the belief that our salvation is in the safety of our money and our accumulated wealth instead of in our healed relationships with one another.

To let go of our fears about risking our social status, our place of power, or even control over our own destinies and instead risk it all for the love of God in Jesus Christ.

St. Paul’s is a church community that wants to help you and help others take these kinds of transformative risks together.

Not only so that you will be blessed and so the talents you have been given will grow and multiply, but so that those who know all too well the pain and isolation of outer darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth will find the way to restoration and life.

The God who wants it all—who wants US all—calls you by name today to put aside your fears—once and for all—and invest your gifts to bless your families, bless your communities, bless strangers, bless your enemies, and eventually bless the world with the peace that we practice in this place.

It’s all or nothing—for the All in All.

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[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-33/commentary-on-matthew-2514-30-7

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Wolves