Year A

Matthew 25:14-30

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Risk of Generosity

If you go to Greece, you will find the Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron, which is actually one of six monasteries built in the fifteenth century on top of a mountain. Those who were fit were invited to access the Holy Monastery by means of long ladders, which were lashed together. Others, less able, were allowed to ride in a suspended basket, which was pulled to the top by several monks who pulled and tugged with all their strength. This was a terrifying ride. It is a steep cliff. On one particular day, an observant tourist got exceedingly nervous about halfway up as she noticed that the rope by which she was suspended was old and frayed. With a trembling voice she asked the monk who was riding with her in the basket how often they changed the rope. The monk thought for a moment and answered brusquely, “Whenever it breaks.” I’m sure there is a better way to get up to the monastery today than taking the risk of being pulled up the mountain with ropes that are frayed. I would hope so.

I am not a high risk taker by nature but there are those who are. We are a people with varying degrees of risk taking. Therefore, the Gospel today might make those averse to taking a risk very uncomfortable because it invites us to take a risk with everything God has given us so that we can do our part in participating and growing the kingdom. Jesus told this story in the middle of his own personal high-risk venture, during the last few days of his life. He had made a decision to go to Jerusalem, where the religious authorities would regard him as a threat to the status quo and their power. He would certainly be regarded as a disturber of the peace and Matthew records this controversy in the previous two chapters with the religious leaders that lead Jesus straight to the cross, what we consider an act of divine generosity.

The kingdom of heaven begins in an act of divine generosity, in creation itself, a gift freely given and generously given to us. Everything we are and have is a gift from God. Seems pretty risky of God to give so freely and generously no strings attached; no get-what-you-deserve justice to God’s people. On the surface, this parable today looks like a tale of an angry God waiting to punish the faithless people but a deeper look, reveals a truer and far richer meaning and a picture of a God more gracious than vengeful for this parable pivots on mutual trust. The master has given the servants talents, trusting in their ability to make good use of them on the master’s behalf as he goes away on a long journey.  It is a great deal of money he entrusts to his servants.  One Hebrew talent was equal to $32,000 today. Now we no longer think of a talent as just a unit of gold or silver: instead, today we talk about musical talent, artistic talent, and athletic talent for example.

The people to whom Jesus first spoke these words were very familiar with the practice of merchants who had to journey to other places to secure their goods and before departing would turn over their property to trusted slaves. Travel was very uncertain and there was no way of knowing how long they would be gone or if they would ever come back at all. Today, we do something similar with designating beneficiaries to receive all our worldly goods when we die. Even though the slaves in this parable are given varying amounts, each one of them was given the same mandate: they were to imitate what they had seen the master doing while he was with them. They were to continue the process that he had set in motion and each was told they would be accountable for what was entrusted to them.

The amount of responsibility was different for each slave which, reflects of our human situation: while we are alike in our relation to and dependency on God, we are very different in terms of our natural capabilities, backgrounds, and the opportunities that are open to us.  This is reflected also in the way those three slaves responded to the challenge. The one who had received five talents went out at once and put those resources to work, just as his mentor had always done and before long the five turned into ten. The one who received two talents did exactly the same thing, but the slave who received only one talent dug a hole and buried his master’s money. His mistake is not failing to trust the market, but in failing to trust the master’s goodness. His poor management strategy is to operate out of fear rather than gratitude and faith. He and the other two slaves were given a gift—a sheer, total and unmerited gift.

They might not have deserved the gift but what seems to be important is not whether they deserved it or not but what they do with it. The master was interested in their faithfulness to be creative and fruitful with their opportunities. God provides each of us with talents and gifts that enable us not simply to endure but to thrive and flourish. We have been given this unmerited gift, by the very gift of our birth into God’s creation and we are given the same mandate as well in our baptism: to do with our gifts and powers what God does with God’s. We are to do what we have seen the master, Jesus, doing while he was with us. And the note of accountability, well the scriptures tell us God is going to want to know at the end of our journey what we have done with all we were given in the beginning, through the abundance of divine generosity.

There is an old parable that describes how, when one comes before the judgment seat of God, God will not ask, “Why weren’t you Abraham”? Or “why weren’t you Moses?” What God will want to know is, “Did you do the best you could with what you had?” Did you do what you saw the master doing?  The whole purpose of our life is for us to experience God’s kind of joy, and the secret here is to use the gifts of power and freedom that God has given us in the same way that God does which is to delight God’s self with our love and service, and to bless all others. Faithful living means doing something with what God has given us, but like the third slave we are good at holding on to a talent. We know what we should do and we know what faithful living looks like but we can hesitate to live it. We bury too much goodness, time, love, treasure and talent in the ground. Perhaps we feel our talent is too small to make a difference or we fear losing it.

How freeing it could be to risk it all, because it appears the greatest risk of all, is not to risk anything, not to care deeply and profoundly enough about anything to invest deeply, which means to give our heart away and in the process risk it all. By playing it safe, by not caring, not loving, not investing ourselves, not risking anything is like being banished and thrown into the outer darkness. This parable is an invitation to risky faith and to using our God-given talents to spread the gospel rather than burying them in the ground. This parable is about generosity, God’s and ours. The challenge Jesus sets before us today is will we invest or will we bury? The result, for those who are able to go from fear to risky faith, is a return on a heavenly investment with interest.