Sermon:  “Build Up Christ's Church”

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

I suppose it’s appropriate that a judgment day text like this “Parable of the Talents” would come up here in the fall of the year, the season of the dying of the leaves and the grasses.  Today’s scripture lesson reminds us that that the end of earthly life does come to us all, in time.  And so, especially after our last blizzard, I do think it’s a good time for us to turn our attention to our mortality and to the power and true nature of God, who (as the hymn says) is “our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home.”

Let us be brave and take a fresh look at this difficult parable of Jesus – one that ends with that awful Bible phrase about the “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” If we can look a little past the fearfulness of that image, this passage I think holds an important reminder that all we have and all we are has come from God, and it all will eventually have to be returned – we hope and pray, with interest from wise investments of our time and money that have paid off in the building up of God’s Kingdom.  When we come to the end of our earthly lives, we might hope to look back with no regrets, knowing that the time and money we spent actually bore fruit for that which is most important to the God we have come to know in Christ Jesus – that is, the up-building of the saints of Christ’s Church and through that, the expansion of the Reign of God’s love to the world. 

And so, with the Paul in his first letter to the Thessalonians, we might wonder:  Are we awake or asleep to the reality of the “interest due date” that will come at the end of our earthly existence?  Do we live in the light, every day sharing the light of God’s love with the world, or do we dwell in the darkness of forgetfulness and sleep – spending our time and money on escapist pleasures for ourselves and our family instead of investing it where it could do more good?  Especially in these tough economic times, aren’t we tempted to hide what we have as the owner of that one talent did?  Hoarding has always looked like a safe investment – you know, to expect the worst and save up ALL that we have been given as a private hedge fund for a dark and uncertain future.  But is that dark future really what is promised to those who love God?  Paul says “no” –we are children of the light.  We are called to live in the light of God’s love, in the light of our hope in God’s glorious Kingdom, which has no end.

My point is, the irony of this parable may be lost on us if we forget it is coming from the mouth of Jesus, a man who preached constantly of God’s love. To Jesus, God was a gracious “Heavenly Father,” NOT a dictator like Caesar or vengeful slave-owner like the one in this story.  I know many of us are tempted to just skip over this parable, because its image of God sounds so mean – but I encourage you NOT to do that.  We have to assume that Jesus – perhaps the wisest teacher and storyteller the world has ever known – was capable of irony, even humor.  It is as if he says in this parable, “Do you really think that God will act like a cruel accountant at the end of your life?  Do you not think that God will forgive your mistakes if you made an investment that turned out to have a poor payoff in the end?  So rejoice in the freedom of new life in God’s Kingdom, where you can invest your money and time with the assurance that whatever you offer in Christ’s name will work together for good.”

Now this may seem like a strange transition, but bear with me here:  Do you remember your first Pez dispenser?  I do.  I loved it!  I think I got my first one in my Easter basket, because I remember it had some kind of bunny head on it.  You know how Pez works?  You tip the head back and open the mouth (or I guess, the neck!) of your particular Pez character and out pops a treat – a tiny rectangle of candy.  I loved to share them – it was as if they were the first “legal tender” I knew as a child.  But the thing was, if they came with any refills, there weren’t many, and I didn’t know where to go and buy more.  So I dispensed them one at the time, and only to my closest friends and family.  I treated them like tiny gold bricks – I mean, supply was limited, so as much as I enjoyed sharing them, I handed them out very sparingly.  And if I had any refills I hid them away someplace really super-safe, like the bottom of my sock drawer.  I had to make them last a very long time, at least until the next candy holiday – Easter to Halloween is a big gap!

We laugh, but this “Parable of the Talents” from Jesus, if it does anything, should make us laugh – because it should remind us that God’s blessings have never been like that – rationed out to us in tiny, almost insignificant morsels.  God’s grace has been poured out to the world in the life-giving love of Jesus Christ – it is the cup that runneth over, a holy grail of unlimited supply and not my stingy Pez dispenser of dubious nutritional value.  This is important, I think, because when we hear “talents” we think of our common English use of the word – as in little Tina’s tap-dancing “talent,” or Toni’s musical talent.  Or if we know a “talent” is a coin, we think of a small but special one – rationed out like a Rockafeller dime or a child’s allowance.  We need to know that for most of those who would have been listening to Jesus – people of very limited income – they would have not expected to ever see ONE talent of silver in their lifetime, much less 5 or 10 of them.  A talent was an enormous silver coin the size and shape of a small tire, and they were worth some $10,000 each.  So for the people listening, having a talent was like one of us imagining winning the lottery or finding a silver suitcase full of big bills.

And isn’t God’s love like that – if as Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is the pearl of great value, a priceless treasure, isn’t it worth everything in the world to us?  We are so lucky because, like Matthew’s own audience in the early church, we already know the end of the story.  It ends NOT with God’s wrath, but with the cross and the empty tomb instead.  So the Good News is like a “jackpot,” because God’s grace is extended to all of us, poor sinners that we are.  Whether we are generous or stingy with our own giving, we can live our lives with confidence in God’s generous giving to us – we can come to trust God with the devotion the writer of Psalm 123 describes in the words we prayed earlier, “as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master of mistress, so our eyes look to you, our God.”  Like my little dog, we can know that the hand of our master is kind and will never fail to provide what we need for life.  We can afford to risk a great deal more than others because we know that it has always been God’s hand that has cared for us, and it is THROUGH us – through our own investment of treasure and time in Christ’s church – that God extends the reach of that gracious love to the world. 

Now you know that I’m a big Bible nerd, but I have to admit, I have loved Christ’s church since I was a small child, because I knew it was a place where I would get unconditional love and affirmation – even if I fell off the step-ladder or flubbed my lines as the Angel of the Lord in the Christmas Pageant.  I loved giving to the church too.  I loved those offering envelopes – adults and children could use them, just as we can here – each one of them had these words printed on them, in a very elegant and flowing Gothic script, “For God’s Work.”   I loved that!  I loved that my giving was that important, because as little as I had to give (only a couple of quarters usually) I was investing in God’s work in the world.  What a heady feeling that was – to know that God actually needed my help with something!  When I sang in the children’s choirs at my church, our director (like Toni here) would remind us that we were doing something very important – we were contributing to the building up of Christ’s church because we were filling the sanctuary with the joy of our song and lifting everyone’s hopes and spirits.

I know that seeds of the Gospel have been planted right here in this Meetinghouse by scripture, sermons, songs and stories have guided and inspired many of you to take great risks and make huge investments in God’s Kingdom.  We just heard last month from our Senior Youth Fellowship what the time and money they invested in their summer mission trip meant to them.  Last Sunday, we heard from Susan Ludwig of Brookfield Social Services how much our participation in the Giving Tree and our other outreach means to our local community. And in our giving to our wider United Church of Christ Neighbors in Need offering today we have the chance to reach out across the United States not only to our own UCC missions from poor inner-city neighborhoods to remote Indian Reservations but also to hundreds of worthy nonprofits that get UCC grants, like the one in Maine that is described in your bulletin.   And those of you who helped out with the big fund-raiser last night for the Men’s Mission Trip – you know how rewarding it can be to know that you are not just having fun with friends but making a difference for someone in need. 

And so – for all of you, old members and new ones – I hope and pray that whatever time and money you are able to invest in Christ’s church will fill you with as much satisfaction and joy that I have found in the giving of my time and spiritual gifts in the work of discipleship.  We must never forget that what we teach, what we share, what we do under this roof to “encourage one another and build each other up” in love has a great pay-off – not just for ourselves, for our own spiritual well-being, but for the world. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

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1 Thessalonians 5:5-11

⁵You are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. ⁶So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; ⁷for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. ⁸But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. ⁹For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁰who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. ¹¹Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

Matthew 25:14-30

¹⁴“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; ¹⁵to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ¹⁶The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. ¹⁷In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. ¹⁸But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. ¹⁹After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. ²⁰Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ ²¹His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ ²²And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ ²³His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’

²⁴Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; ²⁵so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ ²⁶But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? ²⁷Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. ²⁹For 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. ³⁰As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’