Matthew 25.14-30 21 October 2007
“THE USES OF CREATIVE INSECURITY”
Interviewers asked a group of elders over 95 years of age, if you had life to live your life over again what would you do differently? Their response was threefold. First, reflect more. Spend more time deliberating over who you really are, why you are here, and how to expend time and substance. Second, take more risks. Yes, these are nonagenarians speaking. Take more risks, they said. Life is short. Dare greater things. Don’t let challenge intimidate you. Get from underneath fear. Third, do more things that last forever. Invest in eternity. Place your priorities in areas you will look back upon someday knowing that the world is better for them.
So today we begin with reflection, hearing Jesus’ pithy parable. Then we speak of the risks of promising to give for God’s work, even in times of uncertainty. Fin-nally, we note how risking ourselves for God’s cause is an investment in eternity.
Here we go. Jesus told of a master entrusting three sums of money to servants. The word “entrusted” means the master expected his money back as he returned from his time away; it was not a gift or a loan. Rather, the master gave them different amounts based on their different abilities. By entrusting these sums, the master intended that both his money and their abilities should be put to work. Upon the master’s return to settle his accounts after a long time away, we learn that the five-talent and the two-talent servants had each matched what was put in their trust. So they gave the boss seven new talents alongside the original seven.
The one-talent servant, however, fearing his master and being prudent by nature, refused to expose his talent to risk. Fearing to lose what little he had, “He went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.” Upon the settlement, he returned exactly what he had been given: one talent. Often we sympathize with this third cautious servant because we imagine that a life carefully calculated not to lose is a good and faithful life. But Jesus here lands hard on such carefulness.
Peter Gomes, whose ideas formed my sermon, writes of this inscrutable parable, “Now, if we were to rewrite this story according to our image of what a good master should do, assuming of course that the master is God, we would have the master say to the now terrified servant, ‘There, there; I understand your fear and your ambitions. I know that you have a learning disability as far as figures are concerned and I know that you wanted to do what was right. It could be worse; you could have lost all of the money in some foolish investment. As it is, you did the best you could; I appreciate your concern for protecting my money. You can keep what you have. You could have made more, but at least you haven’t lost out completely.’” But this is so different than what Jesus told us. We could call this one the parable of the Hesitant Servant and the Mealy Mouthed Master. Instead the third servant is harangued for his timidity and stripped of his tiny fund.
Listening closely, we hear the parable is not just about money. It is also about the time we have on earth and how we use our gifts in the days we are given. This is a good thing on Faith Commitment Sunday. For people resent it when we speak only of treasure, because it so intimately connects with time and talent. Happily, in the heart, mind and faith of Jesus, all three of these connect with each other.
Jesus tells many parables dealing with the precious time we are given on earth. In those parables, Jesus warns us that what counts most is not how much we predict, anticipate, and foresee what will happen. What counts most is how we use what time we have with the resources we are given to redeem this moment. That is a message worth hearing when we feel like we can’t make a difference for God right now because of personal circumstances or limits. Even more than investment, the parable of the talents is about engagement. Jesus probes what we are willing to do with what we have depending on where we are now in life.
The kicker in this parable is that in leaving, the master never tells his servants how long he would be away or when he would return. Neither did he tell them what to do or how to proceed during his absence. He counts on their imagination. Can you feel the uncertainty that creates? The late Dean of Harvard Divinity School, Samuel Howard Miller, coined a name for this life void God expects us to fill with positive, productive, and imaginative things. He called it “creative insecur-ity. “ And I like that. It’s about what we’re doing with what we have here and now.
How do we respond to the creative insecurity that is at the heart of being alive? The sin of the third servant is retreating into grasping after the security of the moment. He suffers from what we might call a loss of nerve. Filled with fear of trusting God or himself, he plays the safest game possible: no risk, no fault. Part of us wants to praise such a course as a sensible plan. It appeals to our cautious Yankee instincts. But here, when it comes to making a difference for the master or lacking the nerve to do so, caution is cowardice or spinelessness. The upshot of that third servant neither trusting his master nor himself is inaction, paralysis, and waiting for a better offer. But so often in life waiting for a better opportunity to do good never comes. We are left with regret of missed opportunity, our regret and God’s. Experience has taught us all that not to decide is to decide. And not to act is to act in an unimaginative, ungraceful and uncreative way. This parable helps us understand why Martin Luther called security the greatest idol of all.
Sometimes we pack faithfulness to God in the mothballs of duty and prudence. Sometimes we forget how spiritual courage and moral imagination powerfully drive us forward and elevate all around us in the journey toward God’s reign. Sometimes we think it is enough to be kindly disposed toward others, to think well of others who do good, to offer vaguely supportive thoughts toward some benevolence far off in the distance. Today Jesus says to us, “Better think again.”
In the midst of our creative insecurity, where nothing is guaranteed, God expects us to risk doing good even as we don’t believe that we have enough to do good, enough resources; enough ability; enough trust; enough initiative. “Let the other, more generously prospered do it,” we rationalize. “Let the more gifted carry the day.” But the master is hearing none of it. Rather, he bears down upon us asking what are we doing right now with what we are given where God has placed us? God requires that our ability, opportunity, and resources be put to use. And living faithfully into our landscape of creative insecurity will nearly always mean risk.
By nature, of course, we prefer certainty. After all, we’re only human. We want to know what will happen next so we can look back assured we were right in what we did. But certainty is not the mark of spiritual living. It is the mark of practical and commonsensical living. The mark of spiritual living, Jesus insists, is creative insecurity. Or, if you prefer, it is what Os Chambers calls gracious uncertainty.
Oh, we are certain about God’s presence, that we live in relationship with God, and that God is at work in the world. But gracious uncertainty means trusting God while almost everything else around us is in flux. We know not what the morrow will bring. Nevertheless, we step out boldly and act faithfully despite the fears skulking at the perimeter of our lives. This is the spiritual life, full of engagement despite any looming threats, teeming with spontaneity as opportunities present themselves, full of excited expectation about what God will do next. I can hardly wait. Can you? Today we ask: how much of us would we give God to work with?
Last Tuesday at Council a one-talent-servant mood crept into our deliberations around giving. We can venture nothing more than we ventured last year. We had just been talking with no little excitement about helping our leaders project their ministries into this splendid new space we’ll occupy in 2008, by the grace of God. Then our spirits plummeted in this downturn of a talk about our 2008 budget. We discussed the motion of leaving all spending at last year’s levels. But then this two- and five-talent mood arose. How can we settle with so little without even having tried? Not only was the motion unanimously defeated. But a challenge was lifted among us to set the example for the rest of church to increase our own giving by 20%. I believe that everyone there who wasn’t too financially strapped signed on to those personal goals in giving. I love it when leaders lead like that.
Upon facing death, Nadine Stair, the 85 year old patient of Dr. Bernie Siegel, wrote: “If I had my life to live over…I would take more chances, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. You see...
I was one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely. Hour after hour and day after day, I've been one of those people who never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, and a raincoat....If I had it to do all over again, I'd travel, much lighter. If I had it to do all over again...But you see, I don't.”
Friends, risk is not disappearing soon. It is not some anomaly of life but the stuff of living. Think about it. Every time we laugh, we risk appearing like fools. Every time we weep, we risk seeming weak. Every time we try, we risk failure. Every time we hope, we risk despair. And every time we love, we risk rejection.
All of this notwithstanding, we cannot grow fainthearted and shrink back. We have come too far by faith led by the God who would lead us the rest of the way. Instead as people of faith we live out of places like creative insecurity or gracious uncertainty. We let God give us more faith to face down those fears burying our talents in the ground. Risks like living and giving and loving must be taken simply because the greatest hazard in life, Jesus has reminded us, is to risk nothing.
As for me, despite its insecurity and uncertainty, I prefer the richness of a spirit-ual life with laughter and tears, daring and hope, love and faithfulness. Life in Christ is a life of spontaneity, joy and excitement. That’s the life you want as well. So naturally, we invite you to step out and engage the things that matter most. Amen.
Lord of all Creation, we have been placed as caretakers and stewards of this world we call home. To us you have given the right and responsibility to manage this earth and the wealth it produces. Some of us have more placed in our keeping, others less, but we share the same obligation to use and administer as wisely as we may the resources you have placed in our temporary custody.
We rely on your Spirit to tutor us in the arts of right investment, rather than upon managers who see only dollar signs. Help us to engage where it matters most rather than sit back and expect others to do everything. Build up our faith until we trust you to provide for us when we honor you with our offerings. Help us hold lightly the material goods that come our way so that you don't have to pry them from our hands in order to free our hearts. Help us restrain our endless desire to accumulate. Help us resist the daily barrage of advertising that encourages us to be possessed by our possessions. Free us so that we learn to receive and to give with equal joy. You have given us all of the gifts we need to do everything we hear you calling us to do. Bless us as we enlist and receive those promises.
We pray for Ann Goulding recovering from cancer surgery, Lo Smith recovering from yet another surgical procedure battling his infection, Don Parker just now coming home after another frightening sequence having to do with his heart, for Leo O’Brien recovering well from her gall bladder surgery, for Chrissella as she awaits the replacement of her defibrillator and for Kay Baker’s cousin Carolyn Eck. We pray for those in the path of destruction that stretched from the Great Lakes to the
