Who's the Boss?

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during worship yesterday.]

Luke 20:9-20

The questions that today’s gospel lesson puts before us as disciples of Jesus are these: Who has authority over us? And how are we to acknowledge or live under that authority?

There are different kinds of authority, of course. In a verses of Luke's gospel that appear just beyond today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells His hearers to give to Caesar, that is to the government, what we owe the government and to God what we owe God. 

Because I feel privileged to live in the United States, I’ve never minded paying my taxes. Justice Holmes said: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” Scripture teaches and Lutherans have always believed in the necessity of government authority. Since not all people voluntarily accede to the authority of God, Who commands us to love God and neighbor, we need government to keep the sinful impulses of a fallen humanity at bay. While it’s right for Christians, in the name of Jesus, to demand that governments be loving and just--the prophets were sent by God to place this very demand on governments and peoples, we also realize that it’s beneficial to our neighbors and to us that governments exist. All of which is why I usually switch the channel any time a commercial for Optima Tax Relief comes on my TV screen: Jesus is clear that if we owe Caesar, we’re to pay Caesar.

But there is a far greater authority, an authority to which all of us--presidents, prime ministers, dictators, bishops, pastors, business people, accountants, teachers, contractors, doctors, lawyers, and everyone else is answerable. 

It's the authority of the One Who, after creating the first human beings and placing them in the garden, directed, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28) God was asserting His authority. God gives the human race the world and commands us to use it and our whole lives in ways that honor God.

This isn’t always a popular message. Adam and Eve were tempted to sin by the serpent’s promise that if they disobeyed God, they would “be like God.” This is the central ambition of every child born to the human race--except Jesus: to be like God. 

And it’s especially the ambition of those to whom the world has given power, authority, comfort, prestige, and money, even in the smallest of doses. 

Jesus talks about the common human desire to usurp God’s authority and be gods unto ourselves in today’s gospel lesson, Luke 20:9-20. Let’s take a look at it.

Verse 9: “He went on to tell the people this parable: ‘A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.’”

Jesus has multiple audiences in mind when He speaks. 

1. He knows that His apostles are listening and will make us, as we read and hear their witness in Scripture, one of the audiences to what He says. He had promised the apostles that after He died and rose again, the Holy Spirit would help them to recall what He taught and did so that they could understand and teach others about Him as the Lord Who saves human beings by grace through faith in Christ alone (John 14:26; Ephesians 2:8-9). 

2. When Jesus first told this parable, He spoke it to a crowd of common people thronged around Him in the temple in Jerusalem. 

3. But He also knows that there are others listening in, the religious leaders anxious to hold onto their power to exploit others’ guilty consciences and have authority over them. 

Through the parable, Jesus is warning the religious leaders (and all of us who get little doses of authority in this life and may not handle it very well) that the authority that is a a trust from God will be one day be taken from those to whom it's granted unless they repent for their sins and trust in Him as the only One Who can make a human being right with God. 

This is a warning to all leaders, whatever their field. 

If they’re arrogant or unjust, if they show preference for those who can grease their palms, if they’re bullies, they will have to answer to God. 

When you’re the victim of evil leaders--whether at work, at school, at home, or in governments, you may wonder where God is. 

But in this parable, Jesus underscores the promise of Proverbs 11:21: “Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free.” 

There will come a day, Isaiah 2:17 tells us, when, “The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled; the LORD alone will be exalted…”

In the centuries after God made His covenant with ancient Israel, He had sent one prophet and preacher after another, like the vineyard owner of Jesus’ parable sends servants to the renters in Jesus' parable, to tell His people (and the world) to give to God what they owed God for giving them life. 

In the Ten Commandments, God tells ancient Israel and the world: “You shall have no other gods before me…” (Exodus 20:2). Yet human beings have a marked penchant for worshiping idols they think will give them the ability to control their lives and get what they want.

Through the prophet Micah, God reminded the people of the world, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) Yet, it's an enduring characteristic of the human race that we act unjustly, treat others unmercifully, and walk in arrogance away from God.

In Leviticus 19:33-34, God told His people, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God…” Yet the people of Israel (and the people of the world) have a decided penchant for turning life into a contest between "us" and "them," siloing us ourselves off from those we deem "different" or "other." 

In Jesus’ parable, the prophets and preachers of God’s truth, who reminded people of God’s authority over our lives, are portrayed as servants who are brutalized and murdered. It was precisely this human penchant for rejecting God’s servants that caused Jesus to lament, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.." (Luke 13:34)

In the parable, the vineyard owner is beside Himself with anguish over His tenants, as God is for us. When our kids first learned to drive and took off for work or school for the first hundred times, I remember the anxiety I felt as time seemed to drag as we awaited their return. Parents want their children to grow up, be independent, and do things for themselves. But you can't help but feel anxious as they take their first steps into adult responsibilities. Magnify the feelings of parents by an infinite amount and you can begin to imagine that anguish God feels for us as He places us in the vineyard, that is the world. God risks losing us by letting us go. He risks seeing us turn from, be contemptuous of, or to forget about His authority over us and losing us forever!

To reject God’s authority over our lives is also to reject His authority over our sins, our death, our vulnerabilities, His authority to give us new and everlasting life. 

It’s only when we entrust our whole lives to the gracious authority of God that He can give us all that He has in mind to give us through faith in Jesus, all that we can be as grown-up, maturing, confident, adult children of God. 

Verse 13: “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” (Luke 20:13-15a) Here, Jesus prophesies His own crucifixion. Not interested in yielding to God the authority that they want to keep for themselves, the people of the world, led by the arrogant leaders of the Jews and the governor from Rome, would take Jesus outside the walls of Jerusalem and murder Him. They didn’t realize that in voluntarily going to the cross, the sinless Jesus was dying for all human sin and that those who dare to lay down any claim to have authority over their own lives will have life with God that never ends.

Verse 15: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Here, Jesus says that there will be a great reversal, the very kind that His earthly mother Mary had spoken of in The Magnificat. In Jesus, Mary said, “...[God] has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:51-53)

Strangely enough, even the common people who heard Jesus tell this parable, were appalled by it. Our translation tells us that they responded to the idea that human arrogance would be punished by God by saying, “God forbid!” Actually, they say, in the Greek in which Luke and the other writers composed the New Testament, “Μὴ γένοιτο,” a more literal translation of which would be, “Never may it be!” Or, “No way!”

Why would they react like this? Jesus was offering them freedom from the arbitrary authority of self-glorifying human leaders. More than that, He was offering, as He still offers today, freedom from sin and death, freedom from the cruel demands of human authority, replacing them all with His loving lordship over our lives, the freedom to be all that a loving, omnipotent God can make of us for all eternity! 

The answer, I think is simple: As children of a fallen race who have only ever known the dog-eat-dog world in which we live, life in the kingdom of God is scary. 

We’ve never lived in a world in which we were accepted just as we are and helped to be all that we can be. 

We’ve never lived in a world that says if we will die to self, we will live with God. 

Accepting life in this upside down world that Jesus brings means that we must give up all pretense of having the authority of God over the world--or even our own lives. 

When death comes, as it does to us all, we must finally admit what we sometimes spend our lives trying to deny: Only the God we know in Christ can give us life. 

At the beginning of this message, I said that Jesus’ parable forces us to wrestle with two questions: Who has authority over us? And how are we to acknowledge that authority? 

It’s the God we meet in Jesus Who, alone, has authority over our lives, no matter how much we may pretend otherwise. 

And there’s only one way to acknowledge Christ’s authority: It’s to lay aside all our arrogance and sin and trust in Jesus alone to give us the greatest gift of all, eternal life from the hand of God. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Giving From What We've Been Given

[This was shared during worship with the people (and guests) of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 16:19-31
The parable that makes up today’s Gospel lesson was told by Jesus in the face of mockery directed at Him by Pharisees after He told the parable on which we focused last Sunday. At the end of that parable, Jesus said that it is impossible for us to serve two masters. Money cannot be our ultimate loyalty; that place must be reserved for God alone.

The Pharisees mocked Jesus because, Luke tells us, they were “lovers of money.” The Pharisees spiritualized their greed, employing a few proof texts from the Old Testament to support their idea that God gives good people (like themselves, the Pharisees would say) money.

You can hear the echoes of this notion even today. A friend told me about attending a small group Bible study one night at which six of the eight attendees insisted that they had their nice homes in suburbia because they obeyed God’s rules. Like the Pharisees, the people at this small group Bible study also insisted that poor people were poor because they were sinners.

Yet the Bible--in both the Old and New Testaments--is filled with examples of people rich and poor, who were right with God, not because of their goodness, but because they trusted in the God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ.

People who think that their wealth or success in this life prove their worthiness of God’s favor, ignore certain fundamental truths.

One of those truths is that none of us is worthy of God’s favor. We are all born in sin and deserve nothing but condemnation and death.

The other is that God loves us any way and sent Jesus to die for our sins and rise from the dead so that all who believe in Him may live eternally with God.

Pastor Dale Galloway once wrote memorably, “Jesus never met an unimportant person.” He might have added, “And He always punctured the egos of those who thought themselves more important than others.” You can see Jesus elevating those considered unimportant by the world while puncturing the egos of the proud in today's lesson.

Please go to it, Luke 16:19-31. Jesus begins: “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.”

In Biblical times, tyrian purple was the color of royalty. That’s because it was prohibitively expensive due to the rarity of the dye. It was made from the secretion of a particular specie of sea snail, hard to find. So, Jesus is conveying that this rich man was really rich, like a king.

Our impulse at this point is to check out, thinking this is a parable directed at money grubbing rich people, not at people of our financial station. Do you want to hear something daunting? The other night, I found a web site called Global Rich List. It allows you to type in a level of yearly income and see where it stacks up with the rest of the world. I typed in $23,000. I did this because the Department of Health and Human Services says that in the US, a family of four making less than $23,550, is living in poverty. I don’t doubt that’s true. But the Global Rich List says that an American making $23,000 a year is wealthier than  97.75% of the global population! The point is that by global standards, most of us in this sanctuary this morning are among the wealthiest people in the world. We can’t dodge Jesus‘ parable so easily. We--you and I--are among the world’s haves, like the rich man in Jesus’ parable. Please read on.

“But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.”

This Lazarus is not the friend of Jesus who Jesus raised from the dead. This is a fictional character, the only time Jesus ever gave a name to such a character in a parable.

By doing giving this character a name, Jesus is turning the world’s usual way of doing things on its head. The poor, after all, are often a mass of faceless, nameless people in the eyes of the world, people passed by at freeway off-ramps or in walks through usually rough neighborhoods after concerts or ballgames. But by naming the beggar in His parable, Jesus is telling us that the poor among us, are real human beings, with thoughts and feelings and needs no less important than ours.

That’s why donating food to the CHAP emergency food bank, helping with the upcoming community dinners Saint Matthew will be doing with Trinity Lutheran Church, or donating health kit items to Lutheran World Relief, as coordinated by the Women of Saint Matthew, are so important. The poor may be invisible to the eyes of the world. But God sees them and God calls His people to see them and to serve them, just as God has seen and served us in Jesus Christ!

The Lazarus of Jesus’ parable is in a pitiable state. He is full of sores, presumably due to being malnourished. Our text says that he was laid at the gate to the rich man’s estate. But this is a dainty translation. The verb translated as laid is more literally rendered as thrown. Who threw Lazarus away, we don’t know. But Jesus says that Lazarus, this thrown-away man, would have been satisfied with the scraps from the rich man’s table, that he was so weak that dogs, not domesticated house pets in first century Judea, but wild animals, licked his open sores and Lazarus was unable to fend them off. It’s not a pretty picture. Please read on.

“So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.”

Lazarus was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom. Abraham, the Old Testament figure whose descendants became the nation of Israel, “believed in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Despite the torments and poverty of his earthly life, Lazarus also believed in God. Because of his faith, he, like Abraham, was counted righteous, worthy of being at the heavenly banquet with God.

Please look at what happens next. “And being in torments in Hades, [the rich man] lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.  Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'”

The rich man was, like Lazarus, a descendant of Abraham. But, unlike Abraham, he had not put his trust in God. Clearly, his trust had been in his money bag. Had he trusted God and not mammon, the beggar outside his gate, Lazarus, might not have starved to death. A good work done for Lazarus would not have saved the rich man, of course. Only the God we know in Jesus Christ can save us from sin and death as we trust our whole lives to Him. But the clear implication of Jesus’ parable is that if the rich man had truly believed in God--trusted God--rather than his wallet, he would have found it easier to part with some of his money to help people like Lazarus.

The Bible teaches that one of the reasons God gives us money is precisely to help the helpless people of the world like Lazarus. In Ephesians 4:28, those who once made their income by stealing but had come to faith in Christ are told: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” In torment in Hades, the place of the dead, the rich man calls out to Father Abraham in heaven for help.

Verses 25 and 26: “But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.'”

Abraham could offer no help to the rich man. Nor could Lazarus. The rich man’s time on earth was done. His wealth, stubbornly held onto, had not made him acceptable in the eyes of God. Nor did his wealth prove that he was better than anyone else, not even a poor man who had been thrown at his gate. Having refused to trust in God while on earth, he was now separated from God’s eternal feast. Habakkuk 2:4 reminds us that we are right with God not because we have fat paychecks or even because we do good works. “Behold the proud,” it says, “his soul is not upright in him. But the just shall live by faith.”

Now, the rich man becomes a beggar. Verse 27: “Then [the rich man] said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.'"

One of the key themes that Luke hammers away at in his telling of his gospel’s story about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and in Acts, his history of the early Church, is this: The God of the Old Testament is the same God we meet in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. In both Testaments, God hates sin and injustice, calls people to faith in Him alone, promising forgiveness and life to those who believe in Him, and warning of condemnation--self-condemnation, really--for those who turn their backs on the life only God can give.

In Jesus’ parable, Abraham tells the rich man that if the rich man’s brothers didn’t pay heed to the will of God to trust in God, to love God, and to love neighbor when they heard and read about it in “the law and the prophets,” that is, in what you and I know as the Old Testament, neither would they pay attention to God or repent for their sins and trust in God alone for life and hope, if someone who had been dead should rise from death and appear to them.

Some Christians, in a Pharisaic mood, may see Jesus’ words as applying to Jews who refuse to trust in the crucified and risen Christ. But if they do so, they miss Jesus’ point.

The God disclosed to all the world in Jesus Christ has given His witness to Jew and Gentile alike. As tempting as it is to put our trust in things we can see--things like money and possessions--our call is to trust in God alone and then, from hearts brimming over with gratitude for the freedom from sin and death we enjoy as the gift of God to all who live the trust in Jesus Christ, live the faith we confess here on Sunday mornings.

God’s earth produces more than enough to provide for every person’s need for daily bread. We live our faith when we dare to share what God has given to us with those in need.

And we needn’t be afraid that we’ll have less of what we need if we give to others. There is no limit to the bounties of God’s grace or goodness. The God Who loves to give will also empower us to give to others from hearts filled with God's infinite storehouse of love. Amen

[This sermon is really a companion to the one given last Sunday. You might want to check it out here.]

"Five Reasons to Make Walking Your Way of Getting in Shape"

That's the title of my latest post over at Associated Content from Yahoo! I hope that you find it helpful.

"Jesus wants your heart."

Here.

I don't know anything about this new non-profit...

But their work looks interesting and worthy, especially in these economically challenging times.

"Caring for God's creation is the believer's duty."

See here.

'Embrace Life'

This is a great PSA from the United Kingdom.

How Will You Invest Your Life?

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 25:14-30
The parable that Jesus tells in our Gospel lesson this morning is likely one that you’ve heard many times. A master, preparing to go away on a long journey, gives whopping sums of money to three of his slaves, in lots of what were called talents. To one slave, he gives five talents; to another, two; and to a third slave, he gives one talent.

Now, there’s no reason for us to feel any pity for the third servant. One talent amounted to between 75 and 96 pounds of silver and equaled what one day laborer would have received for about twenty years of work!

So, the master is generous to all three slaves. He gives them their money, tells them he’s going away, and leaves.

Later, the master returns and asks the slaves to tell him what they’ve done with the money he gave them. The first two report that they’ve found ways to double the master’s gifts. The master is so pleased that he invites the two to party down with him and he gives them greater responsibility. The third slave, probably confident that he’s done the right thing, explains that for fear of losing anything the master gave him, he had buried his one talent and now was bringing it back.

The master isn’t pleased at all. “How wicked and lazy can you be?” he tells the third slave. “At the very least, you could have opened a savings account and gotten a little interest.” Then he orders that the one talent be taken from that slave and given to the first guy. And the third servant is sent away.

There are three things I want to say about this story this morning. First: It’s important to understand that the master in Jesus’ story didn’t simply entrust this money to the slaves, but gave it to them. That doesn't come through very well in our translation. The word describing the master's action in the original Greek of the New Testament is paradidomi, which means to give over or hand over. The talents given to the three slaves was their money to use, to invest, to disburse, or to squander. The choices about what to do with those gifts were theirs to make.

My first car was a 1963 white Dodge 330. I called it The Tank. I bought it...for a dollar from my grandfather. He gave the dollar back to me after we’d had the title work notarized. In other words, it was really a gift.

And it was a pretty valuable gift, too, because my grandfather, just like my other grandfather, and just like my father, was a mechanic. (Those genes skipped over me!) When he gave that car to me, it was in top condition. How do you think I responded to his gift? I ran it into the ground!

In fact, I did that with the first five cars I ever owned. I didn’t know what it was like to trade a car in until I was thirty-six years old. (Even then, I wondered why the car dealer had actually given us any trade-in on our old car!)

Now, here’s the point: Our lives, minds, and bodies are all gifts from our master, the God we know through Jesus Christ.

So too, is the new and eternal life that goes to all with faith in Christ.

So too, are the basic gifts we all enjoy as members of Christ’s Church: God’s Word, the communion of Saints, Holy Baptism, Holy Communion.

On top of that, God gives to everyone of us skills, abilities, and spiritual gifts.

God gives all of these things to you and me to be used. Not hoarded. Not forgotten. Not denied. But used.

All of God's gifts demand a response of gratitude from believers in Jesus Christ. The way I treated the car my grandfather gave me didn’t display gratitude to him. I pray that the way I live my life displays gratitude to God for all His gifts to me. So point #1: God’s gifts deserve our gratitude.

Point #2: The master in Jesus’ story gives no specific instructions on how his gifts are to be used by the slaves. He just gives them and leaves. That was so maddening to the third slave that he was left paralyzed and did nothing.

You and I, as followers of Jesus, live in what can be called the in-between times. We’re in-between Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension into heaven, on the one hand, and His return, which will happen some day, on the other.

Jesus has given some general directives to us on how to occupy ourselves during this in-between time. They’re called the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Incorporated in two passages in Matthew’s Gospel, they can be summarized in five points: We’re to worship God with our entire lives; live in fellowship with Christ’s Church; open ourselves to God’s Spirit, so that we grow to become more like Christ; serve others in Jesus’ Name; and tell the world about the free new life God offers to all with faith in Jesus.

But Jesus never tells us exactly how to do those things. Like the slaves in His story, we must decide for ourselves how to live in this in-between time, how to take the gifts God grants us and live faithful, useful lives. We must do that as individuals and as a church family, each seeking God’s glory and guidance above all else.

Point #3: Like the slaves, we’re to do something with God’s gifts to us. The Christian life isn’t a passive life. Confident of our place with God for all eternity, we’re called to jump into life: serving others, sharing Christ with them, being advocates for justice, and acting as servants to the neglected and the despised.

A number of years ago, Guideposts’ annual book of daily devotions had a piece written by a young man majoring in business at the University of Tennessee who apparently had a talent for investing in the stock market. By the time he’d reached the end of his junior year in college, he'd become successful at it and looked down his nose a bit at his parents for failing to make the most of their money. At home for a break, he made a few comments about this to his folks and how he believed they could do better with their investments.

One day during this visit, he and his mother went to a mall where they ran into a young woman he’d never met. She had benefited from a scholarship provided by an organization of which his parents were an active part and to which they gave money. "Who was that?" he asked his mon. His mother smiled and explained, “That’s one of our investments.”

Next week will bring us to our Consecration Sunday. You’ll be asked to make an estimate of your giving for 2009. Last week, our own Bryan Starner suggested that you prayerfully consider increasing your giving by a “stairstep.” It will be great if you do that.

But if, in consideration of all of God’s gifts to us, our financial giving is the only thing that increases, Consecration Sunday will be a failure.

Even in tough economic times like these, it’s easier to write a check than it is to teach a class, volunteer for a ministry, tell a skeptical friend about Jesus, or visit a sick person.

Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen notes that to be a good and faithful servant of Jesus “is not mere theological correctness, passive waiting, or strict obedience to clear instructions, but active responsibility that takes initiative and takes risks.”

What sorts of risks may God be calling you and me to take today?

Methodist pastor Douglas Mullins tells the true story of Belinda, a member of one of the churches he served. Belinda had become the single parent of a five year old son when her husband left her after she’d had breast cancer. He left when he realized that she would be disfigured by the surgery she’d undergone.

One night, she was tucking her son, Ryan, into bed, reading a story to him, when he interrupted to ask if she had bought the book she was reading for him. “Yes,” she said. And had she bought his bed? “Yes.” And the house in which they lived? “Yes.” And the new sweater he liked so much? “Yes” was the answer again. As Mullins explains it, Ryan “thought about how good [his mother] had been to him...and finally said, ‘Mommy, get my piggy bank. There are seven pennies in it. Take them and get something you really want for you.”

None of us has anything that God needs. Everything we have comes from God anyway, just as the slaves in Jesus’ parable got everything from their master. But if you and I are going to faithfully respond to God’s call on our lives, if we’re going to express our gratitude to God for all His gifts, if we’re going to find our own unique ways of responding to God’s gifts, and if we’re going make investments of eternal significance, we need, like the first two servants in Jesus’ parable, to take risks.

We need to take all the blessings God has given to us—including our time and talents and our passions—and invest them in loving God, loving neighbor, serving others, and making disciples. We need to move from being Christian spectators to active Christian disciples.

It’s only when we strive to use all our gifts in response to God’s love in Christ that we really start to live!

When pour our lives into living for God's purposes--what Methodist theologian Leonard Sweet calls "cashing our last check"--we find as those first two servants did, that God’s presence, provisions, and promises fill our lives.

Grateful people who invest their lives in living God's way are paid off in the dividend of an endless and deepening assurance that the God we meet in Jesus Christ is always and forever with us, for us, and by us. Amen

[This sermon was inspired by the fine work of the pastoral staff at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Burnsville, Minnesota.]

Sidney Sheldon Dies

Shakespeare he wasn't. But the creator of 'I Dream of Jeannie,' 'The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer,' and numerous suspense thrillers never claimed to be. But he seemed to have the right attitude about his craft:

"Any talent is a gift," he told an interviewer. "We're obligated to work as hard as we can at whatever talent we're lucky enough to have."

I wish that I would remember that. Christian theology calls it good stewardship.