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.]