Risky Business

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 25:14-30 I Thessalonians 5:1-11

Do you believe that God has a plan for your life? Not just some big, vague hope but a specific, detailed plan?

That’s a big and complicated question. It brings up all sorts of theological questions. And it raises a host of doubts, fears, and insecurities in many of us. If God does have a plan for each of us and we all live according to that plan, then what do we make of free will? Are we just pawns in some universal game of chess? If God has no plan at all, does that mean that God is powerless? Or doesn’t care? Are we just playing our own little games with each other?

But, putting all that aside for another time, I’ll ask again … Do you believe that God has a plan for you?

Whether your answer is yes or no … or you have no idea, you are not alone. According to a recent Baylor Religion Survey, 41% of American’s strongly believe that God does have a plan for them. About 30% believe that there is no plan. And about 30% are somewhere in the middle, leaning one way or the other but not strongly.

One interesting thing about those figures is that a large portion of the people who said that they do believe (and especially those who believe strongly) also believe that part of that plan is granting them, personally, blessings of wealth and prosperity. And despite the current recession and the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, that number is growing, especially among those who are at the lowest income level.


That kind of magical thinking seems foreign and naïve to me, but the studies show that 2 out of every 10 of us believe that we will become millionaires in the next decade with the percentage growing the further down the economic ladder you move. And part of the reason for that may be the growing number and popularity of preachers who teach a "prosperity gospel" that promises wealth in return for sacrificial giving to support their ministries.

Those teachings are often justified by quoting the words of the parable we heard today with its promise that "to all those who have, more will be given, and they well have an abundance…" as well as older texts from Deuteronomy. Among other promises, those scriptures say that "God will … bless you and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, you grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock…. You shall be the most blessed of [people]."

But proof-texting – taking small pieces of scripture out of context and using them to support our own ideas - can be a risky business … especially when the scripture is a parable.

This story that we call the parable of the talents is not at all straight-forward. There are two major interpretations out there, and I have found the summary offered by Christina Berry helpful in my thinking:
Some [read] this parable in an upside-down kind of way, a parable not of the kingdom, but of how things really are ... with the master as an example of greed and acquisitiveness and the first and second slaves being opportunistic traders in mortgage-backed securities and derivatives– Wall Street executives, before the fall. They understand the third slave to be the faithful one, the one who refused empire, who refused to lend money at interest or to go for the quick buck.
But when the outer darkness descends and the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin, it’s hard to take that third slave as a new folk hero of the economy, some kind of first century 99-percenter, a participant in the “Occupy Jerusalem” movement. It’s hard to see anything heroic in the one who has nothing, who is not productive, who lives in fear of losing.

Others read this as unequivocal kingdom language. Jesus is … using oblique language to describe something hard to understand. It is something he wants the listener to understand on a gut level, not something you can write a book report about, not something you can make a chart or spread sheet about. Jesus is talking about trust and faithfulness, about using what we are given to bring about the kingdom.

Either way, the parable is not really about money. And it’s NOT about getting a good return on an investment. As Robert Farrar Capon tells us, “It [is] about a judgment rendered on faith-in-action, [but] not on the results of that faith.... It emphatically does not say that God is a bookkeeper looking for productive results…. The only bookkeeper in the parable is the servant who decided he had to fear a nonexistent audit and therefore hid his one talent in the ground….”

The judgment – the knashing of teach in the outer darkness - has nothing to do with which slave got a return on his investment and which didn’t. It has everything to do with who was willing to make use of the gift he was entrusted with and who wasn’t. All the Master asked of the slaves was that they do something … anything with his wealth so that it didn’t just sit idle while he was gone.


It is a risky business, this telling of stories. If we take this story literally, when it is not at all about what really happened, God ends up being characterized as a greedy old man, like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” capitalizing on the grief and the needs and the misery of the common folk or Mr. Potter in the Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.

A story like that can play into our deepest fears, and heighten our anxiety about money. It’s frightening enough to make us all bury a small fortune, to sock away fifteen years of income, in case something terrible is going to happen. It’s scary enough to make us focus on money and productivity above all things, working and saving to keep our anxiety at bay.

But if we read it differently – more like a parable should be read, then it asks even more of us. It asks us to risk more than money. It asks us to give up our fears about security and our self-made dreams about the future. It asks us to step out in faith on the path laid out for us by God – the Way to abundant life, trusting … trusting that God will be there to take care of us.


Imagine, for a moment, that some billionaire (Warren Buffet perhaps) gave you a gift of millions of dollars to care for while he was away. What would you do with that money? Give it away? Spend it on yourself? Spend it on others? Invest it? Save it?

Maybe you’d follow Warren Buffett’s advice: “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy,” and you’d risk it all in the high yield investment markets. Maybe you would simply do the best you could, trusting that the gift was meant for you, and that the one who gave it trusts you to use it to the best of your ability. Maybe you’d put the money into charitable organizations so that it would earn a different kind of interest. Maybe, at various times or places in your life, you’d do all three.


Now imagine that same scenario with something much more intangible – something much more precious: an overpowering grace and love, say, or an everlasting covenant, or a spring of living water, or the bread of life. Maybe you would feel lost or out-of your depth enough to risk your confident self-image, to risk admitting that you just don’t know what to do with such an amazing gift, to risk letting the Holy Spirit move into your place of not-knowing, and lead you into uncharted territory.

Maybe you would become greedy to multiply it by sharing it – just like the magic penny of our childhood songs. You would have an insatiable appetite for evangelism, for mission, for telling the good news, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless visiting the sick, welcoming children.

Maybe you’d risk everything you have, everything you are, for the sake of sharing the hope and promise you have found.

Maybe. Maybe not.


I do believe that God has a plan for each of us. I believe that we are each servants of a master who has shares with each of us the smallest portion of her unlimited supply of grace and love – a tiny portion that is still more than we could ever imagine – hoping that we will do something … anything with it.

Jesus showed us what that can look like. From the vantage point of our world, that can look like failure that will bring down the wrath of the Master. But in the Realm of God things work differently. God’s grace sets us free from that kind of tyranny so that we don’t have to act out of fear, hiding what we have. And we don’t have to save what God gives us because there is an infinite supply.

It’s a risky business … this discipleship, this sharing the good news of God’s grace, this throwing love around like it was only money. It’s risky … in the eyes of the world, but it’s the most secure investment that any of us who live in the Kingdom will ever make. And the abundant life that was already there … waiting for us to give birth to it – promises more riches and joy than we could ever come up with on our own.

I’d say it’s worth the risk.