God With Us

Matthew 25:14–30 NRSV

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then 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.’ His 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.’ And 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.’ His 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.’ Then 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; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But 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? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For 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. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

This is a strange story that has an ending that probably just made you feel a bit uncomfortable. We’ll get around to that in a little bit.

On the surface, this is a parable that Jesus told to his disciples as they neared the end of his life. And I just want you to know that Jesus is NOT telling this story in order to speak to you about your investment strategy… however that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some overlap right?

Invest early and often. Compounding interest is your friend. Lessons many of us wish we learned earlier in life. But even though Jesus is using money here in his illustration he’s not really talking about money. But money grabs our attention. So here’s the deal.

One talent is worth like 15 years of a laborers wages. That’s the pull. This gift that the master has given to his servants is EXTRAVAGANT. It’s beyond the realm of reality. Each of these people is in a good position themselves just with the gift that has been given to them. Their life has been changed forever, even if they do nothing else. Especially the first two servants who received five and two talents. That’s 75 and 30 years wages each.

But even for the servant who received one talent, 15 years salary is a lot of money to hold in a lump sum.

So these people have been given an incredible opportunity. And the parable is set to tell us about how God expects humans to use the gifts that have been given to us.

We are now on the third in a series of sermons called Good Grace. What we are looking at is how the activity of God intersects with our human lives in order to enable us to achieve God’s plan for us. God desires for humans to grow and to become people who live out the original righteousness and intention that God created us for.

So we’ve previously talked about how the grace of God is ever present in the lives of humans from the time that they are conceived in the wombs of their mothers. This prevenient grace of God acts in our lives and in our hearts long before we ever acknowledge God’s presence.

We are drawn closer to God and convinced of our sin and need for Redemption. When we give up the fight and turn to follow Jesus and repent of our sin we are granted a new status. We are declared righteous before God and are given what is often called “new birth” through God’s justifying grace. This grace makes us new. It affords us a new opportunity in life. It is a gift that we could never have achieved for ourselves.

But the funny thing is… our story doesn’t end here. Unfortunately the Western Church, and particularly the American Church has been plagued by Christians who experience conversion but never do anything else to walk with God into a life that lives up to the gift of righteousness that we have been given. For far to many, “Christian” is a title rather than an identity that is lived out.

And let’s face it. It’s understandable. The world is hard. Being human is hard. Walking with Jesus is hard. Sin is easy. I mean, look at what Jesus says:

Matthew 16:24–26 NRSV

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Right? Like that doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence in not only my ability but also my willingness to follow Jesus. He’s not running an attractive business model right? Pick up a cross… lose your life?

Any sensible person would pass on this opportunity. It’s less appealing than any pyramid scheme out there. But perhaps sensible people aren’t who we’re called to be in this respect of our lives. So how do we move from accepting the free gift of God’s saving grace and move into a not-so-sensible life of actually following Jesus?

Well, remember the words of Jesus: For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible.

What this means is that although the heavy lifting of “salvation” has been done, although we’ve said YES to Jesus and moved from being subject to the law of sin and death to new life — that we are still deeply in need of God’s grace in our lives to help us keep moving forward in our journey of following Jesus.

It means that we still need the grace of God, the activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives to help us live up to and into God’s plan for us. The Grace that we rely on is Sanctifying Grace.

Sanctifying grace was our theological founder John Wesley’s way of describing the activity of God WITH us as we move throughout the rest of our lives with Christ. We are not saved and then abandoned to figure out how to live life on our own. Every step of the rest of our lives is empowered by the Spirit of God and the power that God has to sanctify us — or make us SAINTS.

Think of the people that we call saints today: Mother Theresa, Francis of Assisi, your mother who put up with you. Right? They all have gained a status of love and patience that is beyond what we experience from normal humans.

What if I told you — that’s who we are all called to be… in our own way. It’s not natural, it’s supernatural. It’s the power of God working in the lives of human beings to refine us and make us more like the perfect love of God that Jesus lived out.

The thing about sanctifying grace though is that it requires human cooperation. It requires you and me to do some work.

In Jesus’s story, the servants were given an extraordinary life changing gift. The gift was only part of the story though. The main thrust of the story relied not so much on the gift given, but what each person did with that gift.

The first two servants took their gift and they multiplied it through business transactions. They invested their gifts, and what they received in return was much more than they had put out.

The third servant though, perhaps out of a sense of scarcity because he had received less than the others, and most obviously stated out a sense of fear of his master did not take any risk. He buried the money and returned only what he had been given. And the response he receives is not favorable. He blames his master for his failure to invest.

One thing is evident from the dialogue here:

“this servant has no love for his master. He is really interested only in himself, and consequently security, not service, is his goal. There is not the slightest trace of gratitude that his master trusted him with so great a sum. Respect for his master is limited to a grudging acknowledgment of power.”

Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1993), 287–288.

The difference between these characters — those who invest their gift and the one who does not — is their motivation. Two are motivated by love and gratitude for what they have been entrusted with. One is motivated by fear and obligation. And there is no fear in love… perhaps this is why Jesus has such a harsh ending to that character’s story.

And these are the two options that we face as people who make a decision to follow Jesus. We can choose to invest in the gift that is given to us, or we can choose to just sit on it. We can choose to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and allow the gift to take us on the journey of a lifetime, or we can bury the gift in a field and go visit it every Sunday morning or so.

The life that we are called to through the gift of God’s grace is a life of investment. We are called to invest the gift that God has given to us through our own spiritual and communal growth so that we can invest in God’s mission to the world.

God created us to be people who care for and see to the wellbeing of the world that we inhabit. That means both the well being of our own souls through personal spiritual disciplines and growth as well and the well being of our neighbors in the world. And these are really concentric circles that don’t operate separate from one another.

Sanctification, which is the journey and destination that sanctifying grace takes us on is the process of being perfected in love. Love for God and Love for Others. It is a state of have our hearts and minds filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can fully live out the commands to love God with all of our being and love our neighbors as ourselves.

And y’all. This is a process that unfolds over a lifetime. This is not something that just comes to us in an instant and stays forever. It is something that we work on and fail at and do two steps forward one step back, the hokey pokey, the electric slide, and the macarena around as we fumble through life. But the end result, if we are persistent in our willingness to show up and invest what God has given to us, is that we grow in love for God and neighbors.

We become sanctified, or saintified, or as I simply like to think of it: We become the people that our Dogs believe we are. We start to live up to the status that God granted us through Christ. We look as righteous on the outside as we are on the inside.

Remember, the journey of a thousand steps starts with just one. What investment are you willing to take? Maybe it’s just really taking time to pray. Maybe it’s coming to the Bible study that begins on wednesday night at the end of the month. Perhaps it’s a conversation with me about where you are and what the next steps for you look like.

Regardless of where you are and where you need to begin, you can rest assured in this fact. God has not brought you this far to let you figure it our on your own. God has brought you to where you are today and will continue to be with you as you fumble through this thing called life. God is with you and will never forsake you, and that friends is something worth investing in.