Talents

Readings for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Almighty God, whose loving hand has given us all that we possess: Grant us grace that we may honor you with our substance, and, remembering the account which we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your bounty, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

So the kingdom of heaven will be like this:

a master goes on a journey and entrusts his property to his slaves - he gives the first guy five talents, he gives the second guy two talents, and he gives the third guy one talent... to each according to his abilities

Now, when we say a talent, we mean something you're good at, like singing or playing basketball, or learning other languages, but that's not what it meant back then. Originally, a talent was an amount of money. So the master gave his slaves different amounts of money, based on what he felt they could handle, and then left to go on a trip. Two of them traded the talents and made twice as much; one of them buried the talent, so that the amount was the same when he gave it back. If you want to know basically how much he gave them (and how much they gave back), a talent is roughly 15 years’ wages for a day laborer. You can get a pencil or pull up the calculator on your phone and figure out what that might roughly be.

Assuming current minimum wage, one talent = (approximately)

$7.25/hour x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year x 15 years

Write it down; we’ll come back to it later.

So, in the story, the guy with the five talents and the guy with the two talents are smart - they trade for twice as much. It reminds me of this poem by Shel Silverstein...


Another story of trading up, which you may have heard about, involves a guy from Canada named Kyle MacDonald, who wanted to move into a house and started trading up towards that goal by offering one red paperclip on Craigslist. He writes

On July 12, 2005 I posted a picture of a red paperclip on my blog and in the barter section of craigslist and asked if anyone wanted to make a trade for something bigger or better. A few days later I traded the paperclip for a pen shaped like a fish. Then I traded the pen for a doorknob. And so on, each time trading for something bigger or better. Once all the dust settled, I'd made 14 trades and wound up with a house located at 503 Main Street in Kipling Saskatchewan.

 And that's starting with a paperclip.

What if you started with...  a talent?
Remember how much one talent is?

($7.25  x  40  x  52  x  15...)

So the guy with one talent had something like a quarter of a million dollars, and the guy with two had almost half a million, and the guy with five had over a million! That's a lot of somebody else's money to be responsible for; I sure wouldn't want to lose it.
That was the third guy's approach; he played it safe, not wanting to risk losing any of the money. But the first two guys were responsible for handling even more of their master's money, and they weren't scared at all - immediately went out and risked it in trading.

FEAR is one difference between the first two guys and the third guy. As he says when the Master returns,

Master, I knew 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.

Another difference between the guy who buried his master's money and the other two who risked it is TRUST.

The first two guys viewed the money their master gave them as an opportunity because they trusted his confidence in their ability to handle it. In taking the money and trading with it, they accepted the responsibility of sharing with their master in the household's business. And when he returned, he invited them to share in his joy.

The third guy feared and distrusted the master. When the master gave him more money than he felt qualified to manage, this guy viewed it as a setup - a test designed to trap him - so he buried the quarter million dollars in the ground. Burying the talent was not to keep the money safe for his master so much as to keep himself safe from the master's invitation into shared responsibility. As he says on returning the money "Here you have what is yours." He never accepted the master's trust in him in the first place. "Here's your stuff - I didn't mess with any of it. I don't even know why you gave it to me in the first place. It's none of my business. I just work here."

The master gets really angry with him. His no-risk = no-failure strategy misses the whole point of the exercise. And he doesn’t account for opportunity loss. It's like taking only classes that are way easy for you so your GPA doesn't go down. Or like going up to bat and never swinging at a pitch because you don't want to run the bases and maybe have to slide...and get dirty, or possibly even hurt.

From this parable, I'm beginning to get the feeling that the point of the life we've been given is to get in the game, not to finish with a clean uniform. While we're here, we should play hard, go all out, even if we get grass-stained and dirty in the process. Even if we get hurt; even if we fail. And EVEN - though this is the scariest of all I think - EVEN if we succeed... and God gives us more responsibility to share with him in the work of his kingdom.

The kingdom of heaven will be like this: a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them...

Don't be scared of how much God has entrusted you with.
Ask yourself (like Kyle MacDonald's dad asked him when he thought of giving up the red paperclip idea)...

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

As those famous theologians, The Goo Goo Dolls, wrote:

The end of fear is where we begin.

Amen

About fighting

Year C - Pentecost, Proper 24
Readings: Genesis 32:3-8,22-302 Timothy 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8a Psalm 121


A common theme in today's texts is that of persistence in struggle and difficulty - hanging in there. Fighting and prevailing.
In struggling with the man he believes to be God, Jacob literally hangs on until he receives a blessing. In the epistle, Timothy is urged to "continue in what you have learned and firmly believed" and to "be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable..." And in the gospel, Jesus tells a parable "about the need to pray always and not lose heart." The widow in his story "kept coming" and asking for justice, and eventually the unjust judge decided to grant it "so that she will not wear me out by continually coming."
Another aspect of this theme of struggle and persistence seems to be the presence of opposition. In the Gospel, the widow seeks justice against an unnamed opponent - we don't know the problem there - but then she has a further struggle with the judge, who doesn't really care about justice and so in that sense forms some more opposition.
In the OT reading, the opponent seems to be God. The text just says 'a man,' but Jacob clearly believes afterward that he has seen God and even fought with him, and he's amazed God didn't kill him. Jacob wrestles with the man, and the man dislocates his hip, but Jacob still won't let him go without a blessing, so the man gives Jacob a new name. "You shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." The word translated as 'prevail' doesn't necessarily mean that he conquered his opponent - that he beat God; it can also mean that he showed endurance, strength and courage in the fight. I think that's very important to notice - you don't have to beat your opponent to prevail.
I think struggle and fighting are things most of us can relate to. We fight with people, with circumstances, with God, with ourselves. What does it mean to prevail in these?
When we fight with people, it's just as often, if not more often, that we fight with people we love. In this situation, beating your opponent is not really a good way to 'win.' In a fight with family or friends, this kind of winning isn't very satisfactory.
When we fight circumstances, whether it's a health issue, a job situation, a policy or a law, people usually get drawn into it, too - even if you know what's to blame, it's hard to fight something you can't see or touch.
Sometimes, we fight God, and a similar thing can happen there - think Cain and Abel. But really, if anybody can handle our fight, it's God. Writers of the Psalms often got really angry with God; so did Job, and so did Jonah, and so did countless other people in the Scriptures. God's big enough to take it, and if God's the one you're mad at, God's the one to take it up with. I think it's also true that when you fight with God, you know God better.
Then there's fighting within ourselves: fighting our fears, our demons, and all the gunk we internalize from the problems and dysfunction in our lives. In the book The Imitation of Christ, I ran across this: "Who has a greater struggle than those who labor to overcome themselves?" Anyone who's faced addiction or even observed someone in that struggle can agree this is true.
In all of these struggles, what does it look like to prevail? I think part of the answer relates to peace. Sometimes, just to endure is to prevail - if you've made it this far, regardless of how much damage you've sustained - the fact that you're here is prevailing. Your scars show what you've been through - like Jacob limping as he walked away from wrestling with God. But you've lived to tell about it - you struggled with God and the world and yourself, and you've prevailed.
What if you lose? It depends on what you think losing is. I think to make peace with an opponent is to prevail, even if they win. For example, to face death and make peace with that opponent, whether you then live or die - is to prevail in that struggle - to show courage and endurance. I heard a saying once: 'Courage is fear that has said its prayers.' I like that, and I think it's true.
When I was facing a medical procedure to repair a brain aneurysm a couple of years ago, I also had to face the fear of dying. There came a point, after six months of delays, when all my distractions were gone, and there was no avoiding it anymore.
I wouldn't say I won that battle; I didn't beat the fear. I tried every argument I could think of to reason myself into peace, and I couldn't. Fear is more primal than reason. So finally, I prayed and asked God to give me peace about death, and it came.
It was so simple, I didn't believe it could be true at first and tried to make myself afraid again, but I couldn't. So I prevailed, but it wasn't because I defeated the fear; it was because God fought for me when I couldn't fight anymore.
Another thing about fighting is that it reveals a lot about the character of the contenders. When you fight someone, you know them. This idea was expressed in the sequel to the Matrix, when Neo is summoned to a meeting, and as soon as he walks in the door, the doorkeeper immediately engages him in a ferocious battle. Afterwards, the guy says he had to fight Neo in order to know for sure who he was.
I've started arguments with people before for no apparent reason, I suppose to see how they would respond, to flush them out into the open, I guess, to figure them out. And I've had people do that to me, too - to see how far they could push me before I pushed back.
There's something about competition that brings out things you don't see in casual interaction. People are more raw when they're fighting or competing. If you play any sport, or ever have, you know this. I played soccer from the time I was four until just a few years ago, and now I fence. In either place, I've found I learn a lot about people by facing them in competition. I learn their strength, their speed, their stamina, their habits and their style, how rough or skillful they are, whether they play clean or dirty.
The other side to this is, I learn a lot about myself, too. Some of it's good - some not.
When I played soccer, I learned that I'm persistent and I'm tough, but I'm not always realistic about the laws of physics. I frequently got knocked down trying to challenge people much bigger than me, but I'd get up and keep going. When I played goalkeeper, I wasn't afraid to dive or charge a forward one-on-one.
I also learned, though, that when I played forward, I had a tendency under pressure to sabotage my own plays and then make excuses about why I lost the ball, even though I had enough skill, technically, to keep it. If I had a fullback bearing down on me, for example, sometimes I'd cross the ball early from the wing just to get rid of it. But the center forwards weren't in place yet, so all that work to get the ball up was wasted.
The thing is, probably nobody would blame me. Except that I knew I was doing it. And actually, you can't have that many 'unlucky' breaks without someone seeing a pattern. When I played on my cousin's team, he commented 'Good Lord, I've never seen a more skittish forward!'
He had me sorted. I didn't have myself sorted, though. I didn't know WHY I was doing it. But at that point, I decided I better figure it out and try to fix it.
I think the same concept is true in many types of competition: the quest for grades, the desire to climb a ladder or achieve some status, even political debates.
The reason this is useful - what we see in the microcosm of a game or a debate or an argument, we can work on in that context and in other areas. And more broadly, what we see when fighting under any circumstances, can be an indicator of strengths or weaknesses.
In spite of our desire for peace, we do a fair amount of fighting. I think it's somewhat a part of the way we are as people. Maybe this is why God fights with Jacob and doesn't kill him - because God knows Jacob and knows that's the way he is.
Some people just come out swinging, and Jacob's whole life was like that - Jacob wasn't the ideal man like Abraham - calmly accepting all kinds of difficulties and waiting patiently for their seemingly impossible fulfillment. No, Jacob was going to grab what he could - he was grabbing his brother's heel when he was born - and since that moment was always fighting or scheming with somebody.
One of the most notable examples was when he tricked his brother Esau out of a blessing, and it was after this that he fled his home, afraid of the revenge his brother would taken when he discovered this.
Sometimes, people just kind of have to fight, I think. We wish for peace and harmony and unity with no divisions, but the reality is far from these ideals. In our culture, we don't have a lot of acceptable circumstances for fighting, but I think in some sense, people need to contend with something. Sports are one example, but also things like Survivor and a lot of those reality TV shows, where all kinds of normal activities, like dating, doing a job interview, and designing clothes are turned into competition events. Yesterday, I was watching Iron Chef America - they were having 'Battle Eggplant'...Now you tell me we don't have a need for competition!
The movie Fight Club is a very clear example - these young guys started a club just to fight each other - hand to hand, no gloves, no weapons, and very few rules. The story is somewhat more complicated than this, but essentially, the appeal seemed to be that by fighting, and sustaining injury, they were doing something that felt real - more real than pushing papers in an office. This movie was really popular, which means people respond to it for some reason. I think there's something to notice there.
If you're fighting, especially one-on-one, your goal is clearly defined by beating your opponent. But if you're a small part of a big goal, and especially if you don't know what that goal is, your part can feel pointless. This is somewhat our situation as members of the Church - we're each small parts of a larger body, involved in doing a work that we don't see the end of because it's so much bigger than any of us.
I think part of the implication of the letter to Timothy is - Hang in there. Don't lose sight of the goal you're part of. Know what that goal is. Learn what your part is and do it. And don't let other people's impatience or lack of interest make you forget what you're about.
AND - Fight the good fight.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Oct. 21, 2007

About cheating

Year C - Pentecost, Proper 20
Readings: Amos 8:4-7(8-12); 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13; Psalm 138


Lord, may we know your word, speak your word, and love your word. Amen.Today’s OT and Gospel readings both talk about cheating.
Basically, if you’re cheating anyone, stop it - especially if you’re cheating poor people or anyone at a disadvantage to you.
The message in Amos is very harsh toward people cheating the poor.
‘Hear this, you who trample the needy… The Lord has sworn… "I will never forget…"’Amos describes some methods people were using in his day to increase their profits by tricking or cheating their customers.
"Skimping the measure, boosting the price, and cheating with dishonest scales…selling even the sweepings with the wheat."Methods are the same today – for example, next time you get gas, notice the sticker on the pump that certifies the pump has been checked to ensure it pumps a gallon of gas for a gallon of gas.
And when I pay $.75 for a bag of chips from the vending machine, and 2/3 of it is air, with 5 chips in the bottom, I feel like someone is skimping the measure.
Now, a popular method of ‘boosting the price’ seems to be tacking on lots of little fees and surcharges for things you didn’t request but didn’t know you had to exclude.
Then there’s the whole area of financing, which invariably ends up making people with less money pay a lot more. Currently, the issue of sub-prime mortgages has been in the news a lot. From what I gather, these are high-risk, high-interest loans made to people who probably really can’t afford to buy a home – and sure enough, most of them couldn’t pay, especially with the high interest. Now, their houses are being foreclosed on, and that whole area of the market has collapsed, sending other sectors of the economy into a tailspin.
Who’s most affected by this? People who can least afford it.
By way of contrast, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to an economist who developed a system of micro-lending to help very poor people start businesses. These loans have been so successful that whole sectors of the economies in many developing nations have been strengthened.
It’s not a matter of money – it’s a matter of the lender’s motives.
It’s a matter of justice.
What about credit cards? How are credit cards marketed?
They’re often presented as sources of cash flow – offered to people who have very little cash… like college students. When I was in college, credit card companies would set up tables in the SUB and give away ‘free’ stuff to people filling out applications. Talk about ‘buying…the needy for a pair of sandals"…
So, in addition to tuition, room and board (which we took out loans for), students were encouraged to rack up additional expenses on credit cards with high interest rates. Pretty much every college student I know is at least up to their eyeballs in debt, and even if they find a good job, they’ll spend a substantial chunk of their lives paying it back.
In the meantime, what if they need to buy a house? …. Remember, the housing market has basically collapsed.
And these are college graduates – what’s the situation for people without a degree?
And there’s no time to talk about who doesn’t have health insurance or what you learned about the insurance on your house after Rita…Many things in our society are unbalanced – usually in the favor of whoever has the money, power, or influence. Think Jack Abramoff… and the influence of lobbies on the laws that get made.
If you’re going to oppress or neglect someone, it’s easiest to oppress or ignore the people who are without representation – the poor, the weak, the uneducated, the powerless – because they don’t fight back as much.
BUT, they do have a key advocate. God seems to have a particular concern and care for these folks. And as the Church, we’d better be looking out for them, too. We’d certainly better NOT be contributing to injustice against them.Many times, particularly in the prophets, God’s word is that he doesn’t care about sacrifices and ceremonies – not if the rest of the week is full of injustice. Earlier in Amos, the prophet delivers this message from the Lord:
I hate, I despise your festivals, / and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…
Take away from me the noise of your songs; / I will not listen to the noise of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters, / and righteousness like an ever-rolling stream.Over and over again, God’s theme is Justice:
"And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice…." (Micah 6:8)But cheating perverts justice, turns it upside down, makes it meaningless.
And if we, as Christians, representing Christ (because we do) – if we cheat people, especially disadvantaged people, not only does it destroy their trust in us personally, but they can associate our behavior with the Church, and with Christ – and they can decide that, if that’s what Christianity is, they want nothing of it.
They’re chased away from hope because they don’t hear, don’t see evidence in us of God’s particular care for the poor, the sick, the weak, and the lonely.
If we, who profess to know and follow God, commit injustice, this puts a barrier in front of people who need hope in God more than anything else - and that’s inexcusable.
This may sound like overkill if all the injustice you did this week was cheat on your math homework.
But part of the message from Luke’s gospel is that, unless they stop – and turn around – little cheaters grow to be big cheaters.
It’s only a matter of time and degree from cheating on tests to cheating on taxes.
The mindset that justifies it and the basic pattern are the same.
As a person gains more responsibility, cheating has wider ramifications.
Think about Enron. How many people lost their jobs? How many lost their retirement?
So if you’re cheating at anything, stop now.
If you’re not – don’t start.In light of all this, the gospel reading from Luke sounds pretty odd.
Here’s a story of a guy who gets fired for cheating his boss, and then his boss compliments him for how clever his cheating was.
What was Jesus trying to say by telling this story?
And why did he pick a cheater as the main character?I don’t know, but my theory is maybe he wanted to show that he knows what kinds of things people get into, and he’s not shocked that people cheat.
When we cheat, God’s not shocked; God knows us already better than we know ourselves. He knows, and he’s not shocked. God can even appreciate the ingenuity and talents we used to do it, since God’s the one who gave us those gifts, but it’s a shame for us to use them on schemes instead of doing something good with them.
It’s also a shame if we don’t use our gifts for anything at all – maybe thinking the only thing we can offer to the church is the gift of being ‘nice’ while we’re here. But there are a lot of attributes natural to each one of you that really contribute to the life and health of the church.
What if you’re not necessarily that nice, but you’re strong? Great! We have heavy stuff.
What if you’re funny? Excellent – there are people here who could use a laugh.
What if you’re good at soccer? What if you know all about horses? What if you can explain complicated things? What if you think about things in simple terms? What if you plan things? What if you read, write, paint – draw, sing, or dance?
Fantastic! Obviously God thinks the church needs it, because he gave it to you and brought you here.Part of Luke’s commentary on the story of the dishonest manager is to say basically that ‘it’s a shame the world is more creative than the church is…’
It’s true –
How much time and money and artistic talent – genius even – go into making a Super Bowl commercial to get people to drink beer or change their car insurance?
How much goes into trying to get people to come to church?People are capable of amazing feats of ingenuity and persistence. Think of anybody who’s dating. Guys and girls both will do all kinds of clever, creative, crazy things to impress a date. Did you see the movie 50 First Dates ? - perfect example.
What if that kind of creativity were given toward honoring God? If we think about how we’re spending our time and creativity now, then cut out the worthless and bad things (which God’s not shocked about because He already knows)
What would we do differently?
Think about it – Make some changes
And let’s see what God will do with us.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Sept. 23, 2007