Home    Theology    History    Homilies    Newsletters    Events    Pictures    Staff    Contact Us    Links	Wise Investments November 13, 2005 Text: Matthew 25:14-30 We’re going to hear a lot today about the investments of the church and the bottom line. Not the bottom lines that appear in corporation annual reports, figures easily manipulated or made to look more impressive than they really are. Not the bottom lines of our investment funds. But the scriptural bottom line about our investments. The biblical bottom line about wise investments is found in the I Peter 4:10: “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” This is the good news and the challenge we’ll explore today. Wise investing is the focus of our gospel message. Like many gospel messages, it’s amazingly timely because it’s about risk and, even in these days, the church, the gathering of God’s people, continues to be a risky venture. We may not have the challenges that Matthew’s community has – these words are among Jesus’ last words to his disciples and address the worries in Matthew’s community about how to live in the meantime before Christ’s return – but we have our own challenges. Our bottom line involves using the gifts we’ve been given to be good stewards of God’s varied grace as we plan not only to survive as a congregation but to thrive as a faith community. On the surface, the world of this passage is very different from our own. For one thing, the gospel is using master/slave language and the transactions operate within a social hierarchy that is anathema to us – and no one in the passage is talking about abolishing this master/slave system. Second, we hear the word “talent” and think about singing and dancing when they’re talking solely about money. By getting our language confused, we miss understanding what a vast amount of money we’re talking about in this story. One talent alone – never mind five – equals about twenty years of earnings for a laborer. If we understand how much money we’re talking about, we won’t lose the story’s intensity. Finally, we need to pay attention to an important even if seemingly insignificant detail – the detail about the master being away a really long time because, if we miss that particular detail, we’ll miss how the original audience – in despair because they didn’t know how long they might have to wait for the return of the Messiah – heard this intense story. BUT there is one thing that, in spite of cultural and linguistic differences, we can fully understand immediately: the paralyzing fear experienced by the third slave. The gospel passage is about risks and his paralyzing fears keep him from risking anything. The paralyzing fear of this third slave teaches us an important lesson: the opposite of faith is not doubt or disbelief, it is fear. The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is not lack of belief. The opposite of faith is fear. As I was pondering this sermon, my mind went back to something I see almost every week. In our prayer requests, there is one frequent request that asks that we – as people, as a congregation – be released from “the slavery of fear.” The gospel addresses this “slavery of fear.” In the case of this story, we have three fears: fear of failure, fear of punishment and fear of loss. Each of these fears is paralyzing all on its own; the combination of all three – failure, punishment, loss – is deadly. The third slave is basically a nice guy. He’s not deceitful (i.e. he’s not trying to cheat the master out of money), not an embezzler (i.e. trying to act as if the money was his), not a spendthrift (i.e. he doesn’t go out and spend any of the money). But he is overly cautious and afraid. He overanalyzes the situation and is such a slave to his fears that he’s afraid to act, afraid to do even the minimum, which, in this case, would be to give the money to a bank and let them earn a minimal amount of interest. Jesus’ bottom line about our investments is: Love demands risks. Demands! Jesus isn’t saying, “Risking while you’re in love is one of a list of things you might possibly sometimes do.” Jesus is saying, “Love – true gospel, Christian love – DEMANDS that you take a risk, that you take a chance, that you give up the fears that hold you back.” This concept about the inseparability of love and risk is not unfamiliar. Those of you who are parents, those of you who have been married, those of you who are partnered, those of you who treasure your friendships know about love demanding risks. Most importantly for our sermon today, those of you whose hearts and souls are involved in the Body of Christ also know that love demands risks. If you think that our love of God and for Christ exempts us from risky adventures, you’d be wrong. One of our connections with the Matthew’s congregation is that the church is still, even in this day and age, a risky proposition. (And I insist it’s a risky proposition no matter if you’re the smallest church or the largest megachurch. If you do church right – if you pay attention to the heart of the gospel message – then you should always feel at risk.) As the church we need to give what one writer calls “God’s investing hand” the power to take over and turn our risks into wise investments. The gospel passage teaches us that everyone in the church has some amount to invest, that everyone in the Body of Christ has the capacity to respond either in faith or in fear (and has this capacity in spite of whatever age you are - young or old or middle-aged - or whatever your circumstances) and, finally, that everyone is accountable for their investment action in the realm of God. One final note: The intensity of this story might convince us that we have to follow Jesus’ commandments for how to invest our gifts because, as good serious church folk, we have to obey God. But I’ll leave with another possibility: we love and we take risks because we might even have fun! Our gospel-wise investments might yield dividends of reward, interest, challenge, change, and even a good time now and then! Bottom line: Love demands risks. The church is a risky adventure calling us to take gigantic leaps of faith and to give up our fears. Our only question is: Are we up to the challenge?