God's Kingdom

A sermon by Bishop Don on the Gospel of Matthew

In this transcription, Bishop Don begins with a prayer and then discusses a parable from the Gospel of Matthew about a man who entrusts his wealth to three slaves. The slaves are given different amounts of money based on their abilities. Two of the slaves invest the money and double their amounts, earning praise from their master. The third slave, out of fear, buries his money and returns it unchanged, resulting in criticism from the master. The speaker emphasizes the importance of trust in God's love and grace and encourages listeners to respond to God's call with faith and obedience

Let us pray. Holy and gracious God, we thank you for your presence in this time and place and within each one of us gathered here and in our homes. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives to receive the gift of your living word for us this day. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer.

Amen. I'm just going to make a little adjustment here, it's just a little too low, that's better. So if you've been with us in consecutive Sundays in the last few weeks, we've been hearing in Matthew's Gospel the parables Jesus used to talk about the Kingdom of God. Last week we heard the story about the ten bridesmaids, the five who were wise and planned ahead and took extra oil for their lamps to greet the coming bridal party, and the five who didn't.

With the overriding message, be prepared for God's Kingdom, because you never really know the time or the hour that it will come. So this week, there's no pause, it's the very next verse. There is a story about a man and his three slaves or servants. The man goes away and entrusts portions of his wealth to each of the three slaves. First of all, we get confused with the English word talent, and sometimes you'll hear a preacher try to start talking about gifts and abilities and so on.

No. In this context, the talent is a measure of weight that's used with respect to sums of money. And while five, two, and one sounds like a small amount, and these are only approximate conversions, they are actually a very large sum of money. Five talents in today's Canadian currency would be about $250,000. So it's significant. And so therefore, by the math, two talents about $100,000, and the one talent about $50,000. So this is a major entrusting that this master does to the slaves.

And so, Jesus, in trying to describe this Kingdom of God, starts with these words to the story. For it, the Kingdom of God, 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, each according to his ability. Then he went away. Each according to his ability. Remember that. That will be significant later. So eventually the man returns, there's kind of a hint that he comes back later than expected, but he returns and he asks the three slaves to come and settle accounts with him.

So here's how it turns out in Jesus' story. Then the one who had revealed 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. Then the second slave comes forward, says similar words, 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. Exactly the same words. Note that even though the second guy gained only two talents, the response of their master is exactly the same. Good and trustworthy slave, enter into the joy of your master. Well, what about the third slave? 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. And what's the master's response? 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. Now, we need to say something quite clearly initially when we look at this story.

It is a parable, but it is not an allegory. And what we mean by that is allegories, in a true sort of allegory, every person and symbol in the story signifies somebody else in real life, usually. And so there's these direct parallels. The problem with that is one starts to assume that the master is God in the story. That is not the case. Rather it is a human story of a master and three slaves. The situation and the outcome would have sounded familiar, this story of a master entrusting money to slaves and so on, for many in Jesus' company and people who were listening to him teach.

But rather this story, like a parable, think of those parallel lines, parable, is set alongside what Jesus is teaching about the kingdom of God. Some aspects of the master's speech and behavior correspond to God and God's kingdom, just as some aspects of the slaves' speech and behavior correspond to Jesus' disciples, past and present. That's us. So what can we learn from this parable about God and how God sees us, as well as God's expectations for living into God's kingdom, living as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? First of all, note the criteria by which the master entrusts the money.

Do you remember what he said? He's giving five talents to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. So maybe the five-talent slave had more experience in handling money. Maybe the one-talent slave was new or very young. The key thing to note is the master trusted all three slaves with considerable assets of his property. We know how the first two slaves responded. They went off at once and traded with those talents and gained more talents.

They actually doubled the amount that they had. They trusted their master and his trust in them. If their master gave them these large portions of his property, he obviously had faith in their abilities, and they took him at his word. But how did the third slave respond? He said, Master, I knew that you were a harsh man reaping what 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, and he hands it back. Obviously this slave did not trust his master, nor respect the trust that the master had extended to him. There is no mention of the first two slaves being concerned about whether their master was a harsh or opportunistic person. They may have only, it may have only been the third slave that perceived the master that way. Either way, the key phrase, the key descriptor in this admission is, I was afraid.

I was afraid. The third slave does not trust the master, nor does he entrust himself to the master or the master's request. So where are you and I alongside this parable? God graces us with God's Spirit, with God's eternal love, with an intimate relationship with God as Father, Mother, Intimate One. God knows us better than we know ourselves. And then God entrusts some of God's creation to us, perhaps calls us into certain personal relationships, calls us to confront injustice, calls us to exercise good stewardship of the earth, calls us to various ministries in the Christian community, calls us to be sources of healing and support to people who cross our paths.

And in every case, God calls us to act of service according to the abilities that God knows we have, not to things that we don't have the ability to carry out. When God entrusts to us these opportunities, these needs, even these crises, we have a choice. Trust God's love and grace and respond, or shrink back in fear and conclude that we know better than God and bury or walk away from God's request. Even Moses, that great patriarch, struggled with this in the story in Exodus when God was commissioning him to go to Pharaoh in Egypt and demand that the enslaved Israelites be set free.

This was Moses' response. But Moses said to God, Oh, my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. Then the Lord said to him, Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? So, in a sense, in a colloquial way, God is saying to Moses, Moses, who made your tongue? How dare we question the wisdom of God or God's knowledge of us or, most importantly, God's love for us.

When God entrusts to you or me a person, a situation, a function that needs us, God knows what God is doing. God entrusts to each of us according to our God-given ability. In our colic prayer that Murray read for us at the beginning, we prayed these words, Free us from all that darkens and ensnares us. In the parable of the talents, we learn that one of the biggest snares is our reluctance to let God be God and entrust ourselves to God's grace and love.

Amen.