Investments

The parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) is a difficult one to interpret. Does God want us to concentrate on making money? That appears to be its message. In my opinion, however, it is about something very different. What if we read it as a call to take a risk for the sake of the Kingdom of God? At least, that's what I assume in my sermon for today.

There is one topic that is virtually forbidden to be discussed in American Protestant churches these days. Despite that taboo, I’m going to take my life into my hands and talk about it this morning, anyway. No, I’m not going to talk about politics. I’m also not going to talk about… well… you know… that three-letter word that begins with “s” and ends with “x.” Maybe I’ll tackle it another time… but not today. No, today I’m venturing into an area that even the bravest preacher hesitates to approach. Today I’m going to be preaching about money.

Money is an intimidating topic. Many preachers steer clear of it, except for the obligatory stewardship sermon that pops up in the fall along with the annual giving campaign. Maybe that’s because what we do with our money is an intensely private matter – at least, it is in our culture. While this congregation has a tradition of giving generously, how much each person gives from one year to the next is a carefully guarded secret. Only a few people know who gives, and how much they give. I’m not one of those people; and quite frankly, I like it that way. Knowing who gives a lot – and who doesn’t give at all – has the potential to tempt me to give better pastoral care to big givers. That won’t do at all. There are good reasons to keep our financial habits private.

But money plays a big part in what Jesus had to say about the Kingdom of God. Many of the parables that he told are about money and what we should be doing with it. This morning’s parable is about money. Oh, we tend to make it easier to swallow by making it spiritual. Since a “talent” no longer refers to a unit of money, we interpret this parable to be about our natural abilities and how we use them to serve God. And that’s OK. But we mustn’t forget that this parable originally referred to what we do with cold, hard cash. So that’s how I’m going to interpret it this morning.

Let me give you a little background just to get you on board. A “talent” was an enormous amount of money in Jesus’ day. One talent was the equivalent of 15 years’ worth of pay for an unskilled laborer. Today, to someone who is paid at the poverty level of $25,000 a year for a family of four, a talent would be worth $375,000. Three talents would be worth over a million dollars; and five talents would be worth almost 2 million dollars! The total amount that the master gave to all three of his slaves to invest was nearly 3½ million dollars in today’s money. And did you notice that he didn’t give those slaves any instructions? But the slaves knew what was expected of them. In Jesus’ time, prosperous men frequently entrusted their wealth to slaves when they had to travel on business. When the master returned, the slaves were expected to have turned a profit with his money. How they did it was up to them.

So, how did the slaves in today’s parable do with all their cash? Two of them did very well, indeed. Both the slave with five talents and the slave with three doubled their master’s money! It takes quite a while to double any amount of money without taking a risk. Safe investments – the kind that don’t require much of a risk – also don’t offer much of a return. So we can assume that the two slaves who doubled their money took quite a risk. They must have invested in something that might have taken a nose dive and left them with nothing to show for their efforts.

And that’s exactly what the third slave had when the master finally returned. All he had was the original cash that his master had given him, all $375,000 of it. In our day of roller-coaster stock markets and housing bubbles, his strategy sounds very wise. He buried the money in the ground, a common way to keep money safe in Jesus’ day. Today, we might put that cash in gold, stuff it into a sock, and hide it under the mattress. You might think that the master would have been happy with the prudence of his third slave. After all, he had given that slave the least amount of money. He obviously didn’t have much faith in that slave’s ability to turn a profit. He had all of his original investment back! What was the problem?

The problem is that a no-risk strategy is also a no-gain strategy. What’s that proverb? “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Money doesn’t increase on its own. in Jesus’ day or in our own, you have to risk money to make money. The master didn’t want his money to just sit there like a golden paperweight. He wanted it to be used for something. He wanted to see a return on his investments! So he sacked that third slave, and he gave the money to the first slave who had proven himself a whiz at investing! It appears that taking a risk was exactly what the master had expected. Maybe in the Kingdom of God, the greatest risk is not to risk anything at all.

Now, we have also been entrusted with wealth. In particular, this congregation has been entrusted with wealth. We have recently received the first installment of a very generous bequest; and we anticipate receiving more when the estate clears probate. We have a very comfortable amount of money right now – and we will soon have quite a bit more. We have to decide what to do with it. Do we save it? Do we spend it? Do we do some of both? And how do we spend it? As we ponder these questions, we need to remember that this money doesn’t belong to us – it belongs to God. The money that the slaves invested wasn’t theirs. It belonged to the Master. Now God has entrusted some of his money to his servants here in Nashville UCC to make investments and to pay dividends in God’s Kingdom. How do we do that? Maybe the parable that we just heard can give us some guidance.

First of all, I don’t think that the Master has any problem at all with our saving some of this money for our future needs. Investing in God’s Kingdom doesn’t mean spending every dime without any provision for what might happen tomorrow. But I do think that the Master would have a problem of we decided to save all of it. Jesus told us what happened to the slave who hid his portion of the money in a hole in the ground! But even with some of the bequest safely stored away for a rainy day, we still have a great deal of money to invest in – what? What does God’s investment look like?

I can’t give you an iron-clad answer to that. No one can. How God is calling us to handle this bequest is different than how God might want another congregation to handle it. But I can tell you this much for sure. God is surely calling us to take a risk with at least some of this money on behalf of God’s Kingdom. God is calling us to try something new…to step away from just playing it safe… to risk a ministry to people we don’t know and maybe haven’t even met yet! Maybe it is a ministry to battered women. Maybe we could offer them a safe place in the middle of a world that has only so far shown them only violence. Or maybe we could use our Recreation Park as a playground for children who live in urban areas; and who have never seen a trail through a quiet forest, let alone walked on one. Or maybe we could start a ministry to military veterans who don’t know how to fit back into society after returning from overseas deployment. Whatever it is, it will probably turn out to be something that we haven’t even dreamed of yet! God will show us what we are being called to do – if we ask him; and if we’re ready to respond to what he tells us.

This will be a long process, friends. It will take… months. In the process, we will dream and talk and pray… and then we’ll dream and talk and pray some more. We’ll come up with some wonderful ideas – and we’ll come up with some stinkers! So, let’s work together, friends! Let’s brainstorm and talk and pray and get creative! Let’s see where God is calling us, so that at the end we will not hear, “You wicked, lazy slave!” No, indeed! At the end we want to hear God say to this congregation, “Well done, good and trustworthy slaves! Enter into the joy of your master!”

 

Weed Seeds

We all know the parable of the mustard seed and how a tiny seed grows into a huge plant. But what does it actually say about the Kingdom of God? If we take a close look at the original Greek text, it says some surprising things that don't really come through in translation. Are you a mustard seed? Maybe we all are!

Some things just can’t be described; they have to be experienced. For example, if someone asked me to describe riding a horse, I would have difficulty putting that experience into words. The best I could do would be to compare the feeling of riding to something more familiar. “Well,” I might respond, “riding a horse is like being aboard a boat. To keep your balance – on a horse or on a boat – you follow the motion with your whole body. Otherwise, you risk falling off.” Riding a horse is like being aboard a boat. I can’t describe the experience of riding; but I can compare it to something else.

Jesus told us that being a part of the Kingdom of God is something like that. Have you ever noticed that Jesus never offered a “twenty-five words or less” definition of the Kingdom? I expect that’s because defining God’s Kingdom is ultimately impossible. Like riding a horse, it can’t be described; it has to be experienced. The best that we can do is to compare it to something else. “The Kingdom of God is like…” Jesus said that over and over and over again. He told parable after parable comparing the Kingdom of God to things that were more familiar to his audience. Over the next several weeks, I’m going to preach on some of those parables. I’m going to consider what the Kingdom of God is like. Jesus told us that it’s like some very unexpected things. It’s like a dinner party that nobody attended. It’s like a woman who pestered a judge until he finally gave her what she wanted. It’s like a man who cooked the books when he was sacked from his job. But I’m going to start today with one of the most familiar parables of all. The Kingdom of God is like… a weed.

I’m referring, of course, to the parable of the mustard seed. The Kingdom of God, said Jesus, “is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” Like a mustard seed? What’s that all about? What is it about a tiny grain of mustard that makes it a good comparison for God’s Kingdom? It turns out that the original Greek text of this parable can help us to start to answer that question. The text that we read is, of course, a translation of that Greek into English. As in many cases, some of those Greek words are packed with meaning that we have to tease out like a jeweler untangling a knotted golden chain.

One of those words is the one that is frequently translated “planted” or “sowed.” In this parable, a man “planted” or “sowed” that mustard in his garden. No he didn’t – at least, not according to the Greek word that Luke uses here. The verb that Luke uses is “ebalen,” and that verb doesn’t mean “to plant.” It means “to throw,” or even “to throw out.” The image is one of a man getting rid of the day’s trash. Apple cores, potato peelings, watermelon rinds… out it all goes, together with the mustard seed that he probably never even noticed. After all, mustard seeds are one of the smallest seeds around.

And where did he throw it? Why, he threw it into his “garden,’ his “kapos.” A “kapos” isn’t a field. A “kapos” is an area that many upper-middle class people of Jesus’ time had in the courtyard of their home. Ornamental plants grew in a “kapos.” You’ve all seen pictures of Roman villas with fountains and flowers in the middle of the courtyard. Those flowers were growing in a “kapos.” But not mustard. No one would have put a mustard seed into a “kapos” on purpose! That’s because mustard is a weed. It grows quickly and soon takes over the area where it is planted. All the carefully organized flowers and ornamental plants would be crowded out if a mustard plant showed up in a “kapos”!

But there’s one more curious thing about this parable. The mature mustard plant is called a “tree,” a “dendros.” Mustard seeds don’t grow into trees. They grow into annoying bushes that you can’t get rid of easily; but never in the history of the world has any mustard seed grown into a tree! But this one did. This one grew into a tree so big that birds were able to come and make their nests in its branches.

The Kingdom of God, said Jesus, “is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw out into his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” A tiny mustard seed… thrown out with the garbage into an organized, well-manicured urban garden… growing not only into a plant, but into a tree that was so big that it became the home of the birds in the area. Hmmm…. What does that suggest about the Kingdom of God?

First of all, is it possible that many people of Jesus’ time saw God’s Kingdom as something worthless, fit only to be thrown on the trash heap with the morning garbage? That Greek word ɛβαλεν certainly suggests something like it. “This Kingdom of God,” said many people who heard Jesus’ message, “is trash. Who wants to live in a kingdom where the meek will inherit the earth and the peacemakers are blessed? I don’t want anything to do with that kind of kingdom! Give me money and power, thank you very much!” Do we still hear that today? Are there still people who discard Jesus’ message of love and compassion because it doesn’t suit their lifestyle? Well… it’s just a thought.

Second, the mustard seed that was discarded – that weed seed – quickly took over the urban garden where it was thrown. All the careful planning, all the organization, all the human thought that went into the garden – it all went out the window when the weed took over! It seems to me that the Kingdom of God does the same thing to many of our own careful plans. “My life is going to be like this,” we say. “I’m going to live there and behave like that.” But then God’s Kingdom lands right in the middle of all our plans, and takes over our lives. At least, if we’re lucky, it takes over our lives.

Finally, this mustard plant is not content to remain a bush. It insists on growing into a tree – a tree that offers shelter to all kinds of creatures. The birds of the air are the only ones that Luke mentions, but I’ll bet that chipmunks frolicked around its roots, cicadas buzzed from its leaves, and squirrels peered out from holes in its trunk. This tree offers not just shelter, but a home – a home for anyone who cares to live there. Is that the Kingdom of God for us? Is it a home where we can live safely, secure from all those who might want to harm us? This parable certainly suggests that it is.

Parables are powerful in that they don’t nail things down. Parables are open-ended. Parables suggest all kinds of interpretations! I’ve just offered three of them for this parable, but there are more. After all, the Kingdom of God is all kinds of things! “The Kingdom of God is like a weed seed that a man threw away into his well-thought out, organized garden. It grew until it took over that garden; and it offered a home to any creature who came by.”

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

 

Reclaiming the Neighborhood

What is hope all about? Is it sitting and wishing... or is it something else, as well? In this sermon, I suggest that hope is not only belief, but also action; and that God calls us to live out our hopes through the actions that we take. Do you agree with me?

How would you respond if you saw the following ad in the classifieds? "For sale: One field, suitable for growing wheat or barley. Family property. Convenient location. In need of some TLC. Currently in use as campground by invading army. Price negotiable. All offers considered." Would you respond to that ad? I confess that I probably wouldn’t. After all, why buy a field when an enemy army is occupying the territory? Life doesn’t go on as usual during a war, nor for a long time afterwards. Who would buy a field under those circumstances?

The answer is that Jeremiah would – and did. The scripture reading this morning tells us that Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel came to him and asked him to buy a field just like that. It was family property; and it would be lost to them if someone outside the family gained control of it. The trouble was, that someone was the Babylonian army; and they were well on the way to controlling not only that field, but the whole country of Judah! Why in the world would Jeremiah buy a field in circumstances like that? To understand the answer, you need a little background.

The prophet Jeremiah had been a thorn in the side of Judah’s King Zedekiah for years. The king, his generals, and everybody else in Jerusalem thought that their city was invincible. After all, the Temple of the Lord stood there; and surely God wouldn’t let his Temple fall to an enemy army! But Jeremiah loudly and publically proclaimed otherwise. God wasn’t happy with the people’s behavior, he said. They relied more on their foreign allies than they did on God. And one of these days… one of these days… the chickens were going to come home to roost. God would give their nation up to one of the foreign nations that they relied on so much. Jerusalem would fall. And now, in today’s scripture reading (Jeremiah 32:1-2. 6-15), Jeremiah’s prophecy is coming true. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has had enough of Judah’s attempt to play both ends against the middle; and he has sent his army to wipe out Jerusalem once and for all. As the story takes place, they are besieging the city. Crack troops are camped all around Jerusalem. No one can come into the city, and no one can go out. Although Jerusalem has a reliable internal water supply, their food is running low. At some point, the city will either surrender or become so weak that the Babylonian army will breach the walls with little resistance. Anybody with a grain of sense can see that; and Jeremiah says so. But the king insists on hanging on to the traditional belief that God will defend his city against all comers – Babylon included – and so, he throws Jeremiah in jail. He just doesn’t want to hear the truth.

So, I ask again… why would Jeremiah buy a field under circumstances like that? After all, Jeremiah was the ultimate realist. He knew that Babylon’s victory was certain. (And, in fact, they did conquer Jerusalem not long after this story takes place.) What in the world was Jeremiah thinking? Jeremiah was thinking that, no matter how hopeless the situation, there is always hope in God. Remember that God told him to buy the field from his cousin as a sign of hope in the future. After he bought the field and gave the deed to the scribe Baruch to record, Jeremiah proclaimed, “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: ‘Houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’” Now, he never used the word “hope.” But hope is exactly what Jeremiah had. And it’s important to understand where Jeremiah put his hope. He didn’t have hope in the king’s ability to hold out against Babylon. He certainly didn’t have hope that Babylon might have compassion and spare Jerusalem! No, Jeremiah had hope in the god of his fathers who promised to bring his nation through warfare and exile back to their families and to their ancestral lands. Although the circumstances appeared to be hopeless, Jeremiah’s act proclaimed that in God, we always have hope. Despite the presence of the Babylonian army and the immanent destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah’s act began to reclaim the neighborhood for God’s people.

God calls us today, just as God called Jeremiah, to reclaim the neighborhoods in our lives. And there are a lot of neighborhoods that need to be reclaimed, aren’t there? Some are the burned-out, tumble-down, boarded-up neighborhoods of our inner cities. There’s precious little hope to be found there. Whole families exist on welfare for generations, because there are no jobs to be found there; and what work exists is low-wage and menial. You can’t support a family on that kind of job, much less get ahead.  Some are the affluent, upper-class neighborhoods of the suburbs. Does that surprise you? Think for a moment: where is the hope of most owners of sprawling McMansions with a golf course view? Why, it’s in the stock market… or in the family inheritance. Surely the recent economic disaster teach us that money is the worst place to put our hope! And some of the neighborhoods that we need to reclaim aren’t neighborhoods at all. They are groups of people – battered women, bullied students, homeless men who have given up on life. Hope? Not for them.

God calls us today, just as God called Jeremiah, to spread hope through our actions. The good news is that God is with us always, and that God will make a way through even the most difficult circumstances! And we are the ones who are called to take action against all those situations that drive hope out of the lives of millions of people. Now, we don’t have to find an abandoned property in the middle of west Dayton and renovate it. Sure, some Christians do that. But others reclaim the neighborhood by working for Habitat for Humanity… or speaking out against laws that restrict opportunity instead of expanding it… or maybe even intervening if they see someone being bullied. Hope, you know, begins small. But once it starts, it doesn’t stay that way for long.

On the way home from the east coast on one of our recent trips, Fred and I stopped by the Flight 93 memorial in western Pennsylvania. You will recognize it as the site where the third hijacked plane crashed on 9/11. The courageous actions of its passengers prevented that plane from destroying the Capitol building or possibly even the White House in Washington, D.C. on that terrible day. All of those passengers were killed in the crash. On the site is a long, white marble wall engraved with the names of the brave people on that plane who sacrificed their lives to prevent the success of terrorism. At the base of the wall lay items that visitors leave there – a rosary… a teddy bear… a single rose. One item caught my eye and my heart. It was a set of military dog tags. Why did a visitor choose to leave dog tags? Did it signify that the passengers on Flight 93 were as brave as any member of our military forces? Did it honor the sacrifice that civilian passengers on a commercial airline aren’t supposed to have to make? We’ll never know. But to me, it was a symbol of hope – hope that one day, we can give away all our dog tags. On that day, all of creation will be the neighborhood. On that day, we will care as much about people who are different than we are as we will about people who are the same. On that day, we won’t talk about “we” and “them,” but about “all of us.” On that day, God has promised that there will be no more hate, no more terrorism, no more war. On that day, all the money that we spend to build tanks and drones and missiles will be used to sustain life instead of to destroy it. On that day, there won’t be any more need for dog tags.

That is the hope that we are called to share. May its fulfillment come soon!

 

Jesus, Take the Wheel

Last week my sermon considered faith -- what it is and why we have it. This week, my sermon is about trust, which is a natural consequence of faith. After all, if we have faith in someone, doesn't it make sense for us to trust that person? Do what does it mean to trust God? This sermon uses the words of a popular song to consider the answer to that question.

If any of you are country music fans, you might recognize the title of today’s sermon as the title of a song by Carrie Underwood. It tells the story of a young woman who is driving home on Christmas Eve to see her family, her baby asleep in the back seat. In the words of the song, she was “low on faith and gasoline,” and because she had a lot on her mind, she wasn’t really paying attention to the road. Before she knew it, she was spinning on a sheet of black ice, out of control and heading for disaster. Terrified, she cried, “Jesus, take the wheel. Take it from my hands! I’m letting go; so give me one more chance and save me from this road I’m on. Jesus, take the wheel!”

I’ll let the words to the song tell you the rest of the story. “It was still getting colder when she made it to the shoulder and the car came to a stop. She cried when she saw that baby in the backseat sleeping like a rock. And for the first time in a long time, she bowed her head to pray. She said, ‘I’m sorry for the way I’ve been living my life. I know I’ve got to change, so from tonight, Jesus, take the wheel.’”

That’s a powerful song. Maybe it touches you deep down inside like it does me. Every time I hear that song, I wonder whether I’m really letting Jesus take the wheel of my life, or whether I’m actually being a back-seat driver. You all know about back-seat drivers. Back-seat drivers are supposed to just be along for the ride, but they really want to be in charge of the whole trip. Back-seat drivers are always making comments and suggestions, and telling the driver what to do. Back-seat drivers don’t trust anybody else to get them where they need to go. When we try to be back-seat drivers with our lives, we undermine all God’s efforts to make our lives meaningful. God can get us where we need to go if we’ll just take our hands off the wheel and get out of God’s way!

The author of Deuteronomy didn’t know anything about cars or steering wheels or back-seat drivers, but he did know that there are two ways that we can live our life: God’s way… and the world’s way. God’s way leads to a rich, full life. God’s way is making time for prayer, loving others as much as we love ourselves, and showing our faith through deeds of charity and compassion. The world’s way is very different. The world’s way is harshness, selfishness, and judgment. The Scriptures say that in the end, it leads to death. “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction,” says Deuteronomy. “Choose life, so that you and your children may live.” If we let Jesus take the wheel and drive us God’s way, we will travel the road of life. If we don’t, we’ll end up on the road to death.

That seems easy enough. There’s no secret to how to live God’s way. We can read it over and over and over in scripture. We should “do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God.” That’s the prophet Micah’s summary of it (6:8); and the Old Testament law and the other prophets and all the Gospels say the very same thing. We all know what we should do; but very few people actually do it. Why do you suppose that is the case? I think that, in the end, it is an issue of trust.

Let’s go back to that song again, and the image of Jesus as our driver. Jesus is the only one who knows what’s on the road ahead. If we want to say safe, we really need to trust him. We don’t have a road map of the future or a GPS system that will tell us which decisions will bring us joy and which ones will bring us pain. We can’t see beyond the limited vision of our imaginations. Like driving using the headlights on a car, we can only see so far ahead. And there are bumps ahead of us that might run us off the road altogether. We can’t see those coming up. We have to trust in something beyond our limited selves. Now, if we have faith that God exists, and if we have faith that God is a loving God, and if we have faith that Jesus is God incarnate, then doesn’t it make sense to trust Jesus as our driver?

The trouble is that Jesus frequently drives us over roads that don’t look very appealing. For example, loving others as we love ourselves is a very difficult road to travel. It’s full of bumps and ruts. And that road of mercy and compassion is really hard to stay on! Why, sometimes we can’t even be sure where the sides of the road are. The road of selfishness and judgment, though, is wide and well-paved. It’s easy to see where that road goes! And sometimes Jesus drives us right into a tunnel that’s so black that we can’t see our nose in front of our face. Those are the times that we wonder if Jesus really knows where he’s going. And those are the times when we really do have to trust him to take the wheel.

Maybe you’re still wondering whether you should let Jesus take the wheel of your life. Would you like some examples of people who let God do the driving? Just read Hebrews 11. It gives a whole list of people who had enough faith to let God drive their lives. Abraham is a great example. Abraham heard God tell him to leave his ancestral home and go somewhere else – somewhere he had never been before. In fact, he didn’t even know where he was going; but he trusted God enough to travel to an unknown land. Moses is another example. After being brought up in the palace of Pharaoh, Moses fled from Egypt and made his home in what we now call the desert of Sinai. Years later, God told him to go back to Egypt and confront Pharaoh – and then to lead the Israelite slaves out of Egypt. Despite his misgivings – and he had a lot of them – Moses trusted God enough to do just that. And what about Esther? Esther isn’t in Hebrews 11, but she should be. Esther was the queen of Persia when she heard about a plot to kill all the Jewish people. She risked her life to go to the king and expose the plot. Because she let God take the wheel of her life, the entire Hebrew nation was saved.

“Jesus, take the wheel!” That’s not just the title of a great country and western song. It should be what we say every single morning, right after we get out of bed and give thanks for another day of life. It’s a good thing to say when we have a difficult decision to make, and we pray for guidance. And it’s a good thing to say when we are tempted to hate, or to take revenge, or to despair of our lives. Remember the choice that Deuteronomy gives us. “I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. Choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

Yes, choose life. Let Jesus take the wheel.