In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Transcription

1 THE PARABLE OF THE TOUGH BOSS November 16, 2014, 33 rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Stewardship Sunday Matthew 25:14-30 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: To follow Jesus Christ means risking and trusting. May your word find a place to rest in our hearts, O Lord, and lodged there, may it direct our love, our hope, our passion, and the choices we make. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. The passage Daniel just read with ends on a jarring note, to say the least, a note especially jarring to investment bankers and financial planners! Like so many of Jesus parables, the narrative conceit is about financial matters or real-estate deals. This parable ends with the third of the three investment bankers in the story being cast into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, all because of his overly cautious investment strategy. There are tough bosses and there are tough bosses, but outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? all because the poor guy had a conservative financial strategy, namely a hole in the ground? The parable is simple enough. A wealthy man entrusts three of his servants with major money to invest. The money is in the form of a Greek coin named the talenta. This talent may have been the most valuable coin in circulation at the time. Each one was worth thousands of dollars. You have to remember that the word talent had not yet come to mean what it means to us today. To Jesus hearers, a talent was simply lots of money. Anyway, one guy gets, say, fifty thousand dollars; another one gets twenty, and the last of the three just ten K. The first two take big risks and turn handsome profits. In fact, they double the boss money first-century hedge fund managers! But the third guy s nervous. He digs - 1 -

2 a hole in the ground and buries his ten thou to make absolutely sure he's got it when his hard-nosed boss gets back. The tale is familiar enough that we hardly see the jolt, the towering irony, the great reversal, imbedded in its ending. The risktakers are praised; the cautious, level-headed, judicious servant is shipped off to outer darkness! One of the popular teaching methods of first-century rabbis was dramatic hyperbole, the use of extreme and exaggerated images. Jesus too used this kind of verbal hyperbole when he wanted to blast out the truth in a way that even the deafest of us could not miss. So in this parable of tough boss, he uses hyperdramatic language underscore his simple message. That message? To be faithful to God that s who the boss stands for, of course involves taking real risks in life. There s just no way around risk. To be faithful means doing something with the talenta you and I have been given us instead of hiding em in a hole. And doing something instead of nothing always means taking risks. Doing something instead of nothing inevitably risks being criticized. Doing something instead of nothing invariably risks failure. This week s New York Times Magazine includes a whole spread on the glories of failure. To be faithful to his way, Jesus is emphatically declaring, means you re called to do something with the talents entrusted to you. To be faithful means you ll just have to trust sometimes, even when you can t know for sure where life is going. There s no way around the risk except of course digging a hole, and you know where that gets you! At one level, this year s stewardship campaign at Brick Church has been cautious a trimmed, tight but balanced budget. I m amazed at how often the stewardship committee meets, how hard its members work, how committed they are. But at another level, the challenge that they and the session have set before us dares some real risks. Specifically, it challenges all of us to risk increasing the level of our commitment. I m going to end this sermon on a parable, my own parable, one I wrote some years ago. It s actually a short story; I ll edit to make it even shorter. It explores - 2 -

3 this very theme of risk and trust using an odd narrative metaphor. The story is about a little boy named James Cory, a second-grader in a tiny Minnesota town. James lives across the street from an elderly couple named Angus and Minnie MacDowell. Angus and Minnie have befriended the little boy, whose own mother and grandmother seem eternally tired and unable to do much in the way of mothering and grand-mothering. James is an extraordinarily active seven-year old who sleeps sporadically, talks without so much as a comma, and moves incessantly. He is a sweet-spirited child, boundlessly enthusiastic about everything. One day their pastor visits the old couple, and over coffee they fall into a tale about young James a tale ultimately about risk and trust. The conversation takes place in mid-november, a few weeks after Halloween. The pastor is the narrator, but the story begins with old Angus telling his minister about James and the Halloween just past: James said his mom bought him a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle outfit over in Mankato to wear for Halloween. But he was real upset about it. Said nobody cares for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles no more Said he would die if he had to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Angus nodded toward his wife, Minnie, and went on, Minnie, she says to the boy, James, how'd ya like to be a ghost? Our boys used to be ghosts every year for their whole growing-up. And I say, We still got their ghost outfits around here someplace. Probably up in the attic. " Angus took up the tale with more enthusiasm than I had seen in him for months, I found 'em all right. Up in the attic just like I said. Not much to one of Minnie's ghost outfits, just an old bed sheet cut into a big circle with a couple of holes for the eyes. Then you hold it all in place with a belt around the waist Anyhoo, Donnie's ghost outfit fit James just perfect. " Minnie lifted a trembling hand that stilled as she covered a smile, The boy was so excited. He couldn't hardly hold still for us to get the outfit on him

4 He was even more charged-up than usual. He was going out to trick-or-treat all alone, so Angus said he would follow behind at a distance, just to keep an eye on him Angus leaned back in the davenport, the coffee mug between his hands. Well, the kid is so fired up. You'd think he'd never been out trick-or-treatin' before. I get the ghost costume on him as best I can I barely have it buckled up tight when he grabs the plastic Jack O'Lantern bucket and tears out the door lickety-split. I'm tryin' to get into my coat and go to follow him I see him tearing across the front lawn and just as I step out the door the kid runs full-speed, smack-dab into our big maple. I run over to him fast as I can to see if he's hurt, but he picks himself up and takes off down across the yard and, would you believe it, he runs smack-dab into the Jennerson's big box-elder tree. Knocks the wind right out of the kid. This time I catch up to him before he gets on his feet again. He's flat on his back and I look down at him. 'James!' I say, 'Are you O. K?' Then I look close and I see that the eye holes Minnie cut in the ghost costume, they don't line up with his eyes. Not even close. Kid can't see a thing! So I reach down and adjust the ghost costume a little to the right so he can see out the holes and he looks up at me, catches his breath, and says, 'Angus! I didn't know you were supposed to be able to see!'" After the pastor leaves them, he muses about the story he had just heard: As I walked down Maple Street back to the church, I noted the two trees James had collided with, the MacDowell's maple and Bud Jennerson's box elder. Stout trees, both of them. I tried to imagine what it would be like to trust anything so utterly as to dash blindly out of the house and down the street. I suppose all of us have our ghost costumes on askew half the time. But as a child trusts an old man from down the street and flies off into the night when he can see nothing before him, we come to trust the One who loves us even more steadily and faithfully. The truth is that so often what lies before us is hidden. The truth is that risk is an unavoidable part of any journey that - 4 -

5 goes anywhere that matters. Truth is, it s either trust and go, or stay in the house. If you stay home, cautious and safe, if you dare no risks, there will be neither treats nor tricks. If you go, you will doubtless run into a tree or two. When you do, all you can do is catch your breath, pick yourself up, and keep going. That s the end of my parable. Risk and trust. There is no way to dodge them in our individual lives. Every step each of us takes, every step in love, every step at work, even a few steps down the aisle with a pledge card or a prayer card in hand, every step means risk, every step means trust. No way around it. Trust and risk. There s no way to dodge this truth in our life together as a congregation, either. Every step Brick Church takes into the future means that we have to trust, trust God and each other, and take the risks. Trust and risk. It s either that or stay home and dig a hole. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen