Gifts and Givers. Purpose: To assert that gifts shape the givers as much as the receivers.

Transcription

1 June 24, 2012 Luke 19:11-26 Pastor Rosanna McFadden Creekside COB Gifts and Givers Purpose: To assert that gifts shape the givers as much as the receivers. Good morning. The parable that Shelly read reminded me of my father, and his wacky sense of humor. He loved word plays, and he especially liked to take familiar songs or jingles and put a different spin on them. For instance, the Sunday School song Jesus wants me for a sunbeam -- do some of you remember that? Here s my dad s version: A sunbeam, a sunbeam, Jesus wants me for a sunbeam; a sunbeam, a sunbeam, I ll be a toaster for him. Here s the jingle that this parable made me think of: Jesus puts his money at the First National Bank; Jesus saves. Silly, I know, but it got me to thinking about saving, and what that means in the context of Luke 19. After all, this parable is not that sympathetic to the most financially conservative folks in the church who would advocate taking all the church s financial assets and socking them away in a safe, but low-yield savings account where they wouldn t see the light of day until we need to put a new roof on the church, or some other big project. On the other hand, I don t think this parable of Jesus--and certainly not the parable in Luke chapter 16 about the dishonest manager who swindled his master and then weaseled out of it by forgiving all the master s debts -- is meant to be taken as literal financial advice. This parable, like the other parables of Jesus, is a story that illustrates something about the kingdom of God; it isn t a literal story, and it may have multiple layers of meaning, so we need to unpack it a bit. This parable is often referred to as the parable of the talents, because some English translations translate the unit of money as a

2 talent. A talent is a unit of weight, which in the ancient world was used to measure gold, silver, or other precious metal. That s why the NRSV uses pounds (similar to the unit of money in England, which was also based on weight at one time). Talents is a convenient translation if we re trying to get past thinking about just money, and want to think in more general terms about the things that we are given. We can all think of people who are talented -- if we re lucky, we know some of them personally. Often they re people who have gifts or skills that we wish we had: musical, artistic, or athletic ability or maybe skill at relating to people, figuring out mechanical things, or (in my case) using computers. It is generally believed that talents are God-given. This parable suggests that, too: the nobleman passes out the talents before he leaves the country. Slaves would certainly not have a way of earning their own money; a gift would be the only way they would have anything at all. The slaves handle their talents in various ways -- this, too, is fits with what we know about God s gifts and about human beings. After all, we all know folks who have talent, but lack the discipline to develop or apply it. There may be a few child prodigies who excel without effort, but for the rest of us it takes practice, practice, practice, and even hard work can only get us so far. No matter how much I practice, I ll never be able to play basketball like LeBron James. Maybe those talents aren t distributed so evenly after all. Notice that the parable doesn t tell us how the first slave managed to make that fabulous 1000% return on his investment. If this were a Charles Schwab seminar, or if Jesus were all about giving savvy advice so churches could manage their financial assets more effectively, this would be important information to have. Did the slave earn the ten talents ethically? Did he invest in only socially responsible companies? Pay fair wages? Provide decent working conditions? Employ undocumented workers? The master doesn t seem to be interested in this at all -- it s almost as if money isn t really the point of the parable. So if not money, then what? What is Jesus on about? Back in April, when I was working with the kids to plan Youth Sunday, we were going through the elements of the worship service, and I

3 asked, Who would like to pray the offertory prayer? One of the kids asked What s that? and another one immediately answered with a phrase that Pastor Janet says nearly every Sunday, one which you can probably say with me now: God bless the gifts, the givers, and those who don t have anything to give. I was tickled that some of the youth actually pay attention during worship, and I m grateful for Janet s phrase and how it s made me consider this parable. I believe this parable -- and the kingdom of God, for that matter -- is about gifts and givers. But it isn t about what the servants make of the gifts, it s what the gifts make of the servants. Let me repeat that: the kingdom of God is not about what we make of God s gifts, it s about what God s gifts make of us. You heard Shelly talk about the Followers of Faith gift card give-away which will happen at the end of the service today. I think this is a wonderful idea, one which came out of an earlier experience of members of the Followers of Faith Team. I think it has the potential to be a life-changing experience. But the lives it has the most potential to change are not necessarily the lives of those who receive the $25 gift card. Don t get me wrong, the gift of $25 should be welcome in any household; it s a great thing for anyone to get. Hopefully it will go toward something needed -- food, or diapers, or maybe some special respite for a worn-out caregiver. Maybe it will lead someone to learn more about Creekside Church and come and visit us. That would be a great outcome, but those things are in God s hands, not ours. The truth is, the person who is the most likely to be changed by this gift is you -- the giver. Most of us are not in the habit of giving things away to people we don t know. And I would guess that many of us are also out of the habit of talking about our church and what it means to us with people we don t know, too. I think the practice of giving, whether it s gift cards, money, testimony, time, or encouragement, is something which can change our lives. This may come as a shock to you, but there are people -- not just outside the church, but within it -- who think that the church exists to meet their needs. Whether they are hungry, sick, spiritually depleted, discouraged, or lonely, they believe the church should be there to love and support them. They are right. This is absolutely work the church should be doing. Not just the pastoral staff, but all of us, as

4 ministers of the good news of Jesus Christ should be asking what we can do to meet the needs of others. But I worry about people who see themselves only as recipients of what the church has to give. How does it shape me if I always identify myself as one of those who don t have anything to give? What does it say about the talents that God has given me? People who see the church only as kind of a spiritual ATM that they can make a withdrawals from are missing one of the gifts of being Christian: giving. It s not so much that my meager talents will change the course of the kingdom of God, or even the ministry of this congregation. But giving changes me. And when individuals are transformed from being people who fearfully hoard the little bit they have to become people who are willing to risk their talents for the sake of the master, then amazing things start to happen. When we allow giving to transform us, then we have set Jesus on the loose in our lives and that will touch the lives of the people around us. At the end of the parable, the master takes away the single pound that the last servant kept, and gives it to the servant who already had ten pounds, and the master says: To all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. (19:26) The onlookers are shocked -- after all, the poor guy only has one pound. Why take it away from him? The guy with ten pounds doesn t need it. This would be shockingly unfair if this parable were about money. But if we look at this statement through the lens of how giving changes us, it makes a lot more sense. Those who risk generosity become generous people. Generous people find it easier to give, and are more aware of the gifts God has given them which they can share with others. Other people respond to generosity by being more generous themselves. The more generosity we have, the more generosity we receive. In contrast, if we keep the little bit we have because we are afraid to lose it, or don t think anyone else deserves to have it, that effects how we relate to other people. We may not literally lose everything we have, but our capacity for generosity will shrink until we can t imagine giving something without keeping track of how much that person owes us. When this happens, our generosity is zero. Our account is empty.

5 Jesus frames this parable in financial terms, but I think it s important for us to move beyond gifts as money. I believe the talent which each of us is given is the capacity for generosity. Like any other talent, it s one which improves with practice. The crazy thing about spiritual gifts is, the more you share them, the more you have to give. Without generosity, the people around us have less, but we have less, too. Do you remember that Jesus saves jingle I sang a while ago? (I won t sing it again). In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for salvation and the word for healing are the same word: it s the root of our English word salve, the ointment which eases the pain of a wound. We are all of us wounded people in need of salvation. Some of the wounds come from others, some are self-inflicted. A generous and forgiving heart and spirit is one of the ways we help others to heal; it is also the only way we ourselves can heal. Refusing to give to others because we ve been hurt only makes our wounds deeper; we need the salve of forgiveness, and we begin by offering it to others. Salvation in Jesus Christ is a gift which is given to everyone, to make us whole and healthy people. We can choose to multiply it by giving it away, or we can hold it close so it can t be taken from us, and eventually it will dwindle down to nothing. The goal of the kingdom of God is salvation for everyone: when we deny it to others we diminish ourselves. I hope these gift cards challenge us to think about generosity. Am I a gift, a giver, or someone who doesn t have anything to give? If you do leave here today a gift card, how can you give that to share the kingdom of God? If you don t here today without a gift card, how will give the gifts you already have to share the kingdom of God? God bless the gifts, the givers, and those who think they don t have anything to give, that we may all be sent out to proclaim the reign of God s kingdom. Amen.