RISKS AND REWARDS Andrew Wilson Hebrews 6:10-12 September 10, 2006 Matthew 25:14-30 That story is commonly known as the Parable of the Talents, but I think it would be more descriptive to call it: The Parable of Risks and Rewards. The parable encourages people who love the Lord to live boldly and take chances. It also contains a word of judgment against people who decide to play it safe. The main message of the parable is that, in God s kingdom, the reward for risk-taking is eternal joy, and the reward for hiding under a rock is losing everything. The talent that Jesus refers to is a unit of money. In Jesus day, a talent was worth 6,000 drachmas, each drachma being worth about a day s wages. I ll talk more about the significance of money in the parable in a minute. Most Bible commentators agree that we shouldn t read the parable simply as a lesson in finances. The talents entrusted to the servants are symbolic of the totality of the gifts that God entrusts to us during our lifetime. In English the word talent is borrowed directly from the Greek, but of course in English we don t use the word in reference to money. Rather, the word refers to a whole range of mental and physical capacities that are widely and disproportionately distributed among us. The word talent found its way into our language during the fifteen and sixteen centuries. The changed meaning reflects the fact that English Bible scholars interpreted the parable symbolically. Because the meaning of the word changes as we move from Greek to English, it s easy for us to misunderstand the story. It s appropriate, at the symbolic level, to think of the talents in terms of what we re good at. But we should remember that, at the most basic level, Jesus is talking directly about money. As I said, during the first century the talent was worth about 6,000 days wages for a daylaborer. If we assume a person works about 300 days a year, then one talent is worth the equivalent of 20 years wages. That s a huge load of cash. To put it in figures we can relate to: a person working 8 hours a day for 300 days a year at just $8 per hour would make a total of $384,000 over a 20 year period. Using the same figures: two talents, or forty years wages, would be worth $768,000. Five talents, or 100 years wages, would be worth almost $2,000,000. It s hard to relate to any of the three servants when we picture the money being given to them in one lump sum. Few of us will ever receive anything close to $384,000 all at once. But we shouldn t let ourselves get hung up on that part of the story. We should instead contemplate the fact that, over the course of our lives, most of us will receive far more than one talents 1
worth of money. The various sums of money mentioned in the parable are huge. But then, so are the material blessings that we receive over the course of our lives. And so are our opportunities to make a difference in God s kingdom. The master returns after a long time and finds that two of his servants have managed to double his money. He s obviously pleased with those results they certainly sound impressive. But let s think about that for a minute. How hard is it, really, to double your money when you have a long investment horizon, as these servants apparently had? Assuming an average return of 9 percent, money that s left untouched doubles in value about every eight years. Assuming a more modest average return of 6 percent, money doubles in value about every twelve years. In our society, it doesn t take great luck or a lot of technical expertise to double your money over the course of many years, as two of the servants in the parable have done. What it takes instead is steadiness of purpose and an appetite for risk. You have to have patience to ride out the economic storms that occasionally move in. And you have to have the discipline, year in and year out, to spend less money than you make. Why is the master so pleased with the two servants who invested his money? Listen to his words to each of them: Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things - Matthew 25:21, 23 Notice that the master doesn t seem to be particularly impressed with the amount of money that the two servants have returned to him. Nor is the master dazzled by the servants cleverness. Their master praises them simply because they ve been good and faithful. It s hard for us to accept the idea that the Lord isn t keeping score. It s hard to believe that he welcomes us into the kingdom on the basis of our faith and not our good works. But that s the message of the gospel. That s the message of Paul s letter to the Romans. And that s the message affirmed in the parable. God wants and expects us to produce fruit. But God doesn t set a benchmark in terms of the amount of fruit we must produce. Rather, he says to us: If you believe in me, you ll seek to obey me. And if you seek to obey me, I ll use you to produce a harvest of righteousness. What God seeks from us, in other words, is faithfulness. The goodness that flows from us as a result of our faithfulness isn t our work; rather, it s a work of the Holy Spirit in us. Notice that there s a difference between the two faithful servants in terms of the rewards they receive from the master. They re both welcomed into the master s presence, and they re both given charge of many things. And yet the servant who realizes the greater return on his investment gets the greater reward. He s the one who receives the one talent when it s taken 2
away from the lazy servant. He provides the illustration for the Lord s teaching at the end of the story: For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. - Matthew 25:29 Jesus tells the disciples again and again that they re going to be rewarded by God for their good works. For example, he says this in the Sermon on the Mount: [W]hen you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. - Matthew 6:3, 4 The parable contains a similar message. It tells us that the reward we receive from God will be based upon the fruit of our life s work. And that s very different from saying that our salvation is based on our works. We re talking now about the blessings we will receive, in this life and in the life to come, as the result of our faithfulness. We re told there will be a direct correlation between our faithfulness here on earth, and the importance of the responsibilities that God entrusts to his us in his heavenly kingdom. Sometimes we feel driven to do something great something that will earn us God s admiration and respect. Sometimes we just yearn to hear the Lord tell us how great we are. There are times when I d just love to hear God say, Wow, Andy what a fantastic servant you are! You re just such a talent. And humble, too! What would I do without you? What we should yearn to hear instead are those simple words spoken by the master: Well done, good and faithful servant! Goodness and faithfulness not greatness are the goals of the Christian life. Why is the master so disgusted with the servant who buried his money in the ground? That servant is full of excuses. He says: Master, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid!... And the master responds: You wicked, lazy servant! [Y]ou knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. 3
The unproductive servant is resentful of his master. He feels overburdened by the responsibility of tending to the money entrusted to him. As a result, he fails even to invest in an interestbearing passbook account. The excuse he gives for his failure is that he was afraid. The master isn t taken in by this impassioned speech. He basically says to the servant: If you really were afraid of me, you would have made at least a minimal effort to tend to my money. But you did nothing at all! And nothing is going to get you nothing! In most people s minds, wickedness is associated with evil actions. Murderers and rapists are wicked. The 9-11 plotters were wicked. But here, in Jesus parable, the bar seems to be lowered. The obstinate servant has been lazy and has failed to produce results. On those grounds alone, the master calls him wicked, and he condemns him in the harshest possible terms. This is the hard part of the parable. This is that part that we would rather gloss over. What the parable is telling us is that God doesn t tolerate willful, bull-headed disobedience. His salvation doesn t extend to those who ignore his commands. Those who refuse to listen to his voice and acknowledge his Lordship are going to have everything taken away from them. Many people have trouble with this aspect of the Gospel. Judgment isn t a part of their spiritual vocabulary. Maybe you find yourself asking: What about God s forgiveness? What about his tender mercy? Doesn t the Bible teach us that the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger [and] abounding in love (Psalm 103:8)? We need to remember that God stands ready to embrace and accept us no matter what sins we may have committed. But we also need to remember that God respects our freedom, and he isn t going to force us to come to him, no matter how much his heart aches for us. In the parable, remember, the servant failed even in the simplest test of faithfulness. He didn t even bother to deposit the master s money in the bank. Had he done so, we can surmise, the master would have shown greater mercy towards him. As it was, by cutting him off and sending him away, the master was only confirming the choice the servant himself had already made. I m sure there s more than one person here today who can identify with that servant who buried his talent in the ground. Maybe you struggle to believe in God. Or maybe you believe in God, but you ve never experienced his grace and mercy. To you, God seems like a harsh taskmaster whose demands can never be satisfied. Instead of seeking refuge in his arms, you re looking for security someplace else. Maybe it s in material possessions. Maybe it s in your reputation. Maybe it s in another person. Or maybe it s in the empty shell of religion without the Spirit. During the last years of my grandfather s life he lived in a modest apartment building near our house in Arcadia. I used to visit him there as a junior higher. There was a young man living in a 4
unit nearby who always seemed to be hanging out by the pool. Sometimes he was accompanied by girls in bikinis. He owned a Camero with huge tires and a custom paint job. I thought to myself: Awesome car, tons of girlfriends, no job, no lawn to mow this guy is living the life! Grandpa Tom, I asked my grandfather one day, what s that guy s secret? How can he afford to just sit by the pool all day? Because, my grandfather explained, he s a spoiled bum who inherited $100,000 from his parents. Wow, I said, what a great life! That was the wrong thing to say to a hardworking, Scottish Presbyterian who never inherited a dime. My grandfather then proceeded to describe the horrors and degradations that awaited his lazy, good-for-nothing neighbor who had buried his talent in the ground. I was skeptical. Lounging by the pool all day with teenage girls sounded pretty good to me. Keep in mind, I was 13 years old. One of the hardest lessons for us to learn is that there s no real security on this earth. We we re reminded of that fact ever year at this time, as we remember the events of 9-11. No matter how hard we try, we can t insulate ourselves from danger. Nothing in this life is permanent. Security is an illusion, and people who try to avoid trouble at all costs always end up disappointed. The historian and biographer Kenneth Davis understood this truth. He once observed: Any life truly lived is a risky business, and if one puts up too many fences against the risks one ends by shutting out life itself. A wise person recognizes that change is inevitable, and that we need a certain measure of insecurity in our lives to spur us on and to help us do our best. The Spanish have a proverb. It goes: You can t catch trout with dry breeches. That s the message of Jesus parable. If we want to discover the abundant life that God intends for us, and to experience true freedom, we have to venture into the water. We have to learn to take embrace the challenges of each day, and take risks for him. Wayne Gretzky was the leading scorer in the history of ice hockey. Some believe he was the greatest player of all time. Gretzky once reflected on the comment of an early coach who was frustrated with him because he wasn t scoring during an important game. Wayne, he told him privately, you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take. Likewise, we miss 100 percent of every goal, dream or project that we fail to pursue. 5
The Lord wants us to be people of faith which is to say, he wants us to think less about our personal security and more about the opportunities he sends to us every day. He wants us to live on the edge, and discover the excitement of uncertainty as we invest our lives in his kingdom. I don t know what that will mean for you in this year ahead. Maybe it will mean changing your focus, so that you ll stop doing things that are safe and familiar, and you ll start doing things that are risky and new for you. Maybe it will mean investing less time in a hobby and more time in someone who needs you. Maybe it will mean joining a Seed Group that can help you to rebalance your life and tune into God s call. Or maybe it will mean helping to fund a ministry where you can see God s Spirit at work. Whatever you do, do it with passion and intelligence. Believe in yourself not because you re invincible, and not because you re better than other people, but because Christ lives inside you. Take calculated risks not because you want to put God to the test, but because it s only through danger and risk that God s kingdom comes. I want to close by reading to you a few lines by an anonymous poet. They once appeared in a Dear Abby newspaper column: To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach for another is to risk involvement. To expose your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To believe is to risk failure. But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The people who risk nothing do nothing, have nothing, are nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live. Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom. Only a person who risks is free. Holy God, one day, the things of this world are going to fade into oblivion. No amount of hoping and wishing and praying is going to keep that from happening. Only you and your kingdom are going to remain. Therefore, Lord, we want to invest all that we are, and all that we have, in your kingdom. Keep us from being timid. Inspire us to take intelligent risks with the talent you ve entrusted to us. Make us abundantly productive so your kingdom will grow, and your work will be done in us, through Christ, our Lord. Amen. 6