"Abundance and Risk": A Sermon on the Parable of the Talents

Vincent van Gogh, Lying Cow (1883)

Preached at Church of the Incarnation, Dallas. Readings here. Listen to a recording here, which differs somewhat from the text below, because the latter benefits from suggestions from my rector which I incorporated into subsequent services.

"Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that, by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." (Collect for Proper 28)

Ruminants. That’s what today’s collect calls us to be with the Bible. Ruminants. You know, animals who chew their cuds, like cows and sheep and camels.

Have you ever seen a cow chewing its cud? I grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, and so I have a pretty clear picture in my mind of a cow chewing its cud, savoring it patiently, with eyes half-closed, perhaps even drooling. 

Today’s collect always makes me think of a cow chewing its cud, when it asks for the grace to “hear [the Holy Scriptures], read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” The collect calls us to ruminate on Scripture, to chew it over and over in order to receive its nourishment—and to taste its sweetness.

Bernard of Clairvaux said of the words of the Bible, “Enjoying their sweetness, I chew them over and over, my internal organs are replenished, my insides fattened up, and all my bones break out in praise.” [1] But some parts of Scripture need more chewing than others to draw out their sweetness. Some parts are like milk and honey: they taste sweet right away and go down easily. Other parts, though, are more like liver: they’re less appetizing and you’ve really got to chew on them for a while and they require some extra digestion.

Take today’s Gospel lesson for instance. I don’t know about you, but when I first hear this story it sticks in my craw. Especially the ending: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mt. 25:29). 

It just doesn’t seem fair! Those who have will get even more?! And those who have not, will lose even what they have?! Where is the justice in that? Taken as a general statement, isn’t this just a description of the injustice and inequity of this world?

And why is the master so hard on the third servant, the one who got one talent? I can understand why the master is thrilled with the first two servants, the ones who got five talents and two talents: they doubled his investment after all! I’d be pretty pleased, too, if I was the master! Wouldn’t you? But why is he so hard on the third servant? The third servant didn’t do anything wrong! He didn’t lose his master’s money through carelessness or spend it greedily on himself or otherwise waste it. No, he kept it safe, hidden in the ground. When there’s no FDIC insurance and when bankers were seen as pretty crooked characters, money is safer in the ground than in the bank. Wasn’t the third servant just being prudent? Fiscally conservative? So why does the master get so upset with him?

And what of the business ventures of the first two servants? What sort of risky and ethically dubious deals did they do to get such a fantastic rate of return? What if they’d lost their master’s property in a business speculation that turned sour? What would the master thought of them then?

Clearly we need to chew on these words of Scripture some more. Roll it around in our mouths. Figure out what it is we are tasting.

Let’s start by recalling the context. Remember that the parable of the talents is one of a series of parables Jesus tells his disciples. They want to know when God is going to set everything right to fulfill all his promises to his people. When the day of the Lord will arrive. 

Jesus tells them, in effect, “Don’t worry about when; there’s no knowing when. That day will come suddenly, and you’ll know when it’s here. So live expectantly in the meantime. Wait patiently and hopefully. Live now as if the day of the Lord has already come; live now as you will when God’s reign is made manifest.” 

And he tells four stories to drive home the point: The first about two servants who have been left in charge of their master’s household while he’s away. One servant was wise and diligently did the work he was given to do, just as if the master was at home. But the other servant took advantage of his master’s absence and abused the authority he’d been given and “beat his fellow servants, and ate and drank with the drunken” (Mt. 24:49). The second story is about the wise and foolish bridesmaids waiting for the groom—we heard about that last week. Our story is the third one. 

And the fourth is the one about the Son of Man coming in his glory, separating the sheep and the goats, judging the nations based on how they treated “the least of these.”

Here’s the point: these stories are for teaching Jesus’ disciples how to wait for the day of the Lord. How to watch for the Lord to come in the fullness of his kingdom; how to live between the times, in the time of our pilgrimage when we walk by faith not by sight. 

So the parable of the talents has to do with the significance of how we live now between the times, with the fact that we are accountable to God. What we do matters, because our Lord will come to judge the quick and the dead, and, as he says, “then he will repay every man for what he has done” (Mt. 16:27). 

But what sort of Lord do we await? It’s the same nagging question about justice again. Is the God to whom we are accountable like the master the third servant feared? He said, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid” (Mt. 15:24–25). Is our Lord, our Master, a hard man? Hard to please? Severe? Harsh? Unjustly demanding?

Well, no! Let’s look again at the story, and I think we’ll see that the master isn’t as harsh as the third servant thought him to be: The master calls his three servants and entrusts them with his property; to one he gives five talents, to another two, and to another one, each according to his ability. Do you know how much money a talent is? I didn’t either, but I looked it up, and it turns out that one talent is a lot of money! One talent was more than a laborer could expect to earn in 15 years! So two talents is more than someone could expect to earn over the whole course of their career, and five talents would have been beyond a servant’s wildest dreams!

The master is generous: he gives even the least talented of his servants an extravagant sum. And think of the trust he placed in his servants by leaving this immense fortune in their care. And look again at what he says to first two servants: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.” Not only does he reward them for their faithful service, but he invites them to share in his joy. He welcomes them into his happiness. He wants their company.

Our Master, our Lord, gives us even more generous gifts and welcomes us to share in his joy. Our Lord gives us even our life. Everything we are and have is a gift from him. And God gives his people what they need to live in anticipation of joy and beatitude we will share with him his kingdom. As Sam Wells says, “God has given his people everything they need to worship him, to be his friends, and to eat with him. […] [H]e gives his people more than enough. He overwhelms them by the abundance of his gifts.” [2]

You see, the third servant misunderstood both the character of his master and the nature of the gift. Remember what he says to the master, “I knew you to be a hard man...so I was afraid.” He was afraid. He focused so much on his master’s demands that he overlooked his generosity. He couldn’t imagine that his master might invite him to share his joy at his return; he could only imagine the account books. He was concerned only with not doing anything wrong, with keeping safe what he had been given. But in trying to secure it, he loses it. 

Aren’t we often like this servant? Unable to imagine a God who desires our happiness. Only able to imagine life as a zero-sum game. Only able to think that what God gives can be used up and lost. Afraid to take Jesus at his word when he says, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (16:25). We want to keep our life. We want a safe investment. We don’t want to risk the vulnerability of love. 

But, as C.S. Lewis says, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” “Love anything,” he says, “and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket…it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” [3]

“Whoever would save his life will lose it,” Jesus says, “and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 16:25)

God the Giver gifts us the gift of love. And love is not diminished by being given away. Think of how a candle burns just as brightly after another candle has been lit from its flame. That’s what love is like. God is light and love, and gives us himself in Christ Jesus. And Jesus, the true light who shines in the darkness, gives the community of his disciples to be the light of the world. 

“Let your light so shine before men,” he says, “that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 5:16).

Our Master has risked everything for us, and gives us what we need to risk giving ourselves in love. He pours out his Holy Spirit into our hearts, so that we can risk the vulnerability of love, because we know that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ. He gives us what we need to learn to love our enemies and speak the truth and practice peace. Through his word and sacraments he nourishes us to do these good works he has given us to do— feeding the hungry and thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison. 

St. John of the Cross said, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.” [4] When we risk love, we find that love is its own reward. For “God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. And there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn. 4:16b, 18).

And now I think we can taste at last the sweetness of Jesus’ words, when he says, “To everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance” (Mt. 25:29). Risk love, and you will find love. Love, and you will have an abundance of love.

[1] Quoted in Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, pp. 56–7.

[2] Samuel Wells, God’s Companions, p. 17. 

[3] C.S. Lewis, Four Loves.

[4] Quoted in Dorothy Day, "The Scandal of the Works of Mercy," in By Little and By Little, the Selected Writings of Dorothy Day.

"Go and Do Likewise": Imitating the Good Samaritan, Imitating Christ

Detail of miniature, Good Samaritan, Rossano Gospels, Folio 7v, (6th c., Italy)

“[Jesus said], ‘Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise’.”  —Luke 10:36–37

Jesus uses the parable of the good Samaritan to show what it means to be a neighbor.  The parable shows that it was the Samaritan— “the one who did mercy”—who “was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers” (Lk. 10:36–37).  To be a neighbor is to do mercy, and the Lord commands us to “go and do likewise” (10:37).  

In calling us to imitate the good Samaritan, the Lord Jesus calls us to imitate himself.  He calls us to be like the one in whom the God of Israel has fulfilled his promise to do mercy (1:72), in whom “the tender mercy of our God” (1:78) has dawned upon us.  He asks us to be like the Samaritan who was filled with compassion (ἐσπλαγχνίσθη, lit. ‘moved from the bowels,’ 10:33) when he saw the half-dead man on the road to Jericho, just as Jesus had compassion (ἐσπλαγχνίσθη, 7:13, cf. 15:20) when he saw the mother of the dead man in Nain.  He commands us to, like the Samaritan, “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (6:35).  In calling us to do like the Samaritan, he says effectively, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (6:36).

The good Samaritan, then, is a figure of Christ.  As the Venerable Bede puts it, “the Samaritan, giving a helping hand to the man found on the road and covered with wounds, is a figure of Jesus Christ, who, in a more worthy and sublime sense and with a special love, became our neighbor by taking upon himself our wounds to heal them.”*  Christ, who did not deny it when he was called “a Samaritan” (Jn. 8:48), comes to us, who are half-dead from sin, and heals us.  He bears us on his flesh to the inn, “the pandochium [πανδοχεῖον] —that is, the Church, which accepts everyone and denies its help to no one.”†  For our healing, he gives the “two denarii” of the love of God and the love of neighbor.‡  He cleanses us that we might produce good out of good hearts (Lk. 6:45), to become “tenderhearted” (Eph. 4:32), to share in the compassion of God.  “We love because he first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19).

Christ is our neighbor:

“Let us, therefore, love him, for he is our Lord and God; let us love him as our neighbor, since, being our Head and we his members, he cannot be nearer to us. Let us also love those that follow him, and show that we love our neighbor as ourselves by giving them all spiritual and temporal help in our power.”§

* Bede the Venerable, Homily on Luke 10:23–27.  Bede draws on an ancient tradition of figural interpretation of the parable, reaching back through Augustine and Ambrose to Origen in the early third century.

† Origen, Homilies on Luke, 34.7.  The Greek word for “inn” (πανδοχεῖον) is compounded from the words “all” and “receiving.”

‡ Cf. Augustine, En. Ps. 126.11.

§ Bede the Venerable, op. cit.

Paschal Meditation: Vicit agnus noster

Agnus Dei bas-relief, St. Euphrasius basilica, Croatia

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν,

θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας,

καὶ τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι,

ζωὴν χαρισάμενος!

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

— Paschal troparion

“Death will be no more.”

— Rev. 21:4

Death will be no more, because our Lamb, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered” (Rev. 5:5).  He has “trampled down death by death,” and by his blood he has “redeemed for God, from every family, language, people and nation, a kingdom of priests to serve our God.”  Jesus, “the faithful and true witness (martyr),” has conquered by his obedience unto death, from which he was raised as “the firstborn of the dead” (3:14, 1:4).  “Do not be afraid,” he says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one.  I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (1:17b–18); “because I live, you also will live” (Jn. 14:19b).

Christ the Lamb has conquered death, but death has not yet been swallowed up forever (Isa. 25:7, 8; cf. 1 Cor. 15:54).  Death’s shadow is still spread over all the nations, and under it, tears stream down many faces; multitudes mourn and cry and suffer.  Thus it takes courage to wait for the salvation of the Lord (cf. Isa. 25:9), to maintain hope in the midst of devastation and violence.  Walking in the way of the Lord Jesus—who was hated by all who could not bear the blazing light of the truth—requires having the courage to become hated, and yet to love.  “In the world you face persecutions,” he told his disciples, “But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (Jn. 16:33).

Christ has conquered by emptying himself, by laying down his life for the world—in short, he has conquered by love.  Those who would follow him must follow him in love, must lay down their lives for the other.  For “we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 Jn. 3:16).  

Such courageous love—the love of “patient endurance” (Rev. 1:9), love that conquers* hatred and fear and injustice, love that “overcomes evil with good” (Rom. 12:21)—is born of the gift of the conquering Lamb.  He himself pours this love “into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that was given to us,” so that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 5:5, 8:37).  Through the gift of the Spirit by which he conquered death, Christ the Lamb adorns his bride, the holy city (Rev. 21:2).  Adorned in love, she already sings to him from whom nothing can separate her, “I love you, O Lord, my strength.”†

* Cf. Rev. 21:7, 2:7, 11, 17, 26, 28, 3:5, 12, 21.

† Rom. 8:39, Ps. 18:1.  Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei 14.28.

Paschal Meditation: Christ and Peter

Detail of miniature of Christ speaking to Peter,
"Arnstein Passional" (12th c.)

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” — John 10:14–15

That bright morning by the Sea of Tiberias after the risen Lord had breakfasted with his disciples, he strengthened Simon son of John to be what he was called.  When Jesus had first looked at Simon son of John, he said to him, “‘You are to be called Cephas’ (Petros, Peter)” (Jn. 1:42).  He called him the rock (petra) who would prove unstable, who would be prostrated by denying “the stumbling stone” (Rom. 9:32).  Now again he calls Simon to come to him, the Living Stone, and to be built upon the Cornerstone, becoming, like him, a living stone (cf. 1 Pt. 2:4–5).  Jesus strengthened Simon son of John to become Peter.

That bright morning the Shepherd removed the shame of his sheep who had scattered; the one who was deserted comforted (com-fortis) the one who vainly promised never to desert him, “though all become deserters” (Mt. 26:33).  When Peter told Jesus, “I will lay down my life for you” (Jn. 13:37), he presumed to possess the strength of love necessary “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13).  But his denials revealed the hollowness of his words, and he was deflated.  Now his Lord comes to build him up with love.  Three times Jesus gives Peter to declare his love for him, and three times he calls him to love “in truth and action” (1 Jn. 3:18) by feeding his flock.  In so doing, Jesus casts out the fear in which Peter had denied him, and leads him to the perfection of love.*  The Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep (10:15), strengthens Peter to follow him.

Because Jesus first loved him, Peter will lay down his life for him, glorifying God in his death.  As Augustine puts it, 

“Such was the end reached by that denier and lover (ille negator, et amator); elated by his presumption, prostrated by his denial, cleansed by his weeping, approved by his confession, crowned by his suffering, this was the end he reached, to die with a perfected love for the name of him with whom, by a perverted forwardness, he had promised to die. He would do, when strengthened by his resurrection, what in his weakness he promised prematurely. For the needful order was that Christ should first die for Peter’s salvation, and then that Peter should die for the preaching of Christ.”†

* 1 Jn. 4:18.  Cf. Augustine: “Let it be the office of love to feed the Lord’s flock, if it was the signal of fear to deny the Shepherd” (Io. ev. tr. 123.5).

† Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 123.4.

Detail of Apse Mosaic, Basilica San Clemente, Rome

"Remembering Jerusalem"

The New Jerusalem as bride of the lamb, Walters Manuscript W.917, fol. 206v

One thing I asked of the Lord,
   that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
   and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)

I will 'enter my chamber' and will sing you songs of love, groaning with inexpressible groanings on my wanderer's path, and remembering Jerusalem with my heart lifted up toward it--Jerusalem, my home land, Jerusalem, my mother, and above it yourself, ruler, illuminator, father, tutor, husband, pure and strong delights and solid joy and all good things to an unexpressible degree, all being enjoyed in simultaneity because you are the one supreme and true Good.  I shall not turn away until in that peace of this dearest mother, where are the firstfruits of my spirit and the source of my certainties, you gather all that I am from my dispersed and distorted state to reshape me and strengthen me for ever, 'my God my mercy.' (Augustine, Conf. 12.26.23, trans. H. Chadwick)

In the midst of defending his understanding of Genesis 1:1 as one of many true interpretations, Augustine is drawn into this rhapsodic confession.  He was considering whether it is true to interpret the "heavens" God created in the beginning as "the heaven of heavens," that is, Heaven, the spiritual House of God, wherein the beauty of the triune Lord is perpetually beheld.  And now, in the midst of defending his view against potential critics, he breaks off, suddenly, into a love song to his Lord.

Like the psalmist, the "one thing" Augustine asks is "to behold the beauty of the Lord" in his House (Ps. 27:4).  Wandering as he is in the world devastated by sin, he groans like one homesick to enter that state of rest and peace.  Now he is dispersed in the flux of time, finding himself tending toward nothingness.  Now he fleetingly knows the stability of that House, when he lifts up his heart contemplation or in the sursum corda of the liturgy.  But he longs for the Lord to gather his dispersed self together in the heavenly City, that he might "behold the beauty of the Lord" forever.

Augustine's desire is to find his rest, his fulfillment, his life, in the triune Lord.  His desire, to be sure, is to gaze upon the Creator, the Beauty of all things beautiful.  But it is also a desire to be gazed on as the Lord's beloved, and so to find himself gathered together, enfolded in the eternal embrace of Love.  Until that Day--when he will know, even as he has been known (1 Cor. 13:12)--, he will not be fully himself.

Waiting for Love

"Love is the soul's true nourishment, yet this food which of all substances we most need is not something we can produce for ourselves.  One must wait for it.  The only way to make absolutely certain that one will not receive it is to insist on procuring it by oneself.  And once again, this essential dependence can generate anger.  One can attempt to shake it off, and reduce it to the satisfaction of those needs that require no adventure of the spirit or the heart for their filling.  Conversely, we can accept this situation of dependence, and keep ourselves trustingly open to the future, in the confidence that the Power which has so determined us will not deceive us." -- Joseph Ratzinger/ Pope Benedict XVI, in Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life.

Rich thoughts here.  This summer they have taken on existential dimensions in my life, as I've wrestled with deep loneliness while I am in Texas for an internship and my beloved wife in Russia for studies of her own.  But Ratzinger points to the posture of waiting for love to come as something fundamental to our very being.  We humans simply are dependent, we cannot nourish ourselves with the fruit of love that is not love unless it comes to us as a gift.

Ratzinger continues by stating why this hope for love's arrival is not simply a "waiting for Godot":

"The God who personally died in Jesus Christ fulfilled the pattern of love beyond all expectation, and in so doing justified that human confidence which in the last resort is the only alternative to self-destruction."

Faith truly is the opposite of despair.  Despair gives up hope that love will come unbidden, and either turns towards the wall or reaches toward love in the self-defeating attempt to procure it for oneself.  (Was this not what Adam and Eve did when they reached out and took the fruit in the hopes that they would thus make themselves "like God"?)  Faith is the quiet confidence that God will nourish our lives with his love.  Faith waits for love even when everything seems to suggest that love will never come on its own.