Message by Pastor John Culp : November 9, 2008
“A Season for Stewardship 3: A Question of Ownership”
Text – Matthew 25:14-30
How do you see yourself? You know that the whole matter of self image is huge for us. And it can work either for or against us.
Norman Vincent Peal told the story of the time he was walking through one of the crowded commercial districts of Hong Kong and came upon a tattoo studio. He was looking at samples of the wide variety of designs and slogans that customers could have permanently etched on their bodies, when one seized his attention. It was just three words: “Born to lose.”
You may know that Peal devoted much of his life to singing the praises of the power of positive thinking, so of course he was deeply troubled by the thought of that tattoo. Astonished, he asked the tattoo artist, “Does anyone really have that terrible phrase, ‘Born to lose,’ tattooed on his body?”
The man replied, “Yes, sometimes.”
Peal pressed him further: “But I just can’t believe that anyone in his right mind would do that.”
The Chinese man simply tapped his forehead and said in broken English, “Before tattoo on body, tattoo on mind.” (from Power of the Plus Factor)
Thank you, Lord, in contrast to that bleak thought, our self-images can be wonderfully positive and life-giving as well! Christian psychologist James Michaelson once counseled a woman who felt lonely and abandoned. As she explained all that to him, he couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying, because a Scripture kept running through his mind: “It is [the LORD] who has made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100:3).
The verse had no apparent connection with the woman’s problem, but Michaelson couldn’t quit thinking about it. After she finished talking, she sat in silence waiting for a response. Dr. Michaelson didn’t know what to say other than to quote the verse, although he realized it might sound foolish since it seemed unrelated to her dilemma.
“I think God wants you to know something,” Dr. Michaelson said. “‘It is [the LORD] who has made us, and not we ourselves.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
The woman immediately broke down and wept. After composing herself, she explained why. “I didn’t tell you this, but my mother got pregnant with me before she was married. All my life I believed that I was a mistake – an unplanned accident – and that God didn’t create me. When you quoted that verse, I pictured in my mind God’s forming me in my mother’s womb. Now I know that He did create me and that I’m not a mistake. I’ll never be the same again! Thank you, Dr. Michaelson. I’ll never forget this day as long as I live!”
(Kent Crockett, I Once Was Blind but Now I Squint, Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2004, page 84)
The image we have of ourselves can make all the difference in the world – for good or for bad. That’s certainly true when it comes to stewardship, a vital part of what it means for us to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today is Consecration Sunday, the culmination of an intentional look we’ve been taking at stewardship in the last few weeks. You may know that Jesus talked a lot about stewardship. But nowhere did He speak about it more pointedly than in the parable we read together today.
how crucial it is that we see ourselves as stewards over all of life.
What do you suppose Jesus wants to teach us today about this crucial part of what it means to be His disciples?
In the first place, this parable emphasizes our ultimate stewardship: our accounta-bility to the One who owns everything.
The parable comes in the context of a large judgment discourse (Matthew chapters 23-25). Now Matthew was a good Jewish scholar. People who have studied his Gospel have long noted that Matthew’s faith is clearly evident in the way he organizes his book. Moses casts his teaching into the five books we refer to as the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. So Matthew structures the teaching of Jesus into five great discourses. The first is familiar to us as the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7). And the last is Christ’s great teaching on judgment (chapters 23-25). Some of the latter deals with God’s judgment on Israel which would come soon enough, from Matthew’s perspective, in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Some of it treats God’s judgment of the whole world, ushered in with Christ’s Second Coming.
All of that helps us understand this Parable of the Talents. It helps us see that a major part of God’s final judgment is the account He will require each of us to give. Jesus’ parable clarifies something that can be very difficult, but a truth that it is absolutely crucial for us to understand, as best we’re able: the Kingdom of heaven.
The master in the parable goes away for a long time. So our lives here on earth can seem to encompass a long time. But the master eventually comes back, and when he does, he holds his servants accountable.
So too our Master will one day require an accounting of us. It may occur at Jesus’ great and terrible Second Coming. It may come when we meet Him after our time here concludes. Either way the implication is the same. Obviously our ultimate account-ability to God has to shape in significant ways how we live each day!
At times it might appear that this life will go on forever – especially in the middle of a l-o-n-g stewardship sermon! But Jesus could come back to close the books on history at any time. And whether He comes tonight or in a thousand years, the time of this life will surely run out for each of us at some point.
The Parable of the Talents should impress upon each of us our need to remember every day that our Master will surely return, and that when He does He will ask us each what we have done with what He’s entrusted to us. That certainty is the backdrop against which we live out all our days.
So first, the parable teaches us that stewardship is accountability.
Then second, a mixed-up notion of stewardship goes hand in hand with a mixed-up notion of God. Now there is a bit of the chicken and the egg here: It’s difficult to say which comes first. Does a faulty idea of stewardship lead to bad theology? Or do wrong notions of God produce poor stewardship? It’s hard to say. Probably both are true. In any case, each clearly feeds off the other.
We certainly see both intertwined in the example of the third servant. His impoverished view of stewardship is the ground in which a terrible attitude toward his master grows.
When we consider any of the parables of Jesus, we need to remember that His teachings have been so foundational in the development of what we call Western thought, we forget that for those who heard them first, many of the parables would have been shocking – even scandalous. That is certainly very true of this Parable of the Talents.
The third servant becomes something of the central character in the parable. Consider his actions. We should note that the master gives no instructions prior to his departure. So the servant doesn’t violate any of his master’s commands in what he does. Though we might think his actions somewhat foolish, burying something valuable in the ground would have seemed to be a pretty reasonable course of action to Jesus’ first hearers. So the harsh condemnation he receives from his master would have surprised – even shocked – Jesus’ first hearers.
But then consider the wicked servant’s attitude toward his master. We can almost see his downward gaze, like a whipped dog, as he grudgingly hands the bag of silver back to his master, muttering (under his breath): ‘Here! Take what’s yours. I know you’re an unreasonable, wrinkled-up old miser anyway…’
Puritan Bible scholar Matthew Henry comments that the lazy servant’s fear and resentment toward his master is the very opposite of the attitude Jesus holds out to us in the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind” (Matthew 22:37)!
What about us? The same chicken/egg conundrum is there: Does poor stewardship produce wrong ideas about God? Or does bad theology grow shoddy stewardship? In the end it doesn’t really matter! The point is that time and time again we forget that God always owns it all.
In the 50th Psalm (our Old Testament lesson for today), God rebukes Israel, reminding them that it is worse than foolish to try to hide immorality behind a cloak of religious ritual: “I will not take a bull from your house, nor goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness” (Psalm 50:9-12 NKJV).
Friend, that is a foundational truth of life that we surely need to remember always!
Maybe you’ve heard the one about the well-dressed man who’s hurrying to his car in a somewhat rough neighborhood of Washington, D.C., late at night. All of a sudden, a guy jumps out of the shadows, sticks a gun in his ribs and demands, “Give me all your money!”
The man is incensed: “Why, you can’t do this – this is an outrage! I’m a member of the United States House of Representatives!”
To which the other guy replies, “Oh! Well in that case, give me all of my money!”
Whose money is it, anyway? Just about all bureaucracies (the government; certainly the church) spend an all-too-common commodity: OPM (Other People’s Money). At least in the church (when we’re thinking straight), we remember that it is OPM. When we’re really up to speed, we remember that not only is the money not ours: it never really belonged to the people who gave it to us, either. The Other Person in the equation is always God!
Now it’s easy enough to pay lip service to that notion. But is truly a radical, life-changing truth. When you say that God owns it all, do you really think about the implications of that simple statement? It’s an absolutely crucial truth for all of life before God. If I forget it, that error will surely generate no shortage of bitterness and resentment – especially at the thought of the Master’s return and His demand for an accounting. Remember it, and you’re on the road to genuine biblical stewardship, and real joy in giving.
So second, if you want to have right theology, and a healthy relationship with God, you need to be growing in the direction of right stewardship.
Then third, this parable provides for us a striking model of both good stewardship and its rewards.
In the first place, it teaches us a lot about life: How richly God has blessed each of us; and the central role of stewardship.
Most of us (at least one time or another) have been tempted to think that we don’t have many gifts to offer. That thought can come out of a false modesty, or even from the genuine kind. It can surely come out of envy we feel of the gifts we see in others.
But the reality is that God imparts gifts to everyone – to every one! This parable certainly teaches that.
Now it may well seem arbitrary to us to note that one servant gets twice what the third servant receives, and one gets five times as much. But again, we need to try to hear the parable in its original setting. The New Living Translation that I read aloud speaks of one and two and five “bags of silver” (Matthew 25:15). That’s a good translation, because it’s exactly what Jesus (and Matthew) had in mind. But the Greek word here is talanta, which comes into English as ‘talents.’ In the ancient world a talent was originally a unit of weight, and then specifically, a weight of some precious metal or coin: copper, gold, or (as probably here) silver. And we need to remember that one talent of silver coins was a lot! It would have been equal to fifteen years’ wages for a laborer!
So even the one-talent servant is entrusted with a great deal. And in fact scholars who study the pedigree of words tell us that our use in English of the word ‘talent’ to refer to some special aptitude or innate ability (as in a talent for basketball or for the bassoon) comes from this very parable.
The point is clear: God has entrusted to even those of us who are one-talent servants a lot – a lot of potential for serving Him.
But we need to remember also what we noted above: the truly shocking nature of Jesus’ parables! Jesus clearly shocks those good folks who first heard this parable, who thought that third servant was behaving prudently in burying the bag of silver till his master’s return. Jesus harshly condemns that third servant, and holds up instead the first two as models.
Make no mistake about it: In order to double their master’s investment, each had to take the initiative. Each had to even accept a very real risk!
But in return for their thus stepping out of their comfort zone, they each receive a great reward! The parable implies that, though they start out as stewards, in the end the master makes each an owner: each receives the four or ten talents he returns to his master (25:28). In fact, the servant with the ten talents is even given the third servant’s lone bag of silver. And what’s more, each wins wonderful words of commendation from his master.
What about us? What do you suppose God wants you to risk? According to Jesus, good stewardship is something very different from ‘playing it safe’! Many Christians, all across the ages, have faithfully given to God the tithe (10% of their financial income). But many others, giving some small fraction of the tithe, find that inconceivable. Perhaps that’s especially true now, given the horrific pressures of our materialistic age. Mother Teresa says it simply: “If you give what you do not need, it isn’t giving.” And the same principle holds true when it comes to giving of our time and our talents.
This parable invites us – it challenges us – to attempt great things for the Kingdom of God, knowing that He promises us great rewards; knowing that He has already done great things for us in Jesus Christ.
I want to leave you today with the number 57. More than 120 years ago, the Sunday School of a church in Philadelphia was very crowded. There were even some weeks when one little girl who wanted to go to Sunday School there was told they had no room for her.
That little girl, Hattie May Wiatt, didn’t become angry or bitter over her disappoint-ment. But neither did she simply forget about it. Instead, she decided to be a good steward of all that God had given to her. The pastor of the church, Dr. Russell Conwell, had told the little girl that one day the church would have the money to construct a building big enough with room for everyone who wanted to come, and so little Hattie quietly set about doing her part. She began doing small chores for which she was paid, a penny here and a penny there, and systematically started saving those pennies.
But about two years later, Hattie became sick and eventually died. Her mother asked Dr. Conwell to perform her funeral, and in her aching grief, gave him the little purse in which her daughter had carefully saved 57 pennies toward a bigger church building.
In time, Dr. Conwell shared Hattie’s story with his congregation, and they were so inspired by it that the story was picked up by a newspaper that spread the story all across the country. Little Hattie’s example became the catalyst for an outpouring of generosity that in time provided for not only a new church building – with plenty of room for Sunday School classes – but eventually Temple University and the Good Samaritan Hospital (now the Temple University Medical Center).
And it all started with one little girl who was a good steward of 57 pennies!
(Bob Russell, “Take the Risk,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 143.)
Fast forward a hundred fifteen years and come over to this side of the state. In 1991, when the H.J. Heinz Corporation negotiated with the Pittsburgh Steelers to purchase the naming rights for the Steelers’ new stadium, the Heinz folks insisted on a price of $57 million. The Steelers had been hoping for something more. But Heinz managed to close the deal at that price. They’d pushed for that amount not only because they drove a hard bargain, but also because of the historical significance of that number.
Just about five years after little Hattie May Wiatt died in Philadelphia, down in Pittsburgh the Heinz Company began an advertising campaign celebrating the “57 Varieties” of canned and bottled foods they sold. And the number has been associated with the company ever since.
I hope you know that you have far more than 57 varieties of ways in which to show good stewardship of the countless good things God has entrusted to your care! It includes stewardship of your time; of your energies and your abilities; of your oppor-tunities and your experiences. It encompasses stewardship of the most precious commodity of all: the truth of the Gospel. And yes, it certainly includes stewardship of the money and all the other material possessions God has placed in your care.
See yourself as the owner of any of those things and you’re missing out on the truth, and risking the just wrath of their real Owner. See yourself as a steward – and take the risk of living that way – and you will one day hear those glorious words, “Well done, good and faithful servant…Enter into the joy of your lord” (Matthew 25:21 NKJV)
Let us pray. God of all good gifts, we praise You and thank You for the abundance of Your giving to us. Please forgive us when we play the part of the wicked servant, burying in the ground that which You entrust to us, giving back to You with grudging bitterness. Give us the grace, we pray, to risk all for Your eternal kingdom, remembering always the rewards You have promised us – indeed, remembering what You have already given to us – in Your beloved Son. We pray in His mighty name. Amen.