Matthew 25: 14-30
November 13, 2011
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Pastor
One of the great things about Facebook is the ability to get back in touch with people you haven’t seen in decades. Yes, decades. Like my high school friends. It’s kind of cool to see how they’ve turned out. Some of them are pretty much what I’d expect—the guy who I thought would be a preacher is a preacher; the guy who I thought would be a no-good ne’er do well is indeed a no-good ne’er do well. Most people grew up just to be themselves, but grown up—the same basic personalities and quirks and gifts and foibles, only now on an adult stage, with jobs, families, so on; and with adult problems, like unemployment, divorce, kids with problems.
There are some exceptions, though, like my friend Connie.
Connie was shy and quiet in high school. She seemed sweet but kind of, well, insignificant. She somebody you didn’t often notice. The old term would have been a “shrinking violet,” someone who seemed to hide when she was exposed to the sunlight. We were in homeroom together, and so we became friends. Otherwise, I might not have noticed her. I found out later she had a difficult home life, and it made her extremely self-conscious and fearful. She was so afraid that people wouldn’t like her that she didn’t really try to make friends.
Kind of ironic, but I think we all know people like that. People who are so afraid they won’t be liked that they don’t try to make friends, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. People who are so afraid that they’ll fail that they don’t try—and so they fail, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Those are the people Jesus is talking about when he says that “To those who have not, even what they have will be taken away from them.”
It doesn’t seem very fair, does it? We like to think of Jesus as being on the side of those shy, insecure people, the ones who don’t hog the spotlight or get the best jobs or the most attention. But here He’s saying that those people, the ones who think they have so little, are the ones who will have even what little they have taken away from them.
But let’s hear some more about Connie. About senior year I started to notice something different about her. For one thing, she was really getting into her art. That was interesting—I didn’t even know she was an artist; most people didn’t. She started to show her artwork around and was even starting to work with a master sculptor. It was beginning to look as if she was starting to come out of her shell.
Unfortunately, she also got involved with a bad sort of guy. I guess she still needed some affirmation, some guy who would make her feel validated and secure. That happens a lot, maybe especially to the young, but you see it in people of all ages—they get into a bad relationship because any kind of relationship makes them feel worthwhile and maybe also they think they don’t deserve a good relationship.
So they got married too young. It turned out he was a bully. Not surprising, given that she grew up in a bad family situation, that she would marry somebody who would treat her the way she’d been treated. He put down her desire to do art and sculpt. She began to spiral into depression.
Then, in desperation, she turned to Christ. In her thirties, she became a Christian. It changed her life. It gave her hope and meaning and validation. It gave her a sense of purpose. It helped her to understand that she was loved just for who she was, and that what she had and who she was was valued in the eyes of God, so much that Jesus died and rose again for her.
And she realized that her tiny little gift, her artistic ability, this thing she loved so much and had been told wasn’t worth anything, that this little teeny gift was the gift that God had given her. And that no matter what anybody said, even her husband, even her parents, she was no longer going to bury that gift in the ground. She was going to dig it up and offer up to the world as a gift from God to be returned to God.
What she realized was that it wasn’t God or life or her unhappy family life or her bully husband who were taking away her one small Talent—it was her. She had been hiding it away. But of course, the Talent she was hiding away wasn’t just her artistic ability—it was her, the incredible gift that God had made her to be for the world.
Now she is an accomplished sculptor. She’s not world-renowned or famous. She’s well-appreciated in the art world in Spartanburg, SC, which is a pretty surprisingly artistic place. She teaches kids art. She’s starting to get respect as a sculptor.
But what’s really striking is that the little shy shrinking-violet Connie I knew in high school has completely disappeared. If she didn’t look pretty much the same, I’d never recognize her. Connie in her fifties is funny, smart, and assertive. She has tons and tons of friends. She’s the one who throws the best parties. And she’s very involved in her church and extremely committed to Christ, but she’s no meek, wallflower kind of person you can walk all over.
And her husband has found that out. He can’t bully her anymore. He’s had to change. And he continues to change.
“For to everyone who has, more will be given, and she will have in abundance.” She has discovered what she always had—that she is a child of God. And that is more than enough.
Jesus is on the side of those who have nothing. But you know what? All of us, in our own ways, think we have nothing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor, talented or untalented, successful or unsuccessful—there are times we all think we have nothing.
So Jesus challenges all of us to learn the lesson that Connie did—the lesson of abundance. Even the most extraverted of us, even the most successful of us, imagine there’s something we have that we have to hoard away, that we have to keep out of the light. I don’t mean our flaws and sins. I mean our gifts, our talents—ourselves. We hide it away for one of two reasons. It could be because, like Connie, we’re afraid that if we reveal this thing we value, that other people will laugh at it, belittle it, put it down—it’ll be proof that we’re nothing, that we’re worthless.
Or we could hide it away because we think it’s so valuable that we’re afraid that someone else will take it away from us. That’s often the fear of successful people—“I’ve worked hard, I’ve earned this, I don’t dare let anyone else get hold of it.” Remember what the unfaithful servant says to his master: “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you do not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and hid your talent in the ground.” And of course, in Jesus’ parable, the “master” is God.
Our fear is that the world is hard-hearted and out to get us. And our fear that the hard-hearted world will take away our hard-earned talent makes us hard-hearted ourselves. When we’re challenged to give financially, we say, “No. Times are hard.” When we’re challenged to give of ourselves in service to others we say, “No. There’s not enough of me to go around.”
The key to the story of the Talents is the fact that the Talents come from God in the first place. That was the secret that Connie learned. She thought she didn’t have much—all she was, was an artist. But that wasn’t true. She had everything. Even if she wasn’t an artist, she had everything—because she was a child of God. She was the gift. She was a treasure beyond measure—because she was a child of God. She should shout it from the mountaintop. She should light the world with her personality. Even if she had nothing else to offer, she had herself—and she is a child of God, a precious Jewel in the crown of the God who loves her, and a gift God has given the world.
As are we all.