|
A message by
Rev. T. Franklin Harmon
Associate Pastor
August 17, 2008 Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30
I can see it now, glimpses of Michael Jordan making the game winning shot. He is jumping in the air and pumping his arm in celebration, while in the background you hear the chorus, “I want to be, I want to be, I want to be like Mike, like Mike if I could be like Mike.” And now during the Olympics that theme is, “One World, One Dream.” We all come from different parts of the world, but our common dream is to be an Olympic athlete and win gold.
I don’t know if it is just me, but anyone who is good in their sport gets compared to Tiger Woods. During his quest for eight gold medals, Michael Phelps is constantly referred to as the Tiger Woods of swimming. We cannot avoid it, from magazines, to billboards, to the television that we watch, we are constantly being told who and what we should be like, including Phelps, someone who has done something that no one else has ever done.
As I was growing up, I wanted to be everything from a zookeeper to an accountant to professional baseball player. However, there was one thing that I wanted to be more than anything else, and that was to be Bob. Bob was my next-door neighbor as I was growing up. I moved into the house I grew up in when I was 4 years old and Bob was 9 years older than me. In high school he was not a three-sport athlete, but a four-sport athlete. He was not only the captain of both the basketball, and football teams, but he dated the head cheerleader. Did I mention that he also had rebuilt a 57 Chevy that was probably the nicest car I had ever seen?
Growing up, Bob was probably the coolest guy I knew and the best part about Bob was that he took time to spend with me. We would play basketball one on one, and he would teach me as we played, and act as if I had a chance, which for some odd reason I always thought I did.
One day when I was about 8 years old, I came home from school and told my parents that I did not want to be called Frank anymore, I was changing my name to Bob. I wanted to be Bob, I wanted to have everything Bob had, I wanted to be a great athlete, I wanted a nice car and I wanted the head cheerleader. But the one problem with changing my name to Bob is that no matter how hard I tried I never would be Bob. I could have played four sports, had a nice car and dated the head cheerleader, but still I would not have been Bob. Just like I will never be like Mike. I could never become Bob. God made me Frank, just like He made each one of you, to be a John, or a Jerry, or a Debi, or a Kelly.
Our scripture lesson today is better known as “The Parable of the Talents.” In Jesus’ parable we see a man who goes away on a journey and when he leaves he leaves five talents to the first servant, two talents to the second, and one talent to the third, based on their ability. He does this so that they might put them to work for him while he is gone. Upon his return, the man asks the three servants how they had used their talents that he had entrusted to them. The first servant tells the master that he had used his five talents to earn him five more. The second did the same, using his two talents to earn two more for his master. Because both of these men used their talents wisely to benefit their master, he rewarded them by intrusting them with many things. It didn’t matter to the master that one servant earned five while the other only earned two. What mattered to the master is that the talents given were used for his benefit.
Now, the first two servants used their talents for their master not expecting anything in return, and when they used them unselfishly, their master rewarded both of them. But, this was not the case for the third servant. The third servant gives the talents back to his master exactly as he had received them, unused… and he tells his master, “I hid it until you returned, because I was afraid [of you] (Mt. 25:25).” When we look closer at this passage and look at the culture, we can see that the third servant wasn’t really afraid of his master, but he was selfish. The master in v.26-17 asks him a rhetorical statement, “So you 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.” In the Luke account, the master asks, “You knew that I was a hard man, why then didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I would have collected it with interest?” (Luke 19:23) The servant gives no reply, and there is no reply because the servant is caught in a lie. If you think about it, the master is correct. The safest thing to have done with the talents was to have given it to the bankers. One, it would be safe there, and two, it would draw interest. Burying it was not safe and, more importantly, burying it left no trace of the master’s transaction with his servant. Therefore, if something happened to the master, the servant could keep the talent for himself.
Traveling in Jesus’ time was not the safest thing to do, especially if you were wealthy and someone thought you had money on you. The third servant knew this and was hoping something bad would happen to his master while he was traveling. With this in mind, the servant did not want to get involved in a risky business venture where he might lose the talents, because if he lost the talents and his master was killed, then he would not get to keep the talents for himself. Likewise, if the servant had invested the talents as his master suggested, the talents would have been recorded as property of master, and, if he were to be killed, the servant would have gotten nothing. So, the third servant was only looking to use the talents to benefit himself and was not looking to use the talents to benefit his master. Because the third servant kept his talents hidden for his own sake and did not use them, his master took them away and cast him out into “darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 25:30).
Since Jesus often used parables to talk about God, it should be no surprise that the master of our parable is actually God and we are the servants. He is the one who has given us our talents to be used for His kingdom. God has given us all different talents, some of which we might not even know about yet. To some of you, God has given the ability to play a musical instrument so that we can sing praises to God, while others he has given the gift of beautiful voices, so that you might sing praises to His name. Leadership, hospitality, prayer, servanthood, the ability to cook, run a computer or to fix things are all talents that God has blessed his servants with.
So why don’t we use all of our talents to serve our master? I think we find ourselves using the same excuse that the third servant uses, fear! This week while we were at white water rafting, one of our guides, Craig, who also happens to be the owner of Rock-n-Water, talked to us about fear and how it can control our lives. He said that one of the biggest things we fear isn’t spiders or snakes, but not measuring up to others. Whether it is in our looks, ability to work, the car we drive, the money we make, musical talent or our athletic ability, we live in fear that our talents will not be as good as those of the person next to us. And because we think our talents can’t measure up to others, we become afraid to try. We convince ourselves that we aren’t as good as others and since we don’t want to look like a failure we don’t try, so we bury our talents because we are afraid.
The problem we have in comparing ourselves to others is that it is not a fair comparison. We can’t compare ourselves to Tiger or Michael Phelps, because we are not them. In an interview they said that Michael was the perfect swimmer. At 6’4” his arm span is 6’10”. His legs are the length of a person who is 6’ tall, which gives him extra power in the turns; his torso is that of someone who is 6’8”, which allows for long smoother strokes. He has size 14 feet, which they describe as flippers, and has huge hands, which they called paddles. If that isn’t enough, he is double jointed in the shoulders and the hip, which allows his body to do things that most can’t. Did God make any of us that way? No! Then why would we compare ourselves to him? God has given Michael Phelps abilities that none of us have, and therefore we would make a terrible Michael Phelps.
We constantly find ourselves comparing what God has given us to others, but in Jesus’ parable we see that the master gave one servant five talents, the second two and the third one. The servants weren’t all given the same, and they weren’t judged on how many talents they had rather what they did with their talents. If they used them, they were rewarded and if they didn’t, they were cast out.
Paul talks specifically about this in I Cor. 12. He gives us an image of the body of Christ. He says,
“Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But, in fact, God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are not presentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all interpret?” I Cor. 12:14-30
We are all not teachers, nor doctors, but we are still part of the body of Christ. Not all of us are blessed with great singing voices, but we can all make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Not all of us are millionaires but surely we can give what we have, and if not our money, our time. A wise man once told me that if I tried to be the best Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, Bob, or whoever I thought I wanted to be, that I would miss out, miss out on being the best Frank I could be. I say this with one exception; we can aspire to be like one man…Jesus Christ.
We live in a world that constantly tries to compare us to others, that tells us who we should be, so much so that we find ourselves doing the same thing comparing ourselves to others. However, our benchmark isn’t Jordan, Tiger, Phelps, or Gates, but Jesus Christ. For if we use Jesus as our benchmark, even if we fall short, we will be seeking to use our talents to glorify God and we will be the best Christians we can be. Although it would be nice to be like Mike, or compared to Tiger, God has made us all unique with our own individual talents. So, if you can’t sing, then dance, and if you can’t dance, then teach, and if not teach, use the talents that God has given you to benefit the Kingdom, because God has given us much. And if you think, “there is nothing that I am good at,” or that “God hasn’t given me any gifts,” I will tell you that you are wrong. I know of at least one gift that God has given to all of us, the gift of Jesus. And all of us have the ability to share the gift of His love and to be used the best that God seems fit. Amen.
|
