Matthew 25:14-30
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
March 23, 2025
Years ago, psychologist Susan David gave a TED talk entitled “The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage”. In it she reflected on how we let feelings determine our decisions and actions, and sometimes keep us from becoming the best version of ourselves. She said, “I’ve had hundreds of people tell me what they don’t want to feel. They say things like, ‘I don’t want to try because I don’t want to feel disappointed.’ Or, ‘I just want this feeling to go away.’ I say to them, you have dead people’s goals. Only dead people never get stressed, never get broken hearts, never experience the disappointment that comes with failure. Tough emotions are part of our contract with life. You don’t get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort.” Indeed, painful feelings are the price of admission to a significant life. We may fear feeling them, but feel them we must to make the world and ourselves better.
We have to weigh then the risk of feeling something bad against the risk of missing out on feeling something good: something deep and soul-satisfying. We have to choose whether we’ll embrace the adventure of seeking to fulfill a big and beautiful dream or play it safe to eliminate the possibility of falling short.
In today’s parable Jesus told a story about “a man” who clearly symbolizes God. This man “went on a journey” and “entrusted his property” during his absence to three servants whom he made his money managers. He gave over to each of them a different amount of his assets to take care of while he was gone: to the first, five “talents”; to the second, two; and to the third, one. He allocated to each an appropriate amount that matched that individual’s “ability”. It seems he didn’t want to burden any of them with more responsibility than they could successfully handle. It also seems he wanted each – despite the disparity in ability – to enjoy the privilege of having a significant responsibility and thereby the opportunity to do something really good. He did this at the price of putting a huge amount of his wealth at risk. For the word “talent” there is a monetary unit equal to the earnings of a day laborer over twenty years. That means that even the third servant, the least able of them, had charge of half a million dollars!
How immense and precious are the resources God puts in the hands of every last one of us, no matter how our ability compares to that of someone else!
Though the man in the parable was extravagant in entrusting his wealth to unproven money managers, he gave them no instructions – or restrictions – about handling his finances. He just gave them generous resources to work with and marvelous freedom to decide what to do, and left it to the initiative of each to determine how to fulfill their responsibility.
The first two “worked with” the boss’s assets. They “traded” his capital and doubled its value. The third chose not to take any risk with his share. So he dug a hole in the ground and hid it there.
When the rich man returned and received his managers’ reports, he was equally delighted with manager number one and manager number two. For even though number one gave him a return on investment two and a half times larger than that of number two, they both had doubled his money. So they each got the same commendation – both are called “good and trustworthy” – and each got the same promotion – both are promised to be put “in charge” of much more – and each got the same invitation – both are urged to “enter into the joy” of their boss. Moreover, though we don’t learn of it until the end of the parable, at some point the boss designated as their wealth all the wealth he’d originally turned over to their care and all the further wealth they’d built with it. And when he took back the third manager’s one talent, he gave it to the first manager that he might become even richer! The boss then declared, “To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance.” The eleven talents the first manager now had were his abundance. But the boss abundantly enriched both of his “good and trustworthy” servants; and if the third one had only added a single talent to what he’d been given, he’d have been equally enriched.
How God longs to lavish upon every faithful person the gifts of His grace!
Perhaps anticipating a rebuke, the third manager didn’t begin his report by talking about how he’d done at least something good and preserved every last cent of the boss’s money, but by insulting him and blaming him for the lack of any gain. He called him a “harsh man” and accused him of “reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed”. He slandered a good and generous man with a charge of being so unprincipled, unjust and untrustworthy as to make anyone who worked for him too “afraid” to do anything but play it safe.
The boss called that servant “wicked and lazy” – wicked because he defamed someone who’d conducted himself perfectly, and lazy because he didn’t work with what he’d been given. He didn’t trade with it or in any way try to make something more of it. He didn’t even dump it in a bank where it would’ve earned a little interest. He just dropped it in a hole, and then didn’t lift a finger until he dug it up to give it back.
He took the easy way out and played it safe. For he had no love for the boss, and thus he had no motivation to defy his fear and dare to try to give a gift back to the one who’d given him the gift of a great privilege. That manager cared more about protecting himself against the vulnerability risk-taking creates than blessing the one to whom he owed everything he had.
The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear. Do you love God enough to swing for the fences though it makes you more likely to strike out…enough to risk failure by going for broke in seeking to fulfill His hopes?
In other words, do you love God enough to become like a lobster? From time to time, lobsters have to leave their shells to grow. They need their shells to keep safe and secure for a while, but they also need to eventually get out of them to get bigger and better. If they don’t abandon their old comfortable place of safety, their shell will become their prison, and finally their casket.
The scary part of a lobster’s life is the interval between discarding an old shell and gaining a new one. During that vulnerable period, as currents cartwheel them from coral to kelp and hungry fish hunt them for food, they no doubt feel afraid and long to return to their former safety. But lobsters risk disaster to become the best and biggest version of themselves.
To grow as a follower of Jesus, we must defy our fear and risk much to grow in love, justice and holiness. We must love God enough to abandon our comfortable peace of the past, so as to work to make something more of ourselves – that we too will be called “good and trustworthy” and enter the joy of our Master.
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