2023 11 19 Sermon
Wisdom through Experimenting
Pentecost 25 A
Psalm 90:1-12; Matthew 25:14-30
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Last Sunday I illustrated my sermon with several quotes from the great baseball player, Yogi Berra. Well, I’ve got one more of his for today. Yogi was talking about the effect of sun and shade in the outfield during late-season games, and described it like this: “It gets late early out there.” I think we can all relate at this time of year. You look outside at 4:30 in the afternoon and it’s mostly dark already, when just a month ago you would have had a couple more hours of light to enjoy. It gets late early out there.
Psalm 90 expresses something similar. “A thousand years in God’s sight are like yesterday when it is past… you sweep them away like a dream, they fade away suddenly like the grass… The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty…[but] they pass away quickly and we are gone.” The older you get, you look back and wonder how the time went so quickly; it doesn’t seem that long ago when you were doing things that people who are much younger than you are now doing. When it comes to life, it often seems that “it gets late early out there.”
But Psalm 90 also concludes with some instructions. Or maybe it’s a prayer? “Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” This verse encourages us to recognize and even embrace that we each have God-given limitations. But this is not something to fear or be in denial about—because, when we number our days, we can gain wisdom. And wisdom makes for a more fulfilling life. The experience gained by living 70 or 80 or more years perhaps makes wisdom easier to come by. But, wisdom can be gained at any age—because “Teach us to number our days” is God’s invitation to everyone to embrace your limitations, beginning with accepting that you have only a limited number of days.
What, then, are we to do with the time God has given us? For an answer to that we can turn to the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. A “talent” in biblical times was a Roman unit of money. About 500 or so years ago, as preachers interpreted this parable, they used this unit of money as a metaphor for individual abilities, and so the English word “talent” (as we use it today) was born. But in the parable, as Jesus told it, a “talent” is simply a lot of money. In fact, one talent was equivalent to 15 to 20 years’ worth of labor. So 5 talents would be equivalent to a lifetime of labor, 75 to 100 years’ worth! The Master in this parable gives one of his servants 5 talents, another 2 talents, and the third 1 talent. In each case, it’s a large sum. The Master did this because he was going to be away for a long time; and he knew that these particular servants had abilities—so he gave to each one an amount that the servant would have the ability to put to good use.
The first servant does just that, and makes 5 more talents. The second servant does likewise, and makes 2 more talents. For this they are praised: “Well done, good and trustworthy servant!” When the servant who had received one talent comes forward, he admits to doing nothing with the talent he was given. He hid it in the ground for all those years—today we might say he stashed it under the mattress. He didn’t lose any money, but of course he didn’t gain any, either. And his reason for doing this was fear. He was afraid of the Master, and therefore he was afraid that he might do something wrong with the talent the Master had given him. His fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the Master gets angry and takes the talent from him, and gives it to the guy with ten talents. Then this fearful servant is “thrown into the outer darkness.”
He gets in trouble, not because he came to the Master empty-handed—after all, he didn’t lose a penny—but because he wasted the talent he had been given by not even trying to do anything with it. The Master never told him that he expected him to double his money. The Master just wanted to see what the servant could do, because he knew he already had ability! Meanwhile, the other two servants did something. They surely took some risks in order to gain more. But this doesn’t mean they were reckless; after all, the Master trusted them with talents according to their ability. Therefore, they used their ability to try things, and over the course of many years their experiments paid off.
In this parable I see a lot of similarity to the things our Faithful Innovation “HOP Outside the Box” team has been learning. When they started, they didn’t really know what to expect, or even what they were supposed to do. But they learned a few things in the large-group events with the other teams from around our synod, and made plans to try a few things on their own, according to their abilities. They listened for the nudging of God through the Bible with the “Dwelling in the Word” exercises; and they learned to ask open-ended questions to become more aware of how God is working among us. As they designed some experiments, they were taught to become comfortable with failure, even to expect that sometimes they would fail. When they failed, they were taught to reflect on the experience in order to learn something—in order to gain wisdom—because nothing is a failure if you can learn from it. Then, taking what they learned, they tried new experiments. And you, as a congregation, have gone along for the ride and have been learning and doing things right alongside our “HOP Outside the Box” team.
As an example, today we’ll be doing a Blessing of the Animals at the end of the service. Originally, the team planned to do this outdoors, and have people bring their pets. They also thought it would be a good way to connect with the community—because lots of people have pets. Well, it rained and poured on the day in October we had scheduled, so the event failed. That could have been the end of it, but the team reflected on the experience, and kept the experiment going, pivoting to what we’ll do later today, when we show pictures of peoples’ pets—probably far more animals than could have ever come in person—and we’ll do our blessing of the animals that way.
Or another example: the team has invited the congregation to join them on a number of neighborhood walks. While we’ve enjoyed the walks, to our surprise we’ve seen very few neighbors on these walks. But as we walked last time we asked ourselves, “I wonder where the people in the neighborhood might be?” Watching the Packers? Going shopping? Or maybe they are over at Kayla’s Playground?! From there grew the idea to experiment with holding a Sunday School class at Kayla’s Playground, including time for the kids to do a Dwelling in the Word exercise using Psalm 148. The kids loved it, and came up with all kinds of wisdom that they shared with their teachers. It’ll probably be a Sunday School lesson they’ll never forget!
So, where is the good news in the Parable of the Talents? God has given us talents—abilities—and God wants us to experiment with using our abilities, and to put our abilities to good use. Even if you fail, we have a God whose specialty is second chances. Even your mistakes can become pathways to wisdom; even your failures can become vessels of God’s grace—when you ask God to help you learn from them.
The message of the cross is that God in Jesus Christ embraced the world’s failure to free itself from the power of sin and death. This failure sent Jesus to his death, yet God used it to open the door to salvation. It is in the failures, in the imperfect times, in the imperfect places where God’s grace is most at work. Therefore, you are free in Christ to use your talents to make a few more mistakes. With Jesus, even death itself opens the opportunity for resurrection and new life. Amen.