"The Risk of the Steward"
Sermon Transcript for March 16, 2003Scripture Reading: Matthew 25: 14-30
By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
I want to begin this morning by sharing a word of scripture with you; and you may remain seated as I read this. Jesus was a great storyteller, which gives me a tremendous sense of comfort because I’ve found it the best way for me to explain anything is with stories; and I’m so relieved that Jesus used the same method. It makes me feel I’m in good company. Listen to this story. You may remember this story. It’s from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, Versus 14-30. It’s about three fellows with some talents. Jesus said, “Again, it would be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents and money, to another two talents, and to another one talent each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. And the man who received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also the one with two talents gained two more. But the man who had received one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and his master’s money. After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents bought the other five. “Master,” he said, “you entrusted me with five talents. See I have gained five more.” His master replied, “Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things and so now I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” The man with two talents also came. “Master,” he said, “you entrusted me with two talents and see, I have gained two more.” And his master replied, “Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” Then the man who had received one talent came. “Master,” he said, “I knew that you are a hard man harvesting where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and I went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.” His master replied, “You wicked, lazy servant. 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 least received it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents for everyone who has will be given more and he will have an abundance. And whoever does not have even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and lashing of teeth.” Let us pray, “Oh God, speak now through your servant. Let your Word be heard and only that which is in you remain in our hearts as we go through this place. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
When you think of risky behavior what do you imagine? Do you picture the X-Games on ESPN, people doing amazing, crazy things with bicycles and parachutes, bungee jumping, scuba diving, cliff diving? Is that the kind of risk taking that comes to mind when you think of taking risks? You know I was born a risk taker. My mother still grieves. When I was six years old I rode my bicycle down a long country lane and pulled it right out in front of a speeding motorcycle and just about got killed. You can look at my face; I still have the scars. For about three days they didn’t know if I was going to make it. You would have thought by then I’d learned my lesson. But then we moved to western Pennsylvania where it is mountainous and I took up the art of skateboarding. You know, my mother frequently got phone calls from neighborhood moms saying they didn’t want their children playing with me. It’s true. Because I’m a risk taker; I always have been. I always take these nutty challenges; not foolishly you understand because the real problem as I see it with those neighborhood kids is they simply weren’t as well prepared or as confident as I was. The hill that I lived on in my little neighborhood in western Pennsylvania, well, we don’t have any hills like that anywhere around Franklin that I can see. I see Earl shaking his head; he’s from that part of the world too. It’s pretty mountainy there. And I’m not kidding you when I tell you that this long hill that I lived about three-quarters of the way down was a good mile-long drive that was just like a ski slope. And I once challenged my friends by saying; “I’m going to take my skateboard to the top.” And they all said, “Go ahead Sinkhorn. Knock yourself out.” I went to the top. Now on my way up I walked very slowly. I looked for rocks on the road because any skateboarder will tell you those are your undoing. And I got to the top and I looked down this long hill, which was a scary thing. But by the time I reached the top of the hill my friends and a whole lot more had come out to watch the bloodletting. So I was committed. I had announced the risk I was going to take and I had to take it. And I started down the hill. Now what my friends didn’t know was that I had an evacuation plan. There were several neighbors who really had beautiful yards with luscious green grass. And I figured if I could make it to any one of those I could bale out and probably survive. But I did actually make it all the way to the bottom of the hill. In fact I did it several times that summer. One time my brother, who had just gotten his driver’s license, followed me in his car and he swears I was doing 40 miles an hour. Well of course then all of the neighbor’s kids had to keep up with me and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth or replacement of teeth—I’m not sure which.
So I am quite familiar with risk and it doesn’t bother me to try something new as long as it is well thought out, as long as it’s not just pure insanity. Is that the kind of risk taking you think of? Maybe you think of risk takers like professional risk takers like firefighters, police officers, people who work with dangerous substances, or work in dangerous environments like coalmines and certain kind of factory settings that are very treacherous. Maybe that’s the kind of risk taking with the intention of you think of. You know, those are the people you find yourself saying, “Well, I hope they pay you well because I wouldn’t do it unless I was paid well.” Maybe you think of risk takers who are business, people who are willing to take tremendous financial risks who are willing to invest in a plot of ground that doesn’t make any sense to anyone else. You think of people like Ross Perot, Donald Trump.
But have you ever thought about Christians, in particular churches, as risk takers? Have you ever imagined a church congregation being that zany? I’ve already presented you with a dilemma because you have to try to imagine your pastor zooming down a hill on a skateboard at 40 miles an hour. And thinking, “Boy, we’re being led by that?” But the question is, “Are we willing to be the kind of risk taker church and Christians that Jesus calls us to be?” Or are we like so many churches, and I do mean many, this is not a message just for Grace church, who live by the saying, “Come wale or woe, the only status is quo.” The pastor of a church like that put up a poster in the front of the sanctuary one Sunday that said this, “The seven last words of the church: We never did it that way before.”
But we are led in a different way. Jesus makes that very clear in the story that we heard today, that we are called to do something radically different from conventional wisdom. Christ calls us to be risk takers for His kingdom. I want to talk about three risk areas this church needs to consider.
Risk of participating in what God is doing rather than merely observing: The story that we just heard describes the one talent servant as being someone who just sat on the sidelines and watched. He was the servant that took his talent that was given to him and buried it under a rock rather than putting it at risk. He was not willing to do anything other than wait and watch. Now the interesting thing about this story is that it is not a new story to Jesus. It’s an old story that had been told by the Rabbi’s and by the various teachers around the communities of His day for years and years and years. The problem is the version that the Rabbi’s told ended with the one talent servant being the hero because he had not put his master’s investment as risk. And so when Jesus retold the story His way, He was stirring things up as He often did. We Christians take a lot of what we hear in the Bible and particularly about Jesus for granted. We’ve grown up with it and so we don’t realize without some study how really radical Jesus was when He came and ministered on earth. He was saying things that didn’t make sense. He was turning the world, I say, right side up. And He took that story and put a totally different twist on it saying that defying conventional wisdom and taking risks is precisely what He wants us to do as our Lord and our master. He says that when He greets us He wants to be able to say, “Well done good and faithful servant because you took a chance.” You took the talent that He gave you and you made it more. You allowed Him through His spirit to make you more than you thought you were. You took a chance on it.
It’s really a matter of perspective when you get right down to it. One of the reasons people have trouble with Jesus’ Word is because of their perspective. We are comfortable where we are. We’re comfortable in the setting that we are in. Last night I was watching Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”. They’ve revived it and put it on one of the cable channels. They were doing a program about Meer Cats. These cute little fuzzy things would stand up on their hind legs together. They are just adorable. But you know, there was a real wonderful illustration in there that I had to bring to you this morning because in one particular occasion the little community of Meer Cats got curious about something that was happening outside of their little circle of the world that they had claimed you know, they lived in little burrows kind of like groundhogs and they stayed around their little mound and they never wandered very far from it. But they got curious about something and they got outside their comfort zone. And when they did they had a danger, there was a hawk flying overhead. And they got scared and ran in every direction because they weren’t familiar with their surroundings. And one of them dived down in to a hole only to find that a snake lived there. And it got bit. He lived. But I thought of that last night because eventually they all found their way back to their little mound and to their familiar territory. And I realized that we don’t have to apologize for being comfortable and feeling safer in our familiar surroundings. It’s our nature; it’s what we do. We want to stay comfortable because we have less risk that way and things are a little more predictable. And we know where we’ll go if there are problems and what we’ll do. It’s a matter of perspective.
Edgar Allen Poe tells a story about a 100 or so years ago about a family that lived in an isolated, rural area way out in the country. And they didn’t have a whole lot but their little farm there and their clearing in the middle of nowhere. And their big event each year was the annual arrival of the catalog. And they looked through the catalog for days and days on end. And one day they saved their money and they purchased a telescope from the catalog. And when it arrived they set it up in the window and for the first time they were able to get a bigger picture of the area around them. But soon after they got it they looked out the window across the field and the father was in a panic. He said, “There’s a horrible monster on the other side of the field and it’s coming this way!” And so they boarded the windows on the house quickly and they all hunkered down in the middle and waited for the end. But the one little son got away and got back over to the telescope and he said, “I don’t see any monster over there but there is a praying mantis on the window sill.” See, it’s a matter of perspective. We’re comfortable with the perspective that we have. And our challenge is to be willing to take the risk of stepping out of our comfort zone to see how things look from another place. And granted it’s going to look scary, maybe, at first. So there are a lot of good excuses for being a little afraid of change and risks, but Jesus says, “Risk it anyway. That’s what I want you to do. Do what doesn’t make sense; step out in faith.” I’ll tell you the truth, the Jesus that I understand and feel that I know doesn’t call us to do the easy things or the comfortable things; He calls us to step out in faith in order to be His good and faithful servants. He asks us to do something.
The risk of doing something for God rather than doing nothing: Doing something involves the talents that we’ve been given, the stuff of our lives. Some of it you’ve heard many times in churches—time, talent, and resources. But there are more than that. There’s influence, there are contacts, there are networks and our abilities, our money, and our energy. Jesus challenges us to put our talents, and by that He means all that we’ve been given, at risk for His sake. I’ve had the privilege for being a pastor for just about six years now, and I remember so well the day that my little family and I packed everything that we had into a horse trailer and moved in to our first parsonage. And it occurred to me as we were pulling away from the little cottage that we lived in that we were like the Israelites leaving Egypt; we were stepping out in faith like we had never done before in our lives. I also remembered Jesus’ words when He said that we should put our hands firmly on the plow, look straight ahead, and never look back. And so I said farewell to our little cottage that we lived in and we moved to the parsonage for our new life in ministry. And there are times each year when I realize how much it seems like we have given up. On the other hand, I also see how much we have been given and it makes it all worthwhile. Time, talent, energy, resources, influence—whatever it is be willing to risk it, Jesus says, so that you can become a fully functional follower of Jesus who is our Lord and Savior. We don’t have any trouble accepting Him as our Savior. We are all willing to admit at some point in our lives we need to be saved. Everybody needs a rescue at one point in our lives but how willing are we to let Jesus be our Lord to give our loyalty to Him completely and allow Him to call us into a place of risk?
In the 19th Century there was a philosopher named Soeren Kierkegaard who was very critical of his home church. And his criticism is worth our time and attention this morning because it turned out that what he said of his church is true of many, many churches in the land even today. He believed that the way it out to be is this, that the congregation should be the actors on the world stage. That the pastors should be the prompters, you know, they are the ones that are down their in the little clamshell on the stage telling everybody their lines and helping them to remember what to do next. And God should be the observer. That’s what Kierkegaard said it out to be. But he felt that his church and many others had become this way that the pastor had become the actor, the congregation had become the observers, and God was seen as the prompter. I figured that that’s the way it is in many churches to this day. It’s so easy to say from our place of comfort and safety, “Well, we pay pastors and ministerial staff to take the risks, to do the things of church and religion and spiritual activity and we observe and participate as we are able and willing. And then we count on God to give us direction. Kierkegaard took issue with that. He said that just couldn’t be the way to do things. He felt sure that the congregation should be the actors, the pastors the prompters, and the God who created us all the observer of His creation. This is not a new concept. People have known this for a long time. It’s just hard. And so I’m tempted to do something easier. There is a 13th Century abbey that still exists to this day called “Our Lady of Risks”. And the monks who live there named it that for a very obvious reason if you think about it.
One of the greatest risk takers of all kind was Mary, the mother of Jesus. She risked it all. Imagine for a minute—she’s young, she’s not married, she’s never been with a man and she’s told she’s about to give birth to the Son of God. And she says, “Okay!” And then another great risk taker, her husband-to-be says “okay”. And they do together the unthinkable, illogical, irrational thing. And what do we get for their effort, for their faith? Our salvation. Not from them, but because they were willing to do the risky thing Jesus was born and became our Savior who was raised from the dead and became our Lord. Because of risk takers! We’re here today gathered in this place because of bold risk takers over and over again sacrificed so that the good news would continue to carry on.
The risk of accepting responsibility rather than placing blame: We don’t want to be like the one talent servant who said to his master, “I didn’t do anything with the talent you gave me because you’re mean and because I was afraid and because the weather wasn’t very good that day and because I had a headache.” And he started making all kinds of excuses and playing the blame game. You know, the blame game is nothing new to us. It started with Adam and Eve. You know, they sinned and then when God asked them Adam said, “The woman did it!” And when God asked the woman, the woman said, “The snake did it!” We’re used to passing the buck and playing the blame game, making excuses for not stepping out in risk. But what we need to consider is being like a certain fellow like William Borden who graduated from Yale University in 1909. You might recognize the name if you go down the refrigerator section of your grocery store and you see all those Borden products. William Borden was from that family. And when he graduated everyone expected him to take over the family business. And then he shocked them all by announcing that he was going to go to the mission field in western China and serve God. The newspapers and columnist in particular had a lot of fun with him. They called him “Billionaire Missionary”. (Lost some of transcript due to tape change.) But instead he headed for the mission field and he never made it. He died on the way. This young man with so much promised who looked forward to spending time on the mission field sharing Jesus with people died on the way. He never even made it. But before he died he left this little note. It’s become very famous. Where he wrote these little phrases, “No reserve, no retreat, no regret.” He knew even as he was dying that he had made the right choice. And his decision was all about his faith, his relationship with God and he had stepped out and risked it all and therefore had no reserve, no reason to retreat, and no regrets.
This capital campaign that we are involved in right now is the same kind of venture. We are asking ourselves if we are willing to step out in faith and to put all of our talents, all of our treasures, and all of our resources at risk so to speak. To step out in faith and courage in the way that Jesus is calling us to do. To do something bold so that we can watch and see how our God takes our little bit and turns it in to so much more. We are about ready to cross that threshold of risk and I hope that when we do whatever comes of it we will proudly say to each other, “No reserve, no regrets, no retreat.” We need to be willing to take risks; Jesus makes it plain. So I challenge you today to leave this place changed, willing not only to make a decision about this church’s future and your part in it but in your own lives in wherever you work and wherever you serve the Lord. Live it so that you have no reserve, no desire to retreat, and you can finish with no regrets.
Let us pray, “Our Father, I thank you and praise you for speaking your word today. Now burn in our hearts that which is yours and don’t let us leave without being changed. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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