Ted Loder provides our prayer for this morning.

God of ordinary things like bread and wine, and ordinary people like all of us, we remember with gratitude what you have done for us. Though our reach is far too short to touch with healing and with help all the ache and need of your human family, or even of each other, you remind us that our reach is not too short to give of ourselves, our time and heart and hand. Keep leading us to give not just what we wish or want or feel, but, in faithful honesty, to give everything we can. And thank you that our reach is not too short to lift all of us to you for hope and peace and strength, as now we do. Amen. (Adapted from “Go Deeper, Further With Us” in My Heart in My Hand. Ted Loder, copyright 2000, Innisfree Press, Inc. www.Innisfreepress.com, p.66)

Our reading today is the second part of a three-part answer Jesus is giving to a question his disciples have asked him. He has been teaching them about the end of the age and about how he will in time return for the faithful in Christ. They want to know, “when will this be, and what will be the sign of your return and of the end of the age” (Matthew 24.3)? Jesus says, “it will be in God’s own time.”

He says to them, “I will go away.” And he says to them and to us, “and I will return one day.” Then he tells them three parables. The first is the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids. The second is the parable of the talents, and the third is of the separation at the final judgment of those who recognized him among people on the outer margins of society, and those who do not recognized him there. Always be ready. Treat the least among us as if we were in the presence of Christ. And every now and then, take what God gives you and help it to grow. That is the point of the parable of the talents.

There is a double meaning to the word talent. In biblical times, “a talent was a large sum of money, equal to the wages of a day laborer for fifteen years. It is interesting that as a result of the wide circulation of this story, “talent” came into the English language in the Middle Ages as a term for God-given abilities, so we speak of “gifts and graces” (New International Bible, volume 8. 1995. Nashville. Abingdon Press, p.453) You will hear both meanings of the word today.

You will hear it because we have begun our stewardship season. By now, many of you have gotten a letter inviting you to be a contributing participant in our stewardship campaign. If you got the letter then you know that the theme for this year is, “Count the Cost: Creatively, Faithfully, Joyfully”. This is also the time of year when preachers usually dust this particular parable off and warn people not to put our money in a hole in the ground, but to use it for God’s work instead. But we are not dusting it off this year, it’s been out for a while, we have just saved it for today. You see, during Vacation Bible School the adult class spent five nights talking about the spirituality of money. The questions we considered then was what does our opinion of money have to do with our love of God? And is there any connection between our faith in God and our checkbook and credit cards?

Imagine you are in the scene. Your employer in this work of stewardship leaves on a trip without a fixed date of return and leaves you and two other servants an important part of her portfolio, and the deeds of some of the property she owns for you to invest and manage. While you are all given a share to take care of, the shares are not equal. There is no one third, one third, one third distribution. Each of you is given according to your ability. One gets five shares, one gets two, and another gets one. You can decide which of the three you are.

A long time later, your employer returns and wants to see what you have done with what has been entrusted to you. Two have doubled their investments and they receive gratitude and a bonus. “Well done, good and faithful, trustworthy servants, you were faithful over a few things, I will put you in charge of many. Enter into the joy of the master.”

Then comes the third one. Now today, you may want to take the stock and bury it in the ground until the market begins to improve, but let’s assume no recession and no deficit. Economic times are good. “Look, I knew you were kind of hard and difficult; you like to live on the edge ethically speaking. Anyway, I didn’t want to take any chances, so I took what you gave me to manage and I buried it. But here it is, and if you wash some of the dust off, you will find that I am returning to you what you entrusted to me. No more, but no less. The one given one talent had no creativity, no faith, and little joy. He had only fear and an aversion to taking even a small risk. He responded to his fear with more fear and he did nothing.

The response to the scared employee is stunning. It is not, “well, I hoped you would have done more”, or “at least you didn’t lose anything.” The response is, “if you know me so well, if you know I live on the edge, then watch me go over the top! The least you could have done was to have put the money in the bank and let it draw interest. But you didn’t even do that. Leave, just go, and give your one talent to your colleague who has ten.” That doesn’t seem fair. After all, the third employee is not guilty of fraud, he is not a thief, he has not done anything illegal. He is simply cautious and risk averse, and many of us would join him in saying, what is the problem? Caution is usually a good and smart thing, but every now and then, we in the church are called to bold faithfulness now and for our salvation.

We really live in two worlds. We have a stake in the world as we know it and in the world that is promised and as people of faith, we live between the time we have now and the time to come. The question for us is the same as it was for the disciples and for the early church as it first heard this parable. What do we do in the meantime? How shall we manage the things of God till Christ returns?

I want us to believe that all we have really belongs to God. And that we have been given a lifetime lease that asks only that we take the best care we can of what God has entrusted to us. Then we will take on both the risk and the task of total stewardship seriously. We will be serious enough to accept the invitation to share all of our talents generously with the church. We can celebrate that the essence of stewardship is in being good stewards of all of our resources. We can celebrate that doing so is vital to our life together, because when we do, we are making an investment in the ministries of this congregation.

We have been so richly blessed that we dare not horde what has been given to us. In this meantime, pray that the God of all time will give us strength and courage, hope and insight to be the creative, faithful, joy-filled stewards we are called to be so that we can answer the question, how will we manage what has traditionally been called our time, our talents, in all senses of the word, and our treasure?

It depends on how closely our time is to God’s time. If we are only concerned about out time, then time is all about chronos time, that is the movement of time in which seconds become minutes, become hours, become days, become weeks, become months, become years, become decades, become centuries, become millennia. We give the time we have no particular importance except to get through the day. We don’t plan, we don’t save, we don’t laugh, we don’t dream, we don’t love. One day just follows another. That is chronos time.

But God’s time is kairos time. It ‘s where you were when you heard that our nation was under attack on September 11, 2001, and what you were doing when you met the one you knew you would be with forever, and so many of you have been, it’s holding a new grandchild for the first time. In kairos time, we know the time of our lives is sacred, it’s special, it’s a gift from God that calls us to risk all we have for the sake of God who has given us everything. If we live in God’s time, then every day is one of thanksgiving and hope. Even the difficult days that come can be days filled with prayer and the companionship of compassionate friends. We will know in God’s time, in those moments when God comes and announces that his time is sacred and anointed a presence, a peace, and possibilities we can now only imagine.

How do we live in the meantime? It depends on what we do with our talents. Each of us has at least one, some are evident, some of them are buried. If yours are among the buried ones, dig it up, let it breathe. Let it see the light of day. And then ask yourself if your talent is a hobby that helps you relax and that gives you pleasure. That is a good thing to spend time doing. But we can pick up a hobby or put it down according to our whims. But our talents are truly gifts of God. They are signs of God’s grace in our lives, they are a means by which we bear witness to the world of the love of God and the grace of Jesus Christ in our lives and we cannot hold them back.

Plus they provide food for our souls and nourishment for those with whom we share our gifts. There are such gifts in this place. Gifts of song, gifts of instrumental music, gifts of compassion, justice seeking, education, helpfulness, and gifts of nurture. There is a growing gift here of people whose attitude about this church is that it is our house, God has given it to us, and we have some responsibility for taking care of it.

What do we do in the meantime? It depends on what we do with our treasure. When our treasure may be measured only in dollar signs and decimal points, we are thinking too small. That is one measure of our treasure, and it is important to us. We all need to share as generously as we are able. But our treasure is mostly whatever is most precious to us. What do you hold dear and invaluable? Who makes your pulse quicken, your heart soar, your passions stir? Who and what do you love unconditionally? That is your treasure, and if you hold it with integrity, it is a gift from God.

I will close by saying what we already know. All that we have comes from God and investing our God-given time, talent, and treasure in a way that pleases God in this life and brings us to God’s eternal pleasure is what real stewardship is about. Like the first two servants, we want to be such creative and faithful stewards that we are able to enter into the joy of our master Christ who has gone to prepare a place for us, and who promises to come again. That’s the real reward of doing all we can with the resources God gives us.

When we do, we will be able to proclaim again and again, thanks be to who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, and who gives us every good and perfect gift. To God be the glory, forever and ever. Amen.