Sermon Tone Analysis

! Daring to Risk

Willingness to risk—that's the way the gospel was born.

For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.

And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.

And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.

But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money.

After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.

And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.

His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.

His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many tilings: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.

Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

And cast ye the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:14-30 KJV

If I were to ask you the point of the parable of the talents, what would you reply?

This parable is so familiar, so much a part of our Christian education and heritage, that the question seems silly—and the answer obvious.

But what if I were to tell you the real point of this parable was not that we should use the innate "talents" we've been given?

What if I said that Christ had another more important, exciting, life-shaping truth in mind as He told this familiar story?

Well, that is exactly what I think.

I believe that this famous parable is really about something quite a bit deeper than an admonition to use our God-given talents.

This parable is about /taking risks./

And the question it ultimately raises is the kind meant to shape our idea of following Christ And that question is this:

!! How Willing Are We to Take a Risk for the Sake of Christ?

Risking.

What is it about the idea of taking risks that excites us at the very same time it strikes fear into our hearts?

We seem to be in love with the idea—if somebody else is taking the risk.

While only a brave, or crazy, minority are daring enough to take chances, the rest of us watch in awe, shaking our heads and exclaiming, "Boy, look at that!"

Recently, I was reading about Dr. Frank Farley, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, who has spent twenty years studying risk-taking personalities.

His research has identified what he calls the "T" factor.

Those who have this "T" factor are those who are willing to risk, either positively or negatively—that is, willing to risk honestly, for the contribution of humanity or self, or willing to risk dishonestly, to the detriment of society through crime.

It's amazing what people like these will do.

In the summer of 1985, 150,000 people risked themselves shooting the rapids down the Colorado River, for instance /(U.S. News and World Report,/ Aug. 10, 1986, p. 64).

And since 1970, 45,000 people have taken up the hobby of hang-gliding—that's strapping gossamer wings on your back and running off the top of a mountain in hopes the air catches you.

And what about the people who take other kinds of risks?

There are supposedly 4,000 new people a day entering the stock market.

In places like Denver, Colorado, school teachers have brought in stock brokers during the school's lunch break to give them advice on how to pool their money and buy penny stocks—stocks that may triple in a matter of days or just disappear within that same amount of time (/U.S./ News /and World Report,/ May 25, 1985, p. 61).

One Georgia wheat farmer recently put $30,000 into wheat futures and within six months, made $300,000.

Of course, that caused a rush of others willing to risk in the future of wheat, too.

And then there are the state lotteries, where you can risk a little in the chance to reap a lot.

In one recent year the New York State lottery (Time, May 28, 1984, p. 42) had a pot of 22.1 million dollars.

Even Governor Mario Cuomo waited in line 30 minutes to buy $5.00 worth of chances.

Yet, believe it or not, those lottery players are three and a half times more likely to be struck by lightning than they are of winning.

Maybe those of us who risk like the adrenalin rush it brings—or maybe it's the feeling of escaping the ordinary we are looking for.

Whatever the reason, we like the idea of taking risks... to a certain extent, that is.

Most of us are really committed to a lifestyle built on playing it safe.

We hedge our bets, cover our tracks, we dig in.

From anesthetized surgery to homogenized milk, from the womb to the tomb, most of us work hard at avoiding risk as much as possible.

And this is where Jesus' story intersects life for most of today.

!! Use It or Lose It?

The parable of the talents has been subjected to so much lameness, tameness, and sameness that it's almost become the story of the bland leading the bland.

We've watered it down, as if Jesus were only teaching a trite moral like, "God gives you talents.

Use your talents or you may lose them."

Now, there is truth in such a moral, of course.

But that's certainly not all Jesus had to say in this parable.

There's so much more—just as there is in all His parables.

Christ's parables are not lame little stories with lame little morals.

They are outrageous stories about outrageous characters.

Think about them—a man who invites strangers to a feast, a woman who bugs a judge, a man who builds his house on sand.

These creations of Jesus do bizarre and eccentric things to wake you and me to the realization that the Christian life is not meant to be predictable or conventional.

So, in the parable of the talents, Jesus Christ is not just talking about what we should do with our talents.

He's also challenging us.

He's saying, "To follow Me is to be willing to risk—to live a lifetime of risk."

And that concept speaks of a life of action, taking chances, adventure, expansion, all for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Learning to be open to risks, though, may be one of the hardest growing pains we can experience as Christians.

But at the same time, such a lesson carries with it the potential of astonishing growth, too.

Still, it seems against our nature.

Our aversion to anything new, anything risky isn't a new attitude.

By the time Matthew had collected this story of Jesus into his book, the history of the church shows that things had begun to settle down.

The followers of Jesus had decided they would begin leading a conventional, quiet, predictable sort of life as they waited for Jesus to bring in His kingdom.

Yet this story should have stabbed them into a heightened awareness, a vision of the sort of willingness Christ expects from anyone who follows Him.

Looking at the parable of the talents from this perspective sheds a whole new light on every part of the story.

!! The Real Star

First, the five-talent servant and the two-talent servant in the parable are essentially window dressing.

They're stage properties to set off more starkly the real star—the servant who was handed one talent of his lord's money and did nothing with it

Make no mistake.

Even holding one talent was an enormous responsibility.

A gold talent in New Testament times was worth about $30,000.

The five-talent man, then, had to cart away $150,000, the two-talent man $60,000, and the one-talent man $30,000.

What makes these amounts even more incredible is comparing them to the standard of living in that day.

The daily pay of the wage earner in Jesus' day was a whopping 15 denarii.

But even though he had less than the others, the focus of the parable is on the one-talent servant who refused to risk what his lord had given him—even though the lord made it quite plain that he was given the money for that expressed purpose.

But the servant could not bring himself to act.

He seemed paralyzed, immobilized with fear.

Because of the heavy responsibility his lord had given him, he couldn't budge.

Like so many of us today, he was the typical spectator, the bench-warmer.

He stood on the sidelines, never participating in what his lord was doing.

!! The Timid Sailor

A famous theologian, Reinhold Neibuhr, tells a parable about this parable.

It is the story of a young man who left his home in Kansas to be a sailor on a tall-masted sailing ship.

On the third day out to sea, the new sailor was commanded to take the watch in the crow's nest, high up the mast.

After climbing about halfway up the mast, though, he stopped.

He was frozen to the big mast, not able to finish climbing up, and too proud to slink back down and admit he was afraid of heights in front of the seasoned sailors watching.

So he took an option that was no option.

He simply clutched at the mast and did nothing with the responsibility that he had been given.