January 9, 2011
"Beyond What We Can Imagine"
W. Gregory Pope, preaching
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Ephesians 3:14-21
Matthew 25:14-30
I was to begin with you today a journey through the Sermon on the Mount, but something wonderful has happened in the past couple of weeks that I want to speak to instead.
During the last week of 2010 we were given two extraordinarily generous gifts by two saints of our church who have recently passed away. One gift from Dr. Sam Weakley of $320,000. Without any designation, in accordance with our policies, 85 percent of his gift will go to our endowment for capital building improvements, which began 25 years ago, and with this gift has now exceeded the one million dollar mark, nearing 1.2 million dollars. Fifteen percent of Dr. Weakley’s gift ($48,000) will go to our general fund for ministry.
A second gift which will be given in three parts comes from Betty Ann Potter. Her initial gift of $168,000 is specifically designated to “the church’s general fund to further its religious and charitable purposes.” Sometime later this year we will receive from her estate an additional $110,000. Then when her house is sold, we will receive a portion of those monies - all designated for “the church’s general fund to further its religious and charitable purposes.”
So, we have been given a substantial amount of money for the purpose of furthering the ministry and mission of this church. This is a monumental moment in the life of our congregation to do something of great impact.
What shall we do? There have been and will be no shortage of suggestions. We will share them gladly and pray over them fervently. Today’s sermon is no way an attempt to tell you how the money should be spent, but a call to see these gifts as gifts of God to be used with a Spirit-led imagination bathed in prayer and faith.
Our epistle lesson we read together is a prayer. The writer prays for the Ephesians to be filled with the love of God to glorify God in the church for generations, the God who can do abundantly far more than we could ever ask or imagine. This text links prayer with imagination, that often forgotten gift of God. We seek imaginations inspired by God and bathed in prayer.
A few days before the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, a small band of disciples had gathered to pray and wait for the wind of the Spirit to blow among them. They prayed and they waited, and the Spirit blew in a mighty way. The elderly began to dream again. And the young had visions of what God could do among them. God’s people have always needed dreams and visions.
Do you have dreams and visions of what God could do through us gathered on the corner of Birchwood and Frankfort? This is an opportunity for some of those dreams to come true.
We tend to dismiss dreamers and visionaries. With our scared and cynical hearts we often tear down their dreams. We lack the faith and willingness to risk. All the while scripture is full of stories of faith where God calls people to leave home, to build arks, to buy land in a destroyed city, to marry a girl who’s pregnant with, she says, a child of the Holy Spirit, and the most foolish all - God calls us to believe in resurrection. God extends to people the call to risk and through them accomplishes amazing things.
The parable of Jesus we heard a few moments ago is a parable encouraging us to risk something big because something greater might come of it. The kingdom of heaven is like this, Jesus said. A wealthy man was going on a journey. He gathered his slaves and entrusted his wealth among them. To one slave he gave five talents; to another slave he gave two talents; and to a third slave he gave one talent.
These are staggering sums of money. One talent equaled 20 years’ worth of wages for a day laborer.
The first slave who received five talents was given an amount of money that represented 100 years’ worth of wages. He wheels and deals and by the time the master has returned he has doubled his money.
The second slave was given 40 years’ worth of wages and he doubled his master’s money as well.
When the master returns he congratulates these two slaves: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”
The third slave, given 20 years’ worth of wages, digs a hole and buries the fortune. It is not an odd choice. In that era the practice was common. Josephus described how, after destroying Jerusalem, the Romans recovered much of the city’s wealth from where its owners had buried it in the ground. Rabbinic law prescribed the burial of money as the best security against theft. This third servant is just being wise and responsible. We simply see him doing what people in that culture did to safeguard a treasure.
The third slave does so thinking he knows his master well. He describes his master as a harsh man. And that shapes his actions. Listen to how the third servant describes his own actions: “I was afraid, so I went away and I hid your talent in the ground.” Afraid. Went away. Hid. Sounds to me like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, afraid of God.
One thing this parable makes clear is that what we believe about God will determine how we live with what God has given us. Can God be trusted to provide? Or must we hold tightly to what we have for fear of a future financial storm?
Risk can be foolish. A big risk for something foolish can be devastating. But to risk something big for something good - well, that’s what makes life worth living. It’s what the kingdom of God is all about - living by faith, trusting that God can do far more than we could ever imagine.
Fred Craddock tells of the time his father took him out to the backyard and had him lie down on the grass and look up at the sky. As he did his father said to him,“Son, how far can you think?”
Fred said, “What?”
His father said, “Just think as far as you can think up toward the stars.”
So he said, I focused my imagination up toward the stars, and I said, “I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking.”
His dad said, “Are you thinking as far as you can think?”
“I’m thinking as far as I can think.”
“Well, drive down a stake out there,” he said. “In your mind, drive down a stake. Have you driven down the stake? That’s how far you can think?”
Fred said, “Yes sir.”
Then his father asked, “Now what’s on the other side of your stake?”
“Well, there’s more sky.”
His father said, “Well, move your stake.”
And they spent the evening moving his stake further and further, higher and higher.1
How far can you think? Can you think very far? Or has your imagination been stunted? Could it be that God is calling you, calling us, to move our stake beyond what we think we can see?
We often do not have what it takes to risk. We are far too rational. We weigh things too much and always discover enough to scare us out of taking any risk whatsoever. But you know, there are many decisions we have to make without certainty. We get married, we have children, we buy houses, we make investments, we take a new job, we leave the house almost every day not knowing what will happen to us.
It is no different as the people of God. Trust and risk are at the heart of biblical faith. In faith God calls us to stretch ourselves beyond what we can clearly see. Because there is always more than what we know. There is always more than what we have. There is always more than what we see. Those inspiring words we heard earlier from Ephesians remind us that we live with a God who is able to accomplish things far beyond our wildest imaginings. Do you believe in that kind of God?
Eugene Peterson tells of the time he was five years old and would walk across the meadow between his backyard and the fenced fields of the farmer who lived behind him. He would stand at the fence and watch Brother Leonard Storm plow the field with his enormous tractor. He wanted more than anything to get a ride on that John Deere tractor.
Brother Storm was about a hundred yards out when he spotted little Eugene. He stopped his tractor, stood up from the seat and made these strong waving motions toward him. Peterson said he looked mean and angry and so large in his bib overalls and straw hat. He was yelling at Eugene, but the wind was blowing against him, and his voice could not be heard. Eugene knew he was probably where he should not be. Five year old boys often are. So he turned and went home feeling rejected and rebuked.
Leonard and Olga Storm were huge Norwegians who always sat on the back row of the church. They hardly ever smiled, but they were quite rich. Whenever something needed to be purchased for the church and everyone else had made what contributions they could, Brother Storm would always say, “I’ll make up the difference.” The “difference” was always several hundred dollars.
Peterson said on the Sunday after his disappointment at the edge of the field, Brother Storm approached him after worship and said, “Little Pete, why didn’t you come out in the field Thursday and ride the tractor with me?”
I told him that I didn’t know I could have, that I thought he was chasing me away.
Brother Storm said, “I called you to come. I waved for you to come. Why did you leave?”
I told him I didn’t know that’s what he was doing.
Brother Storm said, “What do you do when you want to get somebody to come to you?”
Peterson showed him, extending his index finger and curling it back and forth a few times.
“Hahh!” said Brother Storm, “That’s piddling, Little Pete. On the farm we do things big!”2
How often do we as the church curl an index finger toward God, the world, and one another, suggesting people join us for a little social piddling, when all the while God is waving his windmill Jesus arms, calling us all to play the great game of transforming grace and world-changing justice, daring us all to risk something big for something that can radically change lives.
Is it because we think God is too small or too harsh or too tidy? Are we afraid we will take what we have been given and the risk will not pay off, that we will fail, and God will be angry?
What we believe about God will determine how we live with what God has given us.
The first two slaves are unafraid to risk the money. Refusing safety, they play the great game of growing the gift. Of course, this carries a risk of failure, a possible loss of the master’s money. But maybe they don’t fear a loss because they don’t fear a generous master. The third slave fears a loss because he fears what he believes to be a harsh master and does nothing.
Jesus’ point seems to be that in the kingdom of God the worst we can do is nothing. To the one who did nothing with what he had been given, Jesus reserved the harshest punishment: “Throw him into the outer darkness, where there will we weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This hyperbolic shock characteristic of Jesus’ parables confronts us with what Paul Duke calls “the ultimate immeasurable consequence of our choices.”3
It seems to me this parable is about the tension between fear and risk. Will we act in fear or will we take a risk? Our worst human behaviors are motivated by fear. Fear divides us. Fear reduces us. Fear paralyzes us. It keeps us from taking the risks to which faith calls us. It leads us to bury and sit upon what God has given us and do nothing at all.
I wonder how fear is affecting our ministry as a congregation. What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of what people might think or say if we took on some risky venture? Are we afraid of failing? Are we afraid of succeeding?
I know that for some of you the word “risk” stands alongside other four letter words you would rather not hear or speak. The loudest voices in your life are those of your parents or grandparents or supervisors instructing you: “Save! Save! You never know what might happen! Play it safe!” You’ve been through the Great Depression, or you’ve had a business venture fail, or you’ve been financially secure all your life because you pinched pennies, and to think of risking something makes you nauseous and you break out in a cold sweat.
We prefer words that are the opposite of risk. Words like Safe, Predictable, Comfortable, Secure, Convenient, Familiar. Words that have nothing whatsoever to do with following Jesus inspired by faith in God.
But you know what? The opportunities and challenges we have before us as the church can only be seized if we’re willing to risk.
Our calling is not to preserve this church. Our calling is to make ourselves available for God to use to change lives and transform the world. To reach out into the lives of people in our community who are not a part of our church and may never be. To serve those in our community who have the least power - the poor, the unemployed, the stranger, the hungry, the homeless, the abused, the addicted, the immigrant, the victim of violence.
Martin Luther King said that the vitality of religion does not lie in the center but at the edges, the growing edges of faith, where risks are taken to share the gospel and live the gospel.
Every church I know is much more prone to worry over doing too much rather than wondering if we are doing everything we can. There is a tendency for us to look around and say, “We’re not as big as we used to be. We’re going to have to tighten up. Play it safe and save what little we have.” But we have more in this place than we think we do. We possess more buried treasure than we know. We have been blessed.
God does not call us to be the biggest and the best. God calls us to be faithful with who we are and what we have been given. And according to this parable, being faithful means taking risks.
A Cistercian Abbey in Brittany has named its Madonna, “Our Lady of Risk.” I find that inspiring.
The risk for us as a congregation is not to spend money we do not have. The risk before us is to take what we have been given and use it for the sake of the gospel.
The God behind this parable is not the harsh master but the Generous Gambling Giver. Everything belongs to God; it does not belong to us. These financial gifts we have received are not ours; they belong to God. They have been placed in our hands, as Mother Teresa says, “to do something beautiful for God.” And remember: “To whom much is given, much is required.”
This Wednesday, January 12, 2011, will mark our 103rd anniversary as a congregation. Our mission statement says we believe we are to be a Baptist community in Crescent Hill “welcoming God’s calling.” That means we continually ask ourselves not: “What do we want to do?” That gets congregations in a whole lot of trouble because it centers on us and our plans and our abilities. The crucial question for us is this: “What is God calling us to do?”
We can never know precisely what the will of God is. So we must engage in a process of discernment where we ask questions like:
What course of action most fully resonates with the kind of life Christ lived and teaches us to live?
What sort of action opens up more possibilities for God to work?
What opens, rather than closes, doors for God’s healing, reconciling, forgiving, and creating work to go on?
If we ask those questions, we may make mistakes here and there, but we have not made the mistake of shutting the door on God.4
Some of you will remember the late Grady Nutt, who was a member of this congregation. He once said, “I believe that the essence of living is this: to come to the brink of death, look back across your life, and say with a solid smile, ‘I’m glad I did that!’” Several years from now I want us to be able to look back at this moment in time in light of these gifts and be able to say, “I’m glad we did that!”
Back to Brother Storm and his farm, Eugene Peterson writes:
A few days after my disappointment at the edge of [Brother Storm’s] field and his reprimand in church, I was back at the fence, watching, hoping I might get a second chance. The giant Norwegian saw me, stopped the tractor and did it again, made that sweeping motion of invitation. I was through the barbed wire in a flash, running across the furrowed field and then up on the big green John Deere. He let me stand in front of him, holding the steering wheel, pulling the plow down that long stretch of field, my smallness now absorbed into his largeness.5
We stand at the fence today, you and I, together. God’s large windmill invitational arms are waving in our direction. What will we do? Will we draw back in safety, grasped by an uncertain future? Or will we climb through the dangerous barbed wire and run across the field into God’s arms, our smallness absorbed into God’s largeness, and plow the field, gather the harvest, and live into the joy of God’s gladness over all who took the trustful risk? The God who can do far more than we could ever imagine. What will we do? What is God calling us to do?
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1. Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard Ward, ed., Chalice Press, 2001, 123-124
2. Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, Eerdmans, 1992, 158-160
3. Paul Duke, The Parables: A Preaching Commentary, Abingdon, 2005, 55
4. Rowan Williams, Where God Happens, New Seeds, 2005, 61
5. Peterson, 197