How To ‘Fess Up When You Mess Up: A Sermon in Triptych Matthew 25.14-30, El Mesias Baptist Church, Corpus Christi, TX Sunday, May 18, 2014

Right Panel: The World in the Text

            Ron Kaplan, CEO of Trex, an outdoor deck manufacturer, recently gave an interview to the New York Times. The reporter asked him how he determines which employees he can rely on. Kaplan replied that one of the qualities he values is brevity: “The longer it takes to answer a simple question, the more I worry. If I ask a guy if it’s raining outside, and he starts to tell me about cloud formations, I know we’ve got an issue.”

Central Panel: Christ in the Text

            That quote reminds me of this story that Jesus told about three junior executives reporting to their CEO. I’m too much of a poet ever to be a sound expositor, and I was never very good at math, but it occurs to me that in the Greek text of the story we have read this morning, the two guys who succeeded give their report in ten words each; the guy who failed uses thirty. The first two guys say, “It’s raining;” the third guy starts talking about cloud formations.

            Now, the standard way of taking this parable goes as follows: The master, of course, is God. The slaves are you and I. The talents are our gifts and abilities. (In fact, the original word refers to a certain amount of money, but we can apply it to our own natural or spiritual gifts.) God invests certain aptitudes in each of us, certain things we are good at, and on the Judgment Day God will come back and see how we’ve done. And, of course, the idea is to be like Guy Number One, or at least Guy Number Two, but under no circumstances to be Guy Number Three.

            And there’s some validity to that approach. 1 Corinthians 3.10-15 warns that God will test our works by fire and reward us accordingly. 2 Corinthians 5.9-10 urges us to seek to be pleasing to God because God will recompense us for both good deeds and bad ones. Jesus tells similar stories about wheat and tares (Mt 13) wise and foolish virgins (Mt 25.1-13) and sheep and goats (Mt 25.31-46).

            So that’s a pretty good lesson then: Shoot for Guy Number One and make Guy Number Two your fall-back plan and try as hard as you can not to be Guy Number Three. But here’s the problem: Sometimes we’re ALL Guy Number Three! So the question I want to ask from this story is: What do you do when you fail? When my mom caught me doing something wrong and I tried to talk my way out of it, she would say, “Doug, ‘fess up.” So how do we 'fess up when we mess up? I believe this servant makes three mistakes in that regard: He believes in the wrong God, and he blames the wrong guy, so he ends up in the wrong place.

1. He believes in the wrong God

            Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. (v.24) Based on the data at hand, does that seem accurate? What do we know about this master?

We know that he entrusts his servants with real responsibility. A talent amounted to fifteen years’ wages. Right now the minimum wage in America is $7.25 an hour. Calculating for a forty-hour week, that’s about $15K as one year's wages. That means a talent would be worth $225K. Since one man received five talents, the maximum investment topped a million bucks and the total capital outlay exceeded two mil!

We know his gives his servants real freedom: He’s not some control freak who dictates how they should use the money, and as far as the story indicates, he does not insist on receiving quarterly reports or annual audits. He lets them act as true, creative agents.

We know he rewards good work: These men were slaves, not employees. The master could have pocketed the ROI along with the original investment without so much as a “thank you.” According to Luke 17.7-10 that was industry standard: no bonus, no gold watch, no plaque for your office wall – just another assignment. But this guy promotes his slaves and lets them hold both the principle and the interest to start a new endeavor.

You knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. (v.26) It might seem that his boss agrees with this terrible performance review, but look a little closer. The original manuscripts of the New Testament don’t have punctuation marks. Many translators believe this verse should be translated, not as a statement but a rhetorical question: The NIV, the ESV, the RSV put a question mark at the end: So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Read this way, the boss isn’t saying, “This is what I’m like,” but, “So, you think this is what I’m like, eh?” Then he says, in effect, “All right then: If that’s the boss you think I am, that’s the boss I’ll be.”

And so what happens next makes perfect sense. Since he believes in the wrong God. . .

2. He blames the wrong guy.

            I said I’m not great at math, but I also notice that this man’s reply contains the word “you” or “your” six times, and only uses the word “I” twice! In other words, he has a lot more to say about his boss’s mistakes than his own. In fact, he never admits to any mistakes! He’s convinced to the very end that he did the only thing he could possibly have done, that this man is a tyrant, and that no one could succeed under his leadership.

            Of course, the problem with that approach is that his two colleagues have, in fact, succeeded!

            The smart move here is to apologize, throw himself on the mercy of the court: “Master, I’m so sorry! I thought you were a hard man, but now I see you are a generous man! I thought you reaped where you did not sow, but now I see that you sow and let others reap! I thought you gathered where you did not scatter seed, but now I realize that you send others to gather the seed you scatter! I missed an opportunity. Please forgive me!”

            Instead he insists on trying to shift responsibility from himself to his boss. Not surprisingly, his master agrees to play by the rules the employ chooses. You ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. The boss says, basically, that if the servant wants to play the Blame Game, that's what they'll do. And by the rules of that game, this man didn't even do what was wisest if his assessment of the master had been accurate.

            That's why the story ends the way it does: Since he believes in the wrong God and consequently blames the wrong guy. . .

3. He winds up in the wrong place.

            Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (v.30). That sounds harsh, sounds as if the this servant was right about the master all along. But I want you to remember exactly where in the Gospel of Matthew we find this story: In Holy Week, probably on Tuesday, just three days before Jesus goes to the cross. In other words, Jesus himself is about to be cast out and given the death of a worthless slave in midday darkness as the Father turns away from His own Son (Mt 27.45)! And He, the Sinless One, will do this so that sinners can avoid the punishment we deserve! If anyone does indeed wind up in the outer darkness, Jesus warns, it will be because that person chose it, chose to cling to a small view of God and a big view of self rather than undergo the painful stripping of self that leads to life.

            He believes in the wrong God and blames the wrong guy, so he ends up in the wrong place, a place his master never meant for him to go.

Left Panel: The Church in the Text

            I think most of us can relate to Number Three in this story a lot more than we'd like to admit. And yes, as a minister of the gospel I am required to tell you that it's far more fun to be Guy One or at least Guy Two. But you already know that and anyway, the main way they succeeded was that they avoided the mistakes of Guy Three. So let me translate this story into a couple of simple steps to keep in mind when you realize you've buried your talent. Think of it as a checklist for trouble-shooting your walk with God.

            Believe in the right God! We do not serve a harsh God, a crabby and cramped taskmaster who peers over the battlements of Heaven with a magnifying glass in one hand and a white glove on the other and scopes out the slightest speck of dust we've left on our Christian conduct. We worship the God revealed in Jesus Christ, a God who apparently goes bananas with joy at the sight of His children taking daring and seemingly irresponsible risks with God's love.

            Just look at Jesus! He sets up six-kegger weddings as a sign of the coming Kingdom (Jo 2.1-11) and touches lepers (Mt 8.3) and tussles with children (Mt 19.14). He heals the wrong people (Mt 15.22f) and heals them on the wrong day (Lk 13.14). He encourages kids to get rowdy in church because the bricks in the building are more likely to shout God's praise than some of the stone-faced saints stuck fast in their pews (Lk 19.40). He doesn't care nearly so much if you dish up a second helping of ice cream as he does whether you dish out gossip about your neighbors (Mt 15.11). He's not crazy about sexual sin because it hurts those involved, but he also doesn't think that hurting them more will make anything better (Jo 8.1-11).

            Listen! Our Lord sends us out to sling seed on any soil we can find from a paved-over parking lot to a tilled acre of Texas black dirt (Mt 13.1-8). He says that sorting wheat from tares or catfish from carp is the job of angels and that our task is just to fill our baskets and our nets with every broken heart we can get our hands on (Mt 13.39, 47-49). He sends us to reap where we did not sow and promises that the field of souls is white-hot for the harvesting (Jo 4.35-38).

            I'll stand before God's throne of judgment one day and I'm sure I will have gotten more wrong than I got right. But I can guarantee you that in that hour I'd far rather explain why I went too far than why I didn't go far enough, how I over did it rather than how I under did it. I'd much rather explain that I took the talent of the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, bet the whole thing on one roll of the dice and blew it, than explain that I was so afraid of losing that I never tried to win. I'd really rather explain that I went bankrupt because the grace-bubble burst than whine that I didn't trust God to be an honest banker.

            So believe in the right God! That will make it much easier, when the time comes, to blame the right guy. This passing the buck goes clean back to Eden. The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat (Gn 3.12). Aaron tried it out when he told Moses that he'd only gone into the golden calf business out of response to market demands: Let not the anger of my lord wax hot : thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief (Ex 32.22). The ancient Israelites blamed their bad spiritual dentition on the previous generation's poor dietary choices: The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge (Ezek 18.2).

            But the good news of the Gospel is that we serve a God who forgives sin, and this means that we can freely confess sin. See, the problem with believing in the wrong God is that you always get the God you believe in! God isn’t like that, but it hardly matters, because we live as if God were like that, and we end up with tiny, cramped, fearful lives buried in the dirt of our own bad theology! On the other hand, Jesus says, to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance (v.29). In other words, as you come to believe in a bigger God, God becomes bigger in your experience!

            So confess. Talk to God using a lot more "I's" than "You's," or even "Thou's"! Own your sin as the single thing that is truly your own creation. Dump down the dirty mess you have chosen to leave clumped and caked around the pure gold of the gospel.

            And if you believe in the right God and blame the right guy, you will wind up in the right place.

            The German pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, "He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone." That's what Jesus means by "outer darkness." Don't be alone anymore! Let Jesus into your failure!

            There is a marvelous scene in Prince Caspian, the second book in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. Lucy, the youngest of the four Pevensie children, has returned to the  magic world of Narnia and there she meets Aslan, a lion who is the personification of Jesus in that world. The following conversation takes place:

            "Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger.

            "That is because you are older, little one," answered he.

            "Not because you are?" (Lucy asks)

            "I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

            That is what Jesus means when he promises that to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance (v.29). Get bigger! Live bigger! Love bigger! Live the love of Christ to people you are convinced God doesn't even like! Open your arms to embrace those whom your small faith has shut out in the name of safety! Confess your smallness and embrace God's bigness! And in that moment, where eternity intersects with immediacy, hear your Lord say, Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.