Psalm 123
Matthew 25:14-30

Do you ever repeat yourself?  Do you ever tell the same story more than once?  The real test is do you know when you tell the same story more than once?  Today, I’m going to repeat myself and tell a story that I have told before.  I heard about a congregation who called a new Senior Minister.  The Senior Minister delivered his first sermon and the congregation was pleased.  The second Sunday the Senior Minister delivered the same sermon.  People were a bit concerned but no one said anything to the Senior Minister although they said a lot to each other.  The third Sunday the Senior Minister delivered, you got it, the same sermon.  Well, the Moderator was appointed informally to talk with the Senior Minister.  He approached the Senior Minister and said, “A few of us have been talking about your sermons.  It seems to us that you have delivered the same sermon three consecutive Sundays.  Is that true?  And the Senior Minister responded that indeed he had delivered the same sermon three successive Sundays.  And the Moderator asked why.  To which the Senior Minister responded, “When the congregation starts doing what I’m suggesting in that sermon, then, I’ll deliver a different sermon.”  People do repeat themselves, sometimes intentionally.

I wonder if Jesus ever repeated himself.  I wonder if he told a story and thought it made the point so well that he wanted to make that he told it again.  Did he ad lib as he went along telling the same story more than once adding bits and pieces from the landscape of the audience to which he was talking?
Our text for today from Matthew’s Gospel is a story that Jesus may have told another time and another place with a few different wrinkles.  Basically, the same story is recorded in the nineteenth chapter of Luke.  There are a few differences.  The story in Matthew has three servants; the one in Luke had ten.  The story in Matthew has two of the servants doubling their money; the story in Luke has one servant returning ten fold and another returned five fold, a bit like the parable of the sower.  Both Matthew and Luke have a servant doing nothing with what the owner had given him except putting it in a drawer for safe keeping because this servant in each story knew the master was a hard man and the servant was afraid.  In Luke's story, nothing is said about the other seven servants.  Maybe this is a story Jesus told more than once but with some variety in the details. 

Maybe Jesus did repeat himself, but he knew what he was doing.  He was striving to help his audience catch a glimpse of what the realm of God is like.  Luke said Jesus tells this story because he is near Jerusalem and because people expected the realm of God to appear immediately.  Prior to telling this story Jesus made everyone think of things like the coming of the realm of God and the judgment of the world.  All leaped straight to the human race's favorite subject.  It wasn't football; it was eschatology; you know last things, descriptions of what will happen when the world ends.  There are people who are certain that it is a time when scores are settled and people get what's coming to them.  Jesus is unhappy with the leap these people made and unhappy with our leap as well.  Jesus knows what the mystery appears to be like will not be anything like what they expect.  The realm of God will be revealed by resurrection and not by some razzle-dazzle intervention in the affairs of the world.  Jesus feels a need to correct what the coming of the realm of God means for them.  He challenges their customary thinking about the subject of judgment, because even judgment will be nothing like what they have in mind.  We are certain of what judgment will be like, aren't we?  Our certainty is based on what we would do if we were in a position to pass judgment on other people’s lives and the actions or lack of actions they took.  Somebody will knock heads.  Scores will be settled, good will be rewarded, and evil will be punished.  It's clear.  It’s simple. It’s easy.

And it’s wrong because that surely is not what Jesus says in this story that judgment is like.  What Jesus offers is a judgment of approval of the first two servants.  They showed their trust in the one who gave them the gifts.  Jesus said the gifts indicated his desire that they exercise a little trust in him that he meant them well and he wouldn't mind if they took some risks with his gift of a lifetime.  He didn't ask them to make money.  He asked them to do the business of grace and love as he had offered these gifts to them.  And the first two did that.  They took risks and the logical consequences of those risks were that trusting in God through faithfulness to God provided an even greater opportunity to experience God's love and grace
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Jesus said God had great affection for the risk takers.  What if these first two servants had lost it all?  The master would have said, "Well done.  Good try."  As Sandor McNab has noted, "A risk a day keeps boredom away."  If you don't place your foot on the rope, you'll never cross the chasm.  (Liz Smith, quoted by Walter Anderson in The Greatest Risk of All)

In a study of over 250 risk takers, Bruce Ogilvie found that people who crave the kind of excitement available only at the outer limits of physical and emotional endurance tend to be extremely autonomous, have a will to dominate, excel in abstract reasoning, see themselves as leaders, are self-assertive, decisive, rebellious against routine, have a low level of anxiety and a high degree of emotional control.  (Sam Keen, Inward Bound, New York: Bantam Books, 1992, p. 165.)

Fidelity in littleness is what this story is all about.  These first two servants trusted the owner because the owner trusted them.  Because of that trust they felt free to take risks.
 
Part of the risk is running the risk of failing.  And who of us hasn't failed many times already.  Think about it.  You and I have failed many times, although we don't remember a lot of the times we failed.  We fell down the first time we tried to walk.  We nearly drowned the first time we tried to swim.  We didn't hit the ball the first time we swung a bat.  The heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.  The fact that we fail from time to time does not mean we're failures. Good shooters in basketball often miss several consecutive shots but they are encouraged by their coaches to keep shooting.
  
Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs but he struck out 1330 times.  R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.  English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books. The fact that we don't always succeed doesn't mean our lives can't be lives of value and worth!

You know what gets in the way of trusting and taking risks?  Exactly what got in the way of the third servant: fear?  The third servant did absolutely nothing with what was entrusted to him.  As a result he gained nothing.  Even if he had done something with what was entrusted to him and lost it all, there was the potential of learning lessons from the experience that could help him in his life.  But he froze in fear and did nothing.  Here is what the servant said to the man who entrusted him to manage some of his possessions.  "Sir, I know you are hard man; you reap harvests where you did not plant, and you gather crops where you did not scatter seed.  I was afraid, so I went off and put your money in the third drawer of my dresser for safe keeping so I would have it to give to you when you returned."  And the owner said, "George, George, George, what am I going to do with you?  I gave it to you so you could take some risks and enjoy life.  But what did you do?  You hid it in the bottom drawer of the dresser.  You played it safe because of some imaginary fear.  All you've got is the crummy little life you started with.  Here you tell me, Mr. Risk Himself (referring to Jesus) that I couldn't be trusted enough for you to gamble on a two-bit loss.  I can accept absolutely everything except distrust in my acceptance of you.  Show George the door.  I know it's dark out there, but what does he care?  He's got a weasely little concept of me and he thinks if he chews on it long enough it'll turn into a bright idea.  But it never will.  Just let him wear out his little teeth chewing on it forever. 

Death said:  "Play it safe."  Life said: "Risk it." It's amazing what fear will do to us.  It starts early and immobilizes us quickly.  Someone has observed that fear is the polio of the soul that prevents our walking by faith.  Carl Jung observed many years ago, "In lunatic asylums it is a well‑known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.  (Jung, cited in Odajnyk, Volodymys Walter, JUNG AND POLITICS, New York: New York University Press, 1976, p. 74.) 

Brandon had a friend spending the night with him when he was eight or nine years old.  The boys got ready to ride bicycles and Will could not find his shoes.  A long, involved search for the shoes followed.  Finally, when Will saw his shoes, he said, "That was a close one."  Peggy asked Will what he meant by "That was a close one."  He said, "My mother would have killed me if I hadn't found these shoes."  Fear nearly immobilized Will.

Of course, part of the struggle between risk and fear is the unknown.  We don't know how anything will turn out.  How many things would we never have tried if we had known ahead of time how they were going to turn out?  I wouldn't have driven so fast if I had known I was going to lose control of my car in the curve.  I wouldn't have taken that course if I had known it was going to be that difficult.  I would not have accepted that job if I had known I was going to get fired later.  And some other things have been wonderful and we wonder why we were so reluctant to do them.  We wish now we had taken the risk earlier.  In his book, Perfect Peace (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1979), Charles L. Allen notes that it is a strange coincidence that the Bible repeats the command "Fear not" exactly 365 times‑‑or once for each day of the year.

The unknown always is before us and how we grapple with it determines where we move forward and risk it or shrink back in fear.  I was in a school building about 9 o'clock in the evening.  Two small boys came strolling down the hall; the pay telephone in the hallway was ringing.  One of the boys started to the telephone to answer it.  His mother, several steps behind him, ordered, "Don't answer that!  You don't know who it is."  Who ever answered the telephone with any certainty about who was on the other end of the line, even with Caller ID?  A simple thing like answering the telephone has the risk and fear of the unknown tied up in it.  The phone rings.  There is no way to know who it is unless you answer it, even with Caller ID. The person on the other end of the line may be offering you the opportunity of a lifetime that you have been preparing for all your life or she may be calling to give you the most devastating news you have ever received. 

Jesus said that the servants of the realm of God answer the phone.  They take the risk.  Even if the result is their worst nightmare, they have trust and faith and confidence in the owner who has trust and faith and confidence in them.  And together they will make it through even if it is their worst nightmare, but it seldom is.  Actually our worst nightmares never come full-blown but develop and evolve during the passing of time and the changing of events.
 
There are two ways to get a chicken out of an egg. One way is with a hammer, but something of the chicken is lost in the process. A better way is for the mother hen to sit patiently on the egg, surrounding it with warmth, until it is time to hatch. There are two ways to command faith, one is by hammering us over the head; the other is with warming our lives with love. God has chosen the second, less spectacular, way.  Jesus said that's the way the realm of God is.  God offers us relationship and those who have faith in God in the little things discover even greater opportunities to experience God's love and grace.  And those who can't, won't risk the little things lose the opportunity at anything larger.       
About a century and a half before the birth of Christ, a celebrated Greek mathematician named Philon of Byzantium wrote a little treatise called De Septem Orbis Spectaculis‑‑"The Seven Wonders of the World." His list included the Great Pyramid, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Tomb of Mausolous, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Similar lists have been drawn up over the years as more and more wonders have been constructed by human ingenuity.  Ones composed in the 20th century included the Golden Gate Bridge on the West Coast, the Empire State Building on the East Coast, and the Chicago Sewage Disposal System in between! We are still attracted to the spectacular. But God doesn't work that way.  God deals with sighs instead of signs, whispers instead of shouts, hints instead of hammers, intimations instead of intimidations. For how else can God touch us without overwhelming us? 

Jesus always is working in leastness, littleness, lastness, lostness, and death: those, plus faith in God, are the only things God’s resurrecting grace passes judgment on; the good works and good results in this parable are praised only as effective signs of fidelity in littleness that the story is really about. 
God is with us now, if we will believe, just trust the God who already trusts us.  After the good servants had been faithful, they were free to write MBA theses on sound management techniques if that appealed to them.  We are in the business of faith, of taking the whole weird Jesus we now find in Scripture, of laying hold, in him, of the love and grace of God we already have, now.
If we do that, we will have done the only business that we or the servants in the parable ever had to do in the first place: trust God and the grace God gives us and let the results be whatever we can manage to make them.  Good, bad, or indifferent, we are home free, just for trusting the relationship with God. At one level it is such a little thing but on the level of a lifetime, it is our trust in God that makes all the difference in life having meaning, purpose, and value. 

I think Jesus repeated himself.  I think he told the same story over and over because he wanted people to get the message that God loved them and trusted them.  It is a story worth repeating and God trusts us to repeat that story every chance we get.  If we are faithful in this little thing, even more will be entrusted to us.  Let’s repeat this story again and again.