Accountable Spirituality

First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
26th Sunday after Pentecost – November 13, 2005
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-11 /Matthew 25-14-30]

Congregationalists are part of the “free church” tradition – that means we’re not in a state-supported church nor are we tied to a hierarchical system of government. My colleague, Sam Schaal, likes to talk about the Free Church, the free market, and the free society as being all intertwined. Yet, for all of the freedom that we have, be it economic, political, or spiritual, there is also accountability. How does the old saying go, “freedom isn’t free?”

The free market has its systems of checks and balances. As I have done some reading this week I noted that “risk” is also a part of the free market economy – and the willingness to take that risk is at its core. Watching the news or reading the paper certainly lets us see the risk involved in investing, for that matter there’s even a risk in owning a home as we all monitor the “real estate bubble”! When we take a risk we’re accountable for it, aren’t we? If our hunch, our judgment, was correct then we benefit. If it wasn’t, then we don’t.

What is true in the free market is also true in the free society. It is also true in spiritual matters, too. Freedom is a gift, but it is a gift for which we must answer. Authentic spirituality is accountable spirituality. 

This week we read another one of Matthew’s parables on the coming of the kingdom – the parable of the ten talents. Let’s get a little background here so we can make better sense of this text. A ‘talent’ is a unit of weight. It represents a very large amount of money. Scholars tell us that it was equivalent to fifteen years’ wages for a common laborer. So each talent that was given represented the economic power or opportunity for a goodly part of a lifetime.

The structure of the story is set up to deliberately telegraph something to us. It is the story of a superior who gives directions-gifts-responsibilities to his servants. Then the superior goes away on a journey, comes back from it and demands an accounting for what has been given. This is what you might call the scriptural equivalent of a “performance review.” 

The story wants us to immediately get the point – the superior is God. The servants are humanity/people. God makes the world, gives us gifts, sends us prophets, opens Divine Life to us and then wants to know what we’ve done with the gift. Did we, the creature, act as the Creator intended? Did we do the will of the Creator? The story hinges on the answers to those questions.

Storyteller and theologian, John Shea, comments that the normal way these stories play out is to have the first two characters get it wrong and the third one get it right. There’s a certain comedic tie to this as we wait for the first two to get their comeuppance as the last one rises to the tope. We, of course, always identify ourselves with the last one – don’t we? I mean, after all, we’re always the underdog, if truth be known. Here, however, Matthew pulls a switch and it doesn’t come out the way we expect. The first two do it right and the last one goes off into darkness. Those that have get more and the one that had just a little even loses that. There’s no comedy here, but tragedy. So, this is not a “feel good” story. And, of course, it’s not meant to be one, either. It is designed to remind us that freedom is accountable and that there are certain ways in which we are to act if we are God’s people. In short, there are spiritual laws which govern us just as surely as there are physical laws. The difference is that sometimes those spiritual laws are more difficult to discern or observe – which is why we have stories like the one we’ve just read.

The most basic spiritual law is that to get means to give. It begins with God’s gift to us in creation, breathing into us the breath of life. One of the great teachers of the early church, Gregory the Great, put it this way: “The man setting out for foreign parts entrusted his goods to his servants, for he granted his spiritual gifts to those who believe in him. To one he entrusted five talents, to another two, to another one. There are five bodily senses, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. The five talents represent the gift of the senses, that is, knowledge of externals; the two talents signify theory and practice; the one talent signifies theory alone.” [Forty Gospel Homilies 9.1 in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament 1b Matthew 14-28, p. 223] Here is a wonderful allegorical interpretation of the parable.

Notice that how the five talents and the two talents multiply, but when we live in theory alone we lose what we have. Our lives are gifts meant to be used and employed because the very nature of the giver, God, is self-giving. We are to cooperate by behaving the same way God does – we are to give. You see every time we give away the gift of the Spirit, it doubles. As the gift increases so does our consciousness of God’s presence and even our own self-awareness. We “enter into the joy of the Master” by giving as freely as the Master does.

We take risks and we invest ourselves in others – because God has done just that with us. This, of course, runs contrary to the physical law – I’ll sum it up in the proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it” – because you give away the Sprit and more comes. You give of yourself and there’s more to give. Five talents become five more and on it goes. Two of the servants get it and invest themselves – they take the risk of self-giving. The other one breaks the law and tries to bury the gift of the Spirit so he can hold on to it, possess it, and keep it safe. What he does is to succumb to fear – especially the fear of loss, the fear of “not enough” – and it is this fear that cripples him and cripples so many people and even so many churches.

A talent buried is not a talent saved, but one lost. As it is hidden away it doesn’t increase in value, it decreases to nothing. Fear of risk, fear of relationship, fear of change, fear of “not enough for me,” fear of giving of ourselves doesn’t save us, rather it diminishes us. When we succumb to fear we become less. Anthony Robinson, a church consultant, wrote this in The Christian Century several years ago, “The wonderful Australian film ‘Strictly Ballroom’ contains a recurring thematic line: ‘A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.’ According to the parable, this overstates the quality of such a life, by one half.” [October 27, 1993]Perhaps our ultimate fear may even be our own freedom? It is part of the gift – the talent – given to us and it is meant to be used, not hoarded.

Some folks are so busy protecting their freedom – and here it can be freedom of whatever – that they become prisoners instead. Life, gifts, freedom, the Spirit are all God’s gifts to us and are to be used. The ultimate freedom we’re given, as Martin Luther pointed out, comes from Christ and obtained through self-giving. The reality is, then, that we’re to “use it or lose it.”

Anyone who has studied a language can tell you that if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Spiritual life is the same. Paul is speaking the language of spiritual growth to the church at Thessalonica. He urges the people to remember that they are “children of the day and of the light” and then act like it. We’re not supposed to retreat off into a corner somewhere and cower until the Lord comes again. Paul tells the people to “encourage one another and build up each other,” he doesn’t tell them to withdraw from engaging the world, from entering into the risk of relationship.

Those who read these Scriptures, especially those that speak about the parousia or the Lord’s coming, and use them to scare people into a particular way of thinking are just plain wrong. Sorry. I rarely take such an intolerant stance, but what goes on with a lot of this “end times” stuff is just bad theology and worse Biblical scholarship. History has shown us time and again that those who get caught up in the search for the ‘Second Coming’ are more like the servant with the one talent – they’re caught in theory – and that just misses the point. Remember the point of the story? God is the giver and as God gives, so are we to give. To be God’s people means living the gifts we’ve been given, enjoying the senses that allow us to experience the wonder of creation around us and within us. Because we have been given a gift we give. Because God has taken the risk of relationship through Law and prophets, covenant and nation, and then in the new covenant, the Word made flesh, Jesus, we are to do the same.

The point is that spirituality isn’t a warm fuzzy, it’s accountable and it makes a difference in our lives and in the lives of those around us. Accountable spirituality is engaging in the risk of transforming love, the love that God has shown us in the Christ and now in each other through the Spirit. Accountable spirituality begins in our hearts, spreads to our homes, energizes our church, and moves out to our neighborhood and beyond. Accountable spirituality is seeing that the “day of the Lord” isn’t about the end of the world, but about the world transformed into the place God intended it to be from the beginning – a place of purity, justice, and peace.

Every time we take the risk of relationship, live past our fears, use our talent rather than bury it, we bring a glimpse of that day. So, give away your talents, invest lavishly, generously, recklessly in others. Experience the wonder of God’s world around you, in others, in yourself. Be the servant who knows the rule is to get means to give it away and then do it. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up,” accountable spirituality is about how we live in response to God’s generosity toward us. We have been given much – now let’s be generous in our living.