Talents, Gifts, and Blessings

 Do you ever wonder: are gifts something we give - or something we receive… 

There was a priest, named Henri Nouwen, who had some words to say about gifts, which Tara Ward has turned into a song. Here are those words:

Given

we may be little, insignificant in the eyes of this world

but when we realize that God has sent us to the world as blessed

our lives will multiply and grow and fill the needs of others

our gift is not what we can do but who we are

our gift is not what we can do but who we are

who can we be for each other? who can we be, Lord, for the world?

who can we be for each other? who can we be?

how different would our life be if we believed every single gesture

every act of faith or love or joy or peace or word of forgiveness

will multiply as long as people will receive it...

our gift is not what we can do but who we are

who can we be for each other? who can we be, Lord, for the world?

who can we be for each other? who can we be?

We are given. We are given. We are given.

We are given. We are given. We are given.

our gift is not what we can do but who we are

our gift is not what we can do but who we are

(Words: Henri J. M. Nouwen. Music: Tara Ward, Church of the Beloved, 2008.)

Jesus told a story about a man who went on a journey. While he was away he trusted his servants with his property, each according to his ability. From each he received according to their need.

There was a servant with five talents, and keep in mind that a talent is the equivalent of an ordinary person's wages for many years, who'd made five talents more. His need was to be faithful with what he had been given, and to bear good fruit from it. Likewise the one with two talents - only two: but he made two more. And he bore good fruit, and was faithful.

Then there was the third servant, whose need seemed to be: safety. Avoiding risk. Avoiding failure. Perhaps even avoiding the risk of success - of an outcome beyond his control. He did take the talent he had been given but he did not take the responsibility that came with it. He buried it. He hid it in the ground. He turned inward, and nothing could grow. When his master returned, he had earned nothing - he had nothing to show for all he'd received.

And so even the responsibility he had been given, the one talent with which he'd been entrusted, was taken away from him and assigned to the fruitful and obedient servant who had made ten from five. 

The faithful and obedient servants, by contrast, had turned outward - trusting as they had been trusted - and what they had been given grew under their care.

Do you remember the tree Jesus told about, the one that had borne no fruit for many years? His servant, the gardener, said, give me one more year, one year to prune the tree and dig around it and give it nourishment; then we'll see.

I knew a tree like that. It had not been cared for, or pruned, for many years. A friend who knew trees told me how to prune it, to eliminate cross branching, thin it out, and guide the tree, helping it along in the way it wanted to grow. And with permission from the landlord, I began to prune, thin, and water. And the next spring: apples.

It is as if we have been asked to dance. We can stay on the bench - oh, I have a headache; oh, I cannot be sure that I wouldn't look ridiculous, oh, I'm no good at that - or we can accept the hand that is stretched to ours, clasp it, rise from our place by the wall, and join in the dance. However freely, however clumsily, we begin - and our place in the dance, the great dance of the world, which otherwise would have been empty, is filled - and filled with joy.

I have worried I’d be the one with only one talent. I thought I had to have five. But look at the guy in the middle: he only has two. But he makes them grow, to two more.

We may feel we only have so many talents - so many gifts to work with, only so much treasure and worth and value and promise. But we have what our master has given us.

Look around and you will see many gifts, borne under many names, behind many faces.

In church we have many gifts, more than I will count, but here are some of them:

We are good at celebrating.

We are welcoming, hospitable.

We are willing to love people who are different from us.

We hang in there with each other. We work together for each other. We practice faithfulness. We keep at it. We persevere. We keep the faith.

We have, dare I say it, courage and hope. And what abides beyond all else, love.

What we have may seem small in the world's measures, as small as mustard seed.

But from us, from our lives, from our faithful obedience, keeping to God's promise, we can realize something wonderful and very, very big: We are God's people. And we are blessed.

We are blessed when we are poor, not because we are poor: we are blessed because we will be God's heirs.

We are blessed when we are hungry, not because we are hungry, but because God will feed us.

We are blessed who are mourning, because God will comfort us.

We are blessed when we are meek, because we will inherit the earth.

If we desire justice so strongly it is like a hunger, we are blessed, because that hunger will be satisfied.

When we show mercy, we are among the blessed: God will show mercy to us.

The pure in heart among us are blessed, because they will see God.

Those who make peace are blessed; they will be called children of God.

Even if you are persecuted or slandered when you stand up for justice, you are blessed: yours is the land where justice comes from, where you belong, where your true value is known -the kingdom of heaven.

We are blessed - we are blessed with all we need, supplied by the hand of God like a shepherd feeding his sheep.

We are blessed - but not for ourselves. We are blessed, that we might bless: and those who need our blessing are the ones we are here for.

God put us here in this place in this time for a purpose: to celebrate and convey the gracious love of God, to welcome our neighbors into God's holy place and into the kingdom where our God reigns, where all are the beloved of God, and all share in his blessings, where love abides and faith perseveres and hope yields its increase in abundant harvests.

We are here to be the people of God - and our gift, the gift of each other in the presence of a loving God, is what we have to share with the world. We are blessed, and we are called, to be the people whom God has created us to be. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever puts their life in his hands will receive life in abundance, for eternity.

Whether we have one talent or two or five, the challenge is the same, because: We are his children. We are blessed; we are his blessing for the world. 

Our gift is not what we can do but who we are. Our gift is not what we can do but who we are.

Script for the sermon given at Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, Tucson, Arizona, Sunday, November 19th 2023.

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, AProper28, Henri Nouwen, Judges 4:1-7, Matthew 25:14-30, Psalm 123, Tara Ward, The Parable of the Talents 

Prodigal Son

Look at the hands, reaching out in compassion. Look at them, reaching out in mercy. Look at them, reaching out in love.

Look at them. Look at them with joy, not sorrow, with gladness, not anger, with happiness, not jealousy, with peace, not hate, with love, not fear.

Look at them, the father's hands.

Reaching out to the wayward son, comforting him, bringing him home.

He was lost, and is found; was dead, and is alive; was blind, and now he sees!

The elder son - where is he? In the shadows? Is he the observer, cloaked in red like the father? Does he look on this embrace with gladness? Is his heart melting?

The father reaches out to the elder son as well. All that is mine is yours... but he who was lost is found. Can you join the celebration?
 

The Homecoming, by C. P. Snow, creates an image of returning again to the same place, the place he started from, and finding it for the first time a homecoming to a place of peace, of rest, of joy.

What was once feared, or regretted, or a source of sorrow, has now, by stint of infinite striving, become a place of welcome.

Devastating loneliness, wandering, ashamed, lonely, desperate and destitute, the younger son comes to himself: greed and lust are spent. But he is not worthy to be called a son.

Outraged, angry, jealous, hard of heart, the older son looks on without compassion or mercy. Calling him, the father extends the same grace.

Prodigality and abundance are two different things. The extravagance, the wandering wastefulness, the vagrant reckless pride and conceit of the poor wandering one.

The overflowing plentiful affluence - wealth, even - of the father's gift of love. His forgiveness is infinite in value, beyond price or measure.

God's forgiveness is abundant, but not wasteful, not really. Wandering it may seem to be - but it is we who wander, and we who are welcomed home.

It is we who in our turn are called to welcome others.

That is what Paul is on to, in his letters to the young church of the Corinthians: we are reconciled, now we are agents of reconciliation for others.

We do not simply come home. We turn, and in our turn, embrace.




These two boys - the sons - in the beginning have no sense of the value of what they have.


John Newton, writing of his sister-in-law, said, "She knew whom she believed. She possessed a peace past understanding and a hope full of glory." ("Narrative of Eliza Cunningham" by John Newton, in the third volume of a collection of tracts published by the American Tract Society of New-York, n.d.)

She possessed greater wealth than either son knew he had, at the beginning of our story today. The older son had the presence of his father; the younger, his generosity. But neither really realized the true gift they had in their hand, all the time: the unlimited, unmerited grace, the boundless mercy and love, the endless compassion of a loving Father: the overflowing joy of his love, his gladness, his delight in them. They did not have to earn it; they could not: it was there all the time.

That overflowing love - perhaps they, and we, can come home, and know it again for the first time. So we can come home through Jesus, meeting him again as if for the first time, when we open/reopen ourselves to his overflowing love.

	Father of all,
		we give you thanks and praise,
		that when we were still far off
		you met us in your Son and brought us home.
		Dying and living, he declared your love,
		gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory.
		May we who share Christ's body live his risen life;
		we who drink his cup bring life to others;
		we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world.
		Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us,
		so we and all your children shall be free,
		and the whole earth live to praise your name;
		through Christ our Lord.
		Amen.

(Post-communion prayer, Common Worship, Church of England, Holy Communion, Order One. http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/principal-services/holy-communion/orderone.aspx accessed March 9, 2013)
Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons (New York: Doubleday, 1992)
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We are his blessing

An Astonishing Secret

Jesus let us in on an astonishing secret: God has chosen to change the world through the lowly, ordinary and insignificant. This should give us all hope.
Changing the world through the ... insignificant has always been God's strategy. God chose a ragtag group of Semite slaves to be the insurgents of a new order. God sent a vast army to flight with three hundred men carrying lamps and blowing horns. God chose a shepherd boy with a slingshot to lead his chosen people. And who would have dreamed that God would choose a baby in a cow stall to turn the world right side up?

--Tom Sine, The New Conspirators (2008), p. 22.

There was a priest, named Henri Nouwen, who spoke of "downward mobility" - the way of the cross. He had some words to say about gifts, which Tara Ward has turned into a song. Here are those words:

Given

we may be little, insignificant in the eyes of this world
but when we realize that God has sent us to the world as blessed
our lives will multiply and grow and fill the needs of others
our gift is not what we can do but who we are
our gift is not what we can do but who we are

who can we be for each other? who can we be, Lord, for the world?
who can we be for each other? who can we be?

how different would our life be if we believed every single gesture
every act of faith or love or joy or peace or word of forgiveness
will multiply as long as people will receive it...
our gift is not what we can do but who we are

who can we be for each other? who can we be, Lord, for the world?
who can we be for each other? who can we be?

We are given. We are given. We are given.
We are given. We are given. We are given.

our gift is not what we can do but who we are

our gift is not what we can do but who we are

(Words: Henri J. M. Nouwen. Music: Tara Ward, Church of the Beloved, 2008.)


Jesus told a story about a man who went on a journey. While he was away he trusted his servants with his property, each according to his ability. From each he received according to their need.

There was a servant with five talents, and keep in mind that a talent is the equivalent of an ordinary person's wages for many years, who'd made five talents more. His need was to be faithful with what he had been given, and to bear good fruit from it. Likewise the one with two talents - only two: but he made two more. And he bore good fruit, and was faithful.

Then there was the third servant, whose need seemed to be: safety. Avoiding risk. Avoiding failure. Perhaps even avoiding the risk of success - of an outcome beyond his control. He did take the talent he had been given but he did not take the responsibility that came with it. He buried it. He hid it in the ground. He turned inward, and nothing could grow. When his master returned, he had nothing - nothing to show for it, nothing - for all he'd been entrusted with.

And so even the responsibility he had been given, the one talent with which he'd been entrusted, was taken away from him and assigned to the fruitful and obedient servant who had made ten. The faithful and obedient servants, by contrast, had turned outward - trusting as they had been trusted - and bore much fruit.

Do you remember the tree Jesus told about, the one that had born no fruit for many years? His servant, the gardener, said, give me one more year, one year to prune the tree and dig around it and give it nourishment; then we'll see.

I knew a tree like that. It had not been cared for, or pruned, for many years. A friend who knew trees told me how to prune it, to eliminate cross branching, thin it out, and guide the tree, helping it along in the way it wanted to grow. And with permission from the landlord, I began to prune, and thin, and water. And the next spring: apples.

It is as if we have been asked to a dance. We can stay on the bench - oh, I have a headache; oh, I cannot be sure that I wouldn't look ridiculous, oh, I'm no good at that - or we can accept the hand that is stretched to ours, clasp it, rise from our place by the wall, and join in the dance. However freely, however clumsily, we begin - and our place in the dance, the great dance of the world, which otherwise would have been empty, is filled - and filled with joy.

There is a story in the gospels about a servant whose master demanded his accounting for ten thousand talents - that is an outrageous sum. That is the value equivalent to tens of thousands of years of labor under the sun. This story is about a smaller amount - about five talents, and two, and one. Still, it's plenty.

I have always been afraid of being the one with one talent. I thought I had to have five. But look at the guy in the middle: he only has two. But he grows with them, to two more.

We may feel we only have so many talents - so many gifts to work with, only so much treasure and worth and value and promise. But we have what our master has given us.

Look around and you will see many gifts, borne under many names, behind many faces.

At St Alban's we have several gifts, more than I will count, but here are some of them:

We are very good, we Episcopalians, at celebrating.

We are welcoming, hospitable.

We are willing to love people who are different from us.

We hang in there with each other. We work together for each other. We practice faithfulness. We keep at it. We persevere. We keep the faith.

We have, dare I say it, courage and hope. And what abides beyond all else, love.

We may seem small in the world's measures, as small as mustard seed.

From us, from our lives, from our faithful obedience in keeping to God's promise, we can realize something wonderful and very, very big: We are God's people. And we are blessed.

We are blessed when we are poor, not because we are poor: we are blessed because we will be God's heirs.

We are blessed when we are hungry, not because we are hungry, but because God will feed us.

We are blessed who are mourning, because God will comfort us.

We are blessed when we are meek, because we will inherit the earth.

If we desire justice so strongly it is like a hunger, we are blessed, because that hunger will be satisfied.

When we show mercy, we are among the blessed: God will show mercy to us.

The pure in heart among us are blessed, because they will see God.

Those who make peace are blessed; they will be called children of God.

Even if you are persecuted or slandered when you stand up for justice, you are blessed: yours is the land where justice comes from, where you belong, where your true value is known -the kingdom of heaven.

We are blessed - we are blessed with all we need, supplied by the hand of God like a shepherd feeding his sheep.

We are blessed - but not for ourselves. We are blessed, that we might bless: and those who need our blessing are the ones we are here for.

God put us here in this place in this time for a purpose: to celebrate and convey the gracious love of God, to welcome our neighbors into God's holy place and into the kingdom where our God reigns, where all are the beloved of God, and all share in his blessings, where love abides and faith perseveres and hope yields its increase in abundant harvests.

We are here to be the people of God - and our gift, the gift of each other in the presence of a loving God, is what we have to share with the world. We are blessed, and we are called, to be the people whom God has created us to be. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that who ever puts their life in his hands will receive life in abundance, for eternity.

We are his children. We are blessed; we are his blessing for the world. Here. And now.

Whether we have one talent or two or five - or ten thousand - the challenge is the same:

Our gift is not what we can do but who we are.





St Alban's, Edmonds.
November 16, 2008.

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