October 21, 2007  David Hyers

Matthew 25: 14-30

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more

talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

Jeremiah 31:27-34

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

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              Last weekend, Jimmie left me an odd voice mail. Calling before a wedding, he asked: “Captain Davie, I’m out of hairspray in my office. You don’t happen to have any, do you?”

              I could hear that quiet chuckle as he hung up.

              I thought about it for a moment, and I’m not sure which made me laugh more. That I don’t need to use hairspray, or that Jimmie does use hairspray.

              Each year, Jimmie and I meet with the youth for the “Pastor on the Hot Seat Time.” The youth get to ask us any questions they want, and we take turns answering them.

              Each year we are impressed by the thoughtfulness of some of the questions. Each year Emily Stern asks us where babies come from. And we tell her that her parents are both medical doctors and to ask them.

              And each year we are asked to reveal our most embarrassing experiences.

              My problem isn’t answering that question. It is choosing among the many embarrassing experiences I’ve had.

              I think I’ve told the youth about calling a girl for a date and discovering she didn’t know who I was. I think next year I’ll tell them about hitting a parked car with a riding lawn mower.

              With trusted friends, even a caring congregation, the shaming truth defuses itself into accepting laughter. When you feel safe, it’s not so hard to talk about those times when you’ve been caught with your egos down.

              The fears of shame slides into what we hope are smiles of love. And we realize that sometimes surrounded by those who care, its even safe enough to trust to them stories that are not so easy to speak aloud. It is moments like these that remind me of what it means to be the church.

              Frederic Beuchner tells us of one such experience. (1)  It was on his very first trip to Texas, and he was driving in the hill country. Complaining of the boring life bound to a typewriter, he describes the experience of not just driving across a river, but literally going one-half mile down a shallow stream retreating into the valley to get to the Laity Lodge outside of Kerrville.

              Remembering my first trip to Mo-Ranch, I understand his fond description of his time in the hill country. He is immediately at ease not only with the beauty of the place, but the kindness of community there. They simply asked him to share his own story, but mainly he was free to just wing it.

              I imagine that Beuchner winging it must be a more graceful thing than our best rehearsed flight paths.

               You hear in his writing that subtle art of telling the deep truth on one’s life. It is an art gifted to so few.

              As he began to show them his life in stories, he ‘described an episode of’ his “childhood which” represented the shadow side and the “dark memories made it tough.”

              Shadows form around all our lives, shaped according to our own stories. Trying to plan this year’s upcoming Christmas holiday, I was reminded of some shaping memories. They were the crinkle of paper and the solitary image of a freshly unwrapped package on Christmas Eve.

              I was 9 or 10 the year I asked for an Armitron, a small working model of a robotic arm. I did not ask for a bike, a skateboard or even a basketball goal. No, I asked for a robotic arm. At some level, this is a memory of growing up in a family of geeks, a result of too many Sunday afternoons spent at Radio Shack.

              Most of the time at home was spent in the converted apartment beneath our house where my grandparents lived. So this year, the small family Christmas tree was set up in the corner of their den.

              I remember my mother pulling on her coat, grabbing her purse, and telling me that I could open one present tonight. And if I needed anything, I could call Marie across the street.

              As she walked out the door, I was already on my way to grab a knife and flashlight so that I could pry at the big packages to find the Armitron. Finding the right package after shaking and prying, I sat down on the couch and began to open up my present.

              Soon after, the phone rings, and it is my father asking to speak to mom. I tell him that she has already left and is on her way to the hospital.

              In a calm and kind voice, dad tells me that my grandmother has passed away. He says he had been with her and the doctor and nurses and that she has passed away quietly to be with Grandpa and suffer no more.

              I am sure more was said, but I can’t really remember what or how I felt. I imagined the hospital room quite clearly, my father sitting beside the bed and my mother entering the room. I can also remember telling my father I’d unwrapped one of my gifts and that I would rewrap it and go to bed.

              And so with great care, I placed everything back in the box, took out more paper and wrapped the box.

              Sometime Christmas morning, I awoke and the three of us quietly walked downstairs and began to play Christmas.

              I know that my parents did all the things parents can do when a child experiences the death of a loved one. And I know that my blessed mother even shared with me that raw part of grieving that some might shy away from sharing with a child. They did the best they could to help me make sense of the years of care they had given to their parents. And I own that time as a blessing in my life.

              Yet there was a part of me that never unwrapped that Christmas present again. Part of me put my questions and tears, the sorrow and fears into that box. There was some sort of guilt for unwrapping the present or more likely wrapping it with the feeling of not being a better help when their health started to fail. Placing within that box all the stuff I didn’t know what to do with concerning my grandparents’ living and dying in our home.     

              I realized this week I still carry that Christmas package from childhood. I carry it into the hospital, into the pulpit and into my relationships. Lots of things are still in that box. It’s still wrapped with fear and bound with all those unanswered questions and unresolved emotions.

              And in the same moment, I realize that I am still not always sure what to do with that box.

              Reading Buechner’s word last week gave me pause. When Buechner has finished telling his story of childhood, Howard Butt of the HEB family, head of the foundation that supports Laity Lodge, came up to him and said, “You have had a fair amount of pain in your life, like everybody else. You have been a good steward of it.”

              “That phrase caught me absolutely off guard,” Beuchner writes. “A good steward of your pain. I didn’t hear it as a compliment particularly. It is not as if I had set out to be a steward of my pain but rather something that happened.”

              Earlier this summer, a friend used the same language in a keynote he gave at the Senior High Conference.

              And so I found myself asking: what does it mean to be a good steward of our pain? How does one make good use of those shadows, of those boxes filled with so much stuff?

              It seems easy to try and forget them by wrapping the pain so tightly that we think it can never escape. And really with whom can we trust our pain? The world teaches us it is better to keep it wrapped and hidden from each other and ourselves.

              But there is a price to pay. In his book “Telling Secrets,” Buechner says his mother “survived very well in this world by, in a way, burying her bad times. Up to almost the end, she remained a very valuable, interesting person, but she paid a price for that because a certain part of her stopped growing in the direction of compassion and wisdom...”

              For others, the package can weigh one down so much they cannot move from the sense of failure, locked in the pain of the past. They say, “If only those bad things had not happened, who knows where I might have been today.”

              What does it mean to be called to the stewardship of pain?

              Buechner suggests that “before anything else…keep in touch with your pain -- the sad times, the hard times, for many reasons. It is those times when we are most alive, when we are closest to being most vitally human. And it can be those times that we are most open to pain of others and most aware of the fullness of human connectedness.”

              To speak of the stewardship of pain, then, is to be reminded of our Gospel lesson this morning, a familiar, yet unsettling, uncomfortable parable from Jesus.

              Perhaps it is in that final servant that we see the danger of burying our pain away for good. Perhaps in burying the packages of our pain, we bury more than just memories. We risk putting to ground that which is alive within us to possibly grow beyond the pain. In burying his talent, the servant begins to shrink; his humanity stunted and stymied until it collapses upon itself.

              The outer darkness becomes not so much a punishment as it is a symbol of what it means to be so fully trapped, to be so completely shut off and unable to grow towards and with others.

             And in the other servants in the parable, we find the possibility of new life as they traded not only their talents but their whole lives. That tendril growth of life within and around the new life mends and bends growing up and outward towards others and toward God. Could this be a foretaste of the kind of joy into which we are invited, the promise of God’s purpose and joy?

              If we are to take the humanity of Jesus seriously, then does not Christ call us to be good stewards of the whole of our lives? Stewards not just of our money, or those things we name talents, but the fullness of our lives, even the brokenness.

              For is not God calling and telling us that nothing lies outside the reach of God’s grace or beyond the sight of God’s mercy.

              Being a good steward of our whole lives offers to us the opportunity to keep in touch with our pain. Being a good steward allows up to open ourselves to the possibility of transformation and reconciliation from the one who also walked in the dark and felt as we felt. For even in the deepest darkness, Christ abides. And perhaps it is in the dark when we are most open to his presence.

              What if we were to dare look at our lives with the possibility that all those wrapped packages we carry around are viewed in the light of God’s love. They might become real gifts-- energy for compassion and hope for healing. And not for our own lives, but for others as well, perhaps even the whole of creation.

              What if we picked up those packages and took a peak at them. Would we find the wrapping a little loose? What if, surrounded by the love of God and supported by the body of Christ, we look inside.  We should find a true gift, not guilt, and a glimpse of light rather than total darkness.