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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
For a number of weeks, I have been getting occasional informal lessons about inflation and interest rates from our member who is a university economics professor and from a friend of mine who is president and chief executive office of one of our local banks. So, this past week I was amused, as I prepared to preach on today’s Gospel Reading, since Jesus’s parable in the Gospel Reading is one of only two times that the New Testament specifically mentions making interest by investing money with bankers and is said to be Jesus’s praising “faithful businessmen” (Apology to the Augsburg Confession XXI:4). In some ways, we all can relate to the so-called “Parable of the Talents”, and this morning we want to let the parable and its “economics” help us realize that, in the end, “The Lord welcomes good and faithful servants into His joys”.
Last Sunday we heard the first of the three consecutive “parables” from Matthew chapter 25 appropriate for the last three Sundays of the Church Year, and today we heard the second of the three. Last Sunday’s so‑called “Parable of the Ten Virgins” warned us against being unprepared for the Bridegroom’s—our Lord’s—seemingly‑delayed final coming, promised us that those who are prepared would go in with Him to the marriage feast, and concluded by exhorting us to “watch”, for we know neither the day nor the hour of that final coming (Matthew 25:1-13). Echoing statements from even earlier in St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired account (Matthew 24:45-51), today’s “Parable of the Talents” seems to elaborate on what that “watching” includes, namely, our faithfully working with what God gives us until His final coming.
In today’s “Parable of the Talents”, Jesus describes two good and faithful servants to whom the man going on a journey respectively entrusted, according to their ability, five talents and two talents, with each talent equivalent to several thousands of times the average worker’s daily wage (Robertson, Word Pictures, cited by Rienecker and Rogers). In sharp contrast to those two good and faithful servants is the wicked and slothful worthless servant to whom the man going on a journey entrusted one talent, still a sizable amount of money (TLSB, ad loc Matthew 25:15, 1639). The good and faithful servants worked and doubled the money, but the wicked and slothful worthless servant hid it, apparently for safekeeping. After a long time, the servants’ master came and settled accounts with them, welcoming the good and faithful servants into His joys, but casting the wicked and slothful worthless servant into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
When it comes to spiritual matters, you and I have no ability. Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, all of us by nature are like the wicked and slothful worthless servant. To the extent we do anything that might appear to be good, we do it not out of faith but out of fear, maybe even blaming a God Whom we misperceive as cruel, demanding, or violent (TLSB, ad loc Matthew 25:24, 1639). Even those of us who believe may still hesitate to put to work what God has given us during our earthly lives, neglecting the responsibility that the righteous should display in the face of God’s judgment (Hauck, TDNT 5:167). For our sinful natures and actual sins we deserve, like the wicked and slothful worthless servant, to be cast into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Like the people in the Old Testament Reading (Zephaniah 1:7-16), some today wrongly may think that the Lord will not do good nor ill. In fact, in His time the Lord will do something spectacular: He will punish and remove all evil (Piepkorn, CPR 27:4, 54). The Gospel Reading’s settling of accounts also points to that time of reckoning and, before it comes, God continues to call all of us to repentance and faith, so that He can make us good and faithful servants and so welcome us into His joys.
Although the Bible elsewhere speaks of God’s assigning us measures of faith and of our having gifts that differ according to the grace He has given us (Romans 12:3, 6), and although today’s Gospel Reading speaks of giving different numbers of talents according to different abilities, of all the things that God gives us, He equally offers to all the greatest thing, namely, the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in the God‑man Jesus Christ, crucified on the cross and risen from the grave, for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and mine. When, enabled by God, we repent of our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive our sin—all our sin, whatever it may be. God not only forgives us our sin, but thereby He also gives us life and salvation. In the words of the parable, God makes us, who are by nature wicked servants, good servants. God makes us, who are by nature slothful servants, faithful servants.
God does all that enabling, forgiving, and transforming through His Word—His Word read and preached, and His Word administered with water, with the words and touch of our pastor, and with bread and wine. We are adopted as His children in Holy Baptism. We are returned, as it were, to our Baptismal grace by individual Holy Absolution. And, we are strengthened and preserved in body and soul by the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in, with, and under bread and wine in Holy Communion. In all these ways, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are already our possessions here and now, even amid the suffering and sorrows of this world, and here and now we do already have—though we do not yet fully appreciate—the equally‑offered joys of our Master, the Lord. To be sure, when He comes the final time, He will give more to everyone who has—we might think, for examples, of the resurrection of the body and of the fullness of His wedding feast—and so we all will have an abundance. We can count on God’s super‑abundant generosity (Hauck, TDNT 6:59). As St. Paul wrote by Divine‑inspiration to the Romans, God, Who did not spare His own Son but graciously gave Him up for us all, will also with Him graciously give us all things (Romans 8:32 ESV).
Until our Lord’s final coming, we watch for that final coming, in part by living as good and faithful servants. In Christ, God has made us “good”, excellent in our positions, and, with Christ working in us, we are “faithful”. We are saved from sin entirely by His doing, and then we cooperate with Him in the holy living that results. Together, we do “well”. The good works, temporal and spiritual, that we do according to our God‑given vocations are evidence of the faith that God has given us’s being active in us. In the words of today’s Epistle Reading (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11), we live as children of the light (Piepkorn, CPR 27:4, 54). When we fail to so live, as we will fail, then with daily repentance and faith, we live in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from Him, and, in turn, we forgive those who sin against us.
No doubt there is plenty more each one of us could learn about inflation and interest rates and other such matters of economics—if I sort through my particular lessons soon enough, I might get the newspaper column I have been considering written and published this week while it is timely with today’s Gospel Reading. Yet, far more importantly, in that Gospel Reading and the whole of His Holy Scriptures, the Lord has revealed all that we need to know about both His final coming and our lives in the meantime. It has been said that there is no higher commendation can come to us from the lips of Jesus than His judgment on the works we have carried out in Him spoken in the parable: “Well done” (Lenski, ad loc Matthew 25:21, 979). This morning we have realized that out of His love, mercy, and grace for the sake of Jesus Christ “The Lord welcomes good and faithful servants into His joys”. May God grant that, in due time, He so welcomes each one of us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +