November 16, 2008
Stewardship Sunday
Rev. Wendy Miller Olapade
Text:  Matthew 25:14-30

RISKY BUSINESS

While many a frustrated wife has suggested it is a purely male affliction – I too seem to have an innate inability to stop and ask directions when hopelessly lost.  The first time I planned a meeting with Sandy North, trying to find my way here one lovely summer morning from Dorchester, I found myself imagining that salty old Down East Mainer saying, “Weeell, ya caaan’t git they-a from hee-arr”.  

Mind you I lived in JP for years, but I was driving in circles, hoping some landmark would magically rear its head to guide my way.  I was convinced that the next intersection would re-direct me with the name of a street that was familiar.  Like so many caricatures of the classic male navigator--I was the epitome of straight-ahead stubbornness.  Ask for help?  Nay, nay…I know this city.  Yet, I was 30 minutes late for a meeting, saw signs directing me to Dedham, and my car’s compass said I was headed north – when I knew I should be going south!  Needless to say, my persistent, prideful refusal to purchase a GPS seemed silly when I finally realized that for 45 minutes I was circling less than a mile from the church.

Now this is hardly an endearing quality.  Yet there is something to be said for the willingness to explore, to risk.  There is something of value in not always playing it completely safe.  In my youth, we used to go on “Road Trips”.  My friends and I would just get in the car (a souped up 1970 Chevy Nova) and drive…wandering on back roads, discovering the world and seeing what we saw.  Today, most of us are reluctant to go on any excursion without precise directions and a detailed map.    Would we even dream of starting out on a cross-country journey without hauling along a road atlas, not to mention a Map Quest print out, or for those of us who remember Triple A, (AAA) a personalized "trip-tic"?

Risky business, heading out without a map!  Yet, as my friends at Homiletics Online pointed out years ago (1993), Edwin H. Friedman, rabbi, family therapist, sailor and map collector, would snap us out of our "map-dependence" by revealing that "map-knowledge" is really quite fleeting and transitory.  In Friedman’s study of old maps, he discovered that the very willingness to risk new models doesn't merely alter, add to or abolish old models.  The very risking of new models "changes the context of experience and makes the very methods of conceptualization associated with the old model obsolete."   It’s that out of the box thinking we talk about these days.

Friedman studied the likes of Columbus, da Gama, Magellan and Drake and points out that in risking a new thought or a new spirit, one can bring about a new perspective.  It might be a new frame of reference, or a new context, or a new way of living in the world.  In so doing, reality changes.  "Not one's sense of reality," Friedman insists, "but reality itself."  ("Maps," Speech delivered at the 1983 American Family Therapy Association, as transcribed in the AFTA Newsletter).
 
Trusting his maps and calculations, Columbus considered his risks and sailed off to encounter the "new world."  Using charts and maps based on the most current information available, Magellan boldly circumnavigated the world.  Centuries later, Lewis and Clark struck out to cross the entire North American continent in search of a northwest passage, and drew the contours of a new nation.

Like most explorers, these explorers had one thing in common.  They all risked their momentous journeys on maps that were completely wrong, hopelessly flawed or vastly mistaken.  They had to know that there was a good chance their charts were in error -- after all, no one had taken these journeys before.  Yet each of these adventurers went ahead, accepted the risks, plunged into unknown territories and changed the world.

Of course, like in many journeys we human beings take, they didn't end up where they thought they were going.  Columbus didn’t "discover” America, the native Americans "discovered" him, lost, dazed and confused.   Magellan did not prove that sailing west was a great shortcut for ending up in the East, but he was the first European to sail through the Pacific Ocean and his name is synonymous with Global Positioning Systems.  Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery never found a secret inland passage, yet they documented hundreds of plants and animal species and mapped out the American West, opening the way for trade, relations with the Native peoples and further exploration.  Because these explorers were willing to take the risk, the face of the planet was re-drawn, and the dreams of future generations were reshaped.

Discovering something radically different than you can imagine comes about because somebody has the spirit of adventure, not because their theory is right.  In fact, Rabbi Freidman encouraged institutions who fund research projects to set aside five to 10 percent of their resources for projects that totally contradict the projects they have chosen to fund.  Freidman projects that in this way humanity, prone to settling in to our way of seeing the world, will "prevent its knowledge from keeping it from learning more" (Friedman, "Maps," 9).   In other words – the paradigms (or worldviews) in which we sit, keep us from seeing beyond the boundaries of the boxes we have created.

Of course, shifting paradigms is risky business too.  These explorers all faced danger and some form of mutiny.  Coloring outside the lines, traveling beyond our boundaries, venturing out from the shoreline without any sight of shore in front of us, can be terrifying .  Since the days of Moses, there have always been those who clamor to go back to the "fleshpots of Egypt."  Our preference for the known, no matter how unpleasant, is strong.  And frankly, those without vision, without the courage to risk, are quick to label the change-agents, the path-blazers as wackos, fools and failures.

William Shedd coined the phrase that “A ship in the harbor is safe.  But that is not what ships are built for.”  And Jesus tells us this over and over again—discipleship is risky business and being safe is not what disciples are built for.  In fact disciples are called to take risks, weigh anchor, and venture beyond the known and secure--to transform themselves, the people they meet, the communities in which they live and in turn the world.  I would suggest that this means transforming their churches and the manner in which they do church as well.

Now, like so many others, this text has spawned some bad theology.  Some have suggested that it is about the rich getting richer, or taking risks in the stock market, or about God being a harsh master to be feared.  Knowing what we know about Jesus, you have to question the idea that Jesus is suggesting we need to go out and parlay “some” into “more.”

What seems much more Jesus like, is the idea that the "talents" the master leaves with each of his three servants are the God-given gifts we disciples have received and are charged with using to the best of our abilities—to love and serve God and our neighbors.   Yet, as soon as he opens his mouth, upon the master’s return…the third servant betrays his fear and the selfish motives that prompted his actions.   It was a long-standing rabbinic teaching that anyone who buries money that has been put into his care is no longer liable for its safety.  It is automatically assumed he has taken the safest path available to him to ensure the money's well-being.  Thus the slave who buried his one talent might feel secure in the knowledge that he had taken a safe, prudent course of action on his master's behalf.

But this servant said…"Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error.  I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money.  Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.'

”I was afraid I might disappoint you.”   He didn’t bury the one talent to keep the money safe, but rather to keep his own neck off the chopping block.   What might have been interpreted as "responsible" is now revealed by his own words as cowardly and self-serving.  His own fears undermined the sense of accountability that his master expected of him.  He also sought to escape the responsibility the master had given him by getting the talent out of his hands and into the ground.

Perhaps Jesus’ parable is suggesting that if we wish to serve God, to truly be disciples and call ourselves faithful servants, we have got to do more with the gifts we have been given than worry about our own well-being.  You know this--God never plays it safe!  A risk averse God would never have created Adam in the first place.   Our God risked way more than creation.  God risked relationship--first with Noah, then with Abraham, and then eternally with David and the people of Israel.  Finally, God even risked God’s divine self--taking our very form in the incarnation of the human Jesus, in the suffering a humiliating death, only to rise again in the miracle of the resurrection.

Surely this God who risked everything for our sake, might expect more than self-seeking, self-motivated, safety-conscious behavior from those who have been so wondrously gifted. 

So the risk called for in today's lesson is the willingness to open our lives to a power beyond our own.  The risk called for in today’s lesson is the willingness to have faith in yourself, faith in the gifts God has given you, faith in God's ability to work through your life, and faith in the power of discipleship itself.  The risk called for in today’s lesson is the willingness to look beyond what we need for ourselves and consider what is needed by  those who are not yet here – those with whom God would love for us to share the gospel.  And yes, the risk called for in today’s lesson is the willingness to give your money cheerfully, as much as you can spare, so that the church might take some risks to become what God intends.  The power of discipleship cannot be unleashed if we do not risk giving of ourselves.

So it is Risky business this being all that God created us to be.

My friends, God wants us to take those risks, to be all that God created us to be.  God wants us to take risks for the sake of others.  God wants us to take risks for the sake of the gospel.  Risking ourselves, our money, and our status -- that is the genuine risk of discipleship.  And other people should be the focus of our risk-taking…for relationships are the riskiest business around.

It is Risky business this discipleship—for the sake of others…Risking to love and serve, risking rejection and ridicule, risking a commitment to a church that is new and still a little bit financially insecure—those are the truly profound risks that our God—who risked everything—wants all of us to take.  Risky business—for God’s sake!

Reference:  Homiletics Magazine, 1993