How Are We Using Our Talents
"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.'- Matthew 25:14-30
So, what do you do with your talents? Do you invest them? Do you bury them in the ground? If you invest them, how do you invest them? Do you invest your talents in a way that’s supposed to make you money, or in a way that serves God?
The last question is the key question for us, isn’t it? When we think of investing, we pretty much always think of it in financial terms. We don’t think of it in spiritual terms. Why is that? Why don’t we think of our service to God as an investment? I’m pretty sure Dan Barker sees what he does as an investment.
Dan Barker has lived a tough life, but that never stopped him from investing in life. Barker grew up as a troubled child in Sacramento, California. His father left home when he was four, and he never saw him again. His mother remarried soon after, but it was never a happy marriage. What Dan remembers most of his childhood was the overwhelming sense of sadness in his home. It just seemed that everyone was continually melancholy. His half-brother and half-sister manifested the sadness more in their lives than Dan. The brother ended up in prison and died of a drug overdose. His sister struggled her whole life with anorexia. To get out of the home, Dan enlisted in the Marines as a 17 year-old.
It was 1964, and he served in Vietnam as a medic. It was a terrible time for him, and he saw things that have haunted him throughout his whole life. As he says, he doesn’t know if he has ever had a good night sleep since he left Vietnam.
Returning from Vietnam, Dan went to college on the G.I. bill, studying history, English, and philosophy. Upon graduation he really didn’t know what to do with his life. He bounced around from job to job, eventually working for Garland Nursery in Albany, Oregon. It was there that he found his calling. He loved to grow plants. It became a passion. His favorite time of year was when the seed catalogues came out. He would pour over them from cover to cover, delighting in their descriptions of the plants that would grow, such as the “rich flesh” of the cantaloupes. They touched him on a spiritual level.
He continued working in the nursery, but had to get other jobs to supplement his income. It was in one of these other jobs that he made a decision to invest his talents. He was working at the Hoot Owl Grocery, a convenience store, when three men came into the store and robbed it at gunpoint. Pointing the gun at Dan’s head, the leader said, “You can identify me, can’t you?” Dan replied, “No, not really.” The man then turned and fled, taking with him $117. At that moment Dan knew two things: First, he knew that he never wanted to work in a convenience store again. Second, he knew he had to share his passion for growing with those in need. He had already been thinking of an idea of what to do, but now he knew that he needed to pursue it.
Here was his idea. He would build gardens in the inner city for poor people to grow vegetables so that they could improve their health and supplement their income. So in the spring of 1984, supported by a $5000 government grant, as well as 15,000 packets of year-old seeds donated from a local firm, he loaded up a truck full of dirt and wood, and went to the inner city of Portland, Oregon to build a vegetable garden in the back yard of a man named Al Honeyman. Honeyman had muscular dystrophy, and was on disability. Dan built the frame for the garden and filled it with dirt. He then taught Honeyman and his neighbors how to care for the garden. That spring he built 21 gardens in the city. The next spring he built 56. The following spring he built 117. In 1989 he went national, expanding his talent to other cities. To date, over 50,000 of these gardens have been built across the nation, and more are coming. Barker himself has built well over 1400 of them, but because of his arthritis he mostly supervises now (taken from Biography Magazine, 2003). Dan Barker was given a very small talent, and he multiplied it a thousand-fold. The spiritual irony about Dan Barker’s talent is that he actually invested his talents in the ground, and it multiplied them a thousand-fold.
Where do you invest your talents? Everyday, God gives everyone some sort of gift and calls us to use it to make the world better. And every day millions of people ignore that call. They don’t mean to ignore it. They just don’t listen for God much, and when they do, they don’t think creatively about what they hear. They don’t connect what small skills they have with the possibility of sharing them beyond themselves in a way that makes the world just a little better. They bury their talents in the ground by doing nothing. I’m not saying that we have to do everything with every talent God gives us. That would leave us with no balance in life. I’m simply saying that too often we hear God’s calling to invest our talents, and we do nothing.
For example, we are in our annual stewardship period when we receive pledges for the next year. Do you consider your pledge to be just what you give to support the church, or do you think beyond that by recognizing it as an investment in what God is doing? Too few Christians recognize their giving to the church and to charity as an investment, mostly because when they think of investments they think only in terms of investments that come back to them. They worry about whether they will make or lose money, whether their investment will be good for them or a waste of time. When God calls us to invest our talents, God doesn’t think the way we do. God calls us to make investments that come back to God, so that through God they can make the world better for everyone, including us.
Do you look at your giving that way? Do you consider your giving be an investment in God in which you are investing back into God part of what God has given you? I want you to consider it this way. Everything you have is from God. Everything. What are you willing to give back to God to invest in life? 1%? 2%? 5%? 10%? I know that for myself, I am very committed to giving back to God at least 10%, which is why each year I give back to Calvin Church almost ¼ of my salary. I don’t do it to be seen as good or to get into heaven. I do it to thank God and to invest what God has given me back into God.
Our Forward in Faith campaign, the one responsible for our renovation and new building, is exactly that kind of investment. We invested money into this church to create a facility that would multiply our talents for God. This building was never about the building. It has always been about investing in God. Nobody thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if we had a bigger, nicer church?” The whole focus was on the fact that the small, cramped, falling apart building that we had was causing us to start burying our investments in the ground. The building was impeding our ministry. Our classrooms were too small. Only a few on our staff had offices or workspaces. Our downstairs was chronically moldy, musty, and unsafe. What we did was to invest in God by creating a place where God could do more through us. And this is why we will be embarking on a new campaign in the spring. We will be embarking on a campaign to invest more in God so that we can retire our debt and be able to grow our ministry into the future. In the end, the question is always, “Are you investing your talents in God, or burying them in the ground?”
Throughout our lives God is constantly calling, saying, “Do something with what I’ve given you.” We don’t have to change the world. We only have to invest in a way that changes the small part of the world we live in. The question is, where are you investing your talents?
Amen.
