1 00:00:01,200 --> 00:00:04,700 Grace mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and 2 00:00:04,700 --> 00:00:05,400 Savior Jesus Christ. 3 00:00:07,300 --> 00:00:10,500 The text is what we just heard read. 4 00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:11,600 Thank you. Be seated. 5 00:00:21,400 --> 00:00:22,500 When I was a teenager. 6 00:00:23,900 --> 00:00:28,800 I headed off for several Summers of joy to a Convent up in northern 7 00:00:28,800 --> 00:00:33,300 Maryland to attend the Maryland center for the gifted and talented. 8 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:42,200 There artists of various sorts who could not make it into the place 9 00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:42,800 up in Michigan. 10 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:49,200 Dancers, theater people, choir members, orchestral performers would spend 11 00:00:49,200 --> 00:00:51,300 a two-week stint doing their thing. 12 00:00:52,500 --> 00:00:55,100 My thing was clarinet and Orchestra. 13 00:00:57,300 --> 00:01:01,000 As campers we would regularly jokingly ask one another. 14 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:03,400 Are you a g or a t? 15 00:01:04,800 --> 00:01:07,300 As in gifted or talented. 16 00:01:09,500 --> 00:01:11,100 It was a course a joke. 17 00:01:12,200 --> 00:01:14,700 But I'm sure some of us in our teenage angst 18 00:01:14,700 --> 00:01:17,400 we're quite serious about this as well. 19 00:01:21,400 --> 00:01:22,500 Talents here 20 00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:25,500 in a literal meaning of the parable 21 00:01:26,900 --> 00:01:27,700 are money. 22 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:37,100 It is a weight of gold or silver a talent is about 75 lb. 23 00:01:38,800 --> 00:01:43,500 And at $2,000 an ounce gold amounts to a lot of money. 24 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:47,700 At $5 an ounce silver not quite so much. 25 00:01:51,100 --> 00:01:51,800 This 26 00:01:52,900 --> 00:01:57,900 is a big deal this is a lot to invest with a person. 27 00:02:00,600 --> 00:02:01,400 Of course 28 00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:05,300 Jesus is probably not actually referring to money received here in the 29 00:02:05,300 --> 00:02:10,800 parable but rather to the resources of our lives in him. 30 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:16,700 Whether gold or silver family, work, Ministry or anything else that 31 00:02:16,700 --> 00:02:21,500 could be invested in a valuable way for the kingdom of God. 32 00:02:24,100 --> 00:02:26,200 And the master is off on a long journey 33 00:02:26,200 --> 00:02:30,000 so there is time to use the talents. 34 00:02:31,700 --> 00:02:35,200 It is true that Christ May return at any moment made meet us in the 35 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:39,400 air but it is also true that for the vast majority of us 36 00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:42,100 we must be ready to meet him in our bodily deaths 37 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:43,900 at any moment. 38 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:48,500 To await the resurrection of the dead and enter with him into his 39 00:02:48,500 --> 00:02:49,100 kingdom. 40 00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:52,000 The joy in the parable 41 00:02:54,300 --> 00:02:58,000 This is the conclusion of the justification that we received in 42 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:01,900 baptism an eternal conclusion of joy. 43 00:03:03,100 --> 00:03:09,500 And hopefully what we have nurtured through other means of Word and 44 00:03:09,500 --> 00:03:12,600 Sacrament throughout our Earthly pilgrimages. 45 00:03:15,900 --> 00:03:21,900 There are also hints that this is a test of competence from our Lord. 46 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:27,100 The parable indicates that each was given talents 47 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:30,500 in proportion with their skills. 48 00:03:31,700 --> 00:03:34,900 To the One, 5, the second, 2, 49 00:03:36,100 --> 00:03:37,400 the third one. 50 00:03:39,600 --> 00:03:44,700 Apparently God is aware of our special unique and individual gifts 51 00:03:44,700 --> 00:03:47,500 and apportions to each as we read in Scripture. 52 00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:50,800 Gifts that he knows best. 53 00:03:53,100 --> 00:03:56,300 The test here is not whether we use the gifts well 54 00:03:58,000 --> 00:03:58,700 but rather 55 00:03:59,800 --> 00:04:01,600 whether we use them at all. 56 00:04:03,500 --> 00:04:11,700 The only one criticized is the one who has buried his talent and 57 00:04:11,700 --> 00:04:12,600 played it safe. 58 00:04:14,600 --> 00:04:16,500 How often do we do that? 59 00:04:18,100 --> 00:04:20,500 How often do we as a church body do that? 60 00:04:20,500 --> 00:04:22,600 Oh, wait a minute that might result in 61 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:27,000 oh wait that could also result in a big outbreak of the Gospel. 62 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:30,700 Maybe we shouldn't do it. 63 00:04:33,400 --> 00:04:36,700 It's a lot like we are as we play it safe. 64 00:04:36,700 --> 00:04:40,800 Make sure we cause no offense when offense through the Gospel might be 65 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:42,900 the very thing we are called to cause. 66 00:04:47,100 --> 00:04:48,800 And now it's time for something 67 00:04:48,800 --> 00:04:51,100 we is Lutherans are truly uncomfortable with. 68 00:04:52,100 --> 00:04:54,600 Being called upon to do something. 69 00:04:56,200 --> 00:05:00,100 Our Salvation is secure in Christ Jesus and God controls the whole 70 00:05:00,100 --> 00:05:00,600 world. 71 00:05:00,600 --> 00:05:05,000 The Earth is the Lord's and everything in it. In Christ 72 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:05,900 you are a new creation. 73 00:05:05,900 --> 00:05:10,500 The old has passed away the new has come. Today if you hear his voice 74 00:05:10,500 --> 00:05:12,900 do not harden your hearts as you did in the day of tribulation. 75 00:05:14,900 --> 00:05:16,000 This game 76 00:05:17,100 --> 00:05:20,300 this place of investing is not equal. 77 00:05:21,400 --> 00:05:24,600 It is fixed in terms of the good news. 78 00:05:26,400 --> 00:05:32,900 My word will not return to me void but will accomplish that for which 79 00:05:32,900 --> 00:05:33,700 I sent it. 80 00:05:35,100 --> 00:05:39,900 The point here is that if we invest the Lord and savior's resources, 81 00:05:39,900 --> 00:05:42,300 they will bear the fruit 82 00:05:42,300 --> 00:05:44,900 He intends. And notice 83 00:05:44,900 --> 00:05:46,500 I say hear the fruit 84 00:05:46,500 --> 00:05:50,400 He intends not the fruit we intend. 85 00:05:51,800 --> 00:05:53,800 To us in terms of worldly success 86 00:05:53,800 --> 00:05:56,000 this may not look right. 87 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:02,700 It may look like suffering, opposition, hatred even martyrdom. 88 00:06:03,800 --> 00:06:07,100 By the early Church in the book of Acts and through the writing of the 89 00:06:07,100 --> 00:06:12,400 church fathers demonstrates to us that these things are not signs of 90 00:06:12,400 --> 00:06:13,100 failure. 91 00:06:13,100 --> 00:06:22,100 When of the honor of being worthy of the highest task suffering along 92 00:06:22,100 --> 00:06:24,300 with our Lord Jesus Christ. 93 00:06:28,700 --> 00:06:31,700 Now that our Salvation is secure in Christ Jesus 94 00:06:31,700 --> 00:06:37,200 we come to the uncomfortable for me as a Lutheran, notion of doing 95 00:06:37,200 --> 00:06:37,600 these things. 96 00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:43,400 To to do is something we think of as a Catholic or Baptist or 97 00:06:43,400 --> 00:06:45,700 Methodist or Presbyterian or Pentecostal thing. 98 00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:49,600 We are in Christ Jesus and that's enough for us. 99 00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:53,300 What is this grubby semi-pelagianism sort of thing 100 00:06:53,300 --> 00:06:54,900 you were advocating here Dost. 101 00:06:58,600 --> 00:07:03,400 As a teenager, I was quite comfortable learning the catechism until I 102 00:07:03,400 --> 00:07:04,300 came to the Lord's Prayer. 103 00:07:05,700 --> 00:07:06,700 What does this mean? 104 00:07:06,700 --> 00:07:11,800 It is a comfortable question for Lutherans after all it is a seminary 105 00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:12,500 question. 106 00:07:13,500 --> 00:07:17,500 Allows us to remain in the cycle of justifying and rejustifying each 107 00:07:17,500 --> 00:07:20,300 Sunday in a steady unchanging pattern. 108 00:07:21,300 --> 00:07:23,000 A couple of times out of the year 109 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:26,100 we got the same thing on Wednesday and sometimes even Thursday and 110 00:07:26,100 --> 00:07:29,600 once a year on Friday, and that's the level of riding we're 111 00:07:29,600 --> 00:07:30,300 comfortable with. 112 00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:37,500 Then we can came to the Lord's Prayer in our catechetical sojourn and 113 00:07:37,500 --> 00:07:38,700 everything changed. 114 00:07:40,100 --> 00:07:41,800 How is this done? 115 00:07:43,400 --> 00:07:45,000 And horror of horrors 116 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:49,700 there was Luther's response the good and gracious will of God isn't done 117 00:07:49,700 --> 00:07:55,400 indeed without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may be 118 00:07:55,400 --> 00:07:57,700 done among us also. 119 00:07:59,900 --> 00:08:03,200 You mean I can't just be content to theorize about the Christian 120 00:08:03,200 --> 00:08:03,700 faith. 121 00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:09,000 I can't simply spend my time building mind castles ala Sherlock 122 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:10,200 Holmes of theology. 123 00:08:11,100 --> 00:08:14,000 You mean I actually have to love the neighbor even with a neighbor is 124 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:19,200 grubby, undesirable, unacceptable even hateful toward me. 125 00:08:20,900 --> 00:08:23,600 As a teenager you mean I actually have to love my little brother. 126 00:08:25,700 --> 00:08:29,400 And here we find what is really going on in the parable. 127 00:08:30,500 --> 00:08:32,299 Jesus came here to love us. 128 00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:38,200 He sacrificed to give us faith, hope and love. In a world where so 129 00:08:38,200 --> 00:08:42,299 little of those things was apparent, especially before Christ came. 130 00:08:42,299 --> 00:08:46,900 It's hard to even imagine the world before Christ came with such a 131 00:08:46,900 --> 00:08:49,100 poverty of love. 132 00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:58,100 And now he calls upon us to do to serve to speak to testify he calls 133 00:08:58,100 --> 00:09:02,700 upon us to stir things up and make things uncomfortable because that's 134 00:09:02,700 --> 00:09:04,900 what faith, hope and love of a real and true 135 00:09:04,900 --> 00:09:10,500 God does. It spreads and makes people disturbed in their complacent 136 00:09:10,500 --> 00:09:11,100 reality. 137 00:09:11,100 --> 00:09:16,600 It forces the unruly tenants to acknowledge the landlord and his 138 00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:20,300 vengeance for the servant Messengers that have been murdered. 139 00:09:21,600 --> 00:09:24,700 It is a hint that he is returning. 140 00:09:26,700 --> 00:09:30,700 And the game is truly fixed for those who invest the Lord's faith, 141 00:09:30,700 --> 00:09:34,400 hope and love in this task for doers for Christ. 142 00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:39,600 We can't go wrong, or if we do we can't go far wrong. 143 00:09:40,600 --> 00:09:48,300 As God's word will correct us Christ will admonish us and if all else 144 00:09:48,300 --> 00:09:51,700 fails he has promised to pursue us. 145 00:09:53,900 --> 00:09:56,400 So just write the paper you have due. 146 00:09:57,700 --> 00:10:02,300 Put on a mask for your neighbor, but still engage him or her in 147 00:10:02,300 --> 00:10:02,600 conversation. 148 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:05,100 Love your family. 149 00:10:06,100 --> 00:10:08,400 Engage in Labor's you undertake. 150 00:10:09,200 --> 00:10:10,500 Enjoy your life. 151 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:16,400 It's all a gift from God a talent to be invested that will grow and 152 00:10:16,400 --> 00:10:16,700 flourish. 153 00:10:18,400 --> 00:10:22,400 The only mistake one can make is hiding who one is. 154 00:10:23,800 --> 00:10:28,800 Hiding is not with God made the beauty that is you for. 155 00:10:30,100 --> 00:10:33,800 Like a bride at a wedding or Queen Esther of the Old Testament 156 00:10:33,800 --> 00:10:40,200 God has made you to love you and he's proud of you. 157 00:10:40,200 --> 00:10:43,200 He wants to show you off. 158 00:10:44,900 --> 00:10:49,100 He overlooks your flaws and sees you as his newly beloved. 159 00:10:49,900 --> 00:10:54,900 He wants you on display showing the work of the Kingdom in your life. 160 00:10:57,700 --> 00:10:59,100 When I took driver's education, 161 00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:02,400 that's also back in my teenage years. 162 00:11:02,400 --> 00:11:07,900 They told me that the most dangerous position you can be in when you 163 00:11:07,900 --> 00:11:10,200 drive is stationary. 164 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,200 Because then you can't maneuver. 165 00:11:17,500 --> 00:11:22,200 If you're uncertain about what to do, if you are in your life 166 00:11:22,200 --> 00:11:23,800 spiritually stationary. 167 00:11:25,100 --> 00:11:29,100 Pray to the Lord your God through Jesus Christ for guidance. 168 00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:34,000 And pursue one of the paths you have in mind. 169 00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:39,500 God will then close doors or open them so you can keep moving. 170 00:11:43,100 --> 00:11:52,200 Your life is activity not stationary but moving for Christ. And when we 171 00:11:52,200 --> 00:11:56,800 succeed at things we learn lessons and when we fail at things we 172 00:11:56,800 --> 00:12:01,200 learn lessons and when we don't always know which is which we also 173 00:12:01,200 --> 00:12:02,300 learn lessons. 174 00:12:02,300 --> 00:12:08,300 The only way we don't really learn is when we don't do and Luther is 175 00:12:08,300 --> 00:12:09,300 with us on this as well. 176 00:12:09,300 --> 00:12:16,500 Faith is a busy active thing it never tires of doing good works. 177 00:12:19,500 --> 00:12:22,000 You see faith and trust also matter here. 178 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:27,500 For if we don't take our Lord and Master Jesus Christ at his word that 179 00:12:27,500 --> 00:12:32,500 he has prepared in advance works for us to do as the justified and 180 00:12:32,500 --> 00:12:34,300 save people of God that we are. 181 00:12:35,400 --> 00:12:37,900 As he said to his Apostle Paul in Ephesians; 182 00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:42,500 We surely bury that talent 183 00:12:42,500 --> 00:12:43,300 he has given us. 184 00:12:44,700 --> 00:12:50,900 Rather we can faithfully trust that Jesus knows what we should be 185 00:12:50,900 --> 00:12:56,600 doing and has already prepared it for us to do. And find great 186 00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:01,000 Joy and finding these tasks and it pleased in the one who has forgiven 187 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:07,600 us who finds us beautiful. The one who truly and eternally has loved us 188 00:13:07,600 --> 00:13:09,900 and continues to do this. 189 00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:12,500 Jesus Christ Our Lord 190 00:13:14,300 --> 00:13:15,300 And someday soon 191 00:13:15,300 --> 00:13:21,700 we will be fully with him in the fullness of his kingdom. 192 00:13:23,300 --> 00:13:25,200 We will see him face to face. 193 00:13:26,700 --> 00:13:33,700 We will know as we are known and we will find that the real tasks are 194 00:13:33,700 --> 00:13:37,500 so much better than the maintenance tasks of this here and now. 195 00:13:39,300 --> 00:13:45,400 We will live in the now hidden and not yet fully established for us 196 00:13:45,400 --> 00:13:46,200 creation. 197 00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:49,100 That will be revealed on that day. 198 00:13:50,500 --> 00:13:52,100 And what a day that will be. 199 00:13:53,300 --> 00:13:54,000 Amen. 200 00:13:55,400 --> 00:13:59,600 And now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your 201 00:13:59,600 --> 00:14:01,400 hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 202 00:14:01,400 --> 00:14:03,000 Amen.