Your One Wild and Precious Life: A Sermon for 25A Pentecost

 

As I contemplated the parable of the talents in Matthew, I couldn't help thinking about a poem that I have often retrned to because of its question at the end. Mary Oliver presses us to think about how we're using this time that we've been given on the planet. Do we exist or do we live? Do we spend all day inside in an office or do we take a walk, get together with friends, see how we can be of service to someone in need? Do we even pay attention to the grasshoppers?

See what you think.

Text: Matthew 25:14-30

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“Who made the world?

Who made the swan and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?”

These are the opening lines to a Mary Oliver poem called, “The Summer Day.”

Oliver becomes fascinated by a grasshopper that has landed on her hand.

She observes and gets delight from watching this insect eat some grains of sugar.

“Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.”

For Oliver…this is a moment to take in creation and while she says she doesn’t know what prayer is…she has an inkling of something special has gone on in this connection with a grasshopper as she strolled through the fields.

The poem finishes on a question:
“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

What do we plan to do with our one wild and precious life?

Oliver poses a real challenge to us in her poem.

It’s similar to the challenge laid before us in this Gospel lesson from Matthew.

What is that we are to do with the abundant grace gifted to us?

Do we live into it and share these gifts we’ve been given?

Or do we hoard them, bury them, keep them under lock and key?

Our Gospel lesson is all about us recognizing and accepting the love and light of Christ within us and then bringing that out into our communities.

It’s through that sharing that others begin to see themselves as part of that web of love and light.

Connections start to build…attitudes shift…and we begin the process of moving in a more Godward direction.

This passage from Matthew…just like last week’s…was especially written and spoken to a people who needed hope and encouragement to keep going in the face of daunting times.

Things hadn’t gone as they thought they would.

The Roman Empire destroyed their temple for a second time.

Jesus had not returned in the way that they thought he would.

So this parable was again a reminder to not lose hope in God amidst the rubble of their lives.  Rather…keep living and growing their talents in the faith that God will be with them.

Interestingly…when we talk about “talents” today…we often think of some sort of skill that we have that is uniquely ours.

And scholars believe this understanding of the word “talent” comes from this reading out of Matthew.

But the “talents” we’re talking about here in this Gospel lesson were very large units of money…almost like gold bricks.

Just one talent would equal 15 years’ worth of a laborer’s day wages. 

So the guy who got just the one talent was given a whole bunch of money…even if it wasn’t as much as the other two.

In the parable…the “master” gives out the money…and then departs…and returns “after a long time.”

That “long time” is that sense for Matthew’s community of having to rethink this idea of Christ returning.

The three people with their different talents are then left with that Mary Oliver question: What are you going to do with this one wild and precious life?

We hear that at least two of the people go off and find ways to increase the talents or gifts.

They had no idea if what they were doing was the right thing.

They didn’t know if they were going to have any kind of return whatsoever.

But still…they trusted… and took a risk to go do something with their talents.

And then there’s the one with the single talent.

And I was curious that this one created a whole narrative about the master.

Some of you may recall a baseball movie from the 1970s…”The Bad News Bears” starring Tatum O’Neal and Walter Matthau.

In one scene…Matthau…who is this gruff alcoholic coach…holds a team meeting with his bumbling rag tag little leaguers.

He puts the word “Assume” on a chalkboard. 

And then he broke apart the word to explain the meaning of what happens when we “assume” something?

Yeah: so here’s the One Talent guy making an assumption about the master and the master’s motives and personality.

“I knew you were a harsh man.  You reap where you did not sow…you gather where you did not scatter seed.”

Really?

Sadly, this sort of thinking seems hardwired in some of us, doesn’t it?

Disappointment and hurt happens. It’s part of living.

But sometimes those bruises…those emotional hurts… don’t heal as they should.

And then the scar tissue of whatever trauma happened in someone’s life…locks them into a stuck place…and instills such deep wounds that fear becomes their worldview.

They can’t trust that others aren’t going to hurt them.

If suspicion and fear is our baseline outlook on everyone and everything…it only makes sense that we transfer those same feelings onto God.

There was a period in my life when I was convinced that God hated me.

I had lost a lot of important people to death in a very short time frame.

One died in a car accident.

One was shot to death in a robbery at the end of my street.

And my favorite aunt had died of cancer.

Nothing felt right in my world.

Even though I went to church…I believed that the only prayer that applied to me was the Confession of Sin.

Those were some of the loneliest and most terrible days of my life.

I felt cut off from everything and everybody…including and especially myself.

In retrospect…I can now see that where I was living then was in that place where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth because that was my worldview.

Thankfully a chaplain helped me emerge from that space and at least see that God didn’t hate me.

Truthfully…it took a lot longer for me to reach an understanding of God’s endless well of love for me.

But having had that intervention from a chaplain determined to get me to see that God loves and doesn’t hate made the shift in me that I could say more prayers than the Confession of Sin.

It also meant there was still a pathway for God to reach me when I was more ready to listen…truly and deeply listen…to God’s voice and not the narrative that I created about God full of assumptions based on how human beings acted and spoke about God.

Through that process of coming to experience God in a true…real…and complete way…I came to a place of seeing God’s crazy and exuberant love for me and for everyone.

No exceptions.

No hidden clauses.

The craziest part about it is that all God asks is that we trust in this Love…believe in it…and then share that love with others.

Because that’s our talent.

Our one wild and precious life…full of abilities…skills…messy as it can be at times…is the talent that we can grow…given a spark through Word and Sacrament into the Body of Christ…so that we can  make a difference in the life of others and in our community.

Everyone in here has agency to be that person who sits with another who finds herself in that place of wailing and gnashing of teeth and invites them to unbury their talent and put it into play for their own good…and the good of another.

Let what we take from here…the prayers… the hymns… the bread and the wine…inspire us to live into this one wild and precious life that we’ve been given.

Because the world needs us.

All of us.

Keep going.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.