Undercut by Fear November 16, 2008

Judges 11:29-40
Matthew 25: 14-30
A few years ago, a minister colleague asked me to sum up what CHRISTIAN FAITH is all about as briefly as possible, in Layman's Terms, without all the Theological Language. Would you describe faith as MORALITY? How could you describe the INCARNATION OF CREATOR as Messiah, explain GRACE, SIN, RESURRECTION, REDEMPTION, COVENANT, SACRIFICE? Instead, for me, my response is REBUILDING TRUST.

In this life, our expectations are rarely fulfilled.
Broken dreams make it hard to RISK to trust, to hope, to believe.
Despite the hype of this community, parents do not give us everything, when we desire. The job we thought we had, becomes something far different.
The President flew to an AirCraft Carrier off shore in the Middle-East and declared Victory! after 6 weeks, in a war that has gone on now for six more years.
Regardless of how attractive and virile we were when we first fell in love, in spite of all the promises, we did not shower our love with riches and praises, and make their lives a fairy-tale every single day of their lives.
God did not give us everything we imagined, there have been times we have been angry.
We have failed to live up to our own promises and dreams, to ourselves and to the world.
ACKNOWLEDGING the reality of Promises broken, of dreams unfulfilled, TRUSTing anew appears extra-ordinary. REBUILDING TRUST becomes an act of Faith.

Over the last eighty years, our trust has been shifted from beliefs, promises, affections, to what we could earn, purchase, what we could own, master and control on our terms. After repeated disappointments, we put our trust in ourselves and our abilities, building up for ourselves private worlds, measured by belongings, property, accomplishments, our money. HOWEVER, the current crises, whether named the Housing Crisis, Borrowing, Lending or Credit Crisis, are again failures of our ability to TRUST. Fear makes it seem impossible to trust the Banks, to trust the Government, to trust the Market.

Our FEARS UNDERCUT, scars and wounds make it difficult to risk and to believe.
It was to such a world as this, that Jesus gave the PARABLE of the TALENTS. Luke's Gospel tells a similar account, but the TALENTS is memorable for the Parable's extravagance, as well as the Pun, that A TALENT Refers to our ABILITIES as well as having been a unit of money.

At other times, we have described the payment of a Laborer for a full day's work was a coin called a DENARIUS, and another unit of Currency was a TALENT the equivalent of 6,000 Denarii. We often become stuck in this story, by the unfair starting point that one received 5 another 2 and the focus of the parable is the one who received only one talent. The fact of the matter is that we do not all have the same talents, or the same number of talents, some through birth, through education, by what ever means have received more than others. STILL, the parable invites us to recognize that, while we are amazed by the talents of the Stone Masons and Artisans of the great Cathedrals, the faith and culture of the Great Reformers and Great Masters, there were ditch-diggers who broke the soil and cleared the way, who laid foundations deep down beneath that no one will ever see, whose humble singular talent holds up the talents of these others.
Furthermore, at 6,000 times a day's wage, that single TALENT was trusting a slave with the equivalent of a Quarter of a Million Dollars. Yet, this one could not see the TRUST given. His life was so UNDERCUT by FEAR that he acted in fear.

With finance there have always been THREE POSSIBILITIES, you can Spend, you can Invest, or you can Save. As a people, the current generation have excelled at Spending, believing in Middle Class Affluence that we could all have the dream of fulfilling all our desires, we also Invested; what we have not done well is to SAVE and to teach saving. The Master names that Saving would have been the simplest return on an investment, the means of holding and preserving value. What the Slave was afraid of, was losing what had been trusted to him. BUT that is the point of TRUST. If we are afraid, our FEARS so undercut our abilities, we bury our trust, we bury our abilities, our Talents, and our faith is dead to us.

If we were to have that Coin, that represented a TALENT today, we would need to inscribe upon one side ABILITY, for that is what a Talent is. And on the other-side RESPONSE, for that is what a Talent does. So that taken together as one, we would see that our abilities empower us to respond, and RESPONDING WITH our ABILITIES builds greater and greater RESPONSIBILITY. To those to whom much has been given, much will be required. Our Talents are not possessions. Our Talents cannot be returned for a refund unused. A Talent Buried by fear is not SAVED, but Lost, where all we can do is grind our teeth over opportunities lost outside the limelight, living in the shadows.

But the MIRACLE of FAITH is that even when we believe we are lost, still God Trusts us and gives us possibilities for REBUILDING TRUST.
Describing the Book of Judges to the Confirmation Class, I usually name this as the STEVEN KING Portion of the Bible. These are among the most gruesome horrific of tales ever written, of rape and assassination, of power and corruption. While gruesome and horrific, the tales in the Book of Judges are not far different from our Newspaper Headlines. Each one beginning and ending with the phrase “For every man did what he thought was right in his own heart, and when they were convinced of their sins they repented asking God's forgiveness.”

Jephthah is the story of a man who like us has a personal life and professional life, intertwined. As every name has a meaning, “Jephthah” refers to “OPENING THE MOUTH” and it is upon the words spoken, rather than the thoughts of his heart, or the actions of his life, that this story hangs. Jephthah was a throw away of society. He was an orphan, not of war or AIDS, Jephthah's mother appears to have been a prostitute, his father was unknown among all the men she had been with. After having survived to adolescence, Jephthah was rejected by everyone, and developed a talent for killing. Then came a time of war, when his TALENT was desired. The people came to him and offered whatever he desired, if Jephthah would lead the people. In one battle after another, Jephthah was the winner. But as he approaches the final battle with the Ammonites, Jephthah's faith in his own ability is undercut by fear. JEPHTHAH's VOW is not like ELIJAH's who after destroying all the priests of BAAL WORSHIP, runs to the Cave of Moses and asks God whether He, Elijah had done these things or whether God had done them through him, and God in a still small voice says “What are you doing here Elijah.” NO, Jephthah is so filled with Fear and desire to kill his enemy, Jephthah makes a foolish FAITHLESS VOW to make a sacrifice of whatever first greets him representing home. He imagines sacrificing a Pheasant, or a Lamb, even a Heifer, or a Slave. He goes into battle, and wins, without knowing that TO WIN IS TO LOSE. As he goes home, his only child, the one that represents love and home and life to him, rushes to greet him. The height of irony is that what he had been fighting, what the Ammonites represented, was a society that believed in child sacrifice, and having opened his mouth to swear he would kill something of home if he could kill this people, he was faced with his own daughter.

This is a cautionary tale of concern for those returning from war, who cannot leave the killing on the battlefield. This is a Cautionary Tale for us all, that our work, our PROFESSIONAL LIVES ooze out into our personal. But even more, this is a story of whether our faith is in God, or only in our fears.

Having placed such great TRUST in OUR INVESTMENTS, our Faith in our Money and our ability to WIN, we now live in a world very much afraid, UNDERCUT by FEAR. As much as we show up for work, and for meetings, to sing in the choir, to be part of our families, our FEARS ooze out.

Would that Jephthah had made a different vow. Would that we could stop in the midst of all our fears, the bills and news all around us, and confess “LORD, I am afraid. The world is too much with us. But you have trusted us with these abilities, trusted us with Talents, empower us to RESPOND, to use the Talents gifted us for your service.”

Because of the killing of his daughter, before she ever came of age, Jephthah is not remembered in the great lineages. Jephthah's un-named daughter, we can never forget.

Jephthah is remembered for the story that follows. Each of the Tribes of Israel were named after one of the sons of Jacob whose name was changed to Israel. Among these sons of Jacob was Joseph, Governor of Egypt for the Pharaohs. When Israel left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, the descendants of Joseph were identified by the names of his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. Throughout the history of settling in the land the tribe of Ephraimites were forever in tension with the rest of the nation of Israel, sometimes allies, sometimes adversaries, dependent upon the faith and trust and leadership of the Judges. After killing his own, Jephthah wages war against the Ephraimites. The difficulty is how do you tell the difference between one people and another who both are descended from Israel? Jephthah makes up a word, a foreign word, the Ephraimites will not be able to pronounce, SHOBOLETH. When the Ephraimites attempted to pronounce SHIBBOLETH they instead lisp and opening their mouths differently pronounce SIBOLETH, for which Jephthah put to death 42,000 of the Ephraimite tribe of the nation of Israel. Generations later, the descendants of Ephraimites were conquered and intermarried with another people and this new people are called Samaritans. To this day, to PRONOUNCE SHIBBOLETH is to Risk speaking truth, to risk being misunderstood by those who fear.