Proper 28A
Transcribed from a
sermon given
At St Barnabas
Episcopal Church
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
November 13, 2011
Six billion. Six billion is a
pretty big number. Six billion. That is the number of pieces of information in
the human genome. There are that many pieces of information in our DNA and RNA,
which is the source and blueprint for our physical bodies. That is a huge
amount of information. Also realize that there can be variation in any one of
those. Think of all the potential combinations and permutations of six billion
pieces of information.
That means that each and every
human being is unique. Nobody like you has ever been before and odds are there
will never be anyone like you again. And it is not just our genome that
determines who we are. Studies have shown that if a woman is under a lot of
stress when she is pregnant that that will have effects on the child. Other
studies have shown that whether you are the first born or the last born or
middle born that changes who you are. And even if you have the genome to be
tall, if you don’t get sufficient nutrition when you are growing up you will
never grow to that height. So all these different variables, like whether your
parents are under stress when you are a child or if they are able to love and
care for you or not, all of these different things effect who you are, who you
are right now.
And not just things you
experienced as a child, but all of the experiences you have had, the wonderful
honors and good thing that have happened to you, the struggles, the suffering,
the losses, the mistakes all of that is part of what builds who you are right
now. And you are unique. Every human being is unique - A unique creation of
God. The question is, “What are we going to do with that?” What are we going to
do with your uniqueness, the abilities, experiences, and opportunities that no
one else has?
The Gospel reading for today is the
parable of the ten talents, in which one person is given five, another two and
another one. Now a talent back then was not what we use the word talent for
today. The word talent, like in America’s Got Talent, or a talent show, that
meaning for talent as some special gift that is unique and valued, that meaning
came from this parable. The word talent in Jesus’ time was used to describe a
source of money. A talent is a piece of silver, and scholars have looked tried
to figure out how much a talent would have been worth and estimates vary from six
thousand dollars to sixty thousand dollars. So, whatever it was, it was a lot
of money. They weren’t given just a quarter; they were given a lot of money to
take care of.
And the question is what are they
going to do with it. Now the parables always represent other things, and
parables can always be interpreted in many different ways. But parable is almost
always interpreted as meaning that each one of us has been given by the master,
by God, an abundance. Not just a little bit, we have been given and abundance
of talent - each one of us.
Now some of us have beautiful
voices and sing in the choir. Some of us have voices where we feel like a frog
when we try to sing. But there may be some out there who have beautiful voices
that aren’t quite sure whether they can actually sing and don’t really want to
go out there and try. All of us have some kind of voice, so even if we sound
like a frog when we sing our voice can still be beautiful when we tell someone
that we love them. It is a gift we have.
There are some people who have an
eye for beauty. You know, the kind of person where their clothes always look just
right and when you go to their house it is decorated in a way that you never
would have thought to decorate things, but it all goes together beautifully. Or
perhaps they are an artist and they paint or they draw or they make quilts or
they do other beautiful things. They have a talent, an eye for beauty. And some
of us just kind of fumble along, doing the best we can, and never quite looking
so elegant but we have eyes that we can see the beauty of the earth and we can
appreciate the awesomeness of a tree. We can appreciate beauty.
Some of us have brilliant
mathematical minds that can add and subtract and multiply and understand logarithms.
And other of us are kind of like, “I need my calculator to add this up because
I don’t know how to add.” But then there are other ones whose minds are great
in terms of speaking. They can get up and they can talk and look like they are
not nervous at all while others are shy and scared and just kind of freeze in
front of people. It doesn’t matter. We all have different talents and they are
all of equal importance.
Sometimes people say, “Well I
don’t have any talent. I don’t have much to add.” I was at the symphony last
night and it reminded me of a story. There was a rehearsal for the symphony
going on and there was one part in this great gigantic symphony where everyone
was playing. There were a timpani and a choir and every body was playing really
loud so the piccolo player said to himself, “I don’t need to bother with this.
Nobody is going to hear me over that.” He stopped playing for a moment. Immediately
the conductor stopped everything and said, “What happened to the piccolo?” You see that little tiny
sound of the piccolo was what filled out the whole symphony. Even if you are
sitting back in your seat and you don’t know about the piccolo, it is part of
the overall sound. The conductor knew this. Sometimes we feel like that little
piccolo that doesn’t make any difference, but it matters to the conductor. It
matters to God.
Some of us are really good
physically. We can go out and work in the garden, we can paint, we can build
things, and we do stuff. And some of us have gotten to the point where getting
out of bed in the morning and getting dressed is a major effort. We’ve long ago
given up trying to work in the garden. But we have a gift in that we can’t get
up. Because those people who like to help others need someone to help.
Sometimes the greatest gift we give is a willingness to be helped, to be
gracious about receiving, because how can others give if there is no one to
receive?
We all have different talents,
different abilities. In Paul’s letter that we read today he talks about using
who we are to build up one another and to encourage one another. In other
places Paul writes about spiritual gifts and about how we all have different
spiritual gifts but we are one body. Here he is saying that we need to use what
we have to encourage one another, to lift one another up.
There is a wonderful thing that has
been going on in the Sunday School. It is that different people from the church
have been sharing their talents with the children. One time someone goes over
there and shows them how to paint watercolors. Her gift for painting is shared
with the children and the children come out with a painting that they can feel proud
of. And who knows one of those children may decide that they want to develop
that gift - that talent. Another person shares wood working, another person
quilting, all the different gifts that we have we can share with our children.
We can share them with each other. We can lift up and empower each other.
Sometimes the most important gift
that we have to share, the most important talent that we have to share, is our
own journey, and our own struggles. Most of you have probably read or heard
about Steve Jobs great commencement speech which was centered upon talking
about his failures and how important his failures were. Sometimes the greatest
gift we have to give, sometimes the talent that we have, is our experience.
When my husband was in an accident and flat on his back and didn’t know if he
was going to walk, he wanted to talk to somebody who had been there. It didn’t
help for anybody else to say, “I know how you are feeling.” We didn’t. But
there was a friend who had been through that, who did know.
Or when you come home from the
doctor with that diagnosis of cancer, if there is someone else who can reach
out to you and say, “I’ve been through chemo. It’s hard. You’ll survive. I’ll
be there with you.” It makes all the difference in the world.
So sometimes the gift we have is
our brokenness. Not necessarily something that we see as our strength. If you
are familiar with the twelve step programs you know incredibly powerful work of
the twelve steps, but just reading the twelve steps isn’t going to cure you, isn’t
going to help. What is so important about twelve step programs is the other
people. It is the other people who have messed up, and fallen down and are
willing to share their own struggles and their own successes. The gift that
they give is of having been on that journey.
We all have gifts and talents and
things to offer to the world and to each other. The question is, “What are we
going to do with them?” Let’s look at this parable, especially the one who
received one talent and who buried it in the ground. The reason he did that is
stated clearly. The reason he didn’t develop his talent is because he was
afraid. Have you ever been afraid to express your talent? Afraid that if you sing
people might make fun of you? Afraid that if you paint you won’t make something
pretty? Afraid that if you reach out to that neighbor they won’t want to hear
you? Afraid to share the gifts that you have for whatever reasons? There are a
million reasons to be afraid. It is our fears that keep us from fully
expressing ourselves. It is our fears that keep us from sharing the gift of who
we are with others.
I invite you to look at yourself.
What do you have to give, to help to build up the community, to help other
people? And look at what you are afraid of and to trust that you don’t need to
be afraid because Christ is with you.
Amen
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