Sermon on Minahs

First: I want to talk about “holy” risk vs. unhealthy risk.
What are some “holy” risks? (The crowd answers: having children, parenting, letting yourself be known, loving people, serving people, being true to who you are, living out of your passions, facing fears, doing inner work, working through addiction. Someone said that what you do with FEAR is (Fuck Everything and RUn or Face Everything And Recover...both are risks.)
What are some unhealthy risks? (Doing drugs, running away from problems, lying, cheating, scamming people, being dangerous.)
I am not going to talk about unhealthy risks today. I am going to talk about how we venture into “holy” risk. I want to talk about Luke 19:11-27, the parable of the minahs, and what that means to me.
The Parable:
Luke 19:11-27
While there were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately. He said: “A certain well-born went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his slaves and gave them 10 minas. ‘Conduct business with this while I am gone.’
Some of his fellow citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’
“He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the slaves to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it.
“The first one came and said, ‘Sur, your mina has earned ten minas.’
“Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’
“the second one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned five minas.’
“His master answered, ‘You take charge of five cities.’
Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in, and reap what you did not sow.’
“His master replied, ‘I will judge you by our own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then, didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I come back, I could have collected it with interest?’
Then he said to those standing by, ‘Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minas.’
“’Sir,’ they said, ‘he already has ten!’
“He replied, ‘I tell you that everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.
Big picture:
This parable is talking about what the servants did with their money. It’s a metaphor for what we do with our lives, which includes our money. The servants are given the task of making money for their master.
There are ten servants with money, the parable talks about three. The first two did what their master asked them to do and made substantial gains, the last doesn’t even try to make money.
Luke tells us that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem to die. Jesus was preparing disciples for his physical departure. Luke tells us people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately. So the parable talks about a noble man who leaves for a while to a distant land to be appointed king, and leaves his servants behind with some orders. They were accountable to a master who will return. He is talking to the twelve disciples and what he wants them to do until he returns.
The hero:
The first and second guy were the heros, but the hero got 10 kingdoms and the “well done,” so that sounds a little better.
What did he do:
He had 1000% on his money, and gave it all to the master when he returned. We don’t know how he did it, but that is a big return. He probably wasn’t investing like the people around him, he probably did something really unique…found a market that wasn’t tapped into. Perhaps he found out the one thing that he seemed to be uniquely capable of offering the world and he did it. He probably had to put it all on the line.
"The less you gamble, the more you lose when you win.." Reminds me that everything has a cost. It’s easy to see the cost of risk, but sometimes we don’t s see the cost of safety…we lose everything we might have gained. Following our passion is risky, but getting the safe job comes with the cost of never realizing our full potential.
Last Saturday, I had some time, and did some holy wandering. I so rarely have nothing planned that the times that I do can be pretty cool. After overeaters anonymous, I went out to coffee with one of my friends from the meeting, then wandered downtown on my bike. I decided to get my bangs trimmed at the place I cut my hair. While I was waiting, I started reading this Rolling Stones magazine. I couldn’t put it down! I got my bangs trimmed and couldn’t leave the salon because I was so hooked. I finally asked if I could buy the magazine, and the salon owner told me I could just take it!
The article was about Kris Kristofferson. This guy went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, became an army officer during Vietnam, went through Ranger school, became a helo pilot, taught at Wespoint, and begged to get sent over. Then he started hearing the stories. Men learning to brutally murder on command. Men pushing POWs out of helicopters and stomping on their hands when the caught the rails on the way to their deaths. He did a 180 and moved his wife (high school sweetheart) down to Nashville to become a singer-songwriter. He worked as a janitor at Columbia Studios for eight years--enough time for his wife to leave him. Somehow he was flying Helos on the weekend for some commercial firm. He landed a Helo in Johnny Cash's back yard and demanded to have Johnny Cash listen to his song. Johnny Cash loved it, and it became the hit, "Sunday Morning Coming Down." Everyone started recording his songs. Gladys Knight, Jannis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Carly Simon, Kenny Milsap, Isaac Hays, Marrianne Faithful, Percy Sledge, Bob Dylan. He had an affair w/ Janis Joplin, and wrote Bobby McGee for her. Then he started making all these movies. He made the best move at the time, A Star is born, and the worst flop ever, Heaven's Gate. He lived hard, burned with intensity, plummeted.
He didn’t have any guaruntees that 8 years as a janitor would pay off…his wife left him! He put it all on the line.
Martin Luther is another example. He was an uptight guy, who was really concerned with not sinning. He had the courage to throw away his reputation and in his own churches eyes committed apostacy. About his whole adventure he says “sin boldly!”
Moms: I am not sure I am willing to risk 18+ years of my life nurturing another human being I have no control over. That’s a risk! My own mom really threw all she had into raising us…and sometimes that has really not seemed like an investment with a lot of return….any moms relate to that?
I don’t want this to sound like not health and wealth gospel…risk, and you will be rich and famous…Would Kris Kristoferson have still been a hero if he was still working as a janitor? I would like to think so…I just wouldn’t know who he was. Heroes among us like Hicks risk obscurity to be our pastor.
There were another 7 in the parable that received something to invest. They probably weren’t the amazing superstar investors or they would have ended up in the investor “hall of fame” with the other two. They probably were not like the ones who didn’t invest anything or Luke would have mentioned them with the non-invester guy. The only choices left were that they were marginally successful, or the lost the money trying.
Both Bob Dylan and Emily Dickenson were fully realized artists, but one maintained meteoric fame and the other's life passed in obscurity...but the fact that they both threw everything out there was the point.
WHAT DID THE HERO BELIEVE ABOUT THE KING:
He believed in following the Master: The master said, “Invest the money and give it to me,“ and he did it…
He boldly risked playing the game: I wrote my tormented genius friend to see what he had to say about this passage. He wrote, "I think you always lose what you dont risk.. I lost the biggest single bet of my life tonight and don’t regret it for a second.. gambling makes you alive, it makes you feel like a person. rewatching old episodes of "The Wire" and I'm reminded of PrezBo's great line, "no one ever wins, one side just loses more slowly." so why play the game? because it’s the only game to play. and you only lose if you don’t play. And then there is nothing else…so you play."
He focused on the Master’s gain: John Hendrix also told me, The house always wins. John doesn’t care about the house, the house isn’t good to him, but he doesn’t come into the game expecting to win money. He knows that the house is always going to win. His reward is being able to play the game. The servant wasn’t focused on his own glory. The master was getting the servant’s returns.
Perhaps he had some expectancy of the Master’s goodness. That in adding something to the well-being of his master, (and probably the greater market) he would be rewarded. In the end, the master put him in charge of ten cities!
The villain: The guy who buried the money was the villain. The master told him to see what he could do with the money, and he did nothing. The master did not tell him “make sure you don’t lose this!” or “Make sure I get it back”
Thoreau reminds us that many men are “leading a life of quiet desperation and went to the grave with the song still in them.”
WHAT DID THE VILLIAN BELIEVE ABOUT THE KING:
Well he wasn’t ok with the fact that the house always wins: “I was afraid of you. I knew you were a hard man . You take out what you did not put in, and reap what you did not sow.’ He thinks the owner is harsh. He doesn’t want to do what the king asks. He was afraid.
Afraid of loss,
afraid of the king taking the money.
Maybe he was afraid of not meeting the king’s expectations.
Maybe he was afraid of failure.
Afraid of doing what the king said, therefore giving the king power and control.
The wicked servant also did not trust God’s goodness: The one who has no trust in gods goodness ends up w/ nothing…
Me:
The villain: Jesus is telling me, Do something with what you have been given. I am afraid to work on things I am not immediately good at. I would rather not do something than be incompetent at it. The biggest area in my life this plays out right now is writing…in the past its been the only thing I felt the vulnerability of not knowing how to play the game. Its not like I haven’t failed, but I have felt in most of those failures that if I wanted to, I could have avoided it. But I can get a bad grade on a paper I thought was the best I have written. Investing myself in something I am not sure I will be good at is hard for me.
The HERO: "Put it all out there, hold nothing back."
My black paper. For my last class, I worked very hard on a paper entitled, “Effectively Educating African American Students.” I put everything had into that thing! I interviewed about 10 people, and devoured the available literature. One thing that came out of the experience is a professor I worked with wants to co-publish an article together!
That reminds me of something Anne Dillard said:
''One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. . . . Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.''
Annie Dillard
The Writing Life
And another artist’s words:
Eugene O’Neill, “People who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers .”

WHAT DO I BELIEVE ABOUT THE KING:
In order to grow, we need to take risk. This is not only true in the bible…every hero took risks…threw it all out there. Jesus, Abraham, Paul, etc. This is backed by every human growth theory and self help book I have read, and I have read a lot! Leaving our safety and becoming vulnerable to failure, rejections and loss is what living abundantly and loving well are all about.
The point:
Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him." Luke 8:16-18…what’s he trying to say?
Failure to perform ones responsibility results in loss of power to perform it.
Bob Dylan said, "Things are handed down when you are ready to make use of them. You wouldn't recognize them unless you had come through certain experiences. I am a strong believer that each man has a destiney."
We don’t get the next thing (10 kingdoms, five kingdoms) until we have done everything we could with what we have.
Maybe the king couldn't give the man who hid the talents anything, because he knew he wouldn't know how to make use of it.
Lots of the saints talk about how if we aren’t going forward we are going backward. Bernard of Clairvaux observed “Not to progress on the way of life is to regress”. Stasis is impossible. You can’t just bury the money, it loses market value.
We are entrusted to gain profit for the master…according to our fidelity he will share his rule with us.
You only lose if you don't play. And then there is nothing else. So you play.