Today’s lessons speak of crisis, of surprise, of unexpected events. The Day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night. The householder returns from a journey, after many years, to settle accounts. We are told to stay awake, to be prepared.

Paul is writing to the young Christian community at Thessalonika. His first letter may be the oldest writing in the New Testament. It’s the year 51, only 20 years since Pentecost and the beginning of the Church. Christians still believed that Christ’s return was imminent. Paul warns that it can come at any time. He encourages the young church to stay awake to this possibility. That is, to live ethically with one another, in faith, hope, and love, encouraging one another, building up the community.

Some 30 or 40 years later, the Gospel of Matthew carries the same message. Like Paul, the author of Matthew is writing to a young Christian community. But by now, it’s the year 85 or 90, and Christ still hasn’t shown up! Some people are getting tired of waiting. They’re beginning to revise their predictions, or to put their hopes elsewhere. Nevertheless, Matthew continues to speak of Christ’s return, and the day of reckoning. He puts together a series of parables, warning about the Last Judgment. The final three make up the trilogy of Matthew 25.

Last week it was five bridesmaids locked out in the cold because they forgot to buy oil for their lamps. Next week it’s people sent to eternal punishment because they didn’t recognize the face of Christ in “the least of these.” This week we get to wrestle with the very complicated and disturbing Parable of the Talents.

It’s no accident that these readings come at the end of the church year, just before Advent, the season of preparation and penance. All of them divide the world: between wise and foolish, between the faithful and the fearful, between the compassionate and the indifferent. All have harsh, threatening endings, full of judgment. They are, quite frankly, scary! The temptation is to ignore them.

And yet, we should never forget that behind the judgment is love. In a recent sermon, Carl Scovel said that the judgment is actually “a gift, a help, a blessing from the God who loves us:”

“Only a God who cares for us, will judge us. Only a God who loves us and believes in us, will force us to endure the consequences of our stupidity, greed and folly, and yet will lead us through them if we follow.”

The Parable of the Talents depicts the head of a great household, which in Roman times was the closest thing to a modern corporation. The patriarch, a very powerful man, would often go away on business. During his absence, his affairs would be managed by “slaves.” These slaves were not low-status household workers. Rather, they were highly compensated retainers, trustees of the master’s property.

The master of the parable entrusts three of his slaves with a certain number of “talents.” These are not small sums. In the ancient world, a talent was one of the largest units of money - a large piece of silver weighing over 50 pounds. One talent was worth 6000 denarii - the amount a subsistence worker would earn if he worked for 6000 days, or 16 years! Five talents would have been the wage for a very long lifetime.

Two of the slaves do what the master expects and hopes they’ll do. They go out and double the investment, earning praise, honor, and higher responsibility. But the third takes a different tack. He takes a risk-free path, burying his talent in the ground, where it can’t be lost. Some might consider this a reasonable, prudent thing to do, at least in today’s market! But this third slave is stripped of everything when the master returns, and is banished to the “outer darkness.”

For at least some of us, this is a well-worn story. For me, it was one of the staple parables of Methodist Sunday School. If memory serves me, it was presented as a moralistic tale about how we should not be lazy, but be industrious, to “use our talents.” It was kind of like the Gospel version of “The Ant and the Grasshopper”, one of Aesop’s fables.

Now, that interpretation may not be completely wrong. Nevertheless, if offered as the only interpretation, I think it misses the mark.. Parables aren’t moralistic fables, telling us how we “should” act. They’re not about reward and punishment from a source outside ourselves. Rather, they seek to uncover the nature of reality. They tell us about the way things really work.- and the consequences of trying to ignore or resist it.

As I read it, the key to the story is found in three words of the third slave: “I was afraid.” The parable is all about fear, and what happens when we succumb to it.

Fear has many different manifestations. There are many ways to bury our talents in the ground. For some, it’s procrastination. People who procrastinate aren’t lazy - they’re blocked and fearful. For some, it’s perfectionism. The perfectionist wants to write a perfect script, paint a perfect painting, submit a perfect performance - and so never even starts. For some, it’s control. People obsessed with control are so afraid of the unexpected that they settle for mediocrity. Sometimes they bury not only their own talents but the talents of others, too.

What enables us to move beyond fear? What give us the courage to take the kind of risks that would bring abundant return? Some people try to deny their fear, or overcome it, or they beat themselves up for being fearful. But maybe the first thing is to be compassionate with ourselves, to accept our fears as part of who we are. Then we can let go of them, or move ahead despite them.

At this point faith can help us. The Parable of the Talents tells us something about faith - about our relationship with ultimate reality. If we experience the universe as harsh and cruel - the way the third slave did - then we’re never going to flourish. Our talent will stay buried in the ground, never to see the light of day. We may end up living in a hell of our own making - only existing, never fully alive.

On the other hand, if we believe in a Creator who works with us, who meets us and doubles our efforts if only we take the first step - then we’ll be willing to take big risks - or, as writer Annie Dillard puts it, to “spend it, shoot it all!” Then we’ll be able to live lives of abundance, in partnership with the Source of all creativity.

This kind of meaning spun from the parable may be helpful in our personal lives. But what does it tell us about institutions? Matthew, after all, wasn’t speaking to a group of individuals at a personal growth workshop - he was addressing the young church. What was he trying to tell this new community? We can’t know for sure, but I’m guessing he had something like this in mind:

“We’ve all been entrusted with a talent! The Gospel is a treasure - incredible news about God’s love! Let’s not keep it to ourselves, let’s not bury it in the ground - it’s meant to be spread far and wide! The church isn’t meant to be harmless and inoffensive. That’s the way we lose the treasure! Let’s not play it safe. Let’s go out on a limb, even risk our own existence! God has been extravagant with us. Let’s respond to God’s extravagance by giving extravagantly, by loving extravagantly, and by dreaming extravagant dreams!”

No less a sage than A.A. Milne offers us related wisdom. At the end of Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and Pooh walk home together in silence on a golden evening. Finally Piglet speaks: “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh, what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” Pooh responds: "I say 'What’s for breakfast?' What do you say, Piglet?" Piglet answers, “I say, 'I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?'"

Milne tells us that Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said. But with all due respect to the lovable Pooh, it’s not the same! “Breakfast dreams” are dreams of survival, of burying our talent in the ground. “Excitement” dreams are dreams of extravagance, of investing our treasure for lavish return.

I wonder: What kinds of “excitement” dreams could we dream for First Parish? Could we dream of investing a chunk of our endowment - say $100,000 - in affordable housing? Could we dream of offering a second worship service, perhaps at a time other than Sunday morning - to extend God’s love in a wider circle? Could we dream of creating a center for adult spiritual growth and learning, housed in our beautiful buildings? Could we dream of hiring a full-time Youth Minister to reach out to teenagers in danger - which these days is all of our wonderful teens?

All of these dreams would take substantial effort. All carry some risk of failure, though none of are impossible. But they’re really only examples, offered to get you started. What dreams can YOU dream? How can our church extend itself to meet the crises of the age? How might we, First Parish, enter more fully into the joy of our Creator?