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Ambitious, Entrepreneurial Faith

The Rev. Thomas W. Simmons IV

I'm struck by a certain incongruity that occasionally comes up in the reading of Scripture in the liturgy.  Maybe some of you have felt it, too.  Does it ever feel a bit jarring to have readings like ours this morning that deliver stunningly bad news and then we all respond "Thanks be to God"?

I got that feeling with our lessons this morning.  There's Zephaniah: "for a full, a terrible end he will make of the inhabitants of the earth."  "Thanks be to God."  And there's Jesus: "from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away."  "Praise be to thee, O Lord."

Jesus tells a story about a landowner who was departing for a long time.  Jesus is like that landowner.  He's facing his passion and death and like the master, he's leaving his servants behind. 

So before leaving, this landowner gives his three servants responsibility to manage his property.  He didn't want them to merely maintain his property, but to manage it in an entrepreneurial way.  They were to creatively, skillfully and ambitiously invest it and make his money grow and multiply.  I like that vision of stewardship: taking God's gifts and using them, making them grow.

The first two servants were good stewards.  They took the money committed to their care and aggressively sought opportunities in the marketplace to multiply it.  And they were wildly successful.  Each managed to develop 100% return on their investments.  I want these guys handling MY money!   

The third servant, however, had a different mindset.  He was nervous about the risks involved in such ventures and decided to play it safe, be cautious and simply preserve what his master had left him.  That's better than to risk losing it.  He was afraid of failing and made self-preservation his highest priority.  

When the master returned he richly rewarded those who took the risks and reaped the benefits. He entrusted them with more responsibility and invited them to share in his joy at their success.  The third servant, however, was stripped of his responsibility and sent packing.  If he won't be a good steward of his master's trust and strive for success in it, he won't enjoy its benefits.  It's that simple.  Use it or lose it.

Well, that's the parable.  What does it mean to us, today?   I guess the question we have to answer is, what has Jesus entrusted to us?  Well…everything!  All that we know and have and are and will be comes ultimately from the good hand of God. 

All things come from God and he holds us accountable for how we use it.  He cares about our stewardship.  That's true of your relationships with the people in your life.  It's true of how you invest your time and develop and deploy your talent and earn, save, spend and give your financial and material resources. 

It's also true of our corporate life here at St. Peter's.  God has entrusted much to us and is very interested in how we use it.  I can think of many examples, but one stands out to me.  Our parish started with some old bells and a good story from the past. And look what you built! You built that beautiful bell tower all on your own initiative, with the time and talents resident within this congregation. 

"Well done good and trustworthy servants, you have been faithful in a little now you will be entrusted with much."  You all have been faithful in an ambitious and entrepreneurial way and now I wonder what he'll entrust to us next.  One thing comes to my mind.  Since our pledge ingathering it's become clear that St. Peter's is being entrusted with huge growth of financial resources. 

We still have some pledges trickling in - it's not too late to have your financial stake in the coming year - but it looks like we might have as much as $80,000 more to spend this year than last.  We want to be faithful in how we use that money.  The message of our parable is we must beambitious and entrepreneurial and use this money to multiply ministry in the year ahead so God entrusts us with EVEN MORE next year. 

But I think Jesus was talking about more than money.  He entrusted his disciples with a message: the Gospel, the good news that Christ has come into the world and given everyone a way to know and love and serve God. 

Jesus entrusted this precious message with twelve oddball guys and he sent them out into the big, bad world and told them to multiply themselves by literally making disciples of the nations.  They were in the business of Building Christians for Service.

The temptation was overwhelming for these early Christian to hunker down and play it safe.  Convert the nations?  Hah! It would be so much easier to fly stealthily under the radar screens of the dominant Roman culture as a tiny, safe Christian subculture.  They could, in effect, to bury their treasure in the ground and preserve the principal like the third servant. 

This parable aimed directly at just such a line of reasoning.  It shows the folly of the self-preserving maintenance mindset and called the disciples and church into risk-taking, entrepreneurial service bringing the Gospel of Christ into the hurly burly marketplace of the Roman world, often at great personal cost. 

And like those first two servants, they were wildly successful. So successful in fact, that in just a few short centuries the Emperor Constantine accepted Christ, and with him came the entire Roman world.  And it has continued to this day spreading, multiplying and expanding through the centuries, so it now embraces literally billions of people!   Christ entrusted his servants with the Gospel and in return they offered back the entire world.  Now that's a great return on investment! 

The point for us today is that Christ has entrusted us with the SAME commission.  We need to remember that as we consider how to use the bounty that you all have pledged this year. 

How are we going to grow and multiply the Good News here at St. Peter's and in our community, nation and world?  That's a question we need to answer with ambitious, entrepreneurial faithfulness. We're talking outreach.  We're talking missions.  We're talking evangelism. 

I recently read an interview with President Bush in which he said something that stood out to me and I think is worthy of emulation.  He said, with regard to the war on terrorism, "I will seize the opportunity to achieve big goals."  I like that.  We need to take the same approach to our mission and work as a congregation. We need to think big and achieve big goals. 

So let's think of one.  Hmm.  Ah, here's one.  Let's double in size! That's the rate of growth the first two servants experienced in their stewardship. That's been the rate of growth in our little town of Purcellville.  We should AT LEAST keep up with population growth, shouldn't we?  If we remain static, aren't we like that third servant who buried his gift in the ground and only had the principal when his master returned?

You know, even the national Episcopal Church has been awakened to the imperative of growth.  At the last General Convention, the Church passed what is called the 20/20 Vision. The idea is to DOUBLE the membership of the church nationally by the year 2020.  That's a very ambitious goal - especially for a lot of Episcopal parishes and dioceses that are…shall we say, lacking vigor. 

I think we are well positioned to do our part, because we have great vigor here.  And with that vigor we need to have the right mindset.  We need to cast our vision outward to the needs of those around us. 

As we walk out the door this morning we need to see ourselves as missionaries and the mission field begins next door and across the street.  We need to take risks with our faith in the marketplace, multiplying, growing and expanding what God has entrusted to us.  AMEN