The Final Parable: Occupy Til I Come

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The last parable in Matthew’s gospel is familiarly known as “the parable of the talents,” from 25:14-30.

Someone says, “Wait a minute. What about the story that follows this parable, the judgement of the nations in which the Lord divides mankind into the sheep and the goats?” Answer: it’s not a parable. It’s the real thing.

A parable is an illustration thrown alongside a reality to make some significant point. But we must always be careful to discern when Jesus is not telling a story but dealing with the actual reality.

The basic points in this story–this parable of the talents–are these:

1. Before leaving for an indefinite period of time, the master of three slaves gives each a certain sum of money to invest.

2. The understanding is that each will give account on his return.

3. The amount each receives is based on that servant’s abilities as the master discerns.

4. Two servants put the money to work–we’re not told how–and doubled theirs.

5. One servant, the slave judged by the master to be worthy of only the smallest portion, buried his.

6. The master is delayed ‘a long time.’ (vs. 19)

7. On his return–sudden, no doubt, although this is not a point of the story–the master called the servants for an accounting of their stewardship.

8. Two had done well and thus received great rewards. In both cases, the reward was a greater responsibility.

9. The servant who buried his money was in trouble and knew it. He pleads that it was his fear of the master that prevented him from taking a risk. “Look, here it is–you have what is yours!” (vs. 25)

10. The master had no patience with such laziness. The man was banished.

11. The money entrusted to the lazy servant was awarded the one who had been most faithful. “To him who has, it shall be given.”

12. The corollary of that principle is also stated: “To him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (vs. 29)

That’s the story.

How fitting that this should be the last of our Lord’s parables in Matthew.

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Explaining the Kingdom

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The Lord had a problem.

He had to convey to His disciples the inner operations of the Kingdom of God. He had to bring them up to a proper understanding of how God did things in the spiritual realm. And He had only three years to do it.

This must have been the equivalent of teaching quantum physics to a colony of ants. It was so far outside their day-to-day experiences that little of it made sense to the disciples.

They don’t call Jesus the Master Teacher for nothing.

He pulled it off.

How He did it should be called the greatest miracle He performed, although it’s not one you see included in anyone’s list of His feats.

He taught His followers up and down the Galilean hills, in the towns of Judea, and even while the stormy sea was battering them. He gave lessons in short bytes, it appears, and was constantly reiterating the insights. He demonstrated in Himself the principles He taught and was forever surprising the disciples. He did miracles of healing and provision, and turned these events into moments of teaching.

And among His teachings, He gave parables.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like….” and “the Kingdom of God is like….”

I take the position that when He spoke of the kingdom of Heaven and of God, it was the same thing, that He used these terms interchangeably.

We have tiny examples all around us of the task Jesus was up against.

Missionaries return from their overseas assignment and stand before our churches to tell what things are like where they live. They entertain us with stories of how they learned the languages and mistakes they made. The customs of the citizens seem weird to us, and some are truly bizarre.

That is a tiny illustration of the assignment Jesus had in explaining Heaven’s operation to His followers.

A slightly better example is the foreign visitor who tries to tell you and me of his country. He is the native there and the newcomer here, and he knows his own people better than he does us. We listen intently because he speaks as an authority.

The best example, however, is one we cannot provide. The best illustration of what Jesus was up against would be a visitor from another planet, another world, coming to earth and telling us how things are where he is from.

That task would be formidable, the gap between the two immense, and the time period the alien might require to pull it off would involve years or more. He would have to learn our language, know our customs, and understand our people in order to make parallels from his own world

Jesus did it in three years. And lest anyone miss the point, as He died on the cross, He was heard to say, “It is finished.” He left no part of His assignment undone.

First, let us establish that Jesus Christ was an authority–no, THE authority–on Heaven. He Himself claimed as much.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one has ascended into Heaven except the One who descended from Heaven–the Son of Man.” (John 3:13)

That is, He ought to know what He’s talking about. Jesus is a Native. And furthermore, He has no rival, no counterpart on earth who can add to what He’s saying. No one has been to Heaven except the One who came from there.

That raises a question: what about Elijah and Enoch and the saints of old? Didn’t they go to Heaven? The Bible seems to indicate they did (Genesis 5:24 and II Kings 2:11) and the Lord’s people have spoken on them through the ages as though they did.

Apparently, not to the Heaven Jesus spoke of, but perhaps some intermediate “lesser-Heaven,” if you will. Not yet the final resting place of the saints of God.

But we must leave that question to God and not waste time–for that’s what it would be–speculating on such matters for which God has not given answers.

When it comes to Heaven and the things of God, Jesus is the Authority.

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Scars on Your Soul

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I suppose it’s a vocational hazard.

We preachers walk through the valley of the shadow with people in the church and out of it. We do our best, weep with them, tell what we know, and offer all the encouragement we can. Then, we go on to the next thing. Someone else needs us.

That family we ministered to, however, does not go on to anything. They are forever saddled with the loss of that child or parent. They still carry the hole in their heart and return to the empty house or sad playroom. However, there is one positive thing they will always carry with them.

They never forget how the pastor ministered to them.

He forgets. Not because he meant to, but because after them, he was called to more hospital rooms, more funeral homes, and more counseling situations. He walked away from that family knowing he had a choice: he could leave a piece of himself with them–his heart, his soul, something–or he could close the door on that sad room in his inner sanctum in order to be able to give of himself to the next crisis.

If he leaves a piece of himself with every broken-hearted family he works with, pretty soon there won’t be anything left.

So he turns it off when he walks away. He goes on to the next thing.

He hates himself for doing it. But it’s a survival technique. It’s the only way to last in this kind of tear-your-heart-out-and-stomp-that-sucker ministry.

Case in point.

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Bludgeon Thy Neighbor

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Pastor John Hewett attended the Carolina Panthers-Minnesota Vikings football game in Charlotte last Sunday evening. Just outside the gates, two stern-faced men stood holding up huge signs.

“JESUS CANNOT BE YOUR SAVIOR UNLESS HE IS YOUR LORD.”

Noticing the grimace on John’s face, one of the men said to him, “Jesus can save you.”

John said, “He already has.”

The fellow said, “You sure don’t act like it.”

Fascinating the way some Christians find one single aspect of the Christian faith and turn it into the end-all of salvation and righteousness and go to seed on it.

Thereafter, it becomes the theme of their sermons and the thrust of their conversations. If they’re Facebook friends with you, that’s all you ever read from them.

For some, it’s the KJV Bible. If you’re using anything else, you are a compromised liberal and naive to boot. Either you have been taken in by the con men in the faith or you are a scam artist yourself.

For some it’s Calvinism. Unless you cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ as they do–or Brother John himself did–you’re shallow, don’t know your Bible, and a blind leader of the blind.

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A Wife’s First Christmas Letter without Her Husband

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Susan is my wife’s youngest sister. Margaret was 11 when she was born and almost feels like her mother. Even though Susan lives in Seattle and we’re in New Orleans, those two are joined at the hip.

Twenty-five years ago, Susan married Jim Schroeder, a native Washingtonian. Jim worked in the post office and after hours refereed high school basketball games. This large man–he was 6’2″ at least–loved flowers and grew prize-winning dahlias and roses all over his back yard.

For the past few years, Jim battled both ALS and MS. On the first Sunday of October, pneumonia ended his earthly life. We were so sad at losing him, but relieved his suffering had finally ended.

Last February–Mardi Gras weekend–our New Orleans family, all 7 of us, flew to Seattle to be with Jim and Susan while he was still well enough to enjoy the visit. Our grandkids were his delight as he was theirs. Even though he was not able to speak, he went everywhere they did and communicated through Susan who, like all wives everywhere, knew everything he was thinking.

Today, Susan’s Christmas letter arrived. It is so sweet and poignant, I thought some of our readers would enjoy it, though you did not know Jim Schroeder. It’s a fine and funny tribute of a wife to a husband.

Susan begins, “Oh, how I miss Jim this Christmas, every moment really. During the Christmas seasons of 2006 and 2007, he was so tired from overwork, some nights too tired to eat dinner–and we all know how much Jim liked dinner! He’ll never be tired again, God bless him.”

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Don’t Look Too Closely

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It’s a hard lesson to learn in life, but fans of athletes and singers, actors and other television celebrities, would do well to adjust their expectations downward concerning the personal, private lives of those individuals.

The lives of very few superstars in any category will bear close inspection.

Life keeps trying to teach us this lesson, but so many in our society refuse to learn the lesson. So we are devastated when we learn the inner secrets and hidden activities of a Tiger Woods, a Michael Jackson, or an Edward Kennedy.

The reason we go on getting disappointed in such revelations is that we keep expecting other people to be better than they are.

And perhaps better than we are.

I was 18 years old when this lesson hit me up side the head. As a college freshman in Georgia and more than a little homesick, I was glad when I saw that a certain Southern gospel quartet was coming to nearby Rome for a concert. I had grown up singing their songs and had attended two or three of their programs, so this was like a little touch of home. I knew the personnel of the group and could sing most of their material along with them.

That’s why I decided to do what I did.

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Christmas Disappointments

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I was 7 years old the first Christmas present I ever received. That morning, as I opened the package, I already knew: it was broken.

Here’s what happened.

That year, our family had moved from the farming and mining regions of north Alabama into the mountainous coal fields of West Virginia. My dad accompanied a number of our uncles and their friends looking for work, and they all landed jobs in a coal camp just outside Beckley. With a steady paycheck, this year for the first time in my brief life, the six children in our family would receive Christmas presents.

One Saturday early in December, Mom and Dad made the difficult trip into town and returned laden with boxes and bags. They hid everything in a closet and warned us away. “Not until Christmas.”

A few days later, when our parents were out of the house, my older brothers found the stash. “This must be for you,” they said, handing me a box containing a lovely golden tractor. This would be my first brand-new toy ever. It was a magical moment. I examined it lovingly. With a windup key, the track could be made to pull the tractor. I twisted it, and it worked–a few times.

Then it broke. No doubt it was simply shoddy workmanship. But to a 7-year-old, this was major stuff.

I had the sad and difficult task of returning the tractor to the box to be re-hidden in the closet, then awaiting Christmas morning knowing that my present would be a disappointment.

When the morning came, I faked excitement. We never let on to our parents that we had broken into the gifts early or that my tractor would not work.

No doubt I was not the first to be disappointed on Christmas morning.

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Now You Know How a Pastor Feels

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If you’ve had the television on at all in the last 24 hours, you’ve heard of the senseless death of Cincinnati Bengal’s football player Chris Henry. Apparently, he and his fiancee, the mother of his three children, were having a Tiger-and-Elin-Woods type spat and he was angry. As she drove away in her pickup truck a few miles north of Charlotte, North Carolina, he jumped in the back.

A motorist called 911 saying, “A black man is in the back of a pickup, beating on the window. It looks like he’s trying to get in. He’s wearing a cast on one arm.”

The next call to the emergency system from a second motorist reported the man lying in the highway, motionless. “It looks like he’s dead.” He was.

The victim of his temper, his uncontrolled rage? It would appear so.

One after another, representatives of the NFL, of the Bengals, and of Chris Henry’s friends, have uttered to the media and the sporting community the same three things: It’s sad, we’re sorry, and he was turning his life around.

Henry is a native of our area. Belle Chasse, just downriver from New Orleans, the location of the Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, is where he grew up and played high school ball. People there remember how “he came from nothing” and quickly found what sports stardom can do for a person. It brings great opportunities and incredible temptations.

We’ve not been told what trouble he got into during his high school or college (at West Virginia) years, but the NFL suspended him several times. He was arrested 5 times in the last 3 years for marijuana possession, driving under the influence, and such. He was only 26 years old.

“He was turning his life around.”

Okay.

The fact that he died the way he did would seem to indicate otherwise, in my opinion, that he still had uncontrolled anger problems.

But no one wants to say a bad word about the deceased. And that’s just fine. There’s no need; what would be the point?

Now you know how pastors feel at funerals.

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What a Blind Spot Looks Like

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Luther Little was a pastor any modern preacher could admire and look up to. I became pastor of the church he served early in the 20th century, some 40 years after he was off the scene. The more I learned about him, the more I admired him.

In the 1920’s, he became the first pastor in America, we’re told, to broadcast his church services over radio. For a time, millions of people up and down the East Coast considered him their radio pastor.

One of the most fascinating aspects to this preacher, the one that stood out and made me realize there was far more to the man than first appeared, is that he was a novelist. I have no idea how many books he wrote, but somewhere along the way–in a used bookstore, I think–I ran across “Manse Dwellers,” his novel about a pastor and his family. Clearly, he was following the number one dictum for novelists: write about what you know.

This is not a review of that book.

Rather, it’s a little story about the realization that the pastor-author was strictly a man of his day with a glaring problem he did not even know about.

Luther Little had a blind spot.

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