Some years back I started seeing T-shirts that say something like this: I [something they did] and all I got was this lousy t-shirt! Is that what that event meant to them? All they got out of it was a lousy t-shirt? Doesn’t seem like a very good use of time and money. I started to wonder if folks think about life generally that way. Just about every morning I take my dogs to a cemetery and let them run off leash. As I walk I look at the headstones. I read the names. I look at the dates. I try to think what their lives might have been like. Did they go to meet their maker thinking “I lived a life and all I got was a lousy headstone? “I hope not. That would not have been much of a life. I choose to think that those folks did something that gave their lives value. Something worth the time and effort. I think all people want to live a life that has value. Abraham Lincoln was one of those. As a young man, his greatest fear was that he would live a life that had no impact on the world. That he would not do anything worth remembering. In her book Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes this about Lincoln’s ambition.

 

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition,” the twenty-three-year-old Abraham Lincoln had written in his open letter to the people of Sangamon County during his first bid for public office in the Illinois state legislature. “Whether it is true or not, I can say for one that I have no other [ambition] so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy if their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.”

 

Well, he certainly pulled it off. I think we all have that same ambition to some extent. We want to leave a legacy. Not many of us will achieve the status of Abraham Lincoln. No one is going to write a book about us. But we can do better than a name on a headstone. Even if no one knows who we were. If you have ever been to a national cemetery, you know what I mean. The headstones have names, but they also testify to the sacrifice those folks made or were willing to make for their country. There is a community story there. A legacy. A life of value. Which brings us to today’s parable. God has given us gifts and resources. God has invested in us. We are called to use these investments in a manner that gives God a great return on his investment. We want to be a good investment for God. Are we? If we live the Jesus way, and are his disciples, we are a good investment, and so will get the reward Jesus describes in the parable. What will be on your headstone?

 

Dear God, we want to be a good investment for you. We want to return many-fold to you all the blessings you have bestowed on us. Help us to choose well how we will use the gifts and resources you have provided so that we can be good and faithful servants. Amen

 

 

It is important for us to understand that right before this in the gospel of Matthew the temple chief priests and elders are questioning Jesus authority. At this point in time Jesus has done a few years of ministry and has entered Jerusalem. Recently, he cleared out the temple of money changers and has been healing people throughout Israel. Jesus is no longer out in the country of Galilee, he is in the city of Jerusalem with the temple of God and all the high up Pharisees.

 

The people in Israel had been expecting the messiah. The question was never will there be a messiah, the question was “is Jesus the messiah”? We often see (not always) in the gospel of Mathew that the people with established power did not want to believe he was the messiah, while the poor and outcasts did believe. The rich and powerful believed they had a lot to lose, they were not willing to accept Jesus. Even though they saw Jesus performing miracles and teaching in amazing ways they were not willing to give up what they believe. 

 

For centuries people believed that Aristotle was right when he said that the heavier an object, the faster it would fall to earth. Aristotle was regarded as the greatest thinker of all time, and surely he would not be wrong. Anyone, of course, could have taken two objects, one heavy and one light, and dropped them from a great height to see whether or not the heavier object landed first. But no one did until nearly 2,000 years after Aristotle’s death. In 1589 Galileo summoned learned professors to the base of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Then he went to the top and pushed off a ten- pound and a one-pound weight. Both landed at the same instant. The power of belief was so strong, however, that the professors denied their eyesight. They continued to say Aristotle was right. 

 

What we already believe is deeply ingrained in every piece of our thought. To give up something we have believed for so long is very difficult. Many times, we can read the Bible and be critical of the Pharisees, and rightfully so. However, are we so sure that we would have given up our station in life to follow Jesus? Would we be willing to change our minds and change what we would believe? Are we willing to change our lives today in response to Jesus? 

 

Lord, open my heart and mind to follow you in my life. Do not let me be closed off by what I already believe, and let me recognize you as the living word.