A Praying Faith (Matthew 25:14-30)
Written by Pastor Fausel   
Grace, mercy and peace …

As you know, this is the time when one of the two of us, Pastor Kuder or I, usually launch into a talk centered on one of the readings for today.  Or, maybe better said … when we talk about how God has shown His love for us  … in the many and various ways He does, as He meets us in His Word, His Sacraments and our lives.

Last year at this time, during the sermon … we spoke of God’s love for us in “Experiencing God” …  That … God shows His love for us in building us up in that loving relationship He has initiated with each of us as He invites us to become involved with Him in building up His kingdom.

Now.  A week and a half ago, Jon Lorenz was back here to meet with us.  As you may recall, Jon’s job is to lead us as a congregation through the process we called Simply Listening to God … or the acronym SMP.  This was the 3rd of his 4 contracted visits with us.  Number four will be on January 14, a Wednesday night.

But on this past visit of his, the day after election day … Jon began his presentation by asking us … What good things are going on here at Our Savior?

The first items came slowly from the group, and then there seemed to be an avalanche of good things people have noticed that are going on around here.

This morning we’re going to delve into a few.  And, in light of them, we’re going to take a look at our Gospel reading.   Our reading for Matthew 24 is one of Jesus’ parables about living out our faith during that time we have now, before our Lord returns in glory.  …  What we as individuals, and we as a church, should be about as we await our Lord’s return. 

Now … as soon as we use that word “should” we’re moving into the realm of Law, aren’t we?   That’s what so great about this Gospel reading.  We know from studying Scripture that we are saved by God’s grace through faith alone … not by works of the Law.

And yet, it would appear on the face of it in this parable that works somehow are involved … because the servant who buries his “Talent” only to return it to His master unused… is ultimately thrown out, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

How do we understand this?  Well, we know for sure that we are saved by faith.  But Scripture also tells us that faith without works is dead. 

Remember what faith is.   Faith is a gift of God.  We receive it from Him not because we deserved it or we earned it.  But once God has given it to us, He expects us to use it to bear fruit.  “You will know them by their fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,” Jesus told his followers.

Now.  Technically, it is faith itself that bears the fruit.  It does that fruit bearing, however, through us … and it does it in direct proportion to the amount of faith God has given us.
 
And so, in the parable, the man who is given 5 talents is commended in the identical way the man who was given 2 talents.  Each amount of faith produced a commensurate gain, the 5 gaining 5, and the 2 gaining 2.   What that means is … both those servants were equally faithful with what they had been given.

The servant who buried his talent, however, put it where it was of no use to him or to anyone else.  His objections about the master reaping where he did not sow indicated that he was jealous of the master … why? … because the profits the talents produced went to the master … not to the servant who used his talents.

Oops.  He really missed the point, didn’t he?  So, we could really say that his faith was dead … so dead, he actually buried it.    And so, his sentence to the outer darkness is consistent with Scripture, a dead faith … does not save.

So much for the dark side.  The positive message is that faith that is not buried and allowed to produce fruit will produce in accordance with the gift.

And so the question that Jesus’ parable puts before us is … what are we doing with the faith we each have been given?  And… what are we doing collectively, as a congregation, with the talents that each of us represent?

Let’s look at that first, what’s happening here as a church… which brings us to the banner we have displayed today.  “Look what God is Doing.”

We said a bit ago that Jon Lorenz asked essentially that question to begin his presentation.  What’s God been doing here?

And some of the things that came from the group that night included  observations that our ChristCare groups are filling and growing to the point of having to become more groups, Our Sunday evening  Worship service band is (and was) featured on local Television on Friday.  Our Welcome center has been transformed into a coffee/greeting area which has worked out very well for building relationships, not only with ourselves but also with our guests and visitors.

And then there’s was the answer to prayer.  You may have read about it in the Panther tale, the School’s weekly newsletter.   The story goes like this:  Mark Schultz’s brothers  (Mark Shultz is our 8th grade teacher) came to visit Mark a couple of weeks ago … and his brother who lives in Houston told me that his congregation had become a center for volunteer groups helping to deal with the devastation caused by Hurricane Ike in the Houston area. 

But their church had run into a problem … and Mark’s brother asked us to pray about it.  Because the great number of contractors flying into the Houston area to assist in the rebuilding were buying up all the pick-up trucks … those trucks were either out of stock, ridiculously overpriced or impossible to come by.
 
Their church had access to a ½ ton Pickup, but they needed a ¾ ton or larger truck to handle a bobcat on a trailer that they were using to clear debris.


So, I took that prayer request to my Experiencing God class that’s meeting on Sunday mornings … “Let’s pray this morning for a pick-up truck.”   And as a result of that prayer … we were directed to an available pickup truck owned by a contractor in Pikeville, KY.   And when they were told of the circumstances, the owner, who had that truck for sale, decided to donate it.

And as God would have it, relatives of a member of ours here at Our Savior just happened to be coming from Pikeville to Louisville this past week … and through them, that’s how that truck became parked here at Our Savior.

So, how’s the truck going to get to Houston?   God has provided so far.  And now we’re watching and praying to see how He’s going have that accomplished.

But until then, we as a church and school are going to take the opportunity while the truck is here, and not in Pikeville … to fill it up with tools and things that can be used by the workers once the truck gets to Houston.  So we’re praying for that today as well.  A list of those needs are in your bulletin, or the Panther Tale.
 
And really, when you look at it, all the good things that are happening here at Our Savior are really … answers to prayer. And, interestingly enough, prayer was the one item Jon Lorenz encouraged us to stress the most … in all that do.

And so.  We’ll be seeing some changes in that area.   We have a ChristCare group that’s organizing around prayer … and looking at how we can best get prayer requests from the congregation included in our prayers at the altar each Sunday.

And as we do, we plan to have more specific prayers as part of our Prayers of the Church.   One such will be offered today.  The request comes from our church council which met this past Monday.  

As we have seen God meet the need of our sister congregation in Houston … so we are asking Him to meet our need here at Our Savior. What’s that need?

Well, the truth is, our weekly giving is slightly above what which we received last year.  However, we made salary adjustments to bring our staff up to district guidelines and added a youth pastor.   Those additional needs are currently not being covered by our giving.

And so today we are going to bring that specific need of our Congregation before our Lord in Prayer.  As we heard in one of the testimonies in Experiencing God … “God knows how to match up those with needs … with those who need to give.” 

The truck outside is a case in point.  And so we will pray today in all confidence that God will provide for the support of His work here at Our Savior … and that we might be a part of that,  as we join Him in that work.

And … one more thing Jon Lorenz left us with as we go about using those 5 talents or two talents or how ever many talents he has given each of us.

Remember, the most important thing in our vision statement is building relationships … both with God and with one another.  And here’s the twist on that.

The work that God puts in front us … the work that He invites us to join Him in … is not the be-all-end-all.   You see, God is more process oriented than task oriented.   Or in plain language … God invites us to join him in His tasks, in order to have a backdrop upon which to build His relationship with us.

Yes, the work gets done, the kingdom is increased … but that’s more the by-product.  The real reason God is inviting us to join Him is because He wants us to more fully experience the loving relationship He wants to have with us.  … and at the same time … develop the same kind of loving relationship with each other.

To that end … we make ourselves available to Him and to each other. … How do we do that?  We pray.  We pray.

In Him.

Amen.
 

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