We Can Do Small Things with Great Love
We Can Do Small Things with Great Love – June 25th, 2023
Mother Teresa, the 20th century Albanian-Indian nun who stood less than five feet tall and influenced countless people with her commitment to give “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor,” famously said, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” Today we’re continuing our current sermon series (“Giving”) by considering our talents.
What is a talent anyway? You might have heard of one of Jesus’s stories commonly known as “The Parable of the Talents” in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. In that story, the word “talent” refers to a unit of value such as an amount of money, a length, or a weight. Early church father John Chrysostom, who lived in the 4th century, said that “For all these things God distributes unequally, according to His good pleasure. And with this end in view, that each should use them for God’s glory, and the good of himself and others.” Priest and exegete Cornelius a Lapide, who lived in the late 16th / early 17th century, wrote in his great commentary, “By talents understand all the gifts of God, without which we can do nothing.” He goes on to include in his list of talents faith, hope, charity, the power of working miracles, the Apostolate, the Priesthood, the gift of tongues, prophecy, a keen intellect, a sound judgment, a sound constitution, prudence, industry, learning, eloquence, honors, riches, and rank. Contemporary American Catholic bishop Robert Barron says that the talents in this parable are “a share in the mercy of God, a participation in the weightiness of the divine love.” But the most common interpretation of this parable over the last millenium has been “a power of mind or body considered as given to a person for use and improvement.”
I asked the question last week, “Whose time is it anyway?” We can start our consideration of talents today with the question, “Whose talents are they anyway?” We tend to think of talents as something people are born with. “She’s such a talented artist.” “He’s a talented nurse.” “They are talented landscapers.” We do like to notice people’s talents and even young children can show a propensity for one thing over another, but I think it’s safe to say that no baby has ever been born with expertise in any field!
Babies are given APGAR scores one and five minutes after birth, as a quick way for doctors to evaluate their health. They are rated on skin color (blue is not a desirable color in newborns!), pulse rate, reflex irritability grimace, muscle tone, and respiratory effort. Imagine if babies were given talent scores, like great athlete, gentle with animals, good listener, or daring adventurer? How could anyone know these things about someone at birth? God knows what he has given to us and what he has put into our hearts. Yet he gives everything he gives to us as gifts, freely offered, without forcing us towards a particular outcome because of the irrevocable gift that he has bestowed on all of humanity – free will, which is the ability to make choices without constraints. As those to whom God’s gifts are given, we are free to decide what we do with them: will we receive them, use them, reject them, practice them, develop them, ignore them, improve them? The choice is ours.
For sure, God gives people talents that can be occasionally glimpsed quite early in life. But it is so important to remember that God’s gifts are given to us in order to be used and developed. To use an analogy, talents in their raw form are like the ingredients for a feast. Consider how very different an experience you would have if you were handed the raw ingredients to be consumed one by one, as compared to savoring the culinary creations of a master chef who had worked hard over a long period of time to develop their talents. No comparison, right? You only need to eat raw flour once to realize that you don’t want to repeat that experience! But mix the flour with some butter and sugar and eggs and milk and baking soda, pop it in the oven, and voila, a mouthwatering and delicious cake can emerge (but only if done by someone who has chosen to both use and develop their talents)!
In our western ways of thinking, we might mistakenly think that God has given us talents for our own personal growth or benefit. Even though we do grow and benefit personally when we use and develop our talents, that is not the main reason he’s given them to us. Talents are given by God primarily to be contributions to the community – the body of Christ, the whole world, and all of creation. Our God-given talents are meant to be used and developed for the glory of God by contributing to the community consisting of those near to us, those far from us, the whole world, all of creation. My current seminary class is “Christian World Mission” and I’m on fire reading, writing, and discussing the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus. I love this journey so much! We can never remind ourselves too often that the Good News is God’s mission to rescue, renew, and transform all of humanity and all of creation. God gave us talents to use and develop as we participate in his mission!
We’re not going to focus today on trying to identify what talents we have or have not been given. What we are going to focus on is taking a good honest look at our attitudes towards our talents.
Our main Scripture for today is 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 (NRSV) –
“The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not regretfully or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written, ‘He scatters abroad; he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.’ He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us, for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your partnership with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”
One of the most important keys in this passage is that the small things we do (like the sowing of tiny seeds) are to be done bountifully, widely scattered yet focusing on the poor, with great generosity.
The other key phrase here is: Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not regretfully or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
When it comes to our attitude towards our talents, we have to make up our mind.
The Apostle Paul here offers several possible responses in how we can choose to use what we’ve been given, including our talents.
One possible response is that we could regret using our talents. Some translations say here “grudgingly.” This makes me think of someone holding onto something so tightly and so joylessly that you wouldn’t be able to pry it out of their fist. I think of Charles Dickens’s fictional character Ebenezer Scrooge, someone who wasn’t exactly known for sharing what he had been given. His business partner, Jacob Marley, cautioned him from the grave that “any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness” and “no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused!” When we withhold the use or development of our talents, it stunts our growth, it stunts our generosity, it stunts our joy. And there’s no telling what others end up missing out on because we didn’t show up. Life’s too short to miss the opportunities to use and develop our talents. We don’t have to have some huge sphere of influence. We can work kindly in our little spheres, doing small things with great love!
Another possible response the apostle Paul offers is that we could use our talents out of compulsion, meaning that we are doing something because we think someone else thinks we should. The original Greek here speaks of being pressed tight, which makes me think of guilt trips or high-pressure sales pitches. Whether it’s a con artist or someone championing a good cause that’s trying to squeeze more out of us, if we use our talents because we feel obligated or pressured, we’ll end up being squeezed dry. And then we’ll feel depleted, worn out, probably even more guilty, with nothing left to give.
Another possible response that is not directly mentioned by Paul here but is most definitely emphasized in Jesus’s Parable of the Talents is to not use our talents at all. In Matthew 25:18 the one who had received one talent “went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid” it. In Luke 19:20 that one “wrapped it up in a piece of cloth,” something about which contemporary theologian and Bible scholar Craig Keener notes: “Wrapping money in a perishable handkerchief was considered one of the most irresponsible ways to take care of money and suggests that the servant was stupid or treasonous, or (most likely) both.” The implication here is that neglecting to use or develop our talents can be considered an act of stupidity or even treason against the one who gave them to us, our creator and King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The last and best possible response Paul offers is that we could use our talents cheerfully. When we decide to give our talents cheerfully, talents that we have received gratefully from God, talents that we’ve worked hard at developing, talents that we’ve decided to use to the best of our ability, then blessings abound. One person’s gratitude becomes contagious to others. One person’s generosity inspires others. One person’s competence helps others. One person’s joy rubs off on others. It’s a win-win-win-win-win situation! God, our creator, created us in his image. That means that right down to our very core, God has given us a creative impulse. God has given us talents with which we can participate with him in his ongoing work, as we cry out to him, “Your Kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven” and then participate with him in that good work.
Do we feel tired sometimes? Of course. Do we sometimes think our talents aren’t enough for the situation at hand? The struggle is real! This week Paul and I spent long hours working alongside Cascade each day on her bus renovation project. We laid hardwood flooring, wallpapered, fixed leaks, installed plumbing, raised and lowered a testy canopy, cleaned messes, made messes. We hammered, hauled, sanded, sawed, lifted, lugged, patched, pulled, dragged, and drilled. At times every muscle in our bodies cried out for mercy. Sometimes what we were attempting to do didn’t work and we had to do it over. But do you know what our soreness, struggles, fatigue, and failures tell us? They tell us that we’re human and we’re fully alive! When we use and develop our talents, we’re going to experience soreness, struggles, fatigue, and failures. They’re all part of the journey.
God gave each one of us, or at least allowed each one of us to have the body, mind, abilities, and disabilities that we have. It’s up to us to make up our minds about what attitudes we’re going to have about the talents we’ve been given. We could choose to use them grudgingly. We could choose to use them out of compulsion. We could choose to not use them at all. Or we could choose to use and develop our talents cheerfully, for the glory of God and as contributions to the community – the body of Christ, the whole world, and all of creation.
Let’s pause here for a few moments and consider our attitudes. I’ve come up with six reflection questions for us to sit with:
- Am I open to changing my habits of how I give, use, or develop my talents? How can I increase in generosity? What would it look like for me to focus my giving more on the poor?
- Where have I drawn any kind of boundary line in which I’ve said to God, others, or myself, “I’ll do this, but I won’t do that.”
- Am I willing to be open to God’s power and presence working in me, and I am willing to be involved God’s power and presence working through me?
- Which talent have I most neglected? What could happen if I used or developed that talent?
- In what area of my life have I become grudging in the use of my talents? How can I begin to work kindly in my little sphere, doing small things with great love?
- In what area of my life have I been squeezed dry such that I feel depleted, worn out, guilty, with nothing left to give? What needs to happen in order to step away from the prison of compulsion and into the wide-open freedom for which Christ set me free?
We can each do small things with great love, and as we live this way, God invites us to be both a faithful and fruitful presence wherever we are and whatever we do. I want to tell you three stories I’ve heard about in recent weeks. In each case, a person or group decided that they could do small things with great love. I hope you find each of these as encouraging and inspiring as I did.
Story #1: I’d like to call Patricia up here. She didn’t know I was going to ask her anything – I didn’t prepare her in any way. But I know her well enough to say with confidence that she’s the real deal. She loves God and loves people. One thing I heard her say recently is that she sometimes gets interrupted by neighbors. Patricia, could you please share with us a couple of recent ways in which you’ve been going about your day and then a neighbor interrupted you. What happened? <Patricia shared> Patricia does small things with great love. She is open to God interrupting her in the middle of her plans and her day.
Story #2: This week I heard about what’s called the Creation Care group at Cascade’s church, Hopwood Christian Church, up in beautiful Johnson City, TN. This group started when a couple of people decided to go for walks together in nature and pray as they walked along. After a while, they started noticing things that needed to be done. Then they started doing them. They saw a creek that needed cleaning up, and they cleaned it up. They began a recycling program in the church buildings, setting out receptacles, investing in purchasing reusable goods, and arranging for recyclable materials to be dropped off at a recycling center each week. They researched more energy efficient options for the church property and started implementing some of those. They continue to go on weekly walks together in nature and pray as they walk along. The Creation Care group does small things with great love. They are open to God showing them what to do next as they walk around and pray with their eyes open.
Story #3: Majuli is a river island in the Brahmaputra, one of India’s largest rivers, located in the northeastern state of Assam, just south of the Eastern Himalayas. In the 1790s, Majuli Island covered an area of 500 square miles. Every year monsoons destroy much of the vegetation and homes bordering the river. By 2014, erosion had caused Majuli Island to shrink to just 136 square miles. Back in 1979 when he was just 19 years old, an ordinary local man, Jadav “Molai” Payeng, started planting and tending trees and bamboo plants on this river island. Little by little, he turned it into a forest reserve which ended up being named after him – Molai Forest. Molai encompasses an area of about 1,360 acres which, thanks to Payeng’s afforestation, has become a dense and fertile forest, a habitat for many animals including elephants, tigers, deer, rabbits, monkeys, and vultures. In spite of his only source of income coming from the sale of milk from the cows and buffalos on his small farm, Jadav Payeng has singlehandedly planted and tended thousands and thousands of trees and bamboo plants. His efforts went unnoticed by authorities for the first 29 years until forest department officials visited the area, a place they had abandoned because they thought it was just a rapidly eroding, bare sandbar. Jadav Payeng, who was awarded one of the highest civilian awards in India for his distinguished contributions, remained unswervingly loyal to the cause that captured his heart. Jadav Payeng has been doing small things with great love for many years now.
Our job is to be faithful, to give cheerfully, to share our talents widely while focusing on the poor, and to do all this generously. To use a gardening analogy, we do the planting, the tending, the watering, the weeding, the pruning, whatever is needed. God is the one who will provide the fruitfulness.
Faithfulness is, to borrow a phrase from Eugene Peterson, a long obedience in the same direction. Patricia’s story, the Creation Care group’s story, and Payeng’s story each show us the power of small acts of faithfulness done again and again and again. Whether we change one neighbor, one community, or an entire nation’s lives, God calls us to be both faithful and fruitful. Whether we make a small corner, a stretch of adopted road, or an entire island more beautiful, God calls us to be faithful and fruitful. God has given us the talents he’s given us so that we can bring him glory and contribute to the community. God cares about the well-being of the whole community – the body of Christ, the whole world, and all of creation.
As we close today, let’s remember that using and developing our talents for God starts with our attitudes and continues into our actions. Imagine what can happen when we faithfully do small things with great love again and again and again. Imagine what can happen when we use and develop our talents cheerfully. Imagine what can happen when we share our talents widely while focusing on the poor. Imagine what can happen when we choose to do all these things with great generosity. Imagine the fruitfulness that God will bring. We can do small things with great love, for the greater glory of God!
