Hoarding Grace

We’re talking about the end of time and the parables of Jesus found in Matthew 25 that speak to the end of time. 

These parables tell us about how we should wait for the second coming—the Parousia. Last week we derived from the parable of the talents the idea that while we wait, we are to be in an economy of grace. We are to accept grace, invest in it, take risks with it, and above all, not hoard it. 

Recall that the master is leaving soon a journey and gives talents to his servants, to each according to his ability: five talents, two talents and one talent, respectively. 

“Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have earned five more talents.’His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter the joy of your master.’” (Matthew 24:19-21)

The same thing happens with the two-talent slave. And then:  

“Now the one who had received the one talent also came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.And I was afraid, so I went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you still have what is yours.’

“But his master answered and said to him, ‘You worthless, lazy slave! Did you know that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter seed?Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.Therefore: take the talent away from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’

“For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.And throw the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:24-30) 

So far, we’ve seen that the gift of grace is lavish, excessive, abundant and free. We have a lifetime full of grace. We can never run out of it because God is reckless with it and gives us everything that we need. The main difference between the one-talent servant and the other two is in the willingness to take a risk with grace. Investment of grace is risky, but it seems the risk is always rewarded. To bury grace, rather than invest it, is to proclaim it dead. To be in possession of grace which is dead and buried is fatal and foolish, and consigns us to outer darkness. 

The one-talent servant claims to know the master (God) and how the master thinks and how the master would act. The master even affirms that the servant knows something about him. He said (to paraphrase slightly): “You know that I reap where I don’t sow and gather where I scatter no seed.” What the servant was saying is that God is not a God of cause and effect. Cause and effect is mankind’s way of looking at life. Cause and effects say that you get what you deserve and you don’t get what you don’t deserve. 

The entire story of Job is about the conflict between understanding whether or not God is a God of cause and effect. God’s ways are not man’s ways. In the kingdom of heaven, things are topsy-turvy. In the kingdom of heaven you go to the back of the line not to the front. You turn the other cheek, you don’t retaliate. If you’re asked for one, you give two. Above all, you get grace, the ultimate repudiation of cause and effect. Grace means you don’t get what you really deserve. 

Although the one-talent servant knows that God doesn’t work on a cause and effect basis, he acts as though God does. By burying his talent, he is, in essence, saying: “This is how God works. The cause is: I take no risk, the effect is: I lose nothing. The cause is: I need financial protection; the effect is: I’ll provide my own protection by burying that and eliminating the risk.” 

In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil is the tree of cause and effect, and the Tree of Life is the tree of grace. What is good and what is evil is the prerogative of God, not man. Man is to accept the grace—the tree of life—as a gift, and is to be sustained by God. To seek to discriminate between right and wrong is the work of divinity because God’s eternal and everlasting grace nullifies our cause and effect-based discrimination. 

To recognize and proclaim that God is not a God of cause and effect but then to act as if he is, is to repudiate grace, to bury grace, as if it were dead. It is the route to outer darkness. Alternatively, to invest the gift of grace with reckless abandon, to risk it all, to double its value, symbolically is to enter into the joy of the master. Think of what kind of world this would be if everyone were recklessly investing God’s grace, trying to double its value for our friends and to our families, for the people we work with, for strangers we don’t even know. And above all, what if it would be reckless investment of grace in yourself? What it would be, in fact, would be the kingdom of heaven here on earth within us, and we would be worth entering into the joy of the Lord. 

The insistence on cause and effect in life, as in salvation, is what we’ve called the hoarding of grace. Hoarding is a psychosocial pathology, as Sharon said last week, that can have eternal consequences when it comes to grace. We see the picture of hoarding grace throughout the scriptures. In stories, in parables and teachings, we see that hoarding grace is toxic and destructive. It is also, regretfully, the natural condition of fallen man. 

The light and life of man began at the creation, as a gift from God. The book of Acts describes it as a flame. It is a penetrating light that overcomes darkness. John called it the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man, in the first chapter of John. It is also called the Spirit. And in Ecclesiastes, it’s called the eternity set within man’s heart. 

By whatever name, the Holy Spirit seems to function as a transceiver set to the frequency of God, establishing a connection and enabling a clear line of communication with him. Connectivity with God has important functions as a judge of sin, giving mankind a sense of their sinfulness and their eternal need for grace. Although grace needs this inner light, this sensor, this director and guide, to fulfill our connection with God, and although it is programmed, hardwired into us, free will gives us the ability to switch it off—to disconnect from God.

Our natural condition is to be connected with God. So choosing to disconnect from God is not a common act of wickedness but an unnatural act and a momentous commitment to self-righteousness and independence. We see it in the single talent servant. To bury the talent is to distance himself from the Master’s gift, putting it out of sight, out of mind. “I don’t need it.” It is a conviction of not needing God or his grace. It is the belief that we know what is right bolstered by what we know about God, which in turn leads us to think that we are without sin. It’s like the Pharisee who prayed more to himself than to God: 

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, crooked, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ (Luke 18:10-12)

This is the condition of people who commit the unpardonable sin. To claim that we have no sin is to delude ourselves, to deny the truth, and to call God a liar. To admit our sins is enough to merit redemption. Self-righteousness switches off that transceiver, that connection with God and masks our natural state of being as sinners in need of God’s grace. 

In turning off the inner light we also deprive others of the grace we are expected to pass on to them through serving them, letting the light shine on them too. The investment, in effect, of the grace of God is hoarded by a self-righteous individual who confuses God’s grace with his own supposed goodness and his knowledge of God, and is thereby prevented from sharing that grace with others, especially with others whom he regards as sinners. 

We not only need to receive God’s grace, we have to transmit it we have to invest it too. In Exodus 16 we see the story of manna. Manna which is gathered today and not used today will be spoiled by tomorrow. Hoarding it makes it rotten, moldy, and toxic:

When they measured it by the omer, the one who had gathered much did not have too much, and the one who had gathered little did not have too little; everyone gathered as much as he would eat.Moses said to them, “No one is to leave any of it until morning.”But they did not listen to Moses, and some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank; and Moses was angry with them.They gathered it morning by morning, everyone as much as he would eat; but when the sun became hot, it would melt. (Exodus 16:18-21)  

God’s provision of manna daily to the Israelites as they trudged through the desert during the Exodus is a metaphor for grace. We get as much manna, as much grace, as we need. God’s grace is sufficient for our needs, but we have a responsibility to share it. We see this in the story of the prodigal son when the prodigal’s elder brother tries to hoard his father’s grace and is jealous of having to share it with his younger brother. It seems that in the hoarding of grace, self-righteousness and independence conspire to switch off that God transceiver and snuff out the inner light, the Holy Spirit. 

But it is important to know that God’s grace continues to reach out even to the hoarders of grace, to get them to rekindle their inner light. Hoarded grace is toxic, dead grace. Nothing is more dangerous than to kill something that was made to be alive, something made to give life. The very thing you should give—life—you can’t give, because it is dead. It quenches our inner light and sends us into outer darkness. Hoarding is an act of self-preservation. It is relying on my work, my effort, my way of doing things. It is a claiming of independence, of self-sufficiency. It is the opposite of investing in grace.

Hoarding grace is toxic, but the investment of grace is joyful. It allows us to enter into the joy of our Lord. This idea is amplified in Isaiah: 

I will rejoice greatly in the Lord,
My soul will be joyful in my God;
For He has clothed me with garments of salvation,
He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness,
As a groom puts on a turban,
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth produces its sprouts,
And as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up,
So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
To spring up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:10-11)

Entering into the joy of the Lord is to put on the robe of righteousness and the garments of salvation. It is to be recklessly and riskily exposed to grace. So while we wait for the Parousia, we are to invest in grace, we are to be reckless and risky, but the result will be to enter into the joy of the Lord. This is the judgment: You were given grace, and you invested it in others, and you entered into the joy of your master. The robe of righteousness is yours. But this, too, is the judgment: You were given grace, and you hoarded it, allowing it to spoil, to become rotten and toxic, leaving you in outer darkness. 

What does it mean to be a hoarder of grace? How can we invest in grace? What does it mean to be risky and reckless with grace? What do you think about a God who is not bound by cause and effect? Are you a hoarder of grace? Am I a hoarder of grace? Do I resent God giving his grace to others? Is it possible for you to manage grace without judgment? What are your thoughts about the subject of grace, about waiting in an economy of grace, and about the parable of the talents?

Donald: Hoarding is an interesting thing. At Costco you can buy large quantities of goods for a reasonablee price. There’s something attractive about acquiring a great deal of stuff and putting it away on the shelves. We know someone who does an unbelievable amount of canning, to stock up their inventory. Past a certain point, we call this hoarding. It makes one feel good to be in control of such a great resource. It conveys a sense of security. 

I think that’s really the fundamental problem: We want control. 

Grace is a relationship we don’t control. Is doctrine a form of control? Is loving God and our neighbor not enough of a relationship for us to control, so we add many more parameters and call it doctrine? Is that hoarding? We want control. I think, fundamentally. That’s the problem. Hoarding is our way of thinking we are in control.

David: I’d go even deeper. I think the fundamental problem is that we conflate or we confuse the spiritual with the material, with the worldly. I see nothing wrong in hoarding Costco canned beans to survive a global—worldly—”Armageddon.” A Daoist (this one, anyway) would acknowledge that we live in a material world, that we need food to survive, and that there is nothing inherently wrong or “out of The Way” in sseeking to survive.  

But grace is otherworldly, immaterial. Grace (as we have discussed it) is love, mercy, compassion,  kindness, care, and concern. If you hoard these things, keeping them to yourself, they will rot and the rot will spread to your spirit. 

Hoarding baked beans for a rainy day of Armageddon will do me no harm, but refusing to share a can with my starving neighbor will rot my soul.

Reinhard: In the parable of talents, the talents are to be put to use to help people around us—our family and others— and to multiply it, to grow it, as they in turn put it to use. The one-talent servant was essentially accusing his master of being unfair in expecting others to do his job for him. 

God gave us the power of choice but Eve and Adam made the wrong choice, even though they knew God, and then they contested God’s fairness just like the one-talent man challenged his master’s prerogative. In the end, questioning God’s commandments and not following his way had consequences. That we can choose the Christian way is a benefit, an advantage, that enables us to learn from the mistakes of people who make the wrong choice. 

Michael: It seems there are two things at work with sharing the grace. One is our relationship with God, whether we acknowledge our sinfulness and need for God’s grace, or feel justified in our sinfulness by our sense of self-worth. Is it one or the other? Or are these two connected? Can we, for example, share the grace with others but feel self-justified? I think it’s definitely easier to share and to be more open if we are not feeling self-justified, but I’m asking if they’re mutually exclusive. 

It seems that God and others are connected. I understand we are going to discuss how doing things unto others is doing it also onto God. 

Don: That’s the next parable we will be discussing.

Michael: Is that connected to the question of sharing the grace? Is it two parts or is it a unitary whole?

C-J: I think it’s a false sense of safety to not recognize we live in community with others, and that the environment is constantly shifting. Each of us has different talents and a different purpose in this life, so I think that I cannot be all things to everyone and that sometimes I am abrasive and other times I am a healer. I think we get all caught up in a formula. We’re looking for an equation, but life is always in a state of flux, and God is always being reflected in us and we’re always being used as a tool in different ways. 

It’s presumptuous of me to think that I’m entitled to anything. I’m grateful for the hard and the good, because it’s in the hard that I’m shaped and tempered and made into the image of what God has intended me to be. But the message is always different for a different person. You have that foundation of the faith that we claim to be a part of, this way of living. But it doesn’t mean that other people who were born into a different place or circumstance, aren’t also connected by spirit, because God is the Creator. But I think it’s presumptuous that we think we’re safe.

Anonymous: To add another perspective on this parable: I was thinking, when we had our discussion last week, that lack of trust is the problem with the third servant who received one talent. Lack of trust is a bad way to live, accusing God of being hard and not trusting him. Revelation 21:8 lists those who cannot enter the kingdom of God. The “cowardly”—the fearful—are among them: 

But for the cowardly, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and sexually immoral persons, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

So it’s bad enough not to trust God, but to fear him makes things much worse. To be frightened to invest whatever God gave you (time, knowledge, money, health, grace, whatever), to be fearful of that merciful, graceful God is disgraceful. Therefore, the punishment is outer darkness. 

We demonstrate fear in many ways. As Donald said, we want to control what we have. Besides controlling our lives, we also live in fear. So we want more of everything so that we don’t get to a time where we don’t have it. Or as Jason said last week, I want to keep this, preserve it, whatever it is, for me, in case I need it, for my family, for my kids, for many years to come. A lot of people live like that. 

God is calling us in this parable, besides accepting his grace, sharing it with others, and being dutiful while we wait until Jesus comes, not to be fearful; otherwise, we lose it. We are condemned for just being fearful and not taking the risk—and not just with grace, but with everything we have, even our health. I set a bad example myself: I would like to be a missionary, but then I fear that my cancer will return while I am away and I will be cut off from treatment. Most people fear to lose their possessions in case they need it later.

This kind of fear is a sin condemned by God. That’s why this slothful and unprofitable and wicked servant was judged and sent to the outer darkness.

Don: What I see in the one-talent servant is that he is protesting that God is not predictable. The predictable situation is that if you sow then you will reap what you sow, that you’ll gather where you scattered. What he’s claiming is that God is not predictable, that he will do things that are not standard, not ordinary, not predictable. 

Do we have to have a God that is predictable? 

Anonymous: I have an idea of how God is—probably a very, very slight idea—from my own experience of his mercy, grace, and forgiveness, and from his help and protection. In that sense, he is predictable—he won’t leave me alone! He’s always there for me and I can trust him, just put my weight on him and be comfortable, be at peace. If only fearful people and people who accuse God knew that God shines his sun on both the wicked and the righteous and provides for everyone, they would know that God is not what they think. 

So in this sense, he is predictable. People who don’t believe and have wicked hearts don’t even see it. They’re living it but they don’t see it, therefore they accuse God. 

C-J: I think we’re overlooking that people come from a place of trauma. The response of the person who said “For I know who you are, that you will punish me if I don’t return the minimum. I can’t afford to risk not coming to you with nothing.” Most people in their life understand that trauma will inform decision-making processes. In that region of the world where this narrative is given legs, it’s harsh. If you’re in the wilderness, good luck. If you’re in a battle, a war zone; if food is scarce because of weather conditions, then trauma informs you. If life is short, it informs you. 

So I don’t think it’s about wicked. I think that’s the narrative that comes with it. Because it’s the storytelling. The story is to trust God in all things, and for personal trauma that’s like a giant leap into a pit hoping that you don’t die when you hit the bottom. 

I think relationship with God has to be at a spiritual level. If I base my relationship with God on the here and now, I’ll never know the fullness of that grace we are speaking of. We are integrated beings, and I believe that God meets us where we are. The understanding of trauma and its depth and how it changes chemistry and informs relationships and all of that is complex. And our relationship with God is complex also.

Donald: I agree. Our experience determines how we react. We’d like to think that everybody’s experience is like mine, or they see things my way. But that’s not possible, because your experiences are different. We want everything to be a formula–the longer and more complex, the better. Grace is a short formula. But we want to put everything in a box so we control it. And then we want to tell the next guy “Your box should be like my box, and you should see the whole world like me.” 

That’s walking in somebody else’s shoes, to put it lightly. It’s a very difficult thing. I’d like to be able to walk in somebody else’s shoes, I’d like to sense what somebody else might be thinking. That is so superficial. In reality, you can’t walk in somebody else’s shoes, their experience is so different than yours.

Don: But the question is: Can you let them walk in their own shoes?

Donald: The problem is we want to make our formula. The formula is actually rather simple. It’s not long, but we’re making it so. Why? I think is to control other people, to be honest.

C-J: When something is concrete and simple, there isn’t a lot of room for growth. Whether it’s government and law, whether it’s limited physically because you’re ill and you’re in a wheelchair, you have control, but you don’t have autonomy, and in order to grow autonomy is essential. 

Carolyn: The Bible says we must become like little children. They don’t have a formula. They have trust. They have need of growth. In any group of little children, there is still going to be a little bit of push and shove but pretty soon they can play, even though they talk a different language. I don’t know exactly what it means to become like little children. Maybe it would give a little perspective to this discussion.

Don: Well said, Carolyn.

Donald: Certainly a child has less life experience than an adult. So what allows children to adapt so easily? Give them a little time, and all of a sudden they want it all in their corner, there’s no question about that. But they do adapt. They don’t see lots of things that we’ve come to think of as right and wrong. They just go about and do their business. 

I saw a couple of little kids the other day, a black child and a white child holding hands. Why can’t that just stick? They don’t even see it. They’re just two kids. They need each other and depend on each other. 

I think this is an interesting perspective.

Carolyn: Children are teachable. They don’t always have to be in the box, but they have a comfort zone and they want to be directed, even though they want their own way. They’re pliable, whereas we are more rigid.

C-J: Children are mirrors of their environment. The two kids playing like that had adults modeling that kind of behavior, not just requesting “No, no, we don’t do that,” because they modeled it. The children of my neighbor and another woman I know, both of Asian descent, were assaulted at school. Nothing was really done about it. The parents told the principal and the teacher, if they were not going to take action, they would pull their children from the school. They responded: “Kids will be kids, they’ll work it out.” “I don’t think so,” one parent replied, “You see my son’s eye? He can’t open it, the eyelid is so swollen it can’t open.” The other child says he does not want to go to school. The response was “It is what it is.”

I believe very strongly that when you create a narrative of separation, you’re going to have problems. But when you create a narrative of community—”this is acceptable, that is not acceptable”—the world looks very different. How can you have an eight-year old boy and one that’s just turned four (and he’s a special needs kid) have his eyes swollen like that because he’s just learning language? And he’s still wearing briefs—he’s not toilet trained, so he’s easily assaulted and he can’t communicate. 

The other kid comes from an Asian family also, and he’s very soft spoken. They’re not loud. They’re very quiet, well disciplined, from loving families. They go to the school, and it’s a dangerous place. 

Donald: Children have a short formula. They are constantly looking around, going, “Is this okay? Is that not okay?” Somebody’s saying “yes” or “no”, somewhere; nodding or smiling. But as adults, we have a very big formula. It’s very long. And we want others to behave by our formula. We don’t care about theirs. It’s nice when formulas overlap. It’s probably good friendship. I like to see somebody who has a different formula, but you can’t be confrontational about “Yours is wrong, mine is right”—That’s the box we get into.

C-J: It’s hard to separate culture, because part of that formula includes cultural identity. It’s not just a spiritual belief system. I wouldn’t want somebody to come in and say, “Oh, no, I want you to dress like this, speak this language, eat this food,” etc. That’s part of that formula. It’s the culture of where you work. or the community you live in, no matter how diverse it is. The longer the formula, the more beautiful the tapestry. I don’t want to blink. Everybody cookie cut.

Donald: Diversity is actually saying, “You can mix this formula up. If you appreciate diversity and tolerate diversity, your numbers don’t have to look like my numbers. It’s not a long formula.

Don: Do the three servants in the Talents parable have a formula? 

Donald: If you put stuff in a bank, your formula is all numbers. Four plus one equals five. The ones with more talents probably have more letters going, I’m just saying maybe there are variables: “Let’s try this. And hopefully it will work.” They took a risk. 

C-J: It’s about tolerance of risk, tolerance of loss.

Donald: Exactly. But if you have got all numbers, you don’t have much risk. Does that make any sense?

Michael: The third servant’s view of God was true in the sense that God isn’t fair or doesn’t play by the rules of cause and effect. But a lot of it wasn’t true, such as his portraying God as harsh. 

Don: He accused God of not being a god of cause and effect and God was agreeing with him. But the conclusion of that agreement is really what’s quite different.

David: Carolyn made the point about seeing things from different perspectives, and I was reminded that Job and Mrs. Job each had their own perspective on the calamities that befell them. But what difference did that make? The calamities were what they were. Would it have helped them to see things from the other’s perspective? 

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