James T. Cleland - "A Two - Talent Man" (May 19, 1968)
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| - | When we pray to say our father who art in heaven, | 0:03 |
| hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, | 0:08 | |
| thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 0:12 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread, | 0:16 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses | 0:19 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 0:21 | |
| And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil | 0:24 | |
| for thine is the kingdom and the power | 0:29 | |
| and the glory forever, Amen. | 0:32 | |
| - | The grace of God be with you all. | 0:59 |
| The Parable of The Talents, | 1:06 | |
| which was read as our scripture lesson | 1:08 | |
| has been a hunting ground, happy or otherwise, | 1:11 | |
| for generations of preachers. | 1:16 | |
| On the one hand, | 1:20 | |
| there have been sermons on the five talent man. | 1:21 | |
| He was a first century entrepreneur and economic undertaker. | 1:27 | |
| He knew his way around in the business world. | 1:35 | |
| Because of zeal, cleverness and an eye to the main chance, | 1:40 | |
| he made 100% profit. | 1:47 | |
| He was a success. | 1:52 | |
| He had all the makings of an economic royalist. | 1:54 | |
| There is no doubt that he was talented. | 1:59 | |
| On the other hand, | 2:05 | |
| there have been sermons on the one talent man. | 2:06 | |
| He was the fellow who risked nothing and was damned. | 2:11 | |
| He was too careful or too lazy or too scared | 2:18 | |
| or too irresponsible to do anything more than keep | 2:26 | |
| the one talent. | 2:30 | |
| Let's say a thousand dollars. | 2:32 | |
| Keep it intact, safe and sound, | 2:35 | |
| to be returned to his master. | 2:39 | |
| He got his come up. | 2:43 | |
| He was told to go to hell without the talent. | 2:47 | |
| Now, I could retell the story of either or both | 2:54 | |
| of these servants applying the situation to our day, | 2:58 | |
| or I could successfully bore you with an analysis | 3:03 | |
| of the intent of the parable. | 3:07 | |
| Was it a moral piece of teaching? | 3:11 | |
| Announcing that fidelity, hard work | 3:14 | |
| and even some risk-taking | 3:19 | |
| are necessary for the ongoing of the religious community. | 3:22 | |
| Or was it a second coming parable? | 3:27 | |
| Warning that the end of the world was at hand, | 3:32 | |
| and that judgment, reward and punishment | 3:37 | |
| was an integral part of the Eschaton, the last days, | 3:41 | |
| especially for the scribes, the Jewish religious leaders. | 3:49 | |
| Frankly, I'm not interested this morning. | 3:56 | |
| Now why? Because I have been fascinated by the format | 4:02 | |
| of the parable. By its style, by its structure. | 4:08 | |
| It's the two talent man. | 4:16 | |
| The man in the middle who has laid possessive hands on me. | 4:19 | |
| Have you heard a sermon on him? | 4:25 | |
| Not often. | 4:29 | |
| Well, you're going to be exposed to one now. | 4:31 | |
| Why is the two talent man so apt to be overlooked? | 4:37 | |
| I can think of two reasons. | 4:42 | |
| First, he stands between a conspicuous success | 4:45 | |
| and a pathetic failure. | 4:50 | |
| He's squeezed out of the picture obliterated | 4:54 | |
| by a five and one pincers move. | 4:59 | |
| And second, the moral of the story doesn't need him. | 5:04 | |
| The lesson of success and failure of enterprise and apathy | 5:10 | |
| is complete without him. | 5:15 | |
| He adds nothing to the point of the pattern, to its intent. | 5:18 | |
| No, but he adds everything to the setting of the story. | 5:26 | |
| How? Why? Because he represents the average man. | 5:35 | |
| The man in the street, common five eight, | 5:44 | |
| as we used to say in Scotland. | 5:50 | |
| A little more than a half, but somewhat less than quarters. | 5:53 | |
| Jesus knew the average person, | 5:59 | |
| the gospels are full of stories about them. | 6:01 | |
| Fishermen, farmers, and small merchants, | 6:05 | |
| children playing in the streets, housewives, | 6:10 | |
| garrows going to a wedding and a runaway boy coming home. | 6:16 | |
| Maybe that is why Jesus introduced the two talent servant, | 6:23 | |
| who adds nothing to the point of the parable | 6:30 | |
| and a great deal to its million. | 6:34 | |
| Our world is full of average people. | 6:39 | |
| Our university is full of potential average men and women. | 6:43 | |
| And there are the folk to whom I want to speak, | 6:50 | |
| the two talent listeners. | 6:54 | |
| Using talent in the derived sense of human aptitude | 6:58 | |
| for a particular task. | 7:02 | |
| If you are a five talent person, | 7:06 | |
| I've nothing to say to you today. | 7:08 | |
| You'll probably graduate on the Dean's list. | 7:12 | |
| If you are a one talent person, | 7:17 | |
| I have nothing to say to you today. | 7:20 | |
| The deans will be looking for you in a couple of weeks. | 7:24 | |
| But to the two talent people, old and young, | 7:31 | |
| there are just three thoughts I would share with you. | 7:34 | |
| First, let us recognize the fact | 7:39 | |
| that we are two talent people. | 7:44 | |
| Let us recognize the fact that we are two talent people. | 7:49 | |
| No, that is not easy. | 7:53 | |
| Many of us would rather not believe it. | 7:57 | |
| We swing between daydreaming that we are five | 8:00 | |
| like Walter Mitty and fearing that we are one and one only. | 8:04 | |
| You know what I mean analogically. | 8:13 | |
| Oh, as an athlete, we'd love to be a triple threat | 8:17 | |
| in football, and one day be carried off injured | 8:21 | |
| before a hushed crowd in the stadium, | 8:25 | |
| and then the pendulum swings, | 8:29 | |
| and we humble ourselves with the thought | 8:33 | |
| that the only triple threat we are is to the coaches sanity. | 8:36 | |
| And if we are injured, | 8:42 | |
| it will be from a splinter off the bench. | 8:44 | |
| Or as freshmen we picture our academic career | 8:51 | |
| as Junior Phi Beta Kappa, BA Magnolia Coombe Loudy, | 8:54 | |
| Rhode Scholar or Woodrow Wilson's Scholar. | 9:04 | |
| And then on the rebound, | 9:10 | |
| we dread the declining curve of C minus, D plus, F. | 9:11 | |
| I never know whether F plus or F minus is lowered. | 9:20 | |
| I mean, when you go below the line | 9:24 | |
| is F plus really a way down? | 9:26 | |
| A student once asked me why he got an F | 9:30 | |
| and I told him it was as far down the alphabet | 9:31 | |
| as I was allowed to go. | 9:34 | |
| (audience laughing) | 9:35 | |
| And in that case its bye bye to Dear or do. | 9:39 | |
| Oh, in religion, we'd like to be a Savonarola, | 9:43 | |
| wakening to spiritual life some American Florence. | 9:47 | |
| Or a Protestant, John 23rd, | 9:52 | |
| really creating an ecumenical church. | 9:54 | |
| Or a white Martin Luther King Jr., | 9:58 | |
| even at the risk of martyrdom. | 10:02 | |
| And then we are so scared that we really bury our treasure | 10:06 | |
| by keeping too quiet about the things of the spirit, | 10:09 | |
| by talking to God less and less, by the sin of omission, | 10:14 | |
| rather than the sin of commission. | 10:21 | |
| The danger is that we two talent folk will settle for one, | 10:26 | |
| since we cannot leave aligned lineup | 10:31 | |
| with those who were given five. | 10:34 | |
| A poem, if it can be called that, describes this. | 10:37 | |
| It's entitled "I Want To Be a Camel". | 10:42 | |
| I want to be an angel was once the lyric cry | 10:47 | |
| then let such Goby angels, heaven's peed them, | 10:52 | |
| but not I, I want to be a camel. | 10:57 | |
| And with the camels stand with no career, no destiny, | 11:02 | |
| no strategic work at hand, | 11:06 | |
| for angels must on missions go and haste mercies back | 11:10 | |
| and social service is there fort | 11:15 | |
| and rushing round like heck, | 11:18 | |
| but camels feel no mighty urge, nor duties, pushing par. | 11:20 | |
| They never do committee work or haste to prayer and song. | 11:28 | |
| I'll spare you the other verses. | 11:35 | |
| But the poem ends with the line, | 11:37 | |
| "Ye God, grant me camel's life and time to chew my cud". | 11:40 | |
| But we are neither angels nor camels, we are human beings. | 11:51 | |
| Somewhat sappy ends, two talent folk, common five eight, | 11:58 | |
| whom God must love because he's made so many of us | 12:05 | |
| as Abraham Lincoln once almost pointed out. | 12:12 | |
| So let us accept the fact. | 12:16 | |
| Second, let us be glad of the fact. | 12:21 | |
| Let us be glad of it. | 12:25 | |
| Why? Oh, there are many reasons, here is one. | 12:26 | |
| Because we are needed. Think of it in other areas of life | 12:31 | |
| before we turn to religion. | 12:36 | |
| You have heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse | 12:39 | |
| who galloped across the playing fields of the nation | 12:44 | |
| for Notre Dame. | 12:47 | |
| But have you heard of the seven mules | 12:50 | |
| who played in front of the four horsemen? | 12:53 | |
| Knute Rocke decided one Saturday to start the four horsemen | 12:58 | |
| behind the second string line | 13:03 | |
| and nobody galloped anywhere for Notre Dame. | 13:08 | |
| Then he sent in the seven mules, | 13:13 | |
| and Adam Walsh who played center and captained the team, | 13:18 | |
| made but one comment to the backfield, | 13:23 | |
| having trouble going places, boys? | 13:27 | |
| Four five talent men, needed seven two talent man. | 13:33 | |
| And Lord Kelvin, the distinguished physicist, | 13:42 | |
| held the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow University | 13:45 | |
| from 1846 to 1899. | 13:49 | |
| He was incredibly learned and an ingenious researcher, | 13:54 | |
| but he couldn't teach. | 14:00 | |
| And then one week, when he was playing William Thompson, | 14:03 | |
| he went up to London to be knighted by Queen Victoria. | 14:09 | |
| And while he was absent, his assistant, | 14:15 | |
| whose name was Dave taught the ordinary class | 14:19 | |
| in natural philosophy. | 14:23 | |
| And for the first time to many students, | 14:26 | |
| physics became a reasonable subject. | 14:29 | |
| Lucid, understandable, Interesting. | 14:34 | |
| It made sense. | 14:39 | |
| And the morning before Sir Williams returned, | 14:42 | |
| a grateful but objective student wrote on the blackboard, | 14:46 | |
| "Work while it is day, | 14:51 | |
| the Knight cometh when no man can work." | 14:55 | |
| One class for one week was glad of the fact | 15:04 | |
| that there was a two talent physicist on the staff | 15:08 | |
| at Glasgow University. | 15:12 | |
| And in the field of religion | 15:15 | |
| let me illustrate our thesis by an incident | 15:17 | |
| from Old Testament history, which may be a parable for us. | 15:19 | |
| It occurs in the book of Exodus. | 15:25 | |
| At Refidim, Amalek came out and fought against Israel. | 15:28 | |
| So Moses said to Joshua, | 15:34 | |
| "Pick out some men to go and fight against Amalek. | 15:36 | |
| Tomorrow, I will take my stand on the top of the hill, | 15:41 | |
| holding the rod of God in my hand." | 15:46 | |
| Joshua did as Moses told him, | 15:50 | |
| he fought against Amalek, | 15:53 | |
| while Moses, Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill. | 15:55 | |
| Whenever Moses raised his hand, then Israel won. | 16:02 | |
| Whenever he lowered his hand, then Amalek won. | 16:09 | |
| As the hands of Moses grew tired, | 16:16 | |
| they put a stone below him on which he sat. | 16:20 | |
| Aaron and Hur held his hands up, | 16:25 | |
| one on one side and the other on the other side, | 16:31 | |
| so that his hands remained steady till sunset | 16:35 | |
| while Joshua laid Amalek low. | 16:41 | |
| Yes, Moses the five talent man of Israel | 16:46 | |
| needed two two talent men, Aaron and Hur. | 16:51 | |
| Jesus picked ordinary folk for his disciples. | 16:57 | |
| Doubtful if there was a five talent man among the 12, | 17:01 | |
| maybe Peter. Paul was five talented, | 17:06 | |
| but did you ever read Romans 16, verses one to 16? | 17:11 | |
| There Paul is simply saying thank you | 17:17 | |
| to a group of early Christians who held up his hands. | 17:20 | |
| 27 are mentioned by name and timber. | 17:26 | |
| Excuse me, and to my knowledge, | 17:33 | |
| only two, just two of the 27 are mentioned anywhere else | 17:34 | |
| in the new Testament. | 17:41 | |
| These were the folk who made Paul into Saint Paul | 17:44 | |
| and several women are in their number. | 17:50 | |
| For those of you who think that Paul had a low opinion | 17:55 | |
| of women. | 17:58 | |
| It has always taken more than five talent people | 18:01 | |
| to keep the church going. | 18:05 | |
| Let us be glad of that fact, we who are two talented. | 18:08 | |
| And then third, let us make use of the fact | 18:14 | |
| that we are two talent people. | 18:20 | |
| Let us make use of it. | 18:23 | |
| Turn back with me to the New Testament parable. | 18:24 | |
| Where did the first two servants differ from the third? | 18:27 | |
| They made use of their talents, he didn't. | 18:31 | |
| It's not a sin to be a one talent man. | 18:37 | |
| It's a sin to remain a one talent man. | 18:42 | |
| It would equally be a sin to be a two talent man, | 18:47 | |
| and to be indifferent, to turning them into four. | 18:51 | |
| God expects us to make use of our talents | 18:56 | |
| and to make use of them for him. | 18:59 | |
| Can we in athletics and education? Of course we can. | 19:02 | |
| There is Duke a basketball player, graduated, | 19:07 | |
| God knows how, some years ago. | 19:12 | |
| He doesn't know how either. | 19:16 | |
| Who in his spare time today is teaching wheelchair patients | 19:19 | |
| to play basketball. | 19:25 | |
| There was a colleague of mine at Amherst, | 19:28 | |
| who on his retirement is now teaching chemistry | 19:31 | |
| in a Negro School in South Carolina. | 19:37 | |
| Have you ever heard of John Staupitz? | 19:42 | |
| He was the German monk who was instrumental | 19:46 | |
| in giving the world Martin Luther, | 19:50 | |
| whom you younger people may well live to see canonized. | 19:54 | |
| You've heard of Lord Shaftesbury, | 19:59 | |
| the Christian philanthropist, reformer, | 20:02 | |
| statesman of last century, | 20:04 | |
| who fought in parliament for the betterment of conditions | 20:07 | |
| for children and the poor and factory workers | 20:10 | |
| and the insane. What started him on this road of service? | 20:16 | |
| It was an unknown servant garrow in his father's home | 20:23 | |
| who taught him how to pray. | 20:29 | |
| These are the kinds of folk whom God depended on | 20:34 | |
| for his service, who occasionally were his agents | 20:37 | |
| to get the five talent folk started. | 20:42 | |
| He still depends on them and on us right here | 20:47 | |
| at Duke in Durham. | 20:52 | |
| That's all I have to say to you. | 20:56 | |
| One two talent man to others. | 20:59 | |
| Let us recognize the fact that we are two talent folk | 21:03 | |
| and be glad of it and make use of it. | 21:08 | |
| Oh, we shall not be dramatic successes | 21:13 | |
| like the five talent man,. | 21:16 | |
| Five make five more and the one talent man's one talent | 21:19 | |
| is thrown in for good measure. | 21:26 | |
| 11 talents to our four, | 21:29 | |
| but Notre Bennett, in the parable, | 21:34 | |
| the Lord blessed the two talent man | 21:40 | |
| in the very same words he used of the five, | 21:45 | |
| not a syllable is changed. | 21:50 | |
| "Well done. Thou good and faithful servant. | 21:55 | |
| Thou has been faithful in a few things. | 22:01 | |
| I will make thee ruler over many things. | 22:06 | |
| Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." | 22:10 | |
| We can hold our heads up high. | 22:18 | |
| Let us pray. | 22:26 | |
| All almighty God whose children we are, | 22:29 | |
| whose faithful servants we would be, | 22:33 | |
| grant us the desire and the resolve so to use our talents | 22:37 | |
| that we made each hear thy, | 22:44 | |
| "Well done thou good and faithful servant, | 22:46 | |
| enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." | 22:52 | |
| Amen. | 22:58 | |
| (orchestral music) | 23:08 | |
| (choir singing) | 23:45 |
