Fruitful Use of Talents

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Exodus 17:1-7

    Do you have any spiritual “ungifts?”  “Spiritual ungifts” is a phrase I have coined to talk about things I am not good at and should never be asked to do.  My main “spiritual ungift” is doing crafts or any kind of visual art.  I just don’t have a visual eye, and I don’t think visually.  As a teacher in training, I took a Garder’s Multiple Intelligences assessment and I scored like 2% in the visual category.  One time for Christmas in college, a friend of mine bought these ornament-making kits. We ambitiously thought we’d make beaded handmade ornaments for people at Christmas since we were poor college students.  The first one I tried was supposed to be a snowflake but it looked more like a crumpled up dead spider. I did not attempt to make another ornament and picked a different gift idea.
    The older I get, the more confident or aware I am of the things that I can really do well, and the less likely I am to even try to bother with the things I don’t do well.  I just call them my “spiritual ungifts” and try to surround myself with people who can do those things well that I can’t do.  As we focus on the theme of fruitful use of talents this week, we are reminded in our first reading and in our gospel reading of people who were not perfect people. They had ungifts, to be sure.  The woman at the well apparently had trouble sustaining a relationship, having had five husbands and living with a sixth man who was not her husband.  In addition, she was a woman, and a Samaritan – all points against her that would limit her ability to be a disciples of Jesus.  Moses famously had a speech impediment and also had killed a man before leading God’s people out of Egypt to the promised land.  Moses came up with all kinds of excuses not to use his gifts to lead the Israelites to God’s promised future for them, but in the end, God convinces Moses that he might not be perfect, he might not have every gift, but he could still lead God’s people, and God would be with him to help.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to lead thousands of people through the desert basically on a 40-year camping trip, without always knowing where our water and food would come from.  Yet, Moses remarkably does, successfully, get his people to the promised land.
    The woman at the well is an unlikely candidate for Jesus to use to proclaim the gospel and further his mission.  She is pretty doubtful, herself.  She asks Jesus why he’s talking to her and using her well – doesn’t he know she’s a woman, a Samaritan and an adulterer?!  Yet because of her witness, more and more people in Samaria start to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the chosen one that God had sent into the world to save the world.  God uses imperfect people.  God also gives everyone talents to share, regardless of who we are.  A baby’s smile can light up a room.  An older person’s story can warm hearts and encourage faith, even if they are bedridden or struggle with dementia.  Sometimes, like Moses, like the woman at the well, it’s easier to first list all of our “ungifts,” all the ways we can’t do what God is asking us to do, why we’re not good at something and how God should probably move along and choose someone else.  But if we take a risk like Moses, like the woman at the well, to trust that God has given us SOMETHING to use to further God’s kingdom, no matter how small, we can share that gift and serve God.
    So, admit it, at least to God…what are you good at? And how could God use that talent, that gift, to serve God and God’s people?  When I was on internship preparing to be a pastor, I was asked to train the congregation’s acolytes.  I was a little intimidated because I had never been an acolyte myself. I grew up in a newer mission congregation that had started in the seventies, and they just never had acolytes. Whoever was setting up communion just lit the candles, too, and put them up when they cleaned up communion.  We had chairs and not pews, no choir robes – that gives you some insight into my church upbringing if I may unintentionally disregard a cherished church tradition here.  At any rate, thankfully in my internship congregation there was a seasoned “head acolyte” there to help me train the new acolytes.  He carefully showed them (and me) how to put a new wick in the lighter, how to reverence the cross before lighting the candles and before extinguishing them, how to carry the processional cross on days we had a procession, and so on.  He usually acolyted himself about once a month because he loved it so much, even though he was about 30 years old.  And on the Sundays there was no procession of the cross with the choir and so on, he would recess with the pastor and communion assistant anyway, and form the shape of the cross with his arms.  You might think this was a little strange at this point, but the thing was, our head acolyte had Down’s syndrome.  You could say he had a lot of “ungifts:” he could never live by himself, he couldn’t do some of the other regular church volunteer things like serving as a lector or a Sunday School teacher, but I still consider him to be the best acolyte I’ve ever met.  He loved that job, and in making the sign of the cross, he showed us all how much he loved his faith, how he loved Jesus.  If that isn’t a great example of using your talents despite your shortcomings!  He was a witness to Christ working in him and through him. He inspired others to use their gifts to serve the church and the world, too. He knew what he was good at, and he did it with a passion that made his faith infectious.  That is what being a good steward of our talents is about.  
Sometimes it’s hard to know what you’re really good at, and what you’re really not good at.  Sometimes you have to try to discover a spiritual gift or ungift.  It’s OK to say no to something if you’re really not good at it, but think twice, like the woman at the well, like Moses, to figure out what you ARE good at then, and then use that talent to serve God and your neighbor.
Thanks be to God.  Amen.