When a Revolutionary Is a Patriot; When a Troublemaker Is Faithful

Pastor Anthony preaching on: "When a Revolutionary Is a Patriot; When a Troublemaker Is Faithful." Scripture focus is: Luke 19: 11-24 with references to Matthew 25: 14-30 and Luke 19: 25-27. Preached on July 4, 2021.

Copyright 2021 by Rev. Anthony J. Tang and Desert Mission United Methodist Church

Watching the Wizard of Oz as a kid, I cheered along as Dorothy searched to get back to her home and as she fought off the Wicked Witch of the West. Then, two years ago, I got to see the musical, Wicked, a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, that tells the story from the witch’s perspective and raises the possibility that maybe we don’t know the whole story and maybe the Witch of the West isn’t so wicked after all as she works to undermine the evil forces of the Wizard.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, we witnessed the horrible murder of Harry Potter’s beloved Dumbledore by none other than the evil Professor Severus Snape. Or was he evil? Was it murder? Is there more to the story? And of course, yes, there is more to the Professor Snape’s story as he works to protect the souls of children and undermine the evil of the Dark Lord. We don’t always know the whole truth, do we?

Sometime around 1960, Dmitri Polyakov, an officer in the GRU, Russia's largest foreign-intelligence agency, was stationed in New York. During that assignment, he approached FBI counterintelligence agents to offer his services as a double-agent. For twenty-five years, as he rose in Russia’s military leadership, eventually becoming a General. Throughout that entire time, he provided a steady stream of information to the United States including Russia’s nuclear capabilities, chemical and biological objectives, political negotiations with other countries, and technical data on weapons. It has been said that Polyakov may have been the greatest source of Intelligence on Russia or of any other foreign country for that matter that America has ever had… up until Russian spies working in the FBI and CIA identified him to the Russians who arrested him six years after his retirement and executed him. Was he an American patriot and a Russian traitor? I think Polyakov would have disagreed.

Waldimir Skotzko of the CIA (now retired) has shared (see Netflix series “Spycraft” season 1, episode 5 “Covert Communication,” at approximately minute 16):

“In the final meeting with him... I began to worry that maybe he was worried that he was under suspicion. And I said to him, ‘If you have any doubts about your security, we more than owe you the opportunity to get you out of here and get you to our country.’ And it was the one time I saw him actually flare up and lose his temper, just a little bit. He said, ‘I am not doing this for your country. I'm doing this for the Russian people because of what those bastards in the Communist Party have done to my country over the last 60 years.’”

The Russian government did and probably still does consider Polyakov a traitor, but I think he believed himself to be a true patriot of the Russian people.

Then, there’s the signers of the Declaration of Independence. When I was young, I thought of the size of John Hancock’s signature as this ridiculous gesture of self-importance. I probably could not have been more wrong. The moment of the signing of this historic document was not one of jubilation or glee or of boasting, but just the opposite.

On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the final draft of the Declaration of Independence and then on August 2, the Congress members affixed their signatures to this parchment inside the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall. John Hancock of Massachusetts was the first and largest signature because he was the president of the Congress and fully aware that his signature was an act of high treason against the British Crown.

Recalling the day many years later, Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Rush wrote of the “pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress,” to sign “what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants.”

The British monarchy considered them to be traitors, we consider them to be patriots. During those moments, 245 years ago, it wasn’t always easy to tell the difference and was especially hard to tell what was right or wrong or worth the risk. Only after it was all over were the new US citizens able to declare that it was definitely the right thing to do.

You know, many people are familiar with the parable Jesus tells in our scripture today from Matthew. It’s the parable of the talents, most often used during stewardship campaigns to help form the argument that God calls us to wisely use all of the talents, the resources, the skills, and the gifts we have been given and not to hide them away.

A master calls three servants and entrusts them with an unfathomable amount of money: 5 talents, 2 talents, and one talent. A talent was worth 6,000 days wages for a laborer. So in today’s dollars, if we figured, $20/hour, times eight hours, time 6,000 days, a talent in today’s terms would be worth almost a million dollars. Matthew tells us that when the master returns, the first servant doubled it from 5 talents to ten talents. The second servant doubled it from 2 talents to four talents. But the last servant, in fear, hid the talent and was scolded and punished for wasting his talent.

From Matthew’s scripture, preachers preach that we are never meant to bury our talents. In fact, I’m quite certain that I have preached this same message myself, because it’s a good message: God wants all of us to be the best of us that we can be!

The only problem here is that today’s scripture is not from Matthew! It’s from Luke! And that makes a very big difference.

You see, Matthew was primarily writing to people who knew of wealth, power and privilege. If you read about the birth of Jesus in Matthew, you will read about politics, kings, foreign dignitaries, and gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Luke was primarily writing to people who were poor and abused. If you read about the birth of Jesus in Luke, you will read about there being no room in the inn, the stables, a manger, and smelly shepherds.

In Matthew’s parable, Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven as if God is a generous master, because God is generous.

In Luke’s version of this parable, I would argue that he is not talking about God. A cruel and hated nobleman is leaving to a distant country to acquire royal power for himself. So, he summons ten servants and gives each of them a talent. When he comes back, one servant took his talent and made ten more, so the cruel master put him in charge of ten cities. The second used his talent to earn five more talents and was put in charge of five cities. The third came forward with nothing more bringing back the original talent. He is severely punished and all of the nobleman’s critics are who didn’t want him to be king are slaughtered in his presence.

Now, to be clear, Jesus in the Gospel of Luke does not portray this nobleman as either God or Jesus. After all, neither God nor Jesus needs to leave the kingdom in order to obtain royal power. Furthermore, Jesus tells us that all of the nobleman’s citizens hated him because of his cruelty. So, why did Luke give us this parable? Scholars have argued that Luke is not portraying the kingdom of Heaven as the nobleman’s country, but rather communicating that faithfulness in the Kingdom of Heaven is the work of the servant who refused to do the bidding of a cruel and evil master. That faithfulness is to not only deny and reject the orders of evil powers, but to have the courage to face that evil and to take whatever punishment is being given out.

So which is it? Is Matthew’s parable right, that the God is the master in the parable and we are to use all of our gifts to God’s glory? Is Luke’s parable right, that God is calling us to reject and resist the evil powers of this world and to face with courage whatever deadly consequences we must face? Did Jesus tell both parables for two different reasons? I don’t know.

But just as difficult as telling which parable is more faithful or more closely aligned with the message Jesus actually said, is telling the motivations and true value of another person’s actions.

I’m often quick to judge and perhaps this is why Jesus calls us to not judge others because we may not truly know all of the story or all of the perspectives around someone else’s experience.

Now, am I saying that there is no right or wrong or good or bad actions or that we can’t hold others accountable for their choices? Absolutely not.

Just that we should beware of being too quick to judge based on just our own perspective and the limited facts that we have.

And what we can learn from both of these parables is about faithfulness. Faithfulness is not about only putting at risk other people’s talents, other people’s property, and other people’s lives. Faithfulness is about being a good steward of our own talents and if we believe we are truly up against forces that must be confronted on behalf of what is good, true, and just, then the talent, property, and life that we risk must first be our own and the signature we sign… they should be the biggest.

On this July 4th, I’m thankful for everyone who signed on August 2nd, 1776, what they thought might very well be their own death warrant. And I pray for all of those around the world who are also risking their livelihoods, risking their freedom, and risking their own lives in order to be faithful to who God has called them to be. May the world be a better and better place for the sacrifices they make.