Eric (my son) recently brought home a collection of Johnny Cash songs, an anthology simply called “Cash,” and I have listened to it a lot, mainly because he forgot to take it back with him to Fayetteville. Now you must know that I grew up on Johnny Cash, but not necessarily by choice. When I was a youth and a teenager, my dad had a very large console hi-fidelity stereo in our living room, and played music on it every morning while he was getting ready for work. Now the problem was that he was in his bedroom and bathroom at the back of the house getting ready to go, so he had to really turn up the decibels on that baby to hear it with the hair dryer running and all that. The hair dryer was another story as my dad, yes my dad would wash his hair, sit under the hair dryer (the old sit under salon type) and then douse his head with hair spray and sit under the hair dryer some more. It was a 30 minute ordeal. With a heritage of hair like that, I was destined to be a Baptist Preacher! Anyway, we got Sister Vestal and the Happy Goodmans and the Florida Boys and the Dixie Echoes at near concert levels right in the comfort and convenience of our own home. And let me tell you, no rock band had anything on Sister Vestal; she could blow the back wall off any auditorium or concert hall. So besides the southern gospel quartet music, we also got Johnny Cash, I believe his Folsom Prison Album. Dad played the same album over and over and over, day after day after day. Johnny was stuck in Folsom prison, and I was stuck in Hi-fidelity hell. But I learn to appreciate the man and his music. Call it nostalgia or something, but I have enjoyed this “Cash” CD.

One song on this particular CD is called “Hurt,” and it is a cover song from a group called “Nine Inch Nails.” Eric tells me that Nine Inch Nails are practically occult like, and are into drugs and stuff big-time. It was an interesting selection by Cash, and debuted on his 2002 album American IV, The Man Comes Around, and he did a video of “Hurt” as well. In the video, the 71-year old Cash appears very fragile as he sings this from his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Cash wore no makeup, and there was no attempt to make him look younger or more vibrant through lighting or other effects. This was interspersed with footage of Cash in his younger days. The video appeared staged to be Cash’s obituary, as he was in failing health after a life filled with drug-abuse. Cash died September 12, 2003 after complications of his diabetes.

This song Hurt is really an interesting anti-drug song; listen to its lyrics:

I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real. The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting, try to kill it all away. But I remember everything, what have I become? My sweetest friend, everyone I know, goes away in the end. You could have it all, my empire of dirt, I will let you down, I will make you hurt. I wear my crown of thorns, on my liar’s chair, full of broken thoughts I cannot repair. Beneath the stain of time, the feeling disappears, you are someone else, I am still right here. What have I become? My sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end. You could have it all my empire of dirt. I will let you down I will make you hurt. If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself, I would find a way.

It really is a pathetic image of a man hopelessly addicted to drugs. A man who would give all the fame and fortune he has made which is really just as dirt in the big scheme of things, to not be addicted. A man who desperately wants out, but is powerless to change. A man who continues to hurt himself, all the time. And it is a vicious cycle; he does the drugs to numb the pain which in turn only hurts him more. And if he could live life all over again in another life, you bet your bottom dollar that he would.

I have seen many, many such people in my life and ministry. And when all is said and done, I have learned more from leading a spirituality group in our chemically dependent unit for 12 years than any other thing that I have ever done. And I saw many people who were educated, successful, popular and famous irrationally undermine it all for a drink or a needle. And despite all their resolve, all the consequences of their actions, they continued to hurt themselves.

Lest we be too hard on poor Johnny and his ilk, we all hurt ourselves in some ways from time to time. Maybe we do so more subtly that shooting ourselves up with heroin, but just as sure and methodical. Maybe it is working too hard, or overeating. OK, I picked on my own two biggies right off the bat. Maybe it is lack of exercise or proper diet. Boy, I am stepping on my own toes; it’s not supposed to happen this way! Maybe it is the way that we self destruct in relationships, or undermine our own successes on projects. Could it be that some unwittingly sabotage their own efforts because failure is more fulfilling to them? Sometimes we are a product of self-fulfilling prophecies that we are no good and not worthy.

Theology does its part to keep us in our place as well, largely because of the fear associated with sin and guilt. Because of religion, we sometimes see ourselves as never being good enough. Our greatest fear is based on our insecurities. And no wonder. We hear preached that we are vile reprobates, who are totally depraved. We are lower than worms, totally undeserving and therefore we conclude worthless scumbags totally deserving of eternal torment. And even though we get ourselves some fire insurance and get saved, we still have that nasty bent towards sinning, and somehow we think that we should be better than that, that we should be good, or even perfect.

In our lectionary passage this morning we have another difficult parable of the Kingdom, referred to as the parable of the talents, or of the Ten Talents. Luke also has this parable in his gospel with some minor differences. I read and studied this parable hard this week, and I am convinced that it is in its essence about faith and about fear. There were three people mentioned, one given five talents, one two, and finally one person was given one talent. Now a talent was a lot of money, some say as much as a 3 years wage. This was a parable involving a master and his slaves. The master would be away for a while, so he left a considerable amount of his assets to these trusted servants to manage. And you know the story from here: the one with the five talents made five more; the one with the two made two more. The master was very pleased with their efforts and rewarded them accordingly. The rub comes in with the final servant. He was entrusted with one talent, and he went out and buried it in the backyard. When the master heard his story, he said, what were you thinking? The servant replied, I knew you were demanding and tough, and I was afraid I would lose it and earn your displeasure. So I kept it safe for you, here it is, just as you left it with me. To our surprise, the master called the slave names, like lazy and stupid and evil and cast him out to outer darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Well. I have wondered all week exactly what the man did that was all that bad. He was punished severely for not making his master a buck. You would have to think to his credit he didn’t squander or waste the money either. In understanding this parable we have to remember that its point is shocking, as Matthew’s Jesus is always upsetting the applecart. I am sorry, this parable is not about church growth, it is not in there, no way.

My favorite author, Frederick Buechner says this about this incident:

To begin with the negative part of it first, it seems to me that the one-talent man represents what I said before, somebody who buried the richest treasure he had, not just pain, but the most alive part of himself, buried it in the ground. He was never able to become who he might have been. I think the outer darkness the Master casts him into is not to be thought of so much as a punishment, as it is to be thought of as the inevitable consequence of what it means to bury your life. If you bury your life, you don’t leave your life. You don’t meet other people who are alive. You are alone; you are in the dark.”From him who hath not, it will taken.” Those hard words. That if the life is buried, if the pain is somehow covered over and forgotten, instead of growing, you shrink. You become less; you become diminished.1

This parable is about faith and fear. Were not the first two servants afraid of their master as well? I think they probably were. The difference was they chose to risk faith, and the third man was paralyzed by fear. And his fears led him to inaction, and they led him to conserve and hold on, and in turn led him to be defeated. This man hurt himself. It is as simple as that, and as profound as that. He was afraid to the point that he hurt himself big-time. He buried himself and his future and lost the very thing which he was trying to preserve– his life. His own fears hurt him.

There is nothing more hurtful to ourselves than when we are subservient to our fears. Fear keeps us from faith when faith is rightly seen as a verb and not a noun. And if your fears consume you and paralyze you, then you have lost your ability to truly live.

I am currently reading a most amazing book that I bought at a book sale for a buck. It is called Every Second Counts, and it is by Lance Armstrong. Armstrong is arguably the world’s greatest athlete. The book was written in the aftermath of his serious battle with cancer and the following comeback to a Tour de France victory. Resplendently, he since has had five more such victories. He was asked at what point did he make the switch from a fear of dying to deciding to really live. “At what point do you let go of not dying,” he said. As a result of his serious illness Armstrong constantly found himself about the business of proving to himself that he was alive, and thus the motivation for wining the Tour de France. Armstrong tells the story of a piece of land that he bought in Texas, and on this 240 acre parcel is a deep hole full of water at the bottom of a high cliff called “Dead Man’s Hole.” He rode his bike there for several days with his friends before announcing that he was going to jump in. They all thought he was nuts. It might kill him. It might injure his very valuable athletic body beyond repair. But he was compelled to jump as he states in the following account:

All I know is something makes me want to jump. So this is about life. Life after cancer. Life after kids. Life after victories. Life after personal loses. It’s about risk, it’s about agenda, and it’s about balance . . . because the way you live your life, the perspective you select, is a choice that you make every single day when you wake up. It’s yours to decide.

After the jump he wrote:

I was stupidly happy, as if I had new skin. The scare of Dead Man’s Hole made me feel fresh. It was a freshness put there by fear—cleansing, clarifying, sharpening fear. Fear that opened the senses, and brought everything into clearer view. A little fear is good for you. That is, if you can swim.2

It is obvious to me that Lance Armstrong was afraid of dying, and he needed to face his fears head on. He needed to prove that he still felt, that he was alive. Otherwise, he would as long as he lived be afraid of death. The rest of the story is that he didn’t beat himself.

The choice before us today boils down to either being a reluctant servant or a risky servant. Have you ever felt like giving up? Have you ever wondered, even in what you try to do for God, whether it is doing any good? Have you ever wanted to bury your head in the sand or your talent in the ground? To submit to our fears in this way is to lose our very lives and to hurt ourselves in the ultimate self-defeating way. In trying to hang onto what we’ve got, we end up losing.

I remember reading about a girl named Annie who in 1876 was ten years of age. She was put into a poor house for children…called the Tewkesbury Alms House in Massachusetts. Her mother had died and her father had deserted her. Her aunt and uncle found her too difficult to handle. She had a bad disposition, a violent temper…stemming in part from eyes afflicted with painful trachoma. She had been put in the poorhouse because no one wanted her. She was such a wild one that at times she had to be tied down as was the practice of the day.
But there was another inmate named Maggie who cared for Annie. Maggie talked to her, fed her, even though Annie would throw her food on the floor, cursing and rebelling with every ounce of her being. But Maggie out of her convictions was determined to love this dirty, unkempt, spiteful, unloving little girl. It wasn’t easy, but slowly it got through to Annie that she was not the only who was suffering. Maggie also had been abandoned. And gradually Annie began to respond. Maggie convinced Annie that she was only hurting herself.

Maggie told her about a school for the blind and Annie began to beg to be sent there, and finally, consent was given and she went to the Perkins Institute. After a series of operations her sight was partially restored. She was able to finish her schooling and graduate at age twenty. Having been blind so long she told the director of Perkins that she wanted to work with blind and difficult children. They found a little girl seven years old in Alabama who was blind and deaf from the age of two. So, Annie Sullivan went to Tuscumbia, Alabama and began to unlock the door of Helen Keller’s dark prison and to set her free.3 And maybe Helen Keller said it best when she said that life is either a great adventure or a great nothing. And to be a great adventure, we have to risk faith.

So again are we going to be a risky servant or a reluctant servant? You see there is really only one choice. Those who would risk nothing are in fact risking everything, and that is the point of this parable. Life by definition is risky. We face formidable odds. The one thing that has really impressed me in the 24 years I have been at the hospital is that there is no end to the number of ways that a person can get themselves dead. But conversely there is only one way to truly live, and that is to let our fears give way to faith. To take a leap in the dark and land in the light.

Because Fear paralyzes, faith empowers.    Fear discourages, faith encourages. Fear sickens, faith heals. Fear makes us useless, faith makes us serviceable. Fear feels hopelessness, faith is full of hope.  To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair. To try is to risk failure. But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person, who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.

You see, what the disciples would learn was that Jesus never played it safe. He risk it all, he laid love on the line every single day. He who was God gave it all up and took on the form of a servant; yes a servant even to death on the cross.

So instead of conserving and holding on and living our lives in fear, we have to at least in the faith sense throw caution to the wind and jump to see if we are really alive. Because any hurt that we incur in such a jump will pale in comparison to the hurt that we hurt ourselves with by living a fear plagued life. Because when we risk faith we are liberated. We let go, and let God as the old cliché says. We let go of that which binds us, we let go of that which paralyzes us, we let go of that which hurts us, we let go of that which limits us, we let go our failures, and our mistakes, and even our sins. Because the truth is God has already let go of them on our behalf. And this man Jesus would soon take the ultimate risk, and set us free. And if Jesus sets us free, we are free indeed. And nothing can ever hurt us again, at least not for long. The cross saw to that. And that is the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God! Amen.