Sermon manuscript: How to achieve success
So I haven’t posted on here in a while, and I intend to get back to posting more regularly soon. In the meantime, I thought I would post the manuscript of my most recent sermon, delivered on our church’s graduation Sunday:
In 2008, when I graduated high school, it wasn’t my first graduation ceremony, nor would it be my last. There’s a good chance many of you have graduated multiple times too. It’s crazy the number of possible graduations there are nowadays: *** graduation from preschool, *** graduation from kindergarten, *** graduation from elementary school — and a few schools also do third-grade graduation in there too — *** middle school, *** high school, and then college, *** and doctorate degree, plus trade schools. So it’s possible your high school graduation is your 5th graduation ceremony. *** It’s possible to go through a dozen of these in your lifetime. For me, thankfully, high school graduation was just my second: my first was from middle school. And I never understood the point of that ceremony. I mean, you can’t actually leave school until you’re 16 or 17, so for most people, you don’t really have a choice but to graduate 8th grade.
But I never really looked forward to my commencement ceremonies. I never found it enthralling to watch 300 people, 50% of whom I’d never met, shake hands with a principal or dean or superintendent I’d talked to once or twice, for two hours. (Maybe some of you were more popular than I was, and you at least knew everyone.) I always liked it when they gave us a program, because I would entertain myself by seeing if I could correctly guess how to pronounce all the complicated last names of my classmates. But it’s a rite of passage ceremony, and we want to make a big deal out of it, so we do it more and more.
So why is that? What exactly are we celebrating at graduation? For some, it’s really a celebration, because graduating school wasn’t a given. It took hard work and discipline. It was a struggle where you finally get a reward. For others, it’s more like a celebration for showing up and doing the bare minimum. You might not feel too celebratory for doing what you had to do. What graduation really celebrates, I think, is preparation. Preparation for the next step of life. The point of graduation is that you’ve achieved all the success you need to achieve and learned all you need to learn to step up to the next grade, the next level, the next stage of life. And once you get through high school, that next stage is either college or the world itself, and with that, the possibility of achieving further success.
That’s the whole point of school, ideally. It’s to prepare you for success in the long term. No, you don’t need to know a lot of the stuff you learned. Most of you probably really are never going to need to know the quadratic formula, or deconstructionist literary theory, the year Oliver Cromwell temporarily overthrew the English royalty, or the triple point of dihydrogen monoxide (which is water). Depending on your profession, you might need to know one out of those four things.
But what school is supposed to teach you is how to do what it takes to succeed, whatever the subject matter. And how good a job it does of doing that is up for debate. Schools could probably use a few less classes for feminist literary theory and a few more on, like, how to pay your taxes and impress employers and that sort of thing. But that is the idea that schools instill in us: that we need to learn how to think and reason and interact with the world so that we can aim for success. We spend 12-17 years, if you go to kindergarten and a four-year college, learning how to succeed. That, I think, is the main thing that is celebrated at graduation, that you are prepared to succeed.
And indeed, that is what people are learning — that success is hugely important, and indeed, the life goal that everyone should have. That the quality of your life and the kind of person you are is measured by your success. And that’s true now more than it ever has been. According to the Barna group, a polling firm, in today’s youngest generation, Generation Z, 43% of people said that professional and educational achievement was very important to their sense of self. That’s compared to just 35% who said the same thing about even their family. That’s the first generation ever to define themselves more by their successes than by even their family and friends. (My generation, millennials, was pretty close.)
And that’s not to fault the younger generations. That’s the culture that we live in nowadays. There’s a reason we care so much more about success, and that’s because success is not an end in itself. At least one reason people see success as more important than ever is because the last generation or two, we have redefined success. According to a study at Strayer University, 90% of Americans believe that success is not mostly about wealth and fame, but about happiness. We kind of understand that success and happiness were two different things — you can be successful without being happy, and happy without being successful — but in our American consciousness they are starting to merge. Almost half of Americans say that happiness is their ultimate goal in life, and success is a means to happiness.
So what most people celebrate at graduation, then, is the fact that you are supposed to now be prepared to live a successful and happy life. You have learned how to succeed. You have learned what your gifts are. You may have even learned what you want to do for a living. You are prepared to achieve your life’s goals on your own, and we have our whole lives ahead of us to do so. That is the American way, right? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
I think it’s worth consulting what Jesus had to say when it comes to the ultimate meaning and goal of life, and what success really looks like. One of the most important things he had to say about this was in a place you might not expect, toward the end of his ministry. In Jesus’ final week, Jesus and his disciples are at the temple, and as they’re marveling at the exquisite design and magnificent building of the temple, Jesus says, *** “Do you see all these things? Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be toppled.” And so his disciples, shocked at that statement, later ask him, *** “Tell us, when will all this happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?”
And so Jesus launches from here into one of his most famous discourses about the end times — the signs of the end of the age. It lasts two chapters. And there’s been endless debate about the meaning of Matthew 24 and 25, and if we can use them to determine when the end of the world will come and what it will look like. And it’s really hard, basically impossible, to know for sure. But that’s kind of the point, because Jesus says, *** “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”
And I think the point is to show us that we cannot be confident that our whole life is ahead of us. Not only do we have no idea how much time we have left on this earth, we have no idea how much time this earth itself has. And our culture and our school system emphasize so much how we need to work hard toward this goal of a successful, happy future. In adulthood, we’re taught to work hard to save up for a successful, happy retirement. That’s what so many of us invest our whole lives into: Storing up treasures for future happiness. But Jesus wants to change our focus a little bit. I think he wants us to consider: “What if you never get there? What if that time never comes? Then what will you have been doing with your life? What’s it going to matter?”
There’s two problems with this mindset of working for success with the goal in mind of future happiness. One is that happiness is elusive, fleeting, and almost impossible to achieve to a point where we are truly satisfied in the long-term. That’s because the meaning of happiness is always changing. You may achieve happiness for today, but is that same thing going to make you happy tomorrow? You may achieve happiness for this year, but what about next year? You achieve what makes you happy, but then what makes you happy changes, and you’re right back where you started, chasing happiness once again. You can never really achieve happiness. You can achieve it for a moment, but if you make it your life’s goal you’re going to be really dissatisfied. As King Solomon puts it, it’s chasing after the wind. It’s no wonder the rates of severe depression are at record highs in America today. No wonder that as America gets more and more obsessed with happiness, we become statistically less and less happy.
And the second problem is the one Jesus presents us: What if time runs out? We are living in the last days. And it’s true we’ve been living in the last days for 2,000 years, but we never know when that time is going to be up. And happiness, being a purely subjective feeling, isn’t going to do anything for us when we come into eternity. Because everything on this earth that gives us happiness — except God and his people — everything we chased on this earth is gonna be dissolved into nothingness. And our accomplishments and achievements won’t matter. They won’t matter, because they’re not eternal. So the question Jesus wants us to ask is: What are we going to have done with our lives that will matter when the end comes? ***
So we really need a different measure of success. We really need a different goal of what to achieve in life. I want to turn to Matthew 25:14-30. If you have a Bible with you, I’ll give you a moment to turn there. If not, the passage will be up on the screen.
*** 14 For it [the kingdom of heaven] is just like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted them with his possessions. 15To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent—each according to his own ability. And he promptly went on his journey.
*** 16The servant who had received five talents went and put them to work, and gained five more. 17Likewise, the one with two talents gained two more. 18But the servant who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.
*** 19After a long time, the master of those servants returned to settle accounts with them. 20The servant who had received five talents came and presented five more. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’
*** 21His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master!’
*** 22Then the servant who had received two talents also came and said, ‘Master, you entrusted me with two talents. See, I have gained two more.’
*** 23His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master!’
*** 24Finally, the servant who had received one talent came and said, ‘Master, I knew that you are a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25So in my fear, I went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what belongs to you.’
*** 26‘You wicked, lazy servant!’ replied his master. ‘You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. 27Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received it back with interest.
28Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. 29For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 30And throw that worthless servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
So in this parable, Jesus pictures a master giving his servants each a share of money. He gives one servant five talents, another servant two talents, and another servant one talent, and Jesus said he did so “according to their ability.” So he gave each of the servants an amount of money he knew they could handle wisely. A talent, back then, was a unit of measurement, specifically a unit of weight. It was about 75 pounds, usually of silver. It was worth about 6,000 denarii — 1 denarius was a day’s wage for a common laborer, so 6000 of them would be equivalent to almost 20 years’ wages. If you want to compare that to today, 20 years’ wages for a minimum-wage worker today is almost half a million dollars. So this master entrusted each of these servants with a lot of money.
So these talents are given from the master to the servants. $2.5 million to one, $1 million to another, and $500,000 to another. In a sense, they’re gifts. But they’re not just gifts for the servants to squander however they want; they’re gifts for a purpose. One thing that might not come across very clearly to us at first but which Jesus’ audience would have understood is that if a master gives this magnanimous a gift to his servants, they’re gifts that are meant to be used to yield an even greater return. That’s why he entrusted those great riches to them. In the same way, when God created us, he entrusted the world to us. He created each of us individually, and was intimately involved with every aspect of our creation. He’s entrusted each of us to accomplish things for his kingdom in this world. And God gives us gifts to help us do that. He gives us material gifts, like our possessions and jobs and homes and opportunities. He gives us abilities, like the ability to do mathematics or be creative or manage money well or program computers or be athletic. And Paul, in the New Testament, indicates that when we give our lives to Christ, the Holy Spirit gives us certain spiritual gifts. He says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” And he goes on to talk about the way the Spirit manifests in us, and that is by giving us certain gifts, specifically for the purpose of “the common good.” That is, to help other people and to further the kingdom of God.
In a few different places, he gives some examples: Knowledge, the ability to understand God in a special way. Teaching, the ability to communicate that knowledge to others in a way that can be understood. Wisdom, the ability to know how to apply God’s word to our lives. Serving, a heart for and ability to serve others. Mercy, a heart to help those in desperate need. Faith, the ability to know that God wants you to do something that seems crazy and do it. Encouragement, the ability to inspire and motivate people to godliness. Generosity, the heart and ability to sacrifice your own stuff for others. Leadership, the ability to shepherd lead God’s people, administratively and by example. To name a few. So Jesus has given each of us great gifts and entrusted to us the task of using those gifts not to get gain for ourselves, but to help others and advance the kingdom of God; to share the gospel with others and bring them to God.
The master doesn’t give all his servants the same amount of money, just as the Holy Spirit doesn’t give us all the same gifts, nor does he give us all the same degree of gifts. Two people may have the same gift, but one might have a greater portion of it than another. But he gives them all an amount that corresponds with what he knows they are able to do with it. In the same way, God gives us gifts based on what he knows we are able to do with them.
So the master went away on a long journey. As Jesus was telling this story, he knew he was about to go to the cross and die and rise again and ascend to heaven. He was about to go on a journey back to his Father, and he was about to leave his followers to carry on the work he was doing in the world. That’s what he’s still doing. We are supposed to carry on Jesus’ work in the world, and these talents represent what Jesus has given us to do that.
So the servant with the five talents goes out, takes the money, does some kind of business with it, invests, trades, whatever sort of thing, and he earns a profit double what the master gave him. The servant with two talents does the same thing, also earns a profit — not as big as the servant with five talents, but proportionally equal. He also doubles his master’s money. And then there’s the third servant. He’s afraid, so he buries the money in the ground, never touches it or does anything with it, and goes about his life as usual until the master returns.
So when the master does return, he’s thrilled with the first two servants. Even though they didn’t make the same profit, they both made a profit, and he commends them. These are servants who took their gifts, used them as the master wanted them to, and accomplished their purpose, their mission. So the master says, *** “Well done, good and faithful servant!” And then the one-talent servant comes, and says, “Master, I knew that you are a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So in my fear, I went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what belongs to you.’”
And the master says, “You wicked, lazy servant!” And he kinda goes, Oh yeah? You know this about me? This is what you think about me? Well, if you really thought this, you should have at least put my money in the bank; you should have at least done the safest possible thing you could do with it so that it wasn’t a complete waste. At least then there’s a guaranteed interest rate and there’s something there. So he says, “Throw that worthless servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
I don’t know about you, but that seems a little harsh to me. When I’ve read this parable, it’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for the one-talent servant. How many of you have ever worked under a demanding boss who had no tolerance for failure or mistakes? Maybe the servant had never done this before. Felt like he had no idea what he was doing. Was afraid to mess up, and how the master would react if he did.
But then that’s the point of the parable. There are masters and bosses like that. But the master in this parable is Jesus. And he is not like that. We’re not told any information about the master or what kind of person he is in the parable because we already know what kind of person he is. He is Jesus. He is God. He is perfectly fair, perfectly loving, generously forgiving. The servant’s claims about who the master is are just false. They’re slanderous. How could he make such a claim? Because he has no relationship with his master. He has no idea who the master really is.
His excuse to the master reveals a lot about what he really thinks. He thinks the master is a hard taskmaster, not tolerating mistakes or failure. He thinks the master “reaps where he did not sow” — is unfair, or even a thief. He thinks the master only cares about his money.
If he had any idea who the master was, he would know that the master wouldn’t give him a task he wasn’t capable of doing. If he had any idea who the master was, he would know that any failure or mistake of his would be forgiven. If he had any idea who the master was, he would know how utterly important this task was. But he didn’t know anything about the master. Nor did he really care about the master. Nor did he care about anyone who might benefit from the gifts the master had given him? What kind of business could he have done, what kind of help or services could he have provided, with that kind of money? None of that meant anything to him. He didn’t even put the money to use in the safest way possible — putting it in the bank with a guaranteed interest rate. He doesn’t know the master, has no care for the master, has no desire to serve the master, and so he’s cast out from the master’s presence.
We sometimes think this way about God. We think God is up there punishing us for our failures and mistakes. We maybe think God is unfair, because he gives some of us more gifts than others; he lets us encounter difficulties and obstacles that others don’t have to deal with. And sometimes, even when we use our gifts faithfully, we don’t get an immediate, tangible reward. I mean, we might even resent him for giving us a gift and not letting us use it however we want. And those are not true or fair accusations, but they or other misunderstandings we have about God, or deficiencies in our relationship with God, might lead us to bury our gifts.
That’s not that we don’t use any of our gifts, but very often I think we may bury our spiritual gifts in favor of using our worldly gifts, our worldly talents. Using what God’s given us for ourselves. And we may do that to achieve worldly success. But even if we achieve great success in this life, have we achieved success with the mission Jesus has entrusted to us? There will be many people that the world thinks are very successful, but who will hear this from Jesus: “Throw that worthless servant into the outer darkness.”
But is there anything to this third servant’s claims? Is there anything to his accusations? I’ve always wondered, what if the parable were changed a little bit? What if the third servant had instead taken the money given him, invested it and done business with it, and lost it all? What if he had failed? Then how would the master have reacted? I think we’ve got to wonder that, because what that means for us is: What if we tried to use our gifts and failed? Surely that’s a fear for some of us.
I’m not sure of the answer, because it’s Jesus’ parable, not mine. But here’s what I think. Look at the master’s response to the first two servants. What does he commend them for? ***
At no point does he commend them for making a profit. He never mentions what they gained. He commends them for being faithful. This is the thing the servant didn’t know about his master: That the master’s concern was not with outward success. The master cared about faithfulness. And Jesus, like the master in the parable, cares about our faithfulness, too. In this world we get rewarded for our fruitfulness. We get rewarded for how much we earn, how much we make, how much we accomplish. But in the kingdom of God, we get rewarded for our faithfulness — how much, regardless of the results we couldn’t control, we trusted God and used the gifts he gave us for the mission he gave us.
And so it is impossible that the servant could have failed. It’s impossible that the servant could have failed using his gift, because the purpose of him receiving the gift was not so he’d achieve outward, visible, immediate success. The purpose was that he would be faithful, loyal, and carry out the mission the master gave him. The only way the servant could fail is by being unfaithful — by not using them at all. And that’s exactly what he did. And so he was cast out from the presence of the master. But the faithful servants were welcomed into the master’s joy and praised for successfully carrying out the master’s mission, not because of what they’d made, but because of how they made it — by being faithful.
So I said that we needed a better definition for success. We needed a better goal to live for. What does it mean to live a successful life? And I think this parable gives us a great one: Faithfulness. Success is faithfulness. *** And that’s the only success that’s going to matter in the kingdom of God. At the judgment, Jesus isn’t going to ask us how many awards we won, what our income was, how many promotions we got, how many children we had, or how many of our goals and dreams we accomplished. He’s going to want to know this: Were we faithful with what he’d given us? Did we use it for the mission he gave us?
Are you prepared to succeed? School has hopefully prepared you for worldly success, but are you prepared for spiritual success? I think this parable shows us two things we need for spiritual success:
*** 1) Have and maintain your relationship with God. The servant in the parable didn’t do this. He didn’t know the master. He didn’t know what he was like or who he was. And that led him to mistrust and despise the master. So we need to make sure that we are staying close to God, that we are getting to know him better. That means no matter how busy we get, spending time in God’s word, with God’s people, communicating with God, worshiping God, learning about him. If we don’t know him, if we don’t experience his love and his grace personally, then we’re not going to be motivated to serve him faithfully. If we don’t get to know God, we’re not going to experience him as he really is. We’re going to develop false ideas about God like this servant did. God really is not the way many people think he is. But if we want to know God for who he is, we need to spend time with him. We need to cultivate our relationship with him. Only then will we understand what it means and be motivated to serve him faithfully.
*** 2) Find and know your gifts. God has given each of us everything we need to fulfill the purpose he’s put us in this world. He wants each of us to know him personally and help others get to know him. Just how each of us does that depends on our gifts, especially our spiritual gifts. And the spiritual gifts God gives us are for the common good of God’s people. So if you want to find out what your gift is, and put it to use as God intended, you need to be around God’s people — whether you know what your gifts are and how to use them or not. How are you gonna know if your gift is teaching if you never try to teach anybody? How are you gonna know if you have a heart to serve if you never try to serve anyone? We can’t just sit in the back row, arrive at 10:00 sharp and leave the moment it’s over. We can’t just come to church to check off our spirituality for the week. We can’t just say every other Sunday, “I’m too tired, I’ll just skip it.” If we want to use our gifts as God has entrusted us with them, we have to be with God’s people. There’s no way around it. And then we also take those gifts out into the world to share the gospel with others.
*** 3) Use them faithfully. Figure out how you can use your gift. With some people this means making a career out of it. With others it means making it an extremely important part of your life. But be sure to use the gifts God has given you, and you will succeed. Whatever the outward results, even if you appear to have failed, if you are faithful with what God’s given you, then you have succeeded. If you have screwed up and not been faithful in using God’s gifts, and if you repent and commit to getting to know him and putting your trust and your life completely in Christ’s hands, and carrying out the purpose he has for you, then you will succeed, regardless of past failures.
And that, as the master says, leads to joy; the master says to the good servants, “Enter into the joy of your master.” But it’s not an unstable, constantly-changing joy. It’s an eternal joy that comes from an eternal relationship with the eternal God. And each of the things we’ve done for God that matter — our true and real successes — will add to that joy. Success is faithfulness. Success is faithfully doing things that will matter forever. And only what we do in faithfulness to Christ will matter forever.
