What Does God Look Like ? Matthew 25:14-30

What does God look like? The ancients, many different tribes and nationalities, would all have had different answers, as they often had many gods and many idols in the likeness of those gods. The Children of Israel would have said they did not know, for no one could look upon the Face of God and live, but God appeared as a pillar of fire, a pillar of cloud, a burning bush, the whirlwind.

As Christians today, we would say the we know the Face of God, for we know Jesus, God’s only Son, but then if you look at the many ways Jesus has been portrayed since His ascension, we are still not certain of exactly how He looked during His time on earth.

Still, we like our image of Jesus, because He looks like us. He is human, which was, of course, prat of God’s plan in coming down to dwell among us. And because it is so important for us to truly relate to Jesus, we have a tendency to go beyond God’s plan, and create a Jesus in our own image. We want a Black Jesus, an Asian Jesus, a Native American Jesus, to name just a few representations I’ve seen, and while this is totally understandable, and acceptable, we go even further. We attribute to Jesus the characteristics and personality that we think should be His. And this is, of course, where we run into problems. It is this tendency of ours, to create God in our own image, that Jesus is speaking of in today’s parable. It is a parable about how we understand God.

Jesus is not only aware of the human tendency to create God in our own image, but is also aware that our images of God have serious consequences for how we live: how we understand ourselves, our relationships to others, and the way we face the world around us. Jesus is telling us that if we understand God as boundless and exuberant grace and mercy, we will probably see our own lives in a similar fashion. But if we understand God to be harsh and miserly, we will probably see life in these terms as well. In the Parable of the Talents, which is the one we heard this morning, Jesus is setting before us a choice. Do you see God as grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy, as unlimited and boundless generosity? Or do you see the nature of God as harsh and miserly and punitive? Choosing one or the other will have deep consequences for the shape and quality of our lives.

Let’s take another look a today’s parable, a look at the story Jesus tells.

Jesus said, “It is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one…

Now, if we were listening to Jesus in the first century, and heard the beginning of this story, we would have known right away that this was not a story about an ordinary person. We would be aware that a “talent” in Jesus’ day was equal to about fifteen years of wages for a servant. One talent is about sixty to seventy-five pounds of silver. It’s an enormous sum. So, to one servant, He gives seventy-five years’ worth of wages, to another thirty years’ worth of wages, and to another fifteen years’ worth of wages. He hands over about five hundred pounds of silver to His servants and then he takes off. It’s sort of a joke, good for a laugh. People just don’t act like that.

And that’s precisely the point. People don’t act like that. But when we stop smiling, the more important point starts to sink in. Even though people don’t act like that, God does. The God who created all things out of an infinite generosity, out of an infinite love that overflowed into all of creation, the love that moves the sun and the other stars, this God pulls back in love from overpowering us and says, “Here you go, look after things for me.” An awesome, generous, and gracious God, who has given us riches beyond belief, if we would but have eyes to see. Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, yet not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.

The question Jesus presses home in this parable is this: How do people respond to the extravagant and gracious God? How do we respond to the generosity of God?

In the parable, the first servant, the one who received five talents, immediately went out and traded with what he had been given and he made five more talents. Notice, it says he went out “at once.” The owner pours out an extravagant amount of riches upon his servant, and he “at once” goes out and does the same. He understands the gracious gift of God, and he responds in kind, exuberantly, extravagantly. He doesn’t hold back what God has given him, but right away starts multiplying God’s gifts. And when the master comes and sees how his servant has used his gifts, God pours out even more riches upon him, this time welcoming him into the eternal joy of his Master. This is Godly economics. God pours out an abundance of grace and mercy upon His servants and His servants pour out this grace and mercy on others. God says well done. There is now even more grace and mercy; enter now into everlasting joy.

This is the world of grace the first servant lives in. The second as well. They both see and understand the graciousness of God and the abundance of love and mercy God has poured upon them. And in response, they both go and invest the grace they have been given by God in the world around them. The result is an overflowing of abundance and the promise of eternal joy.

The last servant, however, doesn’t get it. Like the other two, he receives an enormous windfall. But instead of seeing it as the gift of a good and gracious Lord, seeing it as a sign of a world of grace, he becomes afraid. He has been given much, but he responds with fear rather than generosity. What should he do with so much money, such an abundance of riches? His “great” idea, driven by fear, is to go and dig a hole and bury the money. This is the action of a frightened man. This is the action of a person who thinks the world is out to get him, that God is out to get him.

This frightened, little man has convinced himself that despite the enormous generosity shown to him by God, that God is a hard Master, a miserly Master, a punitive Master. Notice, there is no reason given in the story why he should think this. Rather, this servant has created God in his own image: a frightened, hard, miserly little God. And the servant is so afraid of the false image of God he has created, that he fails to see everything God has given him. He cuts himself off from others. He digs a hole and buries what God has given him in the ground. He might as well have buried himself along with his money. Controlled by his puny image of God, this servant cuts himself off from the true God, from others, from his own self.

When the master comes and finds this frightened little man quaking before him, he basically says, you have dug your own grave, so now you can go and lay down in it. If the way he responds to the abundance of riches that God has poured out upon him is to create for himself a fiction of a hard and miserly God, then so be it. He gets what he asks for. God tells him, in effect, to take his puny little self and his puny little idea of God and go and lay down in the hole he has dug for himself.

Spiritual writers tell us that we become like the things we worship. People who worship money become greedy human calculating machines. People who worship power become ruthless. People who worship the true God become fully human.

Jesus puts before us a similar truth in the Parable of the Talents. It’s really a choice. How are we going to respond to the extravagant riches God has poured out upon us, who poured out His very self for us? How do we see this God? Do we see the true God, a God of unlimited grace and mercy, forgiveness, and love? Or do we create an image of God based upon our own fear, a God that is hard and miserly and punishing? Are we going to respond to the grace and generosity of God by going out into the world and living graciously and generously? Or are we going to be governed by our fears, and cut ourselves off from everything that is true and good and beautiful in this world, dig our own graves, throw in our talents, and crawl in after them?

How do you see God? That is the choice we all must make.

Let us pray:

Day by day, O, Dear Lord three things we pray - to see Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, follow Thee more nearly - day by day. In Jesus Name, Amen.