Pentecost 25 2026

Proper 28, Year A · Matthew 25:14–30

Oh Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

As I read and reflected on this week’s Gospel, I kept returning to the third servant’s explanation, the servant who was given one talent and buried it in the ground. We might put it this way: “I was afraid, so I hid.”

I suspect many of us recognize ourselves in those words. We have all been that servant with the one talent. Perhaps some of us are there right now.

A talent, by the way, was a substantial amount of money—roughly fifteen or more years’ wages for a laborer. Even the servant who receives the least has been entrusted with something extraordinary.

For us, that raises a question about our relationship with what has been entrusted to us: our resources, our time, our abilities, our opportunities to love and serve in community. When we receive these things with gratitude, recognizing how much of our lives depend upon gifts we could never have earned, we begin to approach them with humility.

But as we listen for what this parable asks of us, we might consider: What are we doing with what has been placed into our care?

Before we follow the third servant to the place where he digs his hole, we should notice the first two. They take what has been entrusted to them and put it to work. And although they receive different amounts, both hear the same words of welcome: “Enter into the joy of your master.”

The amounts themselves are extravagant. Jesus gives us a story overflowing with abundance and opportunity, and I think we miss the point if we turn it into a calculation. This is no more a lesson in investment strategies than the parable of the sower is a lesson in agriculture.

Alongside last week’s parable of the ten bridesmaids and their lamps, this story invites us to consider how we respond to what we have received. And for us, that raises a question about love: How do we respond to the immeasurable, extraordinary love given to us by God? How might we allow it to take root in our lives, to grow and blossom through our care for one another, until it reaches beyond anything we could contain?

Here at Emmanuel, we have much to give thanks for: this church, its people, and the generations whose faithfulness has made our life together possible. We recognize something of those first two servants in people who received what had been entrusted to them and offered it generously—in service, in creativity, in care for their neighbors. Their courage continues to bless us.

And alongside that gratitude, we can be honest about the fear we carry. We may recognize ourselves in all three servants: sometimes ready to offer what we have, sometimes hesitant, sometimes afraid enough to hide it. The same person can know each of those responses.

Giving thanks for the courage of those who came before us makes room for that honesty. We do not have to imagine that they were completely fearless to honor their faithfulness, just as we do not have to wait until we are fearless to offer our own gifts of love and gratitude.

Still, there are moments when we recognize the third servant’s words:

I was afraid, so I hid.

Fear and hiding appear early in Scripture. In the garden, Adam and Eve hide among the trees. When God calls to him, Adam explains that he was afraid because he was naked, and he hid.

There is something deeply familiar about that vulnerability: the fear of truly being seen, of having our flaws exposed alongside our gifts.

We may hide behind the version of ourselves we believe others will accept. We keep our uncertainty, our questions, and even our hopes out of sight.

Perhaps we fear that our gift will not be good enough, so we never offer it.

Perhaps we fear rejection, so we leave an apology unspoken.

We may simply fear the unknown because we cannot control the outcome.

I was afraid, so I hid.

Fear is a natural human response. We cannot simply command it to disappear. Yet we can ask how much authority we are allowing it to have over our lives.

The parable ends harshly, and we should allow ourselves to feel its weight. What we do—or leave undone—with what has been entrusted to us matters. Our withdrawal has consequences for ourselves and for those who need our love.

But we also hear this invitation: “Enter into the joy of your master.”

What we do with what God has entrusted to us takes its meaning from the shared life in the reign of God which Jesus proclaims. We offer our resources and our gifts in gratitude, for the good of our neighbors, and for the joy of living in covenant relationship with God.

The invitation to enter the master’s joy helps me hear this parable as something deeper than a demand to produce more or prove our worth.

What might it mean, then, to receive what has been entrusted to us with goodwill and gratitude? To offer our gifts because we have something to share, because we love our neighbors, because there is joy in simply showing up?

We know something of that experience, too. Acting out of fear is part of our story, but so are generosity, courage, and love.

Perhaps we do not have to look very far to see what an offering of love can become.

Look around this church.

In one of the paintings in the chancel, Natalie Bayard Brown is pictured offering Emmanuel Church to God, represented by the burning bush. Around her are people offering their work: architects, painters, musicians. What they have made, what they have learned, what they have been entrusted with—all brought into the presence of God in community.

There is something deeply moving about worshiping inside an offering someone else made. We sit here, sing here, pray here, and come to this table because people we never knew gave something of themselves.

These murals and this reredos were dedicated one hundred and five years ago, in thanksgiving for peace after the First World War, and in honor of those from Emmanuel who served—including four parishioners who never came home.

We remember their courage with gratitude. We also remember the cost: four lives lost, four people whose absence was felt in this community. We cannot know everything they carried, or everything they feared. Courage does not require an absence of fear. Sometimes courage means answering a call to serve while carrying fear with us.

And the gift made here in their memory was an act of thanksgiving for peace. Grief and gratitude found expression in something that would keep gathering people into prayer, long after those who gave it were gone.

All around us, these paintings take up the song we have sung today: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord.” Creation joins in praise. Human work joins in praise. And we, here this morning, add our own voices.

Some of our offerings of love and gratitude may take a form that lasts for generations. Much of it will be quieter: time offered in caring for our neighbors, caring for our garden, a difficult act of forgiveness; a meal prepared; a song sung, a child encouraged; the decision to keep showing up for one another in this space.

We rarely know how far such love will reach. Those who gave these gifts could not have known us. Yet here we are, still receiving them.

In the garden, God calls to Adam and Eve in hiding: “Where are you?” I hear that question reaching toward us, too.

God continues to call us into relationship, into responsibility, into the shared life of the kingdom which Jesus proclaims.

Where is God inviting us to participate today, perhaps even while we are afraid or uncertain?

In the conversation we keep postponing? The gift we hesitate to offer? The person who needs our care or presence, even when we do not know what to say?

Perhaps our next faithful step will be small. Perhaps our voice will tremble or our legs will shake as we take it.

And perhaps, by God’s grace at work in us, we will begin to tell a different story:

I was afraid, and still I offered what I had been given.

Works Cited

The Murals of Emmanuel Church, Newport, RI. Emmanuel Church, Newport, Rhode Island. Parish handout identifying James T. Kaull’s 1986 work as its original source.