The parable of the entrepreneurs (Danielle's Nov 13 sermon)

Computer geeks have ruined us.  I mean that seriously.  Bill Gates has ruined us.  Steve Jobs has ruined us.  Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has ruined us, and not because we now spend all our free time looking at pictures of our high school friends' children's birthday parties.  All of these insane geniuses have ruined us because our popular perception of them, the stories and legends we've created around them, the amazing scale of their specialized intellects, define for our culture what it means to be entrepreneurial.

Now it's always been the case that societies hold up their best and brightest.  Our tradition has saints, after all -  and if you think it’s hard to emulate them, when you consider our cultural saints, it gets downright overwhelming.  Somebody like Bill Gates started writing code as a little kid and grew a company so big it ran up against anti-trust laws.  Somebody like Jobs so revolutionized the way we process information that many of us can honestly look back two or three years and say that the way we think and act has been transformed by a cell phone.  If that's what it means to be an entrepreneur, then we've got our work cut out for us.  And this matters, because entrepreneurialism - the creativity, adventuresomeness, and fruitfulness that we associate with tech giants and designers and business moguls - is something every person of faith is called to. 

Look at the three people in our parable today.  Just as in the angry story about the wedding banquet that we read earlier this fall, Jesus tells this story to illustrate what the kingdom of God is like.  And here the kingdom of God is like an investor who gives three entrepreneurs some seed money, some creative license, a vague deadline, and maintains high expectations.

You know now how it all cashes out: the first entrepreneur makes it work, just like the investor thought he would - that's why he was given the most capital.  The second does fine, as expected, and is duly rewarded.   The third entrepreneur caves.  He crumbles.  He doesn't have any good ideas, he doesn't have any training, he doesn't have time to do any research and can't think of anything game-changing to do with the seed money, so he defaults to maintaining the status quo and buries his talent - and his head - in the earth.  The investor returns, and after he's oohed and aahed  over the innovative and productive things entrepreneurs one and two have placed in his lap, he’s presented with a dirty bag of money that looks disappointingly familiar.  Entrepreneur three can tell things aren't going well, so words start tripping and falling out of his mouth, "I was afraid, Mr. Investor!  You're a little bit sketchy and everybody thinks you're kind of scary, so I thought if I just didn't risk the money, then we could all be happy - nothing ventured nothing lost, right?" 

Wrong.  Entrepreneur number three misunderstood the creative task he was handed in the same way we are prone to misunderstand it.  He misunderstood what it means to be a faithful entrepreneur.  In an atmosphere like ours of professionalism and expertise, not only can doubt about our fitness for ministry, our resources for ministry, and our God-given gifts run rampant, but we can misidentify what ministry and what gifts actually look like.  We imagine that entrepreneurialism is about producing flawless things.  Without fail.  With great élan.  Fearlessly.  Our popular culture has it that entrepreneurs look like the three "saints" mentioned earlier - the brains, bucks, and bossiness behind Microsoft, Apple, and social networking.  Or we might acknowledge that entrepreneurialism happens on a smaller scale, but with no less astounding, complex things that require specialized intelligence, like that really great Dyson vacuum cleaner that can pivot around corners.  The inventors and investors behind all of these things are entrepreneurial and all of them are smart and imaginative.  But none of them are unique.  Rather, they are working hard at tasks that belong to all people of faith, tasks that are the essence of entrepreneurialism: creative problem-solving, shared risk-taking, and partnership.   

Creative problem-solving begins with a perceived opportunity, challenge, lack - or maybe even with something really good that could be made better.  In the church family, faithful entrepreneurialism could be as simple as this: Scripture has to be read every Sunday.  The communion must be prepared every Sunday.  Children need to be taught every Sunday.  So you enlist yourself in one of those rotations.  Opportunity, challenge, lack ... solution.  There’s more to add here, because there's more at stake than just signing up - that's a first step.  But let’s look at other potentialities in our parish life that call for a spirit of faithful entrepreneurialism.  Ray preached about stewardship last week and mentioned a time in the church when a beloved tutoring program moved to a new location and the parish wanted to continue serving others in our space.  Neighbors in Need was born, with creativity, shared risk, and parntership.

We have another feeding ministry here that has been launched into the entrepreneurial moment.  Over a decade ago a dedicated group of people saw an opportunity in the desire for an outreach program, in the challenge of women struggling with homelessness, and in the needs of a neighborhood agency who serves them.  The creative solution they arrived at was Cooking for Deborah's Place, where members of our church shop for, cook, and deliver a Friday meal once a month to an overnight shelter where local women sleep in safety.  As with any group a community developed around the ministry, and the woman at the center of it, our friend Noma Cave, died a little over one month ago.  In the wake of her death, creative problem-solving, shared risk-taking, and parntership are the name of the game as the people who love this mission come together and explore questions like, "How do we move forward, practically?"  "How do we deepen relationships with our companions in this work, and how do we meet the precious challenge of building new relationships, inviting new people into the ministry in a busy, time-challenged parish?"   There is spirit and energy in this discussion.  There is openness, welcome, and imagination. There is flexibility, as the group thinks about its mission and methods, and generosity as people who have served in the past come forward to help and as others, like the Neighbors in Need crew, lend support and thoughtfulness to their Deborah's Place friends. 

But there’s a still more-important feature of this conversation that magnifies the character of faithful entrepreneurialism: the tools being used to do this are not tools of expertise, professionalism, or insane genius.  They are mystical, but they're not mystifying.  They are the fruits of the Spirit - the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we celebrate in baptism and that flourish in our baptismal ministries.  Deborah's Place is named for the female judge, Deborah, whose story was proclaimed today, not because she was a brilliant strategist, but because she was courageous, decisive, and wise.  And the ministry of Deborah's Place will continue at our church because our church is tenacious, compassionate, relationship-oriented, even sacrificial.  These aren't things you learn in school.  These aren't one-of-kind assets plunked in your cosmic piggy bank before birth that stack your deck ahead or behind of anybody else's.  These are habits of virtue, patterns of a redeemed life that grow as a body grows - our body of Christ in which we discover holiness with one another. 

But all of these fruits, gifts, virtues, and habits are not generic, either.  In each life, some of them are special.  Some of them are talents.  Among us today are people who are remarkably good listeners.  Some of you are remarkably patient.  Some of you are driven to be kind.  Some of you are unfailingly diligent.  Some of you are peace-makers, bridge-builders, consensus-seekers, and some of you are agitators.  You become a lector because you read well, and you join the altar guild because you want to help, but is it really about your voice and how well you clean a chalice, or is it about your deep appreciation and reverence for word and sacrament?  Is it about your sensitivity to holy things?  Have you ever been told that you are hospitable, patient, incisive, perceptive, detail-oriented or good at big-picture thinking? Gentle, assertive, passionate, or dedicated?  Those are your talents.  Those are the things that make us all human, that make us a good creation.  In a eulogy for one of those famous entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs' sister didn't share that her brother was great at algorhythms.  She said, "He loved beauty."  Bill Gates doesn't work for Microsoft anymore ... he was receptive to criticisms of his charitable giving and established a transparent philanthropic foundation.  So he's generous, but maybe his talent is really openness.  And Mark Zuckerburg could use his abilities toward any number of ends, but he says again and again that what he really wants to do is connect people with one another.  So yeah, he's smart, but his smarts make a difference because of his talent: an abiding interest in people.  These are the kind of talents we're all given to some degree or another, and they're the things we're called to draw out of one another. So if nobody has, in fact, told you that you are discerning, or loyal, or curious, then you deserve to be told.  We have to be able to listen to our own lives, but we’re bound to listen to each other's, as well - at the very least because we need every talent in this place to be a whole body, with all its members. 

And the kingdom of God needs it, too.  The kingdom of God is people by faithful entrepreneurs.  It is a community of talent, where self is offered as the creative solution to the opportunities, challenges, and lack we encounter.  It is a community where risk is shared and rewarded and partnerships are built in support and discernment.  And where these things do not take place – where talent is buried and creativity, risk, and relationship founder, there is loss.  We suffer the loss of each others’ talent and we suffer the diminishment of our own.  So our true partner, our foundational relationship, must be with the One creator-problem-solver who risks loving us enough to leave this earth and this family to our care, to leave each one of us to the other’s concern, and who trusts our talents to build a kingdom.  Let us pray.

Almighty God whose loving hand has given us everything.  Grant us grace that we may honor you with our substance and be talented stewards of your kingdom of love.  Through Christ our Lord, Amen.