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~~ FAITH 1S A GAMBLE APRIL 30, 1972

MATTHEW 25:14-30 JOHN M. BUCHANAN

A very curious and prophetically signiticant situation emerged last week around
the city of An Loc, South Vietnam. 17,000 clvifians and 6,000 soldters are under
siege In An Loc. They are surrounded by a thin but wel! armed force of North Viet-
namese. Fifteen miles down the road Is a relief column of crack troops. As of my
last reading they were stalled and had been stalled for several days, becruse
between them and An Loc lies a great open plain. To move across that plain would be
an immense gamble. To commit is to chance a severe defeat. But to sit still: to
not commit is to guarantee the loss of the city. a |

Military history Is full of those kinds of situations. in the early years of the
Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's greatest problem was finding ine man who would commit
himsel#, a General who would throw his tropps into battle. Man after man was con-
sidered and tried, but al! held back: each one had apparently sousd reasons of
prudence - the need for more troops, more training, more weapons, more suppfies. Ar“
it seemed for a while that Abraham Lincoln was the only man In the North who knew what
Robert E. Lee knew in the South; namely, that nothing would be gained nor won, nor
would the war be terminated apart from the willingness to gamble.

General Mark Clark wrote his persona! memotrs of the North African and Mediteranen
Campaign in World War !1 under the title ‘Calculated Rick.” In that book the cohesive
theme is the tremendous gamble involved in any military endeavor. Prudence always
dictates standing still, regrouping, waiting. But victory dictates the courage To
gamble.

On more modest level | shall tong remember a cold and rainy Saturday afternnon
at Ross-Ade Stadium when coach DeMoss gambled to win against Ohio State rather than
settle for a tying field goal and lost. And ! felt at the time that it was better
that way.

Now, what do An-toc and the Civil War and General Clark and a strategic decision
In a football game have to do with the fatth and life of people like you and me?

r
Everything in the world, | belleve. for fhe lesson taught by each of those fest
be

i!lustrations is the same jesson taught and lived by our Lord Jesus Christ: thet 7

-2- 0 WS
live a full life ~ to experience futlness of faith is to gamble. |
You know the story. A wealthy man gave three of his servants money and then

went away. The’ scholars tell us that the amounts were not insignificant: the firet
received the equivalent of $10,000, the second - $5,000, the third - $1,000. When he
returned some time later the first two had invested In business and had doubled their

anev. They # °c handsomely rewarded. The third had hid the money under the mattress
and returned to his master exactly what he had been given. For his efforts - for his
prudence - he was treated as severely as anyone in the New Testament.

e A + 1 am intregued by two things in that story. First, what do you suppose would have

Yea-have--to-assume-that

happened had one of those first two servants lost the money?

there was .great—rick-involved=—-as-thers.always ic io financiatiinvestment. Weebamiaeko
assume that there was atuleast«theepessibility of losing it all.
pike

‘hai thetr master was not known as a particularly gracious doser. What would have

The riskiness of the

happened had they gambled and lost? | don't know of course, but | chose to believe
that they would not have been treated as harshly as number three who did not gambie,
and trrefore neither won nor lost. ‘=bheby=heb=pe-witt Pr 'TTTe paral lo reaerre Ss.

LL.

Second, I'm intr.igued by the severity of the punishment meted out to this "'
crugnt. | Sestntrtgued=becarsccDcanyCRescueS-or TST Tess te-wesabsceaated. He had
enown himself, after all, to be prudent and safe and dependable. He was no.gamblor:
he took no chances - he was, according to our standards, altogether admirable. Yet,
as the story concludes te has been stripped of everything and unceremoniously thrown
into the outer darkness. He didnit gamble and lost.

| think that is an extremely Important story because it is so different from the
way we are inclined to regard the tasks of living.

Somewhere along the tine, most of us strike a bargain with life, and it's not a
very good one. Somewhere along the line we learn the lesson that the pain of dic.

pointment can be avoided if we don't gamble with life.

To be hurt in love; to commit oneself and give totally and then be hurt sometir-s

wounds us so deeply that we contemplate, at Icast, never taking that chance again.

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When we see it happening to our children, when we are called on to stand by and watch
6 son or daughter fall hopelessly in love we are afraid for them and want very badly to
teli them don't do that: don't get so Involved: you're going to get burt.’ of
course, the result of that is nover to know the joy and incredible ecstacy of bein,

rave. y One wetter? puts it this way: ‘When w: love we are in danger of being hurt.

The ultimate tralpady is to be ightuned into withdrawal by risks that keep us from not

loving BT ali.’ © (James Angef!, Piet Your Arms Around the City, P. 175)

The terrible pain of griat when someone dear to us dies is always a product of
our love for that person. “When people stand in the midst of dark and heavy sorrow ,
dames Angell advises, ‘we can only hold them hard and say, 'This is the way it has to
be. If we tlove hard and deeply, then our sorrow will be like that, too, But it's
worth it, It's just that one is the price of the other’.

Or perhaps we have been hurt professional ty, vocationally. Perhaps we've wanted
a better job, another assignment, a promotion, and committed oneself to it to the eng.
that our pride and cgo ts on the linc. And we tost, and the bitter dregs of disappo ’rt-
ment and punctured pride taught us never to commit that much again: never to want any-
thing that badly again. And we make a bargain at that point to avoid gambl-j Baran
if hurts so badty.

Maybe it is a political invotvement. To gct deeply involved with a candidate

“a party is, in the truest sensc, to commit onesclf in love. And to lose is to
be bitterly disappointed. Th: day after election is a time of deep gloom for many
Peopie, and out of their persona! pain a lot of them will vow this Wednesday never to
get that invoived again, because it hurts so badly.

Charfotte Bronte once wrote, ‘Better to try all things and find alf empty, than to
try nothing and tuave yur life a blank.’ Those are good words - an eloquent sentiment.
But life has taught us the hard lesson - that gambling can mean fosing: that commiying
can mean pain. And so w. make our bargain: we lower our sights, but the dream respect
Pilly to rest, and come to terms with the status quo.

And at the psint we die a little bit. At that point we give up a fittle bit of

our humanity: at that point we turn our backs on the joyful potential God has given. |

“i
You see, what's really at stake, what's really behind it all is that rather clear New
Testament dictum that to live as God created us to live is to love - to love to the
point of gambii.g - of commiting - of investing ourselves. What's really at stake
is The outer darkness of the third servant who took no chances. An outer darkness,
which in Middle Class American terms, sounds very much like boredom and meaninglessness:
the day to day filling of time without anything mattcring much. jhe rampant emptiness
of security - eloquently documented in the motion picture, The Last Picture Show. -
George Sanders, suave actor, four times married, was found dead in his Barcelofic
Hotel room last week. And he left what | consider the saddest suicide note anyone con's
write: “I'm bored. live lived long enough."
That's what's at stake, Love - commitment - life itself.
ppeite keeps calling us to gamble whether we want to or not. | now of no riskier
business than getting married today. When two young people decide to commit themselves
to each other in the face of an uncertain economic future, the possibility of the draft,
and the statistical law of averages which says quite clearly that they have at least
a 25% chance of failure, they are taking a great cick. But it's worth the taking.
lf there is a greater gamble than that it is to conceive, bear and raise enrie ety.

to be exposed to the possibility of heart break: to take the chance of loving and

giving without ever being thanked or loved in return. But it is a risk werth the takivug.

Jas
A choice of vocation is always a gamble. | remember well having lunch with
minister when | was a senior in College: time was running out: a decision-tad to be
ail

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made: and | vas throwing at him al! the “what-if's’ ! couldttTnk of. ‘What it | find

ann

——
out | don’t want to be a minister? What lf 1-géF out there and can't make it

financially? What if | flunk o He said to me a very wise thing. “No decision

of any magnitude is cleap“for an honest man. You have to risk somcthing.'' And he went

on to fell me how his wedding day, he sat down on the side of the bath tub and very
nearly deci not to go through with it. And it is that rather smndane conversation
that onsider to b. my call to the ministry.

Life calls us to love deeply enough to gamble, to risk losing. C. S. Lewis said

1+ coautifully:

~h

“To Jove at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your. heart will

certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to be sure of

keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an

animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries:

avoid all entangelements. tock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your

selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it

will change, {tf will not be broken; it will become unbreakable: .. J.

The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation.

The only place outside,heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all

the dangers and pertulatioas of tove is hell. (The Four Loves)

[thet sounds to me like what happened to the third servant in Jesus's stofy. To
live openly, honestly and fully is to gamble. Yo experience open, honest, creetive and
fully Christian faith is also, | would suggest, to gamble.

Now. our understanding of faith is not usually related to words |ike risk and
gamble and vulnerability. ‘“aith, for most of us is assurance, certainty; or ecclessia-
stically the acceptance of certain tradition. “Faith ~ Faithful - Faithfulness" have
become soft, passive words. A faithful inaan is one who has stuck to his guns, played
his theologi al and moral cards close to his chest. and most of aj! has been quiet
serene and peaceful. In terms of what goes for the Christian ethic in our culture the
faithful man is tne one who has made a career out of keeping his hands cleang who
doesn't do a lot of things that are regarded as sinful] and @phose greatest hope for the
welfare of his fellow man rests on the restoration of prayer and Bible reading in the
public schools.

[ts was saying that that is all wrong: that that is not what faithfulness
means at all. Jesus was saying that faith is a “hard word: that it means investment -
not saving: gambling - not playing it safe. He was saying that a good and faithful
servant is one who knows how to love the world, and his own community and his fellowman
enough to take some chances, to become vulnerable. He was saying that you and | are
accountable - not on the basis of how much we wore able to believe - not on the basis

of all the evil we managed to avoid doing ~ not on the basis of the money in the ground -

but very simply, on the degree to which we gambled in love.

On the deepest possible level faith {is a ganb @, \ the honest man will know

days when God does not seem Almighty: when Go love for the world seems |ike so much

wishful thinking. when the very ex] ce of God is a dubious proposition. How do we

know? How do we kno are right? We don't. We have faith. We take a chance. We

throw es into the voice and hope.
One of the most eloquent preachers of th> past 6.f. Studdert~Kennedy- wrote a bit
of prose that | have come to love because itis truth is documented in experience,

“How do | know that God js good? | donit,

! gamble like a man

| Bet my lite
Upon one side of life's great war. | must
| can't stand out. f must take sides. The man

Who is neutral in this fight is not
A Man.~

That's where it rests for most of us. We bet our lives on one side in life's
greatwr ... We bet our lives on God.

Jesus told the story of the three servants to his disciples in the midst of the
biggest gamble in his life. it was the last week] th fad just come from a confron-
tation with the scribes and pharises in tie Temple: the die was Zast (he had gambled in
coming to the city: he had gambled again by going to the tempie. And now he was saying
to them: “This is how it is. This is what it means. Ta belong to me.”

And beyond that God, himself, took the greatest gamble of all. God sent his son,
to be born into a peasant family, to live @ common tite, to present his case to the
peopie - gambling that they would hear and Sec, or that the whole project would be
ignored, God put his gn - his fove - at tha disposal of humanity: and he keeps putting
it all on the tine, gamdliag on you ang me.

so ~ in life and in faith - let us remember that- when we are Temrred to make nur
own little bargain with life, let us recall that to live is to love, and to tove is

to gamble. Let us remusber, as we attempt to be faithful, that God himself, considers

us worth taking a chance. AEH
Father, you have given us ali we have ~ even our capacity to belleve. tn Jesus
Christ you have calied us to Invest ft all. Give us the wili - the courage, AMEN