1
Kingdom Investments
FUMCHOT SPRNGS
Michael L. Mattox
Did you hear the one about the 3 guys who came into some serious money completely by
surprise? Yes! Seems their boss took off for an extended trip and left each of them with an
unbelievable sum, literally thousands of dollars! Let’s work with the story just a little because
there’s some odd words that might seem confusing to 21st Century ears like ours…
I realize the story is actually not a news report of an actual occurrence of some event in Jesus’
time—in actuality, it’s a parable--a story that Jesus makes up (or one he’s heard from his
childhood and modified) in order to make a point.
At first, the story might be a little hard for us to comprehend because it keeps using the word,
talent, and today, we take that to mean something like the word skill, natural ability, and such.
However, this is not what is implied in this story. A talent is a large sum of money—equal to the
amount a day laborer might make working every day for 15 years. Now look around you… not
many of you would call yourselves day laborers, but I can imagine you can do the math and
estimate in today’s dollars how much that might be: ($8.00 an hour X 40 hours per week X 52
weeks a year [not much vacation time for a day laborer] X 15 years = nearly $250,000! That is
one talent. In any case, the landowner’s going out of town… and gives one talent—$250,000 to
one servant, $500,000 to another, and almost $1.25 million (five talents) to another. Are you
with me so far? That’s it… next, he leaves without saying a word! The landowner didn’t leave
instructions. He didn’t leave demands. He didn’t threaten bodily harm. He didn’t say, “I’ll be
back before you know it and will want this back, so be careful.” He just left. But, eventually, he
did come back.
It is only when he comes back that we learn what happened to these three “slaves” and see what
all this money did to them. But before we see what happened, let me tell you about a phone call
I got the other day.
“Dan” called the other day, someone refered to me from the church’s organization called
The General Board of Pensions. Like some of you, I turned 60 this past summer, and I didn’t
want to just ignore the entire situation of “getting older”, so I called Pensions Board to inquire
“how am I doing?” Now I realize (as they say) it’s all just figures on paper, but it seemed quite
alarming to see figures on paper that will one day be used as a benchmark for my retirement
income. Dan’s first question to me was “What is your risk tolerance?” How was I to know?
Right there on the spot he had a six-question “survey” that he claimed could identify my risk
tolerance, so bam, bam, bam…he started firing away questions. This, he claimed, could identify
my risk tolerance.
The landowner in Jesus’ story asked no such questions of his servants before he left on his
lengthy journey. But if Dan had called the landowner, I’m pretty sure he would have said this
landowner had a very high risk tolerance! So did two of the servants. And, it seemed to all work
out very well for them. No, they didn’t have the stock market but they had a notion about
investing resources in the future! They knew a lot about KINGDOM INVESTMENTS! The
one who first had five talents-- $1.25 million ended up with almost $2.5 million and the one who
2
had two talents—1/2 million, ends up with twice that—nearly a million dollars. The one who
had one talent… nearly a quarter of a million dollars brings it back to the master, dusts off the
dirt that had accumulated on it and hands it back (relieved, I’m sure, to be rid of the
responsibility).
You can’t help but notice, however, that as the story goes, the last servant didn’t hand the
one talent back without making a little speech first. Neither of the other two servants made such
a speech. All they say was merely “Here’s what you gave me, and here’s that much again
because I used your money to make more.” But not the last servant. He has quite a speech,
revealing his opinions about the master himself (you are a harsh man… you reap where you
don’t even sow… you gather where you do not scatter) so, feeling this way about you, I was
terrified with this, your money, so I just buried it! Apparently, he’s the only one that feels that
way. Who’s to know if he’s even right in judging his master so harshly—the other two don’t
seem to have such notions.
He buries his talent…his treasure, but the others employ theirs—we don’t know how
exactly, but we can assume they risk here and there, spread things around, invest here and there,
expose themselves financially and end up with praise and commendation from the Master
Landowner. And the one who buries his treasure is judged, harshly too!
I’ve heard that if you can’t “judge a book by its cover” you also can’t tell a lot about a person
just by looking at him (or her). Instead, you have to probe a little deeper. And some say you get
the biggest indicator of what that person’s really like by looking at his checkbook! You might be
surprised if we took just a quick glance at American Christians’ “checkbook.” Here’s some of
what we’d find:*
 Some enjoy putting their money where their mouth is in church giving, especially when it
comes to mission giving—that’s giving that goes outside the maintenance/upkeep of a
congregation to help others in need. In 2005 American Protestants gave nearly $5.2
billion dollars to such endeavors! These are gifts like these “Ingathering Offerings” we’ll
raise today. But, did you know that during that same year Americans spent over $60
billion dollars on soft drinks alone? More than ten times the amount spent on mission
giving!
We’re burying ourselves and our treasure in stuff! Remember those statistics I just shared with
you and consider this as well. From Behind the Stained Glass Window, the research team of
John & Sylvia Ronsvalle report this about American priorities:
 In 1996 alone we Americans spent $2.5 billion on chewing gum
 $34 billion on state lotteries
 $22 billion on hunting
 $24 billion on eating “out”
Seeing how all those numbers stack up together against what we place in the offering plate is
staggering. Yet, despite all that spending, we don’t seem to be, as they say, “buying happiness.”
Newsweek Magazine reported that between 1995 and 1998, when over one million new
millionaires were created, 72% of them reported they felt more social pressure to “keep up.”
Do all those figures and statistics make you feel like you’re drowning? Feeling buried by it all?
Fear & dread, when you give in to it can make you do some very silly things… like burying
treasure!
Where, really, is your greatest treasure?
3
“As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace”
(I Peter 4; 10) and this same spirit is echoed in First Corinthians and in Ephesians (I Cor. 12:7;
Eph. 4; 7).
Remember that old song…“What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought since
Jesus came into my heart!”? Can you think of anything more treasured than your relationship
with Jesus—anything that has ever come into your life that is more valuable than that? I can’t
either. But I wonder sometimes if we’re not burying that greatest treasure we’ll ever have—
sticking it in the ground somewhere, hiding our light under a bushel basket, not investing it in the
lives of others, just like the lazy, fearful servant.
After serving 20 years on the Board of Directors of the UMFoundation, I was asked to bring the
devotional at the meeting last Friday in Little Rock, noted, by the CEO of the organization that I
had also brought the devotional as a board member in my first year of service in 1994. At that
meeting, it was reported that a fellow UMPastor’s widow died earlier this year…, Vernon
Paysinger She was united in marriage to the Rev. Vernon Paysinger on Feb. 9, 1941. The
Paysingers served United Methodist churches in West Memphis (Rosewood), Hoxie, Beebe,
Lepanto, Prairie Ridge, Paris (Coles Chapel), Batesville (Central Avenue), Ft. Smith
(Hendricks Hills) and McCrory. At her death, Paysinger was a member of Central Avenue
United Methodist Church Batesville.
Paysinger and her husband were life-long advocates for programs designed to eradicate hunger.
Before Rev. Paysinger died, he and his wife, Eva planned for the creation of the Rev. Vernon
and Eva Lee Paysinger Memorial Endowment Fund at the United Methodist Foundation of
Arkansas to express their concern for others in perpetuity, leaving a gift of over $750,000 and
annual income from this fund will be used to support world hunger ministries. All who knew Eva
Lee Paysinger and her husband knew that they lived simply so that they could give to others
abundantly.
Eva, Vernon, and many many others like these two servants in Jesus’ parable knew about
kingdom investments. We could use a lot more of them today!