The Lutheran Hour
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"Journey Through Ambition"
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Text: Matthew 25:21
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“Well done, good and faithful servant.” I believe that in our heart of hearts, these are words we all wish to hear. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Behind all of our labor and striving, our vocations and aspirations, which is to say, our ambitions–behind all of it, I believe there’s a longing to hear such commendation. So, with that hope in view, how then shall we live? What shape should our ambitions take?
Over the last few weeks on The Lutheran Hour, we’ve been on a series of journeys. Two weeks ago, it was a journey through anxiety. Last week, we took a journey through depression, and today we take a journey through ambition. Now, ambition is a sticky wicket for committed Christians. On the one hand, ambition has the connotation of being caught up in the rat race, climbing the ladder, punching the clock, doing everything you can to get ahead, go farther, gain more status, more income, more followers, more, more, more, in order to make a name for yourself.
From this perspective, ambition is decidedly negative. It’s here where we need passages of Scripture, like what the apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians. He said, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.” Ambition that is solely in service to yourself is contrary to God’s purposes. But Scripture is also clear that on the other hand, a lack of ambition is no better. I think of the poetic and rather humorous words of Solomon in Proverbs: “Go to the ant, O sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise.” To the person who is a layabout, who’s failing to apply himself, Solomon points to the ant, of all things, as if to say, “Look here. Here’s a creature that expends itself in service to others. It doesn’t lack drive but uses its energy in order to help its neighbors. Be like that.”
The ambition that uses your talents in service to others isn’t only positive, it’s positively necessary. Others are cheated if you don’t give your best. And so, ambition is neither totally negative nor totally positive. One biblical scholar puts it this way. He says the value of ambition in and of itself is ambiguous. It is the fire that warms the house or, unchecked, burns it to the ground. So the question isn’t whether you should have ambition, but what shape that ambition will take, and why.
To explore these questions and continue our journey through ambition, I’d like to turn to one of the stories that Jesus told, one that’s often called the parable of the talents. Let’s listen in and hear what the Savior can teach us about the shape of ambition in His kingdom.
Matthew 25:14-30…Jesus said, “For it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one, he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them and he made five talents more. So also, he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now, after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them and he who had received the five talents came forward bringing five talents more saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents. Here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents. Here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you didn’t sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. So, I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what’s yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I haven’t sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So, take the talent from him and give it to him who has the 10 talents. For to everyone who has will more be given and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!
What should we make of this parable? Let’s first provide some interpretation and then tease out a couple of implications for our lives and ambitions today. So as the story goes, there’s a master about to go on a journey who entrusts his possessions to his servants, five talents to one of them, two to another, and one talent to a third, and then he goes away. Now, I should mention that when we hear talent, we think of skill or ability, but in Jesus’ day, a talent was a measurement of money, a huge measurement, in fact. One talent amounted to about 20 years’ pay!
The master is committing his vast estate to his servants with nary a word about what to do with it. This very act speaks volumes about the master’s character. There’s the sense that if the servants know their master’s heart, they’ll know what to do with his possessions. So, after some time, the master returns and settles accounts with each of his servants. The first two are both commended–more on them in a moment. But the third servant, not so much. He steps up and says, in effect, “Well, boss, I know you’re a real miser, a real tough nut to crack. And to be blunt, I was afraid. I didn’t want to risk your wrath so I took the talent and hid it in the ground under a bushel. Now here, not a penny less than what you gave me.” Alas, this servant receives not commendation, but condemnation. Where did he go wrong? What’s the problem?
First, let’s make clear that the problem is not that he failed to get some huge return on the master’s investment. If I give my nine-year-old daughter $20 to start a lemonade stand and she goes and squeezes her lemons, sets up her table, pours her cups, greets passers-by, and at the end of the day, has $20 still to show for it, am I disappointed in her? Am I mad that I didn’t get a better return on investment? The Kool-Aid stand up the street made 50 bucks! By no means. So where does the third servant go wrong? His problem is his trust—or lack of trust—in his master. He missed and misjudged his master’s heart. What’s worse, he projects his own fear and hard heart onto the master. He looks at his Lord and thinks, “Nope, that master’s a miser, not trustworthy. It’s all a trap. I better save my skin rather than take a chance.”
This third servant is fundamentally faithless because what do we actually know about the master? Well, we can see that he is astonishingly generous. He gives to his servants, people who in the ancient world were regarded as worthless, next to nothing. He gives to these very servants the care of his kingdom. The master demonstrates his kindness by reckoning to them the dignity of a place and a purpose in his service. He sees nobodies as somebodies of inestimable worth. What kind of master does that? The master that calls you to be his own, our Lord Jesus. The One who, in the words of the book of Revelation, loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and has made for us a Kingdom. Christ Jesus is the One who has lavished upon you all the riches of His grace and kindness.
And now, as His disciples, He entrusts to you and me the measureless worth of His estate, the care of His incomparable Kingdom, all of which brings us back to the topic of ambition. What can this story teach us about the shape of our ambitions? How does the kindness and generosity of our Lord affect the way that we carry out our lives? Though many things could be said, I want to highlight two implications. First, the Lord encourages us through this story to take a risk. And second, He encourages us to embrace the little. First, I want to say that this story encourages us to take a risk for His kingdom. You and I have a kind and generous Master in our Lord Jesus. Far from being a hard man, we know that He is gentle and lowly of heart. He is the Savior who already has taken all the burden of your sin and mine and done away with it, once and for all.
And what’s more, as Scripture says, He gives to you His Spirit, not a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but the Spirit of adoption as sons and daughters. You’re no mere servant but a child of God. And so, we’re free. We are free to take a chance in this life by faith because we aren’t shackled by fear and foreboding. Our Lord’s got our back. You might think of it like this. I’m a football fan and there’s this funny phenomenon that will happen in many games when a player from the defense commits the penalty of going offsides. This means that he jumped the gun, so to speak, and he tried to get ahead of things before the play began. Well, you might expect at that point that the referees would blow the whistle and the play would stop, but that’s not what happens. What happens is that the offense gets a “free play.”
That’s what they call it. A free play. The show goes on and the offense knows that no matter what, at the very least, they’ll be moving forward five yards and getting a fresh crack at it, so they can throw a deep pass, run a trick play, try something new. And if the play works, bonus! You can score a touchdown, and it counts. But if the offense fumbles or throws an interception or just playing gets tackled for a loss, it doesn’t count. They don’t have to fear failure because it’s a free play. It’s an imperfect analogy, but what I mean by it is this: by means of Jesus’ death and resurrection, He has already ensured those who trust in Him that He has the victory. You don’t have to fear failure. His forgiveness covers over all the penalty of your sins and mine: past, present, and future.
And so the life of faith is like a free play. Author Will Guidara asks the question, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” It’s a question worth noodling over. Because trusting in our kind and generous Master who has entrusted to us our talents, we can take a chance in faith. We can undertake ambitions for the sake of His kingdom that we might never have otherwise thought possible without fear or failure. In fact, it gives Him great joy when we do so, whether those ambitions be great or small. And that brings me to the second implication from Jesus’ story. You know, for the longest time when I read or heard this parable, I thought that the point was that I needed to do great things for God, that what was most important was the size of the return that I would give to the Master on His investment in me.
But then one day I noticed a detail in the story that I had long overlooked. When the master celebrates his good and faithful servants, did you catch what he commends them for? He says, “You have been faithful over a little.” He says the same thing to both the servant with five talents and the one with two. So, the point isn’t how much they have. In both cases, he says, “You’ve been faithful over a little.” In the version of this story that’s told in Luke’s Gospel, the master uses an even more vivid word. He says, “Very little, teensy weensy.” Now, why do I mention this? Because our human default is always to assume that bigger is better, that worth is measured in significant size. But the point in the story isn’t the great size of the work or the grand scope of the ambition. The point is the faith that trusts in the mercy of the master who sees that what looks small to us may not be so small after all.
See, our God operates according to a different value system than that of the world. According to His values, the Kingdom looks like a minuscule mustard seed. According to His values, the grand hero is a widow who puts a pair of pennies in the till. According to His values, it’s the poor and spirit who are blessed, the weak and lowly who are elevated, the nobodies who are worthy of the greatest honor. The world’s ambitions make their aim that you make a name for yourself, but you don’t have to worry about making a name for yourself. In Christ, God has already given you His. When you’re baptized, He places upon you the Name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He says to you, “You are My beloved child in whom I am well pleased.”
When I think about what these little ambitions can look like, I think of a man I’ll call Rich. Rich had a sterling career as a military veteran and a police officer. He was a credit to his community and a pillar in his church where I had the opportunity to be his pastor for a number of years. But for all his accomplishments and successful ambitions, what I’ll remember Rich for most is the way he cared for his wife. Rich met his wife, Dawn, when they were both young, while he was on a tour of duty overseas. She was a war bride. They loved one another deeply, but as they aged together, Dawn began to suffer from dementia. Family and friends encouraged Rich to see about getting her placed in an assisted living center so he could move forward with his life. That may be fine for other folks, Rich said. But for him, keeping his wedding vows meant caring for Dawn at home, no matter what.
That was his ambition. Well, as the dementia worsened, many nights Dawn would get confused. She would get up in the middle of the night agitated and run away. Her mind was weakened, but her slight body was still spry enough to escape from the locked house, even climb a fence. And night after night, Rich would get up in his bathrobe, throw on his sneakers— he was no spring chicken himself—but he would go after his beloved. He would find her, wandering in the dark, and he’d scoop her up and bring her home night after night till death did they part. It was a little ambition perhaps invisible to the world, but not to Rich and not to God.
Where does this all leave us? Martin Luther once said, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.” A living daring confidence in God’s grace. I love that definition. And I believe it’s precisely the perspective on faith offered in Jesus’ parable. We belong by faith to a Master who loves us and is for us. He’s already accomplished everything for your salvation, but His giving doesn’t stop there. He’s also entrusted to you and me our talents, both in the sense of our skills and abilities as well as the treasure He shares with us. And don’t forget also the precious gift of the time of our lives in which we are invited to expend ourselves in service to a great and glorious cause.
And so, as servants of the Master, as sons and daughters of the King, you and I can journey through ambition in the light of His love. You’re free to take a risk for His kingdom and to embrace the little ambitions He sets before you. And you can do so in the confidence that whether you feel you’ve accomplished things great or small, it’s no matter. When you live by faith in your kind and generous Lord, He’s pleased. And He will say to you on the last day, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” You can stake your life on it a thousand times. Amen.
Reflections for June 28, 2026
Title: Journey Through AmbitionMark Eischer: Joining us now, here’s Lutheran Hour Speaker Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I’m visiting with our guest preacher whom you just heard, Rev. Dr. Ryan Tinetti. Thanks for sticking around, Ryan.
Ryan Tinetti: Good to be with you, Mike. Thanks.
Mike Zeigler: So this concludes our “Journey Through” series, as you mentioned. We had “Journey Through Anxiety,” “Journey Through Depression,” now “Journey Through Ambition.” And if you’re listening, if you wanted to get more on these resources, we’ve got booklets, we’ve got Bible study resources, all on these mental health sort of topics available at lhm.org. You can find it all there.
Ryan, your message today pairs with this little booklet that we have. The title is Journey Through the Rat Race. We went with a different title for your sermon, but what was something from that booklet that was insightful or encouraging to you?
Ryan Tinetti: I found it striking that it looks at the different kinds of tolls that can be taken on you when you are caught up in the rat race, that it can affect your life physically, emotionally, relationally. And I think attending to those varied ways in which our ambitions, our sometimes our misguided ambitions, can really impact the whole of our lives causes us to want to evaluate and maybe reevaluate some of the things that we are aspiring to.
Mike Zeigler: Now we asked you to talk about this topic ambition. You’ve written a book on it titled The Quiet Ambition. And if you’re interested, you can find that anywhere books are sold. I like how you spoke of ambition being maybe not neutral, but at least ambiguous. The Scriptures speak of it in a variety of ways. There is the selfish ambition, which we certainly want to repent of, turn away from. But then there’s this, the ant, this industrious work ethic that is sort of ambition that is a good ambition. I noticed something similar with anxiety, that the core word or the root meaning of anxiety in the Bible is care, to have care for the future. And there can be this healthy, cautious concern that helps you love the people around you or there can be this worry that takes a toll on you and just stalls you out and paralyzes you. So how do you see these two things, anxiety and ambition? How are they related in your mind as you see it?
Ryan Tinetti: Yeah, I really appreciate how you’ve tied those together. And I think we could look at some of their associations both in terms of how they have common features, but also, like you say, how there’s something that at the heart of it can break either in a positive or a negative way. So when it comes to ambition, it’s what are you ambitious for? And if your ambition is for elevating yourself, well, then you do need to repent. You need to recognize the way that’s contrary to God’s purposes. And when it comes to anxiety, St. Paul even talks about this in the New Testament in his letters. He says how he has anxiety for all of the churches that he’s kept up at night praying incessantly for their wellbeing. And so there’s a sense in which his care is for the people of God. That itself is a good and godly thing. It’s when it becomes a fruitless sort of worry that doesn’t turn to the Lord. And similarly, when it comes to ambition, when it becomes a fruitless kind of focus on myself and elevating myself rather than looking to how the Lord has already provided for my worth and value.
Mike Zeigler: You’ve written a book on ambition and I’ve heard that you’re working on something for hospitality now. You got another book in the works maybe?
Ryan Tinetti: It’ll be a while, but one thing that I’ve been noodling over is the topic of hospitality. Part of that I think comes from my own upbringing. My dad worked in the hotel industry. All my first jobs were at restaurants. For a long time, it’s been on my mind. But in more recent years, I’ve seen hospitality is such a way for us as Christians to both retain our convictions, our confession about who we are and what we believe. We don’t want to set that aside while at the same time retaining compassion, especially for the outsider or the stranger. And the Greek word of the New Testament for hospitality literally means “love of the stranger” or “love the outsider.” And so this posture of hospitality suffuses or can suffuse all of our labor as Christians and as congregations, how we can both remain rooted in God’s truth while also with hands out in order to connect with those who might not yet know the Lord.
Mike Zeigler: I think sometimes people feel hospitality is so risky because we have these big things like we got to have a huge party or something, but hospitality sometimes is just in a little gesture, even.
Ryan Tinetti: Oh, absolutely. And I think for me, when I think about even something like inviting people over to the home, I try to lower the stakes for myself. I can just invite people in and actually I think there’s a kind of grace when we welcome people into our lives, not in a picture of perfection, not with some pristine look like—“Wow, you could be in a magazine!”—but instead to say, yeah, we’re messy in our home too. I’ve got kids, you do as well. It’s rare that our life is a picture of perfection. It’s not ever happening. And yet in the place of messiness, we’re able to extend that hospitality to show to others that actually the best part of life is life when it’s shared with one another under the love and blessing of Jesus. And that doesn’t rely on my perfection. It relies on His.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Let Us Ever Walk with Jesus” From Heirs of the Reformation: Treasures of the Singing Church (© 2008 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.
“Let Us Ever Walk with Jesus” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.