What Does God Expect of Us?

The Parable of the Talents
Matthew 25:14-30
 
The first thing that we need to address in this parable is “what is a talent, and how much was it worth?” I went to Wikipedia for answers. The talent, or tálanton, was a Greek measure of mass, like a pound or a kilogram. In various cultures using it, the weight of a talent varied between 57 and 71 pounds. In Judea of Jesus’ time, however, it was quite a bit heavier – it weighed 130 pounds. A talent of something was always valuable, but a talent of gold or silver, which was used as money, was extremely so. In today’s inflated world economy, 130 pounds of gold is worth more than $3.7 million! Even in Jesus’ time, it was a lot of money. It was approximately nine years’ salary for an ordinary workingman, or enough to pay an entire ship’s crew for one month. Finally, because of this parable, the word “talent” came to mean a skill or an ability in our language.

But let’s not allow the use of this word, or the great value of a tálanton, to distract us from the message of Jesus. This parable is, after all, the last that we will hear in this Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary. It is, in a sense, the last word of Jesus for us this church year (because we celebrate the Kingship of Christ next Sunday).

In telling this parable, our Lord was emphasizing the responsibility of every Christian to “be all that you can be” as the U.S. Army used to say. I want to be very clear about one thing: Jesus was not glorifying the making of profits or of doubling your money. This parable is not about being a good investor, except to the extent that we invest ourselves into what we do.

That’s another interesting word: “invest.” Just what does it mean?

Invest comes from Latin investire, which means “to clothe” – to put on clothing, raiment, fine array. Similar words include “vestibule” – a place where clothing is put on and taken off, and “vesture” – a word for fine clothing. Another meaning comes to us from French investir, which describes surrounding an enemy with ships or troops to prevent escape. I am reminded of St Paul’s words in today’s Epistle: let us put on “the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” [I Thessalonians 5:8] Paul admonishes us to clothe ourselves properly in order to do God’s work in the world and to surround people with God’s love.

Let’s tie these ideas together. Jesus speaks of a king who entrusted his servants/slaves with talents and then left them on their own. Upon the king’s return, he rewarded the servants who had invested and produced something with their talents, and he punished the servant who did nothing except keep the talent “safe.” What is the context for this parable?

In the Gospel of Matthew, which we often refer to as being written for (and by) the Jewish Christian community in and around Jerusalem, the theme is often something that is particular to that culture. Without suggesting any kind of stereotype or prejudice, let us just say that the idea of making money by investing it was familiar to Matthew’s audience, whether they were Jewish, Roman, Egyptian, or Greek. It is not a novel idea – many of our most troubling issues today are related to people desiring to make a lot of money.

This parable contains characters and concepts that were undoubtedly important in Matthew’s time, but it also provides a message and meaning that only those “on the inside” would fully understand. We have a rich king who entrusts his wealth to servants. We have two servants who fully understand what the king expects of them – namely, to increase his wealth. One servant apparently is more trustworthy or has a longer history of success, because the king gives him five talents ($17 million or thereabouts). The second gets two talents, and the last only one. Right away, we might suspect that the king does not have a lot of confidence in this last servant, because he is not given much to work with. The “insiders” – the Jewish-Christian community to whom Matthew wrote – saw themselves as entrusted with a great treasure (the Gospel) and expected to be held to account for how they invested/planted/spread it when the King returned.

What about you and me? How much has God given us to work with? Does that in any way reflect the amount of love that God has for each of us, or the degree to which God believes that we will work for the kingdom? I don’t think so.

When I think about myself, if I am honest, I recognize that there are a few things that I do well and many more that I do poorly or not at all. In this parable, I first get the impression that it’s not important how many talents God has given me, but rather how I use them. Even if I have only one talent, that’s not an indication that God doesn’t have high expectations of me. On the contrary, I think that it means that I am expected to do just as much with my one little talent as a person with many, many more.

Setting aside the “editorial comment” about the servant with only one talent being lazy, or that he should have entrusted it to “the bankers” (not a popular idea today), we can still see one clear point: what we have comes from God, and for a reason. That reason is not so that we can enjoy ourselves and live wealthy lives. Rather, God gives each of us gifts that are meant to be shared with everyone around us.

I often find it helpful to think about God in the same terms that I think about human parents, who love all of their children but also see realistically what they should expect from each unique child. God gives us challenges. Sometimes these come in the form of unpleasant situations, but other times they come in the form of unexpected joy or success. In these latter cases, it is most important to keep a certain perspective. It is fine to rejoice and be happy that God has given us something wonderful. It is also fine to use it, to enjoy it, and to give thanks to God for giving it to us. However, we must not stop there. We must ask ourselves a few questions: why did God give me this? what am I expected to do with it? how can I use this in ways that God intended? It is these kinds of questions that would have led the last servant to be more thoughtful about how he used the talent that the king left him.

The many layers of meaning in this parable are easily fuel for many hours of thought and reflection, but focusing our attention on the word “talent” and the use that it came to have in English should help us drive down deeply into the message that God wants us to learn.

We have a responsibility to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people, to respect the dignity of every human being. [Baptismal Vows, The Book of Common Prayer 1979, pp 291-292]  We may not have a lot of resources (or we may have many), but the point is that it is our duty to use them as God intends, for God’s purposes. This is a good and important message for us to hear, now that we are near the end of another church year. May we take it to heart, and may our King give us the grace to invest wisely and multiply our talents, all in the service of the kingdom and our fellow creatures. Amen!