Not going to lie, my first read through of this story is always, huh? I’m never quite sure what to make of the conclusion, which seems so different from the rest of the Gospel. How did Jesus, who earlier said “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,” also say, “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” It just doesn’t seem like the same guy.
Because there are so many sayings and stories of Jesus, it is tempting, even easy, to pick and choose our favorites and downplay the ones we find more uncomfortable. To focus on the Beatitudes, or the healing miracles, or his clear preference for the outsider, and to pay less attention to all the stories that end with that classic Matthean phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
But the parable of the talents and the determined sower of seed are the same person. Jesus told all of these stories. The seeming harshness of this story is no less a truth of the kingdom of God as the feeding of the five thousand. But it is also no more a truth than that. It is a piece of the picture that Jesus is painting. An important piece, but just a piece. And we know that Jesus spoke in parables because stories expand our imaginations to hear deeper truths than explanations ever could. This balanced perspective invites us to wonder, what is the piece Jesus was unveiling here, and how to we allow this piece to both change our understanding and be changed.
We hear this parable at the very end of Jesus’ ministry. After the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, after sparring with the Pharisees in the Temple, Jesus gathered his disciples together for one final lecture. The parable of the talents is from the end of that lecture. Just a few verses later, in chapter twenty-six, Jesus and his disciples will gather for a meal in an upper room. And we all know where the story goes from there. They break bread, they go to a garden, Jesus is betrayed, he is beaten, and he is killed. We have reached the end of the road. There is nothing else between this parable and the passion story. So given the location, and the urgency of the moment, what might be Jesus’ reason for telling this story?
Fun fact for you, the English word talent, meaning an innate skill or ability, derives its etymology from the Greek word talaton. This parable is very much a story about money, but even back at the creation of the English language, theologians already had a sense that Jesus had more going on. And the Greek talaton, here translated “talent” was no insignificant amount of money. A talent, you may remember, was the largest currency denomination in circulation, equal to about fifteen years wages for a day laborer. The amount of money in question here immediately raises the extravagant impossibility of this story. Even the slave who received one talent was given an impossibly generous gift. For the one who received five, the amount is astronomical. And then to take that five and turn it into another five, that’s one-hundred and fifty years worth of wages. The scope of the gift is inconceivable.
The other thing you may or may not have noticed about this parable is that no instruction was given to the three slaves. The story simply says the master “entrusted his property to them… each according to his ability. Then he went away.” The question then becomes, what was intended by the word “entrusted.” Entrust simply means to give responsibility to. Given the simplest definition of the word, the third slave absolutely completed the task. When the master returned, he was able to give back the amount of money given to him. At no point during the master’s absence was the money at risk of being lost or mishandled. One could question the third slave’s tactfulness, “I knew that you were a harsh man” is possibly not the best thing to say to one’s boss, but still, one cannot argue that the entrusted sum was kept safe.
The same degree of safety cannot be said for the money entrusted to the first and second slaves. Yes, in the end, they both were able to double the amount given, but I don’t know a single investment strategy that offers that high a reward without an equal or even greater risk. The first and second slaves too were entrusted with the master’s money, to an even larger degree than the third slave, and while their gambles paid off, it cannot be argued that it was a gamble. Now, one certainly could interpret “entrust” to mean “return this better than it was when you got it,” but it is not the safest interpretation. Any number of things could have gone wrong, that could given this story a very different conclusion. We can only wonder what the master’s response might have been, had the first and second slaves returned with nothing to show for their efforts, while the third slave triumphantly handed over his carefully guarded talent, with only a bit of dirt to show for its time away from the master’s possession.
We can only wonder, but in the end, the wondering doesn’t really matter, because that is not the story Jesus told, this is. We know in the real world that gambles don’t always pay off, that risks don’t always lead to rewards, but in the story Jesus told, they do. So what is the carry over from the world of the parable to the real world of Jesus’ disciples?
The parable tells of a man going on a journey. And what we know, though the disciples do not yet, is that Jesus himself was preparing for a journey. A journey not to a far off country; but through betrayal, suffering, and death itself. A journey that will lead through the cross, to resurrection, to accession, and beyond. A journey that, even today, has been completed by Jesus, but is not yet fulfilled until he comes again glory. So the question for the disciples is not about finances, but is what will we do with the extravagant gift which we have been given, this gift beyond measure, this gift of relationship with Christ? Will we, out of fear of losing it, hid it away and try to keep it safe? Or will we risk loosing it all, for the promise of greater reward? I almost wonder if the “ability” the parable referred to is not the ability to make skilled investments but the ability to rise beyond fear to trust. Do we trust the rest of the teachings of Jesus? That the poor, the meek, the merciful are blessed, that the kingdom of heaven is like yeast, that five loaves and two fish can feed a multitude, and that the people most in need of care are the ones most ignored by the world? Are we able to get beyond fear and trust that? Or are we so captive by fear that like the third slave we grumble, “we know you are a harsh man,” and we hid what little we have been given away, believing that if we fail, there will be no chance for forgiveness or redemption?
Of course, the twist in this story is that in the end, when the third slave hid the talent in the ground, it was at least there for him to find again. Imagine what would have happened if the disciples, held captive by the fear of Jesus’ death on the cross, had been unable to gather the courage to go to the tomb. Had never again shared his teachings with another person. Had kept the treasure of this relationship hidden among themselves out of fear of losing it. Had the disciples held their knowledge of Christ hidden they would not, like the third slave, have preserved it as is. They would have in fact lost it all. When Christ comes again, he would not have needed to take away what they had and give it to another, for they would have had nothing left. The weird truth of the kingdom of heaven is the only way to preserve it is to risk losing it all, trusting in the promise that forgiveness, redemption, and resurrection always follows even the darkest loss.
This parable is challenge for us, because it tells us that being a “good and faithful” servant in this time between Christ has come and Christ will come again is about taking initiative and being willing to risk it all. Faithfulness is not strict obedience to a set of instructions, for as much as we might wish it were so, no instructions were given. Nor is it about passively waiting for the day when Christ will come again and fix all of the things that are broken. Rather, this parable tells is that being a good and faithful servant is about wading into the brokenness, trying something, even if it may be the wrong thing, and hoping against all hope that the reward was worth the risk.
And the courage to take that risk comes from the fact that, unlike the third slave, this parable is not the only story we have. We know from the entire rest of the Bible that the slave’s description of the master was wrong. God is not “a harsh man,” or at least, that is not all God is. We hold this parable in tension with the words of Jonah, God is “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” And the Psalmist, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” Even our other readings for today highlight that tension. In Zephaniah, the “Lord is bitter,” and in Psalm ninety “the Lord is our dwelling place.” In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, the day of the Lord is both “a thief in the night” and “the hope of our salvation.” All of these descriptors are simultaneously true.
Dear brothers and sisters, the time of playing it safe has passed, if it ever really existed. And one of the things I love about being the pastor at Trinity, is you all know it already. You know the way we’ve always done things doesn’t work anymore. I tell my colleagues that as hard as redevelopment work can be, I feel blessed to be doing it, because we already know the ship of how its always been done is sinking, so we don’t have to waste any time rearranging the deck chairs. What this parable also tells us is that we also don’t have to sit around quietly, patiently hoping that God will send a new boat before this one sinks. Rather we can be about the work of building something way better than a boat. Yes, it’s a risk. It’s a huge risk. It would be way easier to hunker down in here and hope that our future looks the same as our present. But the promise of this parable is that if we take the risk, we have the chance of growing beyond our imagination, and if we hold tight, at best we end up with a talent covered in dirt. And the promise of the Gospel is that if we lose it all, we’ve really lost nothing, because there is always a new beginning after even the most decisive of ends. So let us take the risk, dear people of God. We have nothing, and everything, to lose, and we have everything to gain. Amen.
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