We are approaching the end of the Christian year, and the end of our systematic readings in Matthew’s gospel suggested in the lectionary. You may have noticed that things are starting to get a bit harsh. In the flow of the gospel story as Matthew tells it, the stakes are getting higher now that Jesus has entered Jerusalem. He has begun to challenge the religious leaders full out in the centre of religious and political control. And according to Matthew, the Pharisees and other groups are doing everything they can to entrap Jesus, to get him to say something that will allow them to shut him down and to lower the pressure he is creating in the precarious accommodation they have made with the Romans. But Jesus is also relentless in turning their questions against them and exposing their self-serving motivations.
And now as Jesus sits with his disciples on the Mount of Olives and teaches them, he tells a number of parables in which judgement looms large. In the parable of the bridesmaids that was the gospel reading last Sunday, Jesus’ disciples are warned to remain watchful because the time of judgement is coming. In this he is sounding much more like the Hebrew prophets who went before him, like Amos and Zephaniah, who warn those among the people of God who have become complacent in their lives of comfort that the Day of the Lord will not be a happy day for them but a day of disaster and devastation. Stay awake, be prepared Jesus warned them in the Parable and the story tells us that five of them did remain watchful but the other five did not and the door of the banquet hall was closed to them. The prophetic message is that you need to live your life in a way that shows that you are prepared for God’s coming among us, anytime, anywhere.
In the parable we read today, often called the parable of the talents because of the name of the currency of the day that figures large in the story, we are confronted by another parable of judgement. This time we are taken out of the context of the marriage customs of the day. Instead, the background of this parable is the commercial life of first century Palestine, a world of slaves and masters, of money and investment, of profit and loss – and of great fear of losing money and making the master mad. In the story, a very wealthy man is going on a journey and he entrusts his three servants with his money. Unlike in Luke’s version of this parable, the slaves are given different amounts and the money is astronomically more. One talent was worth more than fifteen or twenty years’ wages of a labourer, maybe a half a million dollars or more in our world. Not much for the master who was part of the 1% but for the slaves this was big time and they did not want to mess it up because they knew that their master had a reputation for being a harsh and greedy businessman who extracted far more from a business transaction than was his due. The first two, who are given the most money, go out and invest it in the markets, mostly in equity rather than in fixed income instruments it seems, and by the time the master returns from his holiday they had doubled their initial capital. Not a bad return! The third slave though, who was given the least amount, had been afraid that he would lose what he had in the markets, that there would be another major downturn before the master came back, and so he had hidden the money so that he would at least be able to return what he had been given to the master.
Now, if this parable has anything to do with the Kingdom of God, which most of the parables do, we would think that there would be a twist here, that somehow the people who had gotten rich would have the tables turned on them and the cautious person who feared the master would be rewarded. No such luck for the third servant. No escaping from market logic here. You have money to make money, and the more you have, the more you should make. And if you can’t turn a profit in the market, then your money will be taken away from you and given to someone else who knows how to make a buck. Did I mention that things are getting a bit harsh? No bleeding hearts here. You mess up and you end up in the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Or at least on the street, without a home, or a bank account, or any means to support yourself or your family.
Well, we know that is the way the markets work. Probably many of you know better than me. But is that really the way of the kingdom of God? In his book with the provocative title, Devil on the Cross, first published in English in 1982, the Kenyan author Ngugi in a brilliant and cynical parody on this parable names the master as the departing British colonialists and the servants as those who would continue to work for European interests within an independent Kenya. Ngugi begins the parable in this way, “[The master] called his loyalist slaves and servants to him. He taught them all the earthly wiles he knew, and especially the trick of sprinkling theft and robbery with the sweetest-smelling perfumes, and the trick of wrapping poison in sugar-coated leaves, and many tricks for dividing the country’s workers and peasants through bribery and appeals to tribe and religion. When he had finished, he informed them that he was about to leave for his home overseas.” You can see the direction that the parable is headed and can probably imagine the rest of Ngugi’s version.
In fact, on the surface, the parable of the talents does appear to be a fairly clear approval of a system in which making money through investment, and the more money the better, is given the highest value. Not a bad little biblical inscription for above the doors of the stock exchange or a colonial office! It is not without reason that many stewardship sermons have been preached using this parable as a text, urging people to invest and to remember the church when the price of Blackberry shares once again moves into the stratosphere.
But if we look a little deeper, maybe we can see that there is something else at work here. Although the Greek word for talent, talanton, does not have the connotation that it does in English, it is interesting to note that our English word in fact has this connotation precisely because of this parable. So, when we use the word “talent” to mean gift or skill, it is because of this parable. We cannot assume then, that the early hearers of this parable would simply have moved back and forth in their minds between the monetary unit and an understanding of gifts with which people had been blessed. In the parable, though, it is clear that it is not the amount of money that the slave has that determines how it should be used. So, if we do make the leap to thinking about the “talents” as the different gifts that people are given in any group or community, it can be understood that all are to use their gifts for the growth and life of the community. In the struggling Christian communities at the time of the writing of Matthew’s gospel, it was important that each person played their part. Some gifts, or talents, were obviously valued more than others – just think of Paul’s writings to the Corinthians, especially concerning the gift of speaking in tongues. For some people this had come to signify the true and only mark of being a Christian and if you did not possess this gift you had clearly not really experienced the coming of the Spirit in your life. But Paul asserts that there are many gifts and one should not be privileged above another.
So, this parable in Matthew’s gospel can also be read to mean that no matter what the gift, no matter how it seems to fit in the pecking order of gifts, it is meant to be used to build up the kingdom and to enhance the life of the community.
Let’s fast forward from the early Christian communities in Matthew’s first century world to the struggling Christian communities in our own world. We worry about the difficulties that we face. Can we be faithful people in our own context in the 21st century with so many challenges, where our voice seems not to be heard, where day after day the kingdom of this world seems to grow stronger and stronger and anything reflecting God’s will and God’s reign among us seems to be more and more remote. The very wealthy can hide much of their wealth away without paying taxes and benefitting those who are in greatest need. Even when taxes are paid, there seem to be ways to divert money from those things that should be priorities to those things that will line the pockets of politicians and their friends. And those who do wield political power seem to be losing the moral high ground and have sunk to moral and ethical lows that we could never even have imagined. The temptation is there to just bury ourselves and our message in a hole and wait for a better day.
But maybe this parable is calling us to something different. What about the talents we have? Clearly people have different talents, and some seem more blessed than others, but everyone has something to offer to God and to our sisters and brothers in the community of faith and in the world around us. Perhaps it is a time to look more closely at the talents we have been given and how we can use them. The parable seems to be telling us that it is wrong to hide or bury our talent. No matter what it might be, it is given by God and it is meant to be used. What would happen if we started to lose our fear. If we said, “I could do that”, or at least I could try. I am as able as anyone else to put my talent to work, up front, or behind the scenes in a way that I have never tried before. It never ceases to amaze me how some plan or project can fall apart, not because the upfront talent isn’t there, but because the behind the scenes jobs don’t get done. There is no one to set up the tables, or sell the tickets, or clean up after, or sort the papers, or teach the lines, or chop the carrots. Just because some people seem to be loaded with talents and others not so much, is no reason not to use all the talents we have for God’s glory and for building up the community of love and faith that we are called to be. For a community to function, it needs all kinds of people, with all kinds of gifts. We need to be encouraged to use our gifts, maybe not because of fear of a cruel ruthless master, but because we see their importance in the bigger scheme of things. Sure, someone else could do it, but why not you? Why not use what God has given you and multiply that gift as it touches the lives of others. And we don’t have to wait for the world to change to do that.
When I was a kid I appeared on the long running series, “Tiny Talent Time” on CHCH TV in Hamilton. One of the high points of my singing career. “O Danny Boy” had never quite sounded like that and there is a recording somewhere although it did not make the charts as far as I know. Some of my friends at the time were quite impressed that I had been on television. Others thought it was a bit silly. No matter, I was willing to put my tiny talent out there for the world, or at least the limited audience of the program, to see and hear. I thought of that experience as I was reflecting on this passage. It wasn’t much but I did put my talent to use. And it was fun and exciting for a nine year old. There really is something to be said for using our tiny talents. Kind of like mustard seeds or a bit of yeast in the bread or salt in the stew or a light in the darkness. We don’t have it all and maybe not as much as others but we have been given a talent or two. Maybe it’s time to risk a bit. To take that talent out from where you have buried it and see just what might be possible. Now that does have something to do with the kingdom of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
