Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Matthew 25:14-30
This parable makes me nervous and uncomfortable. For the first couple years of my ministry, when someone would ask me what it meant, I would usually say something like, “I don’t know, leave me a alone.” Back in Austin, a member of my Disciple class become so frustrated by my lack of understanding that he bought me a book on the subject hoping I would read it and explain it to him.
The book made it worse.
This is the Parable of the Talents. What is a talent anyway? Scholars argue about this but lets say that a talent is a certain sum of money worth about 6,000 denarii. We learned back in The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard that a denarius was the value of a days wages, so a talent was worth about 6,000 days wages or about 16 years of day wages if one worked 7 days a week. A nice chunk of money.
But this parable is not about money.
Talent has come into our own language in a different way. Our dictionary definition of talent is:
- A marked innate ability, as for artistic accomplishment.
- Natural endowment or ability of a superior quality.[1]
That definition actually comes from here. Our word talent is from the Greek word ta,lanton (talanton), which is simply a unit of money.
Now I often warn people about using the dictionary to interpret the Bible. This is a good example, because this parable is not about using our innate abilities, our talents.
This is the Parable of the Talents. We get our word parable, which the dictionary defines as “A simple story illustrating a moral or religious lesson,”[2] from another Greek word parabolh,, (parabole). Which conveys a meaning of setting one thing along side another. We get other words from here parallel, parabola.
This parable is then not about money or our innate abilities. It is, in fact using other things, that we may understand to help us see something we don’t understand but what?
‘For it is as if a man,
Our parable starts out with “it is as if.” What is the “it”? We have picked up Jesus mid conversation. If we back up to the beginning of chapter 25.
‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.’
Jesus tries one explanation of what the kingdom of heaven is like, now another.
It, the kingdom of heaven, is as if…
14 ‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; 15to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
I want to point out that, after Jesus’ death, his followers initially thought that his return was imminent. They were basically just waiting around for Jesus to come back and change everything for good. As Matthew’s gospel is being written down in the first century, people are realizing they may be waiting a while and these words of Jesus become very important. In fact this parable comes in the line of a bunch of words about watchfulness and what Christians are called to do while we are waiting for the return of Jesus. We are still there today. We are living in the joy of knowing Christ now, but still waiting for the great day of Christ’s return, although we aren’t all that sure what that will be like.
The parable that comes right before this, about the bridesmaids and their lamps uses the image of having enough lamp oil for when the bridegroom comes, about being prepared and watchful. That was one attempt at a parable, laying one thing alongside the other with the hope that it will help us understand. Here is another.
14 ‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; 15to one he gave five talents,* to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
The scripture uses the term slave. The word dou/loj (doulos) could as easily be translated as servant and it often is. The first servant gets right to work, takes his boss’s five talents invests them in something and doubles his money. The second servant, got a little less, but works just as hard and doubles his money. The third buries his in the ground. Now, and this is one of the reasons I love scripture so much, he technically follows the law. In Jesus time, Rabbis or teachers, read the Law of Moses, in Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, etc. and acted sort of like judges and lawyers, taking those laws and devising more specific case law around them. We call that case law rabbinical law and it stated that if someone lent you money, and you buried it the ground, you wouldn’t be responsible for its loss.
This parable makes me nervous and uncomfortable. This servant has done what is right in the eyes of the law and he is getting in trouble for it.
If you read the gospels carefully, Jesus doesn’t shun the commandments and the laws that God gave in what we call the Old Testament, but he never, ever lets the law get in the way of Grace. Jesus healed on the Sabbath day. The rabbis said that it was against the Law of Moses, but Jesus put grace first. From Matthew 12:
9He left that place and entered their synagogue; 10a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, "Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?" so that they might accuse him. 11He said to them, "Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? 12How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath. 13Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other.
For Jesus grace always comes before law.
The Church tends to be conservative. I think many are shocked to hear the way the “conservative” servant is treated. Think about it like this, if you had to go away for a while and you had, say $100,000. Before going, you give it to me and say, “will you take care of this for me?” I say I will. You call up a few weeks later, which of the following would you rather me say, “they money is fine, I invested it in a number of highly volatile stocks, but man if they pay off, you are set.” Or “It is in my safe.”
Many of us would like to reward the final servant for being prudent. He didn’t squander the master’s money, he didn’t take any unnecessary risks. If you have ever invested money in something that offers a greater return than the bank you have heard or read that non-FDIC insured deposits carry inherent risks. But remember this is not about money. This is a parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like.”
When we read this as a parable, we can see that the servant misjudged the master when he said:
24Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”
The servant misjudged the master when he thought that the master would punish him for taking risks with the money. What really upset the master was that his money sat idle.
I think we misjudge God when we think that God will punish us for taking risks with the Gospel. What I believe will really upset God is if the Gospel sits idle, protected by physical and mental barriers that keep it safe. I think we misjudge God when we think that we will be condemned for not defending God’s holiness. I think we misjudge God when we think that God will be upset that we opened up to the church to the wrong kind of people that God will be mad that we erred on the side of Grace. I think we misjudge God when we think God will punish us for taking risks with the church.
I truly believe that I want to stand before God and say, “God I was nearly reckless with your grace, I invested the gospel in high risk, high gain investments. I tried to share your gospel and your grace with everyone. I tried to share your love with men and women, rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, petty thieves and corporate criminals, democrats and republicans, I took your 5 talents and made five more.”
And I hope to hear:
“Well done, good and trustworthy slave… enter into the joy of your master.”
A relative of mine, who had been away from the church for some time visited us one Sunday. When I made the invitation to communion I said, this table is open to all, and she believed me and she came forward. I saw her the other day and she said that she was sorry she hadn’t asked me first if it was ok, she just felt moved to come. I said, don’t apologize, who am I to deny you God’s grace? Another relative of mine, one from a much more conservative denomination that closes their table to non-members gave me a look that I read as “there he goes again, being reckless with God’s grace.”
If I am wrong, I am going to be really, really, wrong, and I am ok with that.
This is my hammer. It is in really good shape. If you look closely, you will see that it is still quite clean and shiny. The stickers that came on it are still there. This hammer has been well cared for.
This is my father’s hammer. My father works with wood, does all his own home repairs. He has been a mechanic, on cars and airplanes and a shop teacher. His hammer is all marked up. It is dirty. It is even a little rusty. My father uses his hammer and he isn’t at all worried about getting it dirty because it is a hammer and that is what hammers are for.
This is one of my Bibles. I received it as a gift from the Annual Conference on my commissioning as a pastor. It is really good shape. It is really well cared for. I keep it in this box I got it in. This is my other Bible. It is dirty, torn, marked up, beautiful. I am not worried at all about getting it dirty, because it is a Bible and that is what it is for.
A pastor in Virginia recently began a huge stir in the United Methodist Church by telling a certain man that he couldn’t be a member of his church because he felt that the man was guilty of a certain kind of sin that the pastor felt was somehow different than the sins the rest of us carry around. I guess he felt he was protecting God or God’s church from something. It was sort of like putting this Bible back in the box and on my shelf. It becomes fairly useless.
