Our Talents

It had been a hard winter in the mountains. The snow had piled up deeper and deeper, the mercury dropped, rivers froze, people suffered. The Red Cross used helicopters to fly in supplies. One crew had been working day after day--long hours. They were on their way home late in the afternoon when they saw a little cabin submerged in the snow. There was a thin whisper of smoke coming from the chimney. The rescue team figured they were probably about out of food, fuel, perhaps medicine. Because of the trees they had to put the helicopter down a mile away. They put on heavy packs with emergency supplies, trudged through heavy snow, waist deep, reached the cabin exhausted, panting, perspiring. They pounded on the door. A thin, gaunt mountain woman opened the door and the lead man gasped, "We're from the Red Cross." She was silent for a moment and then she said, "It’s been a hard winter, Sonny, I just don't think we can give anything this year."

A talent was a fortune – an amount equivalent to years of wages.  But the parable is not about money, nor is it about using our individual talents responsibly. This is a parable about what the kingdom of heaven is like.  We have to read this parable in light of all the other things Jesus has said.  The parable of the talents can be understood like this:  God is the master, and God has gone away from the nation of Israel.  And, because the Roman army occupies the Promised Land now, it must seem like God has been gone a long time from his people. The idea that God will come back to Jerusalem, back to the Temple, was a prominent theme in the preaching of the Old Testament prophets.  Jesus is the incarnation of Israel’s God who has returned to Jerusalem, and to the Temple. But instead of Jesus’ coming as Messiah being a glorious event, an event that Israel could look forward to, this coming of the Messiah is one of judgment.

Remember He has cleansed the Temple of its corruption and defilement by driving the money changers from its courts, has roundly criticized the religious leaders of his day as corrupt, evil, hypocritical, he has also accused them of misleading the nation who depends on them for interpreting God’s Law to them. So, God is the master, and the religious leaders of the day are the one-talent servant.  These are the Pharisees, or all the religious leaders.  Jesus has expressed his outrage with their hypocrisy and self-serving religious performance before.

Who then was the servant that had 5 talents; these are the followers of Jesus.  They are the ones who get the whole idea of the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God. They not only get it, they share it, and by doing so double their wealth, and their reward. The parable is told about Israel.  God is the master, God’s people are the servants, and some do a much better job than others of providing the master with a return on his gift. This basically is a parable directed to groups, or communities within first century Israel.  Each of these communities has their own belief system, their own theology, and their own mission. But the real mission is to do what the master expects – to produce a return on the master’s investment not what we expect or think.  To put it plainly, we as the modern day people of God are God’s servants.  And while it is certainly not wrong to say if you have musical talent, or any other kind for that matter, you are to use it for God’s glory, there is a bigger message and caution here for us in the 21st century. Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God growing like a mustard seed – from the tiniest of seeds to the largest of trees. He also spoke of the kingdom of God like yeast permeates bread dough.  It goes all through it until it leavens the whole lump. He also spoke of the kingdom of heaven like light which by its very shining dispels darkness. All of those images point to the fact that the expectation of the rule and reign of God is that Jesus’ followers will do what he did – announce, demonstrate, and live out the kingdom as a contrast society in this world. God had given the religious leaders of his day a position of responsibility.  With those “talents” the Pharisees and Sadducees should have been able to produce the equivalent of doubling those who understood that God was the creator and ruler of all creation, that the God of Israel was the God of the Nations. It’s interesting to note that medieval mapmakers, working long before cartography became an exact science, often depicted Jerusalem as the centre of the world, Their maps were obviously drawn as theological statements rather than geographically-correct documents That is what we are to do today as well.  Draw the maps of our lives with the kingdom of God as the centre of our being; With God in charge, with the kingdom of God as the guiding principle of all of creation. While God gave the first century religious leaders the Law, we have so much more.  God has entrusted us with the story of Jesus, with the Bible as the record of that story, with the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and with the insight of 20 centuries of Christian witness.  Our responsibility is greater than that of the Pharisees of the first century, or even Jesus’ first century followers. If they are given the equivalent of 5 talents, and they produce 5 more, we must have been given by God the equivalent of 10 or 20 talents.  We know more, understand more, have the benefit of history, the mistakes and achievements of others, and the energizing presence of the Holy Spirit to both guide and empower us.  We have more, and yet often do less than the first disciples. But that can and must change.  The kingdom is not our exclusive possession, nor is it our exclusive destination.  We have been given a gift to share, a gift to give away, and as we give that gift away it produces a return of 10-fold and more.  Our reward will be God’s joy that out of all the centuries, and all his people, that this generation understood what it meant to act so that God’s gifts were not merely preserved for the few, but announced to the many.  Only then will we hear, Well done, good and faithful servant! Sadly, we in the 21st century have fallen into some of the same errors of the religious leaders of the 1st century.  We confuse our limited understanding of God, which we call doctrine, with the God of all Creation, and limit ourselves in effective kingdom work with our own short-sightedness and misplaced self-assurance. We are warned not to inhibit the growth of the kingdom, but to encourage it by our own actions. In doing so, we earn the reward of hearing God say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

The French scientist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin sums it up nicely in his book “The Divine Milieu.” He writes:

“God obviously has no need of the products of your busy activity since he could give himself everything without you. The only thing that concerns him, the only thing he desires intensely, is your faithful use of your freedom and the preference you accord him over the things around you. Try to grasp this: the things that are given to you on earth are given to you purely as an exercise, a ‘blank sheet’ on which you make your own mind and heart. You are on a testing ground where God can judge whether you are capable of being translated to heaven and into his presence. You are on trial so that it matters very little what becomes of the fruits of the earth, or what they are worth.

An anonymous writer has said, "My small son and I were taking a walk. In the far corner of the field we found a small patch of beautiful and fragrant flowers. They were in the middle of weeds, almost completely hidden and unnoticed, yet these flowers were blooming in full beauty and we sensed their fresh fragrance. All of us have met persons unnoticed by many, but who in the middle of struggle and unlikely surroundings far from the centre of attention live lives of beauty and fragrance. And living lives which seemed obscure they faithfully fulfilled God's calling for them. God's question on the last day will not be, 'How much were you noticed?' or even 'How much did you do?' Rather, his question will be, 'Were you faithful in fulfilling your calling where I placed you?' "