We
hear the word all the time. In our culture, a talent isn’t money but a skill, perhaps
an aptitude that we cultivate, train, and use, like artistic or musical talent,
or a person with a talent (or head) for money. But that is not what Jesus is
talking about here.
So what
is a “talent?” Well, you know those billboards for the lottery… the ones that
have the size of the current jackpot in great big numbers. That’s a talent. If
you suddenly had in your hand enough money to equal the average annual salary
times twenty… that’s a talent.
So
imagine if you hit the jackpot. What would you do?
Now
the servants in Jesus’ story did not hit the jackpot. They were people that the
master had come to trust, and in the story he entrusted them with what amounted
to a winning lottery ticket—with one proviso. Make it grow. Make it grow on my
behalf, he said. And then give it back.
Imagine
if someone gave you a big pile of money and said to you, “I am going away now,”
you take this big pile of money and make it grow and when I come back I will
collect what you’ve made. What would you do?
The three
Servants in Jesus’ story had some things in common. For one thing, the master
trusted them all. He believed them to be responsible. And he thought he knew
them well enough to give them as much as they could handle, but not too much.
So the master must have thought the third servant had some skills, some gifts,
some ability—because even though he was given the smallest amount, it was not
chump change. He gave the guy twenty years of average daily wage to play with!
That would be about a million dollars in today’s money!
So if
you were in the position of any of these people in the story, what would you
do?
Thinking
about that third Servants reminded me of a news story from a few years ago. It
came out of California where a person bought a house for himself and his young
family. The previous owner was an elderly man who had died, having outlived his
wife and whose grown children now lived far away. As the new owner began to
renovate his home, he found envelopes full of cash squirreled away in nooks and
crannies all over the house. Now wouldn’t that make for an interesting show on
HGTV?
Soon
these envelopes became a pile and that pile amounted to hundreds of thousands
of dollars. The old man didn’t trust the banks. He didn’t invest the money. He
kept the cash a secret so no one would steal it. He hid them for the rainy day that never came.
His children said he lived in near poverty his whole while working every day he
could.
Now
the new homeowners had a dilemma. His lawyers would have told him that all that
money was theirs to keep. The contract on the sale of the house said so…all the
contents of the house were theirs. But the couple knew that the man did not
save all that money to go to some stranger who happened to buy his house. No,
instead, they decided to give it back to the man’s children for them to use.
Heartwarming
story, but what made this man hide all his money in the first place? What made
him keep it a secret from even his children? What made him live as a pauper
while riches were only an arm’s reach away?
Fear. Fear and a kind of backwards faith that says
something bad is going to happen and is always just around the corner.
In today’s
Gospel, Matthew’s church is trying to figure out how to live in that very long,
uncertain time between the resurrection and Jesus’ return. They’ve remembered a
teaching of Jesus and applied it to their own church. They remembered Jesus
teaching us to never to bury or hide what we have been given. But here they
were, only fifty or sixty years into the history of the church and already had
developed a disturbing tendency to stand pat and let things work themselves
out.
Their
memory of Jesus’ story reminded them not to squander the bounty God has
showered on his people; and, most of all, to remember that Christ trusts us to
carry out his mission…to be Christ’s people, Christ’s representatives in the
world!
But
being trusted can be scary. We don’t want to disappoint. We don’t want to mess
up. We don’t want to lose what we’ve been given. And if that fear takes hold…if
that worry about what might happen becomes front and center…if thinking
about potential disapproval or judgment takes hold of our hearts…then we become
helpless. If we are overwhelmed by worry, we become afraid of risk or what’s
around the corner. Gosh! Who can blame the third servant for burying his
treasure in the garden and hunkering down?
That
is our challenge even today. We have so much that we love in the Church that we
want to hang on to. But changes comes so fast that we often don’t know how to
sort it out! We have so many responsibilities—there is so much Gospel work to
be done! —but find ourselves saying “what if?” We might be tempted to hunker
down, hide our gifts, become helpless.
Pope John
XXIII, the Pope who convened the Second Vatican Council sixty years ago that
set not only the Roman Catholic Church but all Western Churches on the course
to meet a changing world, once said this about the Church: he said that we are
not the curators of a museum, but we are instead the cultivators of a flourishing
garden.
Gardening
is hard work and requires planning and preparation and attention, and you have
to get your hands dirty.
And
one other thing: gardens are for growing, not for burying our treasure.
Jesus’
parable says that the master trusted each servant with an amount in proportion
to their abilities. I believe we have all been given what we need and the place
to act on those gifts, and that God trusts us to use those gifts faithfully.
But we
get scared, which is why we tend to focus on that poor third servant in
Matthew’s Gospel and forget about the other two Servants who are complimented
for their work and welcomed into the joy of their master. What they receive is
not a promotion with a fat paycheck but something much more important. Their
faithfulness means that they enjoy a deeper relationship with God.
So
what are your gifts? Are they something to be protected and hoarded? Or used
for God’s purpose?
If we
understand that everything that we’ve have, not just our money, but everything,
is a gift from God to be used for God’s purposes, then our whole outlook
changes!
The
lesson here for the average friend and apprentice of Jesus is this: our money,
our stuff, our time, and our abilities, are our power for good! So receive what
God has given you with joy, and then use it—even it means some risk—in a way
that returns that blessing to God and to God’s people. Don’t stand pat—do
something big and audacious and risky and wonderful for God!
We
live in an uncertain time. We don’t know how the economy will unfold so we hang
on to everything we can. The temptation is to risk nothing and go for safety.
And I am not just talking about money here., but how we organize our living. If
we organize our living around what we are afraid of, we might hide from other
people, and not bring our best selves into our living. In short, we bury what
we’ve been given.
The
antidote is to live joyfully in the blessings God has given us in Christ Jesus;
to use the abilities and resources God has given us to be God’s hands and feet
in the world; and to build on the blessings and assets we have to cultivate our
lives in service to God and to the world starting right here, right now.
In
Christ, we have been a given a gift beyond expectation or imagining. Now, comes
the fun part, using what we have for God’s purpose, God’s glory, for the good
of God’s people and God’s creation!
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