Today’s parable is a familiar one. A man prepares to go away on a journey and entrusts his possessions to his servants. To one, he gives five talents, to another, two, and to the last, one, each according to their abilities. Then he leaves for a while and we know what happens. The servant with five talents makes five more, the man with two doubles those, but the fellow with one, well, he gets cold feet and buries the talent he was given in the ground. Sounds like a good strategy for times like these, nothing lost, nothing gained. Or so it seems. When the master returns, he is thrilled with the performance of the first two and invites them to share in his joy. But with the one who buried the talent, he is furious. He calls him wicked, lazy and even useless! He takes the one talent away from him, gives it to the one with ten, and rejects this servant forever! Seems kinda harsh! Or at least I always thought so, as someone who is fiscally conservative when it comes to money and investing.
However, there is so much more to this parable than what we first hear! For one thing, this parable, and also this homily, is not primarily about money or material things. Jesus uses the example of wealth here because it is something we readily understand. But he is inviting us to look even deeper than simply what we do with our material treasures. They are important, but there is a spiritual dimension here that is even more crucial. The number of the servants in today's story isn't important, but the fact that the master entrusts them with his enormous wealth is. All that the master owns is in their hands - each in a different amount. And that pretty much matches our experience of life. The good things of this earth - the wealth - the power - the ease and comfort - are distributed widely - and unevenly. The same could be said of the personal gifts, strengths, and abilities that we see in every person.
But that is not what this parable is about when it speaks of talents. This parable is about the unique wealth that God distributes to those who follow him - to his servants - to you and me: the wealth of the scriptures, the gift of his Son, the abundance of his grace and love. God has given to each of us a measure of all that he has! Some have more, some less -- but each has more than enough and more than is deserved, in fact, an incredible abundance!
It is helpful for us to know what the talent was in the biblical world. In Jesus’ time, a talent was a measure of silver equal to about 15 years of income for your average worker. To put this in perspective for us, one talent today would be worth between $600,000 and $700,000, depending on what you considered the average wage to be! The first servant receives five talents, which was equivalent to 75 years worth of wages or 3 million dollars. The second received two talents, equal to about 30 years pay or about 1.2 million dollars. And the third servant, the person we often think of has having very little, is given one talent which is still worth 15 years of work or $600,000 freely given to him!
If we apply this part of the parable to our own lives, we see the same thing at work in us. God has entrusted some of us with more, some of us with less. But each of us has more than enough given to us by God! More than enough faith, more than enough love, more than enough forgiveness. We have been given everything - we have been given the gospel of God's love and mercy, of his divine life in grace, and even the gift of his Son’s Body and Blood; each according to what God knows we can do with it. God knows our abilities and God knows that even the one with the least has been given an incredible amount.
Now, as soon as the master was gone - the first and second servants take action. The first two seem to know exactly what the master wants them to do. They immediately invest the money in the hope of receiving even more than they first had. In other words, they take a chance and engage in some sort of venture, a risk in which there is always a chance of losing everything. Notice how they don't delay about this. They immediately leap into action.
Then there is the third servant, the one who has been entrusted with 15 years’ wages. He takes his precious treasure and does what the rules of the day suggest that he should do; he carefully buries it, keeping it safe until the day of his master's return. We might ask: What's so wrong with being cautious? Discretion and prudence are virtues, right?
When the master returns, he calls in his servants and asks them to give an account of their stewardship. The first two demonstrate their goodness, their willingness to stick their neck out by showing that they have in fact doubled what they were given. And the master is clearly pleased by this as he calls them good and faithful and promises to entrust even more of his wealth to them in the future. But with the third, we have a whole other situation. The first thing this servant does is to make excuses, he describes how afraid he is of the master, that he feels he is a harsh man who reaps where he does not sow, and so on and so forth. Because of this, the servant explains, “I buried your talent, I did nothing with it.” For this attitude, of fear and inaction, the third servant is condemned, cast out, and the one talent he had is taken away.
If we apply this part of the parable to our own life, we might find that we resemble the third servant more than the first two. We have been entrusted with all that we need to accomplish God's will and become saints. We have been given great riches, more than what we need, infinitely more than we deserve, so that we can produce spiritual fruit pleasing to God. God will not judge us for trying and failing to produce that fruit - he will only judge us if we do not try. The faithful servants were active, allowing faith to assist them in making choices of being reverent and receptive to all of God’s other gifts. They responded. The third servant was afraid of the master and doubted. He allowed fear to decide how he would act rather than letting his faith show him how to overcome that fear of failure. He buried his faith and did not allow the gift to grow or permeate all areas of his life.
So, take a moment and think about it! Is God’s gift of faith bearing fruit in your soul? Is it growing and spreading to every aspect of your life? Is it stronger, deeper, and better informed than when you first received it? Or has it been buried because times are tough, schedules are busy, or others make fun of it? Has our fear of failure or growing closer to God or the possible rejection of others caused us to hide what God has given us? What sort of return are you making on the spiritual gifts God has entrusted to you? And the material ones as well?
May we take this parable to heart and allow it to challenge us so that when Jesus returns, we may hear those happy words: “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come, share your master's joy.'
