PENTECOST XXII

Parable of the Talents - Annette Fortt (by kind permission of the artist) annettefortt.com.

Judges 4:1-7
Psalm 123
or
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
Psalm 90:1-8, (9-11), 12

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

 

The Gospel parable for this Sunday has entered our thinking so deeply that it has changed the meaning of a word. In Biblical times ‘talent’ was a monetary unit (distantly connected, in fact, with our word ‘dollar’). Now it means a special gift or aptitude. This change has come about largely because Matthew’s story has consistently been interpreted to refer to the special aptitudes we find in ourselves. To call them ‘talents’ or ‘gifts’ has no special resonance any more, and yet speaking in this way necessarily invokes a theological meaning. Gifts imply a giver, and who is the giver if not God? The aptitudes we have – a special talent for music or mathematics, or just as importantly, a gift for friendship – are not ours by right. Still less are they our personal accomplishments. Rather, they are blessings for which we ought to be grateful in exactly the way we are grateful for birthday or Christmas gifts from friends and family. Without these gifts, we could not make our way in the world, yet they are benefits which we have not earned, and to which we have no ‘natural’ right.

The parable Jesus tells goes beyond this important observation, however. Gifts bring responsibilities, notably the responsibility to use them well. And this, the parable reminds us, implies risk. To use your gifts to the maximum, you have to take a chance. The cautious servant who buried the talent  was ‘risk averse’, understandably so, given the severity of the master who gave it to him. Nevertheless, however understandable his attitude may be, it brought him to judgment. Life is a gift that we waste to our eternal cost.

The message seems clear. Each of us must make an accurate assessment of the gifts we have been given, and launch out on paths that make the most of these. Of course, there is no guarantee that doing so will bring success as the world understands it, but for the Christian this does not mean that we are left stumbling in the dark. One the contrary, Paul tells the Thessalonians in this week’s Epistle, ‘You are not in darkness; you are all children of light’. This is not because they know what the future holds, but because by following Christ they have ‘put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation’.

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