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16
November 08
Proper
28
The
Rev'd Dr. Richard Corney
New
York City
The one receiving the five talents put them to work
and gained another five;
similarly, the one with
two gained another two (Matthew 25 16-17).
Clearly the market in the first century Judea of this parable
of the talents had to have been doing a great deal better
than the market in New York has been doing the past few months,
in order for those two slaves who invested what their master
had entrusted to them to double their stake. And we aren’t
talking here about trivial sums. Those additional five talents
the first slave had made on the investment? At the then going
rate, those five talents could pay the wages of a common laborer
every single day, seven days a week, for a little over 82
years. That’s a lot of money. No wonder the master was
full of praise for the two slaves who had invested the talent
and so annoyed at the one who had buried it in the ground,
for the one who had buried his instead of doubling it, as
the others had, ended up costing the master in lost interest
the equivalent of a day laborers salary for some sixteen and
a half years.
But that was back then. I wonder how Jesus would have told
this parable if he were telling it here in New York in these
days when the market has lost trillions of dollars. If those
two slaves who invested their master’s cash were investing
in today’s market, far from doubling their investment,
they would have found themselves having to return to their
master significantly less cash than they had originally been
given. In today’s market only the slave who had buried
the money in the ground – would the modern equivalent
be investing in zero return treasury bonds? – only that
slave would have suffered no loss of capital. In these circumstances
would Jesus have had the master say to the slave who has received
the single talent and buried it, “Well don, good and
faithful slave,” while saying to the other two, “You
wicked ... slaves”?
Well, perhaps. But perhaps not. Listen again to the dialogue
between the master and the slave who had buried the money.
The slave says, “Lord, I knew that you are a hard man,
reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have
not scattered. And being afraid, I went and hid your talent
in the ground” (Matthew 25 24-25). To which the master
replies, “Wicked and lazy slave, you knew that I reap
where I have not sowed and gather where I have not scattered.
It was incumbent upon you to put my money with the brokers,
and when I came I would have gotten back what was mine with
interest” (Matthew 25 26-27).
Note that in the master’s castigation of his slave more
is involved than simply the fact that the slave didn’t
use what he had been given to make additional money. Of course
the fact that the slave hadn’t quite naturally did annoy
his master. He did want that interest. But it is not just
the loss of all that potential interest that constitutes the
rebuke. Something more fundamental annoys the master. Notice
that when the master rebukes the “wicked and lazy slave”
the master repeats a portion of the slave’s own description
of his master, that description which the slave had used to
explain and excuse his actions: “You knew, “ says
the master, “that I reap where I have not sowed and
gather where I have not scattered.” What the master
is saying here is, in essence, “Look, You knew what
I am like, the sort of man I am. You knew the sort of thing
I would have done with that talent. Knowing that, why did
you act as you did with what I had given you? Why did you
think I wouldn’t be annoyed that you had done nothing
with what I had entrusted to you?”
Remember that these three individuals who receive the differing
amounts of money are slaves. As such they are just as much
the property of the master as is the money which he distributes
to them. That is to say, both the money and the slaves are
tools of the master, and the function of those tools is to
be employed in the manner the master wishes to employ them.
Indeed a good slave – and in this respect all three
were good slaves – a good slave will have studied the
master so carefully that even when what the master expects
is not explicitly communicated, the slave will still know
what ought to be done. A good slave studies the master so
that the slave can anticipate the master’s every desire,
and act in accordance with that understanding of his owner’s
nature. All three slaves in the parable seem to have had a
correct grasp of the master’s character and interest.
The problem with the slave who buried the money was not that
he didn’t understand his master; the problem was that
he did not behave correctly in the light of that knowledge.
And the reason he didn’t act in accordance with his
master’s character was another aspect of that character
which the slave believed he saw – it’s the one
line in the slave’s description of his master which
the master does not repeat, the line “I knew that you
are a hard man.” The other two slaves had been willing
to take a risk on behalf of their master, willing to put what
they correctly understood to be the master’s intention
for th talents into practice. Their focus was on the will
of the master. That was not the case with the focus of the
third slave. He was into self-protection. His focus was on
himself. Fearful of what his “hard master” would
do to him if he wasn’t able to return exactly what had
been given, he buried his talent rather than risk it. The
slaves who had received the five thousand and the two thousand
talents imitated the behavior of their master. What the master
would want was the most important thing, and they do not seem
to have given any thought to what might happen to them if
things didn’t work out right. For the slave with the
one talent, his own safety took precedence over what he knew
to be his master’s desires.
Fundamentally, of course, the parables of Jesus are all about
a single subject, all about the same thing. In the introduction
to this section of the Gospel of Matthew the Gospel makes
this clear; it portrays Jesus saying, “The kingdom of
heaven is like ...” (Matthew 251), a statement which
is immediately followed by the parable of the five wise and
five foolish bridesmaids which we heard last week. Then comes
this week’s Gospel, which begins “for it {that
is to say the Kingdom] is as if ...” (Matthew 25 14).
Each parable, as it were, functions as a snapshot illustrating
different ways the citizens of God’s kingdom are to
behave in the present. Last week’s lesson, which Matthew
makes explicit at the end of the parable, — last weeks’
lesson was “Keep awake, therefore, because you do not
know either the day or the hour” (Matthew 25 13), that
is to say, one is to live every day in the present time as
if the Kingdom in its fulness is always just around the corner.
Today’s snapshot concerns the use of talents. Now an
interesting thing has happened to that word over the centuries.
What originally signified a substantial sum of money now gets
defined as a “gift committed to one’s trust to
use and improve ... hence any natural faculty, ability or
power.” and the reason it gets defined this way, so
my dictionary tells me, is directly due to the use of the
word in this parable, for in this parable the sum of money
known as a “talent” clearly signifies what God
has given to each of us. The parable is a parable of how citizens
of the kingdom are to use what they have been given, whatever
that may be.
Perhaps the first point which the parable makes is that every
talent one has is indeed a gift whose ultimate source is our
master, is God. Just as each slave in the parable was given
a different number of talents, so too we have a diversity
of gifts. We may perceive others as more talented than we,
possessing certain talents which the world may value more
than it does ours. But that, says the parable, is not relevant.
In this regard the point the parable seems to be making is
that as far as the service of our master, the service of God,
is concerned, it isn’t so much a matter of what one
has, as it is a matter of what one does with what one has,
how one employs what one has been given. Remember that the
slave who received and invested the two thousand talents receives
exactly the same praise as the slave who received and invested
the five thousand. Both are told, “Well done,”
each is called a “good and faithful slave,” and
both receive the invitation, “enter into the joy of
your lord” (Matthew 25 21 23).
It isn’t so much a matter of what one has, then, as
it is a matter o what one does with what one has, how one
employs what one has been given. In one of George Herbert’s
poems this stanza occurs:
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgerie divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy
laws,
What make ‘th’action”
of the servant sweeping the floor “fine,” as Herbert
sees it, is that it is done “as for thy [that is, God’s]
laws,” that is, it is done as a service to God. And
that is the second point the parable makes. What one does
with one’s talents, what one does with what has been
given, whatever that may be, is to be done in a manner which
conforms to the character of the One by whom it was given.
One is to act as one believes the master would have one act.
To do this successfully one needs continually to deepen one’s
knowledge of the master. The saintly thirteenth century Bishop,
Richard of Chichester, understood this well.
O most merciful Redeemer, Friend
and Brother,
May I know thee more clearly
May I love thee more dearly
May I follow thee more nearly
It is knowing God more clearly which enables us to follow
God more nearly. The life of prayer, the study of the Scriptures,
the worship of the Church – all these and many others
are ways in which we can come to deepen our knowledge of the
one whom we serve, so that our service may conform to the
divine character and will.
And the final point of the parable is that knowledge of God
in and of itself is not the end of the matter. If one is to
follow God more nearly, if one is to use one’s talents
as God means them to be used, one needs as well the second
of those three things for which Richard of Chichester prayed,
one needs to “love” God “more dearly,”
love God more than one loves oneself. As we saw, the problem
of the slave who received the one talent was not that he didn’t
know the master’s will; it was that he did not wish
to risk himself in his master’s service. His desire
for self-preservation, his focus on himself, on his needs,
rather than his master’s will, kept him from acting,
kept him from taking any risk on behalf of his lord.
“Well done, good and faithful slave.” Those are
the words the master in the parable spoke to the two slaves
who took the risk in the service of their lord, the slaves
who used their talents as the master intended. To use our
talents in the service of our Lord, to take whatever risk
that may entail, that, says our parable, is to do well.
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