In our house for the past month or so we have been living
through exam season. Our youngest Isaac was getting ready for and sitting his
level 3 NCEA exams. It’s been a hard year, with the disruptions of COVID to
class room learning and study routine, and for Isaac it came on the heels of major
disruptions last year: We moved him half way through the year to a new city, a
new home, well a temporary home then into a permanent one, and to a new school.
Possibly I was more worried than Isaac was about these exams, but he buckled
down and studied so he could show the examiner that he knew all the stuff they
had been teaching him during the year. He worked to try and get a good mark, hopefully
an excellence, or a merit, even just an achieved and definitely avoiding not
passing. These exam results could have a direct bearing on his future directions
and prospects. Now we settle into that waiting period, waiting for the results…
Maybe you remember going through that exam season and its
tensions yourself, when you were at school or university, or it may be fresher
in your minds as you went through it with your own children or going through it
at a distance with your grandchildren. The need to pass and do well in exams…
NT Wright says that many of us come to the parable of Jesus
we had read out today, the parable of the talents as it is known, with that
same mentality that same exam season tension. Hoping we have done enough work
to hear the master say ‘well done good and faithful servant… it can feel like
it revolves all around how much we achieve and it collapses Christianity into a
cosmic level examination system. And maybe just maybe when we take it in
isolation we can lose sight of the grace of God shown in Jesus Christ. Our true
hope of salvation in Christ alone.
This is the third of four parables that Jesus tells at the
end of his Olivet discourse. His sermon on the mount… of Olives, in that week
before his crucifixion. A private talk with his disciples in answer to their
questions about the destruction of the temple, the end of the age and his
coming as king. The third of four parables with which Jesus speaks to his
disciples about what it means to wait for his return. The third of four
parables with which we are finishing our yearlong journey through the five
blocks of Jesus teaching on the Kingdom in Matthew’s gospel. A series we’ve
called A 2020 vision of the Kingdom of
God: The manifesto, mission, meaning and means of the much awaited Kingdom of
Heaven.
Like all the parables in the Olivet discourse it deals with
the central figure going away and being away a long time. This time it is the
master who goes away on a business trip. Like many such people in Jesus day he
entrusts his wealth into the hands of his servants. In the good news bible it uses the word gold
coins, and in the NIV it speaks of bags of gold, but the measure for the wealth
he gives them is the talent, five two and one. And measure is the right word it
was a weight of money, either in gold coins or in gold bars. A talent was quite
a lot of money a denarii was equitant to a day’s wages and a talent was
equivalent to 10,000 denarii. So it was equivalent to about 15 years wages. Of
course when we hear the word talent we think of skills and abilities that
people have either naturally or God given, and that is because the English word
talent actually comes from this biblical word and from this parable in fact.
It would be easy to think that the master was being stingy
to the third servant only giving him one talent, but remember how much a talent
was worth. We also forget that the master gives to each of his servants according
to their ability. He knows the servants and their capabilities so well. So
entrusts them with what he knows they can handle.
The first two servants go right away and put the money that
the master has entrusted to them to good use.
Maybe they started a business or risked investing it to get a good
return, by the time the master comes back they have doubled what they were
given.
When the master returns he calls his servants to account and
the first two servants are able to present the increase to him. The response is
they are acknowledged as good and faithful
servants, who have been faithful with little things and so can be intrusted
with bigger things. They enter into their master’s happiness, which echoes the
wedding feast in the previous parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids.
However the emphasis of the parable and the punch line comes
with the third servant. Who had been afraid of his master and had gone and
buried the talent he had been given. He saw the master as a hard man who was
wanting to make money off the efforts of others. So he buried it because he
feared losing what he had. The master is angry with him. He sees the servant
putting the blame back on the master and his character, and really if he had
thought the master such a hard man wouldn’t it have been easy to simply put the
talent into a bank, with the money changers even, and get a return in that way.
So the third servant is not faithful and is cast outside into the darkness.
Again a punishment that echoes the dismissal of the foolish brides maids last
week who were left outside with the stinging words “I never knew you’. It seems
the third servant really did not know his master.
It is easy for us to come to this parable with that exam
tension that I talked about before right… There is something about us that we
find ourselves wondering if we are in the position of the third servant. We ask
have we done enough to pass. And as I said before I think in doing that we
forget the rest of the gospel that has gone before and what is about to happen
in Christ’s death and resurrection. This wonderful gift of being reconciled
with God and the kingdom of God coming to reign in our lives by God’s grace.
In scripture in particular the Old Testament stories told
about masters and servants usually talked of God and his relationship with
Israel. The parables of Jesus about the Kingdom do likewise… And remember here
that Jesus is talking about the time when Jerusalem and the temple will be
destroyed. He is also speaking after a stinging criticism of the self-appointed
religious leaders of his day, the scribes and the Pharisees in Matthew 23. The
destruction of the temple is a judgment on that religious system. Israel had
been given the law and the temple and been called by God to show the goodness
of God to the nations. To draw all people to worship the one true God, because
of the way they lived. However they had turned that region into one where it
was held onto and guarded and became insular and inward serving. They had
buried what had been given. It came from a misunderstanding of the very character
of their God. So God was going to take away what they had and cast them out… What
they had done was the very opposite of Jesus parable of the kingdom of God
where he likened it to a buried treasure in a field, where once it was
discovered a person went and gave up all they had to possess it. Here they
buried it and hid it away, piling rules and regulations which made it hard for
people to find and have a relationship with God.
The two faithful servants are the ones who know and have
received the kingdom of God. The Disciples and all of us who follow on. The
words the third servant uses to describe God, again go in the face of what
Jesus had taught about the kingdom of heaven. The third servant had said that
the master was a man who reaped a harvest that he did not sow. But Jesus in
that central parable about the kingdom in Matthew 13 had talked of the kingdom
being like a farmer who went out to sow seeds and where it took root in good
soil it grew and produced a harvest, 30, 40 or a hundred fold. And we see that
in the way the two faithful servant right away go and risk using what they have
been given for the sake of the master. It produces a harvest while not one
hundred fold, it is 100%.
The parable is also very much based on the generosity of
God. Like with the parable of the day workers in Matthew 21 where all who work
no matter for how long receive the master’s gracious reward, here we see the
master, God giving his great treasure generously and graciously to his servant.
It is by God’s great mercy and grace we are welcomed into the kingdom of God.
He has given us all his Son Jesus and through Jesus death and resurrection we
are given eternal life and the presence of God’s spirit in our lives. We are
welcomed into his kingdom. All that is entrusted to us. He blesses us through
providence and through his presence the gifts and abilities we call talents,
and the talents that we call our wealth and resources. This parable speaks of
all those things being entrusted to us because of God’s providence and his
grace. They are God’s and so as we come to know the one who gave it to us we
invest and risk using all those things for the kingdom of heaven.
Keeping that in mind how do we apply this parable to our
lives.
Firstly, When we are aware of what Christ has done for us,
the great generosity of God and the fact that he has given us so much to be
Stewarts of it causes us to be able to be like the first two servants and
gladly use what we have for the kingdom, for the sake of the one who entrusted
it to us. It does not become a matter of exam tension, but a natural
outworking, a joyful celebration of what Christ has done for us. To wait for
the kingdom of God is to be productive is to allow the fruit of the spirit to
grow in our lives, and take on legs and hands and heart and impact on the world
around us. To take risks to see the kingdom prosper. Risk investing time and
resources into those who are in need. To risk sharing the good news of the
Kingdom come in Christ, to love lavishly. To take care of the gifts of creation
we have been given, and to be good stewards of our resources, willing to risk
investing in what God is doing in the world around us.
Secondly, we need to be aware that what we think of God will
affect how we lives. When we focus on the grace and generosity of God, it
allows us to want to live out of that. Where as if we have this idea of God as
a cosmic policeman or slave driver we find ourselves ruled by fear and I fear
we do not know Jesus as we should.
Thirdly, as we use what we have been given faithfully, I
believe that God actually entrusts us with more… now, as a foretaste of what is
to come.
Lastly, to have a hope in the return of Christ, to be ready
now and on watch for his coming which was the line that started and finished
the first two parables in the Olivet discourse, in the future actually calls us
to be invested in the here and now. Matt Woodly puts it like this “As we await
the coming of the generous Lamb of God how will we spend our allotted
jackpot? Of god’s grace and providence… then summing up the first three
parables all together he says… “Our yearning for the consummation of all things
causes us to live better today- serving, celebrating and risking…”.
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