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"The Parable of the Talents"
A Sermon preached by Dr. Laird J. Stuart
30 August 2009

Genesis 2:4-9; Matthew 25:14-30

This past Thursday morning I opened the San Francisco Chronicle and pulled out the sports pages. There on the front page of the sports section was an advertisement which had a message that seemed to come right out of this parable. It was an advertisement about the San Francisco '49ers. It said in bold letters, "You have to earn the name faithful." Then there is a pointed note about buying tickets. To a large degree that is the message of this parable, the parable of the talents. "You have to earn the name faithful." How did they know?

We do not have to earn God's love. We do not have to earn the gift of Christ. As the parable tells us, God's love and the gift of Christ are given to us.

We do have to earn the name faithful. That is not automatic. We earn the name faithful by what we do with God's love and what we do with and for Christ.

This is a somewhat disturbing parable. It is helpful to notice right away, before getting into the details of the parable, that the master in this parable is very generous. He is generous in two respects. First, as he prepares to go on a journey he entrusts all of his property to his servants. He entrusts all of it. He does not hold anything back from them. He does not entrust some of his property to his slaves and entrust the rest of it to a friend or fellow master. He entrusts it all to them. Secondly, the amount of money he gives them is huge. People have tried to figure out what a talent would be worth today. One way to figure it out is to equate a talent to our present monetary values. But as the value of our money changes so does our understanding of what a talent would be worth in today's money. Another way to get a sense of what a talent was worth is to equate it to how people were paid. According to the Oxford Annotated Bible, a talent was worth fifteen years of wages to a common laborer in those days. So when the master gives the first servant five talents he is giving him 75 years worth of wages. When he gives the second servant two talents, he is giving him the equivalent of 30 years of wages. Even the third servant who only gets one talent is still being given 15 years worth of wages, all at once. I bet there is at least one of you right now doing the math on your wages. The master is very generous.

It is not worth spending too much time puzzling over and looking for some deep message is the disparity of the gifts. One servant gets five talents; one gets two talents, and the other one gets one talent. Jesus is not using the word "talent" as a symbol of abilities and skills. This parable is often used as a kind of motivational message about using the skills you have. I have done that. Jesus is simply using different amounts of talents to get to a bigger issue.

The bigger issue is revealed in the contrast between the actions of the first two servants and the actions of the third servant. The first two servants put their talents to work. The other servant buries his. When the master returns, the servants give an account of what they have done. The master says to the first two servants almost the same thing, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things." The next thing the master says is worth underscoring. He says, "… enter into the joy of your master." These two servants are not just given new responsibilities and opportunities. They are welcomed into the joy of their master; they are welcomed into his fellowship. They are in good standing with him.

There is no question that the third servant has made a huge mistake by burying the one talent he was given. His treatment by the master is harsh. There is a very curious element in the parable here. The slave accuses the master of being a harsh man and even somewhat dishonest in reaping what he did not sow and gathering what he did not scatter. The implication is he was reaping what others sowed and gathering what others scattered. The master does not directly deny such accusations. In the parable as Jesus tells it, the master brushes all this aside and points out that if the servant believed all that about the master the servant should have at least given the money to some bankers so that he would have made some interest.

In the end, the one-talent man looses not only the one talent given to him, all fifteen years worth of wages, but he is thrown out into the outer darkness. He does not enter the joy of his master. He is banished.

So what on earth is Jesus talking about?

In the parable, the talents represent the gospel: the good news that we can live this life with Christ, that we are given Christ for our lives just as the servants were given those talents. Jesus is using the parable to call people to use the gospel he is preaching and teaching. He wants people to invest him and his teaching into their lives.

Simply put, the parable says we are called to live the Christian life, to practice it, to work it out, to do it as best we can. If as our life ends we have something to show for our Christian living, some evidence of Christian living, then we will be welcomed into the joy of our master, who is Christ. If we have been good stewards of his life, in this life, then we will be blessed to live with him in the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven forever.

Invariably people are disturbed by any reference to a judgment and to the possibility that not everyone gets into heaven. Somehow this judgment will happen. Jesus makes that very clear throughout his teachings. But there is a very important element in this parable. The servants are free to choose what they will do with the talents they are given. Just so, you and I are free to choose what we will do with the gift of Christ. It is not predetermined. It is not predestined. We have a choice. We are given a choice. What happens to us in the end will be a result of how we choose to live. Daniel Migliore, in his book Faith Seeking Understanding summarizes this truth very well. He writes:

If any are excluded from the community of grace at the end, it is because they have persisted in opposition to God's grace, not because they were excluded before the foundation of the world.

With the difficult matter of judgment raised in this parable, it is important to listen to the whole parable and what it teaches us about Christian life. Christian life is made possible by God's generosity.

Jesus tells us about the generosity of the master.

In the parable the master represents God. The first truth for our lives this parable teaches us is that God is generous. The master gives all those talents to the servants. They do not earn them. They are given.

Throughout scripture we are told God is generous. It begins in the opening verses of the bible, in the accounts of creation. The people who wrote the two accounts of creation in Genesis did not know what we know about evolution. They did not know the how? of creation. But they sure knew the why of it. Creation happened because God chose to make it happen. They also wanted to be clear that God was generous in making creation. The second account of creation is simpler in some respects but the generosity of God is revealed here in just one word. God forms a man and puts that man in a garden. A garden! Not a cave, not a cage, not on some desert, but in a garden, a place lush with life.

This earth is all its beauty and abundance is the garden. Every single day of our lives we are blessed by this garden. Even when we may feel bothered, we are being blessed. Several days while I was in Bay Head, New Jersey, the ocean along the shore was filled with small translucent little things. Some people called them fish eggs. Some people called them jelly fish. When you dove into the water they would be all around you and hit your body. Someone said it was like swimming in tapioca pudding. It turns out the little things are call salps. They are living things. They move by drawing water into their tiny bodies and expelling it. In the water one day, surrounded by these things, I made a comment to another fellow and he changed my perspective on the so called nuisance immediately. He said it was just another sign of the ocean's abundance. Bingo. He was right.

God is generous.

God is even more generous is giving us Christ. Just as the servants are given the talents, we are given Christ. Christ is a gift. With Christ it is not our natural bodies and selves that are fed and watered and provided for. It is our souls and spirits. It is the well-springs of our lives. It is the root and source, the spirit and courage of all that makes human life good and worth living. That is what is redeemed and renewed by Christ. As abundant as God the Creator is, so abundant is God the Son who can redeem and renew each and every person who turns to him, not a select few now and then but everyone, all of us all the time. God is generous to us with creation. God is generous to us with Christ. We do not have to try to earn God's generosity. It is given. What matters is how we respond.

Christian life happens when we do something with God's generosity.

Jesus Christ says do something. Use the talents. Use the gospel. Live with and for Christ.

There is a story about a visit President Harry Truman made to the famous cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona. It is full of tombstones many of which have interesting stories and some of which have a bit of whimsy. One of the tombstones there reads "George Johnson – Hanged by Mistake." The story is that George Johnson unknowingly purchased a stolen horse, rode into town, and was lynched. Another tombstone reads "Here Lies Lester Moore…Four Slugs from a $$. No Less, No More." Evidently the tombstone President Truman said was his favorite read simply, "Here lies Jack Williams. He Done All He Could."

That is all that Jesus Christ is asking of you and me, that we do what we can with the gospel, with the teachings and the life and the calling of Christ.

Here is the best part, which is not in the parable but is a part of Christian life: if you do something with Christ in this life you will discover what Christ can keep doing in your life. You do not have to wait until the end of your life or whenever Jesus does return. You will discover new joys from your master in this life.

While I was in Bay Head, I went to call on a couple, the Carters, who attend the Bay Head Chapel. Last year about this time, Slade Carter had surgery to remove a tumor that had grown along his spinal cord. During the course of surgery his cord was nicked and Slade is now paralyzed from his chest down. It has been a huge adjustment for Slade and his wife, Tahti. When I was with them just last Sunday afternoon, I was impressed with their attitude and spirit. It was obvious they had been struggling with the huge challenges created by his paralysis.

When we talked about faith and how it was helping them, I heard a testimony I have heard before. There is a degree to which Slade's good nature and good spirit is a result of who he naturally seems to be. He is one of the those people who sees the glass half full. But that is not the only explanation for his good spirit. He is a man of faith. Tahti is a woman of faith. They use their faith. They let faith work in their lives. They do not think they have to prove themselves to God. They let God prove what God can do in their lives, in their struggles, in this life.

One of you shared with me an article from "Oprah" magazine. It was entitled "The Doubter's Dilemma". The author Kelly Corrigan writes about her experimenting with living a Christian life. She makes a very telling confession. She compares what happened when her parents learned her father had cancer some years ago with what she and her husband did when she learned she had cancer. In her words, "They gave it to God; we gave it to Google."

You can get all kinds of useful information from Google. But if it is inspiration you want, if it is a renewed heart, if it is a refreshed spirit, if it is the daily bread of courage that is what Jesus brings to us and brings to us in abundance.

There are so many ways to let Christ into your life and discover what Christ can do in your life. One of them is by being generous, simply and deliberately being generous. What better way to show your gratitude for the generosity of God than by being generous yourself. Even in and especially in times when we are so aware of scarcity and limitations, what better way to show the transforming power of Christ in your life than by being generous.

The Stewardship Mission Team of this congregation is calling us, you and me, to be generous. Share abundantly is what the Stewardship Mission Team tells us.

Share your financial resources. Share your heart. Share your mind. Share your arms. Share your hands. Share your attention. Share your knowledge of where jobs might be available. Share you extra time volunteering, especially where it matters so much to people and with people who have so little. Share your financial resources, sure. Share them as generously as you can. Share them with us at Calvary so we, as a church, can be generous especially in what we can give out into our community and world.

Do something for Christ and you will discover what Christ can do in you.

The '49ers are on to something. "You have to earn the name faithful." Like the servants in the parable, we do not have to earn God's generosity, but we have to do something with it.

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