Jesus’ loves to tell parables and today, we get another one from Matthew’s Gospel. It’s the story of the talents.
In this story, a man entrusts his financial resources with three of his servants. To the one he gave five talents; to another, two; and to the third servant, one.
A talent was the name given to a unit of money that would have equaled fifteen years of wages. So, Jesus is using a large sum of money in telling this parable. Fifteen years of wages would have totaled up to a substantial amount. Just one talent would have been a big amount, but just imagine if someone entrusted five talents to you. That was equivalent to 75 years of a living wage, a life-time of earnings.
So right away, we notice that the stakes are high. Can you imagine someone entrusting you with that amount of money? Even just one talent would make you nervous.
Should I play it safe or be aggressive in how the money gets invested? Maybe I’ll buy some property with this man’s money hoping that there will be some equity when he returns. What if it’s a bad year in the stock market?
Those are great questions. Financial advisors make a living in helping their clients think through these risk-tolerance scenarios especially when we are dealing with such a large amount of money. We all know that even with the best financial advice out there, there are no guarantees that things will turn out as planned.
Being a good steward with the gifts that have been entrusted to us can be complicated. So, I don’t envy these three people who were entrusted with this man’s talents. It is a lot of responsibility.
The first two servants are the stars of this parable. They ended up doubling what had been given them. It’s the third guy, the one who had been given one talent who couldn’t handle the pressure. He took his talent and buried it in the ground.
When the man returned to see what they did with his wealth while he was away, he was pleased to hear that the first two servants doubled what had been given them. He rewarded them by giving them higher positions. As far as the third guy goes, well, let’s just say that it didn’t end well for him.
Here was an opportunity that was handed to him out of the blue. It was an opportunity of a lifetime. That was his moment, his opportunity to shine. But he broke under the pressure.
I think that the reason Jesus told this parable was to remind us that we all have been given an opportunity of a lifetime. God has entrusted to us our unique backgrounds, experiences, skills, expertise, talents, gifts, assets, passions, hopes, and dreams. God has given us all of these resources so that we can be part of the building of God’s kingdom here on earth. And we only have one lifetime to make our mark.
Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems like we often focus more on what we don’t have rather than on what we do have. How often we worry about not having enough time, or enough money, or enough knowledge, or enough confidence to be able to make a difference in our world. We often are stuck in this scarcity type of thinking that we lose sight of what we have been given.
And maybe this is why Jesus told the parable of the mustard seed which we find earlier in Matthew’s Gospel. In that parable, Jesus says, all you really need to have is faith the size of a mustard seed and if you invest that little faith, it will eventually grow into a large tree. You don’t even need to have money, just a tiny seed will do.
Two summers ago, our church hosted a “Faith Builders” training here at our church. We had a great turn-out, a little over forty people from our congregation attended. The whole point of that training was to remind us that each one of us has been given everything we need to live out our faith.
[Faith Builders Seminar, August, 2019]
And here is what we learned. One of the resources that God has given to every single one of us are opportunities to build relationships and share our faith with people inside and outside the church. And so we spent most of that time during that training, improving our relational skills and becoming more aware of opportunities where we can be a blessing to others.
One of the sessions during that two-day Faith Builders training included three simple questions to help us see the talents that each one of us has been given to share with others.
The first question was, “What are some challenges that people face today?” Here are some of the responses from the forty or so people who attended the training. I wrote these down so I wouldn’t forget:
Stress at work or school – Raising children – Loneliness – Grief – Depression – Political Division – Addictions – Safety – Food Insecurity
The second question we were asked was, “What do these challenges tell us about the needs of people and what does this tell us about what people are seeking in this community?”
Here are our group responses from that training:
People are seeking a supportive community, medical access and affordability, hope, education and career opportunities, mentors and wise guidance, values, someone who will listen, forgiveness.
And the last question we were asked to consider was the question, “What can we, the church, the Body of Christ in the world, uniquely offer people that they many not be able to get anywhere else?”
Here are the responses from that question:
A community of love, forgiveness, hope, and a reality that is greater than ourselves.
That three-question exercise at this training led us to this conclusion: It’s not just about our church having programming and events, but it’s really about how we personally relate to people in authentic and meaningful ways.
That training that we had about a year and a half ago reminds us that the talents and resources God has given us aren’t necessarily found in the church’s financial resources or our programming, it’s really found in the opportunities we have to build caring relationships with others and offer the hope and good news of our faith.
We are like those lucky servants in the parable who were given the opportunity of a lifetime. We’ve been given so much, more than we can ever imagine, but the question is always, “what will we do with the seeds and the talents God has given us?”
I loved watching the musical, “Hamilton” this past summer. Probably the most popular song from that musical is the song, “My Shot.”
Alexander Hamilton who is played by Lin-Manuel Miranda sings this song as a young man who has just arrived to New York City. The words of the chorus are, “I am not throwing away my shot! I am not throwing away my shot! Hey yo, I’m just like my country, I’m young, scrappy, and hungry, And I’m not throwing away my shot! It’s time to take a shot!”
This theme of Hamilton not throwing away his shot runs throughout the musical. As a young immigrant who arrives in New York he finds himself in a position to become George Washington’s right hand man in the Revolutionary War and he later would become our nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury. Throughout his life, Hamilton rose to the occasion to serve our country and is proudly known as one of our Founding Fathers.
The parable of the talents is a parable about the importance of not throwing away our shot when given the opportunity to rise to the occasion. When the first two servants were given their talents, they knew that this was their shot to multiply those gifts. It was the third servant who out of fear, threw away his shot.
In telling this parable, Jesus is reminding us that God has given each one of us talents and incredible opportunities to use these resources to be a blessing to others. The question is will we bury our talents and throw away our shot at making a difference?
The question isn’ if we have been given talents. The question is how alert and ready are we when given the opportunities to multiply our talents by serving and blessing the people around us.
Jesus, the one who told this parable of the talents, lived out his own parable. Every time, Jesus had an opportunity to use his talent of serving, he did. Every time Jesus had an opportunity to be a blessing, he was.
A few chapters earlier in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus said that he came to be a servant and to be a ransom for many. And when Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, he offered all of the talents that had been given him, even his very life.
What talents have you been given? An opportunity to listen to someone share their fears and concerns with you? Maybe it’s in sharing a little of your faith with someone. It could be some of the time you have been given to serve others. Sometimes it’s skill or area of expertise through the church. Maybe like the parable, you have been blessed financially and you want to see it multiplied by helping others.
So many talents we have been given. So many talents
Let’s not throw away our shot.
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