“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away”.
Matthew 25: 14-15
Can you visualise the scene? Jesus surrounded by his disciples and others telling the story of the man who gave his men his ‘talents’ for safe keeping. Some would have listened intently; some may even have been distracted or lost interest. Some probably took his words literally. We know Jesus often used stories including every day and familiar situations to teach his disciples and those who came to listen to his teachings. He knew that if he was going to get his message across, he needed to bring in the familiar, as many of those listening to him were likely to be generally uneducated. That is a lesson for us today – to keep things simple and to relate what happened in Jesus’ day to equivalent things happening in today’s world to help us understand better and be able to make changes where changes need to be made to improve things.
On first looking at the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30 we can guess that Jesus is preparing His disciples for a time when He won’t be there with them. We could also guess that He is setting them tasks to do while He is ‘away’, and on His return they will be judged on how well they have performed. But I think it is more likely that Jesus was giving them the ‘tools’ they were going to need when He was no longer there to lead them in person. He was teaching them ways of interacting with people.
Like much of scripture we can read it and take what we read at face value, or we can look deeper into it. First impressions are that the man appears to know the abilities of his men. He gave them what he thought they could handle. He treated them individually and didn’t give them all equal portions of his property/wealth. Therefore, according to what he believed they could handle, the result shouldn’t have been a surprise to him. On the other hand, you could say that there was no equality there! The men would have probably got together afterwards and compared what each had been given to be responsible for while their master was away.
However, as the saying goes - we will sow what we reap. If our expectations of ourselves and of others is low, the results will reflect this and be little. If our expectations of ourselves and others are high, then the chances are that we will produce high achievers. We will get our just rewards. Over the years there have been many aspirational education studies confirming this.
Relating ‘talents’ to life today we could replace the word ‘talents’ with ‘resources’ -time and energy, money, skills and experiences, property even. I recently read about a church who was sat on a huge amount of money, saving it for a rainy day, when the church building was almost derelict, and they couldn’t use it to do God’s work. Likewise generating funds just for the sake of generating them, and not using them to further God’s work is also not much use. Our time and energy can be used to its full potential or we can put it into things that are actually not that important, which doesn’t help our fellow human beings and doesn’t achieve what God wants us to achieve.
And so, as we journey through Lent let us think about the ‘talents’ we have and use them as wisely as God would want us to use them to further His kingdom.
Kathy Shaw
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