Psalm 123,
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11,
Matthew 25:14-30
Parable of the Talents
window at Old First
Reformed Church
Chapter 25 of Matthew concludes the last public speech of the Lord Jesus before he gets arrested—like a commander giving his last speech to his troops before they enter into battle and maybe die. The conclusion of this speech takes the form of three last parables.
You heard the first one last week, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Today you heard the Parable of the Talents, and next week you will hear the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
All three parables are about the coming of the king, however that will be, whenever that will be. “Like a thief in the night,” says St. Paul in First Thessalonians, in real human time, but not on anyone’s calendar. Like a bridegroom suddenly arriving, like a master suddenly returning. For five of the virgins it’s the wedding feast and for two of the slaves it’s the joy of their master, but for the other five virgins and the third slave it’s the outer darkness, with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
That does not mean hell or torture, but it does mean exclusion. Weeping and gnashing of teeth mean grief with anger, that you’re hurt, but you’re mad too. Yes, you blew it, but you maintain it was a set-up, that it was unfair from the start. You blew it, but you blame the other virgins who did not share their oil, or the master who you predicted would be harsh. You’re out and it’s their fault that you’re out.
This is the paradoxical experience of God that runs through the Bible. You will experience God as harsh if you see God as harsh. You might even want God to be harsh. But if you want God to be gracious you will experience God as gracious and even generous. So do so. The parable is the invitation. And if you see God in the way that Jesus does, then you need not fear what is unknown, you can handle all the great unknowns of time and space, even general and special relativity.
You don’t know the time that he is coming, so how do you act in the meantime? If you’re one of the virgins, you keep your lamps trimmed and you get spare oil, to be ready no matter how late he comes and even if you fall asleep. If you’re one of the slaves, you use the time and freedom that he gives you to buy and sell, make money, invest money, make more money, exposing yourself to risk, just as your master exposed himself to risk when he left his wealth with you!
A talent was a monetary unit like a million bucks, a fortune, really. That the master left you with five million or two million or even one million, and went a way and did not supervise you, confirms that the master understands risk. And if you can bet on him, then you can bet on his millions. If you bet on him being generous, you will find him generous. But if you presume against his generosity and expect him to be harsh, then you will find him harsh. Yes, the paradoxical experience of God.
If the slaves experienced their master so differently, I wonder how differently they experienced the passing of the time that their master was away, the long time, the weeks and months and maybe years. I know that I am risking the error of psychologizing this parable anachronistically, but I would imagine the two slaves regarding the long time of their master’s absence as positive, a good space of time, and the more time they had, the more they could risk; the more time they had, the greater their return. But for the third slave the time will have been empty and even a trial. Just reckoning for inflation, his static money would decrease in value. Worse, his time spent in passive waiting was empty time, and his time spent in fear of his master was negative time, even bad time.
There are different conceptions of time embedded in the Bible. The Egyptians and Babylonians regarded time as an endless repetition, an endless cycle of birthing and dying, like the Hindu wheel of karma. The Israelites thought of time more like a stream, a wave that we ride, a river that courses toward the goal God set for it. Like in the hymn by Isaac Watts: “Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away.”
We moderns, however, think of time in terms of space, Cartesian space like in geometry, and we draw time-lines running from left to right, all in order, date by date. Since Einstein, however, we’ve begun to think of time as relative, flexible, warped, and curved, as curved as space itself, but still very spacious.
So I want you to think about time as a kind of space of unconditional welcome that God has given to us. I want you to think about time and space as the room God makes for you within the universe for our human creativity and our cultural investment and your personal development and our congregational mission.
We are thinking about time because this is the Sunday that we choose to mark our anniversary, our 363rd trip around the sun since our church was established in 1654, thirty years before that communion beaker was given as a gift to the church. That beaker is 333 years old.
When I came here in 2001 a couple of our leaders said we had a window of only five years left before we might have to call it quits. We are much more positive about our time now. How much time do we have before us? Can this church endure in witness and mission until Our Lord returns? Maybe yes, but not by holding on. That’s the third slave. Rather by risking, investing, and expending.
First, in our programs that express our mission to our piece of the world. And if we see the world in terms of daylight and not darkness, we can discern, as Melody said last, that already the bridegroom comes among us now. Second, in our building that presents our witness and programs to the world. Third, and most of all, by risking, investing, and expanding in our relationships, as St. Paul writes in First Thessalonians, encouraging one another and building each other up, as indeed you are doing.
First Thessalonians is the earliest written epistle of St. Paul. At this point St. Paul expects the Lord Jesus to be returning soon, within his life-time. His later epistles show that he had come to terms with the delay of Our Lord’s return, and this developed appreciation for the spaciousness of God’s time went along with a developed realization of the wideness of Our Lord’s true significance.
At first the apostles saw him as the one to return the kingdom to Israel. Step by step the Holy Spirit taught them that Samaritans and Ethiopians and even Roman soldiers could have him as their Lord and Savior too. The longer the Lord delayed, the more their witness could expand. Eventually, by the epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, St. Paul reckoned how global and cosmic the Lordship of Jesus was, so that the delay of his return was not a delay but a wonderful openness to time and space, for expansion and investment in all the nations and persons of the world, including you.
To invest in the market means lots of loss as well as gain. That’s the risk. And so this expansion and investment has never not been unopposed, resisted, and rejected. And this can be worst among those who spout the name of Jesus, from the false apostles who opposed St. Paul to Christian politicians in America today. This problem is addressed by our parable next week, when the goats will be surprised at the judgment against them and cry out, “Lord, Lord, when did we see you poor, and hungry, and in prison?” The kingdom of heaven expands and invests not by noble evolution but in weeping repentance and laughing conversion. And so too with your own personal development.
The two slaves bet on their master’s graciousness if their investments didn’t pan out. They bet that when he came back he would honor that they dared to trust in his decency. Their investment of his money was their investment in their own future with him. They had no proof of either result, that their money would double, or that their master would honor their attempt, but they took the risks of hope and faith. The Lord Jesus says that this is what it’s like with God.
The third slave did not risk his master’s decency. He felt himself prudent, but his prudence only served his fear. His fear prevented his opening to joy—at the end, but also all along. His final outer darkness was the expansion of his inner darkness all along, his distrust and his alienation. He should get himself a gun.
But the joy that the first two entered as their reward was the expansion of the excitement of the risky commerce they’d been conducting all along. You exercise your faith to live creatively in joy. It is a life of risky vulnerability, but it is an open life, a spacious life. Against your fear you wear the helmet of your hope of salvation, and to protect your vulnerability you wear the breastplate of faith and love. The Lord Jesus says that this is what it’s like with God, and that’s because your faith is the faithfulness of God and your love is the love of God for you and all the world.
Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
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