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Looking up content for: Matthew 25:14-30 (posted on 11/7/2005)

Comments and Observations

  • Like the previous parable of the wise and foolish virgins, so this Parable of the Talents sets us up to ponder ultimate issues of the endtimes. And like the prior passage/parable, so here we see that how things go in the end is determined by how one thinks and acts in all the time leading up to that final conclusion.
  • However, unlike the parable of the bridesmaids in Matthew 25:1-13 (where preparation and foresight were the key), here there is much more focus on concrete actions (and a series of actions and a pattern of behavior at that).
  • It’s easy to read this as a parable of judgment (and ultimately it is that), but as Robert Farrar Capon once pointed out in his books on the parables, this is also a parable of grace. After all, it begins with the master freely giving away the talents in question. That’s how it always begins in the gospel: God freely gives us good things without our deserving and without our necessarily deserving them. They are just given to us. That’s the grace part.
  • But if ever there were a parable that implied the notion that even grace entails subsequent responsibility—a fitting response to the grace given—then this is it. It’s perennially easy to confuse the works we do in response to grace with the idea that by our works we EARN grace. This ties in with the famous alleged discrepancy between Paul and James in the New Testament—is James working against Paul by saying we’re saved by our own efforts/works after all? No, but James emphasized the tight linkage between being saved by grace and living a gracious, grace-filled life in return. You can say that you cannot have grace without the response without having to imply thereby that the response earns the grace retrospectively. That’s backward!
  • Of course, this being a parable, it cannot be an allegory or we will find ourselves in lots of trouble. If we want to equate the initial reception of the talents with grace, then we will be forced to wonder how and why the third servant ends up in the outer darkness gnashing his teeth. If the talents are grace, how can one ever lose that grace? It is probably best not to over-extend the imagery here. Suffice it to say that this is a parable about faithful living during however long a period it may be that the master is away. But it’s also about the need to press on in faithfulness because of the belief that precisely because the master is himself faithful, he will return one day, and we will want to have proven by the overall shape of our lives that we were ready for his active presence all along.

Questions to Ponder/Issues to Address

  • Because parables are not allegories, we should not fret too much when the character in the story that we most closely identify with God/Jesus turns out to have some less-than-stellar attributes that we would ordinarily not want to associate with God himself. So in Luke 18, God may be analogous to the unjust judge who fears neither God nor people, but we should not overextend the analogy to say that, therefore, God himself must likewise be in some sense surly and unjust.
  • So also in Matthew 25: In verses 24-27 some things are alleged about the character of this master that sound rather harsh and unpleasant. We don’t want to say that God just is like that. But maybe we’d even so do well to take a closer look at this.
  • Notice that the third servant claims his master is a hard man but does that make it so? In verse 26 when the master says, “So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown . . .,” what if we nuance the tone of that word “knew” such that it sounds ironic or even sarcastic? If a teenager takes out the family car without permission, he may later say to his father and mother, “Well, I knew you guys wouldn’t mind.” The father may then say back to his son, “Oh, you just KNEW that, did you?” In other words, maybe what the third servant claims he knew to be true is not true at all. And maybe the clue to the idea that this master is, as a matter of fact, a whole lot kinder than this third servant alleges came in the opening of this parable when the master so freely (graciously) gave away these talents. The generous nature of the master was on display from the outset. The other two servants seem to have seen that. The third one seems to have missed it and this led to his fear.
  • Now, perhaps the first two servants had a healthy fear/respect for the master, too. But they took their primary cue from his up-front generosity and went from there. They had a healthy fear of the master and used this to turn them toward proper action. The third servant had an unhealthy view and this fear led him to paralysis and inaction.
  • Another question: What would have happened, do you suppose, if one or both of the first two servants lost their talents as a result of their wheelings and dealings? Isn’t there a measure of risk involved in what they did? Could it have been possible that despite their efforts, they could, in the end, have had less to show for themselves than the more prudent third servant who tucked his talent safely under the mattress?
  • That is to say: Even if things had not gone as swimmingly for the first two servants, do you think they still would have received their master’s approval for at least having tried to do their best with what they had been given? What (if anything) does this parable say about faithfulness in the kingdom irrespective of final outcomes and “success” as the world might define it?

Textual Points

  • Commentator Frederick Dale Bruner points out that in the Greek text, the vitality of the first two servants is signaled by Matthew through the use of a series of very strong, active verbs starting in verse 16. Immediately (eutheos) these two sallied forth and they worked and gained more. But the contrast then follows as the third servant is characterized in a series of three very dull, recessive verbs. Whereas the first two “went out, began to work, and gained more,” the third more flatly is said to “ have left, dug a hole, and buried his talent.” Left, dug, buried. The action in the text pulls you down, down, down into dull passivity and laziness.
  • Insofar as this parable has a wider application to the sweep of what we would now call the Christian life, we ought not to get stuck on the actual monetary value of a “talent.” As some commentators note, it is ironic that this ancient unit of currency is now in English the same word used more broadly to refer to an array of talents/abilities that people in the church have. However, applying this to the grace (and the graces) that God provides to us would be a legitimate application of all this even if that verbal coincidence were not present. However, in terms of the imagery of the parable itself it can be noted that each of the three servants received a large sum: a poor person could have lived off of even one talent for up to fifteen years. So these were sizeable sums, great gifts, things not to be trifled with.

Illustration Idea

Illustration Idea #1: In the New Testament, we are frequently told that the church is like a human body. And even as the human body needs every single part, so also the church is organized by the Holy Spirit in such a way that all the bases are covered. If you walked into this sanctuary this morning, it wasn't just because you have feet but also because you have legs, hips, eyes, a sense of balance. Take away any one of those, and you would fall.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks provides vivid reminders of how interconnected the body must be in order to function. As a neurologist, Sacks know that there are parts of our brains no larger than a pea which, if damaged, will render us unable to walk. In one of his books he tells the story of the man who received a very slight amount of damage to a very tiny part of his brain with the result that this man lost his sense of proprioception.

Proprioception is a big word that refers to your innate ability always to know where your body is located in space. Without even having directly to think about it, you always know whether you are sitting, lying down, standing, standing or sitting straight, leaning sideways, bending forward, etc. But this particular man had lost this sense and so when he walked, although he himself did not notice it, he walked bent at the waist to about a 90-degree angle. In the end, the only way they could help this man was to fit him with a pair of glasses that had a little spirit-level extending out from the bridge of the glasses. So long as he could see the bubble on the level and keep it in the middle, he knew he was standing straight. But the moment you took the glasses away, he tilted sideways again, though he could not sense this! There was nothing wrong with this man's eyes or legs or feet. But he was missing one small item that turned out to be key.

If we extend that metaphorically to the church, we can see again that we really do need the plethora of gifts, interests, talents, and abilities that our great God in Christ is so very careful to distribute. Take any one of those gifts away, and we walk crooked (and maybe not at all). But put them all into their proper place, and we walk upright once again. When God gives us gifts, “talents,” he expects us to put them to use as best we can. He gives us talents for a reason. If we bury them under the mattress or find that we are too fearful to put them into practice, we may find in the end that not only are we ourselves accountable for our fearful failure, we may even find that we have diminished the entire church.