November 19, 2023

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; Matthew 25:14-30

You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.

This is the Parable of the Talents. It has been interpreted in many ways over the centuries. And here I am to add to the discussion, or the confusion, depending on one’s perspective.

These slaves have been given talents, a literal mass of silver, and then their master goes away. One got five talents. One got two. And one got one. The master comes back after a time, looking to see how the slaves have fared with the money entrusted to them. The ones with more talents have generally doubled their master’s returns. But the single talent servant did nothing more than bury his talent and obviously it did not grow underground. This was a fearful reaction that resulted in an all too predictable outcome. The master was not happy.

[T]ake the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

Generally, a parable is to be interpreted at face value. It is meant to be a simple story that provides a memorable lesson. One such take away message is do not just bury your talent underground. Invest your talent. Make it work for you. And if you do not, prepare to be more than disappointed.

What is a talent? In this specific sense, it is a unit of weight. It varies depending upon the context, but the most consistent number I found for a Biblical talent was about seventy five to eighty pounds. We are not told in the reading what the talent was made of, but the implication was that it was silver, so about eighty pounds of silver. A talent was a rather large denomination of coin, or honestly a hefty silver bar.

As to value, a talent is thought to have been worth about 6,000 denari, a Roman coin that represented about a day’s wages for an ordinary person. One silver talent would therefore be worth about 20 years’ worth of wages at least at that point in time. We do not know if that was a minimum wage, a working wage, or a living wage. Those terms would have had no meaning at that time. Let us assume this pile of silver was supposed to represent a life of working.

The slaves were given differing amounts. One got five talents, which is about a century’s wages. That one double the amount owed to the master, ten lifetimes effectively. The next got two talents and doubled them—twice a lifetime, in other words. And the last one buried his talent. His talent was taken away, so we might assume that he got nothing because he did nothing.

The most straightforward interpretation of this message is that to those that something has been given, from them something is expected. You got all this money and you should have done something with it. Even if you had simply turned the money over to a banker, it would have grown somewhat. So why did you do nothing? Or, less metaphorically, why did you spend your life doing nothing?

There are alternative interpretations. There was one I read that suggested that this parable is about patience. The patience of those waiting for the return of Jesus, the master in this story. Just wait and your patience will be rewarded. Which, I must say, makes absolutely no sense. Why all that discussion about making money if it was really a story about waiting rather than doing? Burying the talent makes sense if that is the take home message. So, I think that is wrong.

Then there was a commentary about liberation theology. The servant with one talent was being punished for speaking out against an unfair economic system. The other two slaves had struggled to perform, but received nothing for their labors. Why? Because the master still took everything.

This explanation is also problematic. Jesus was of a more progressive mindset than the other prophets, but he was not known for shrouding his messages in this way politically oblique way. And, liberation theology was a term coined in our lifetimes. Jesus performed many miracles but anticipating 20^th century economic policies and progressive theologies seems a bit of a stretch. I think this is an attempt to reclaim Jesus in a very strained way to suit a modern sensibility. Not that I do not try that most Sundays, but in this case it seems unlikely.

How do we interpret this parable in a more approachable fashion? Jesus was not trying to be subtle or cute with these stories. These three slaves were given enormous amounts of money. The master did not do this on a whim and these three could be trusted with large amounts of money accordingly. Notice the master did not lose any money, so he knew what he was doing.

Twenty years wages. If I were a regular working person in the first century and someone handed me 20 years of wages, I would have been pretty excited. Perhaps this money is representative of the blessings a person receives in life. The question then becomes, what are you going to do with them? What are you going to do with the blessings of this life?

The word “talent” in English implies an ability that someone has. A talent at music or writing, carpentry or masonry, accounting or investing. Imagine any number of talents. And the word “talent” seems to be drawn from this use of the term from the Bible rather than it being a coincidence—this passage has been interpreted across time as what we are to do with our talents and the word has stuck in that sense.

What are we to do with the precious qualities we have been given? Bury them underground? Obviously not. But what about the different levels of talent suggested in the story? If I get five talents and you get one, how is that fair? If I get two and you get one? Again, what is fair about that?

And whose fault is that? Is it God’s fault that I have a talent for playing the French horn and nothing else? I am told, by the way, that if you play the French horn you are almost guaranteed a full music scholarship. Piano, violin, and voice, not so much.

The poet Mary Oliver once asked in a poem: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Well, what do you plan to do with yours?

There is all sorts of advice out in the world to help answer that question. Some of it is even good. But not all of it. Ever heard this one: do what you love, and you will never work a day in your life. And all that little chestnut requires is that the thing that you love somehow leads to you getting paid a living wage. Again, the French horn might have its charms, but if you cannot make ends meet playing it, it might not be the basis for a life plan.

I am personally very dubious about such “follow your heart” advice. Not because you should not pursue the things that you love, but because the things you love often have little or nothing to do with getting paid. In fact, the things that we do to pay the bills often have nothing to do with what we love.

And that is not a terrible thing. I realize that suggesting this perspective is to chuck out much of my childhood life advice from 1970s America. Toss all that out the window.

Some of you might also recall “Free to be you and me.” That is a great line, but it is not great occupational guidance. You may have a lot of freedom to choose in life: who you like and love, how you spend your free time, etc. But if you want to pay the bills, it might mean selling insurance or organizing spreadsheets or some other job that does not make it into children’s picture books. Let’s be honest, how many astronauts do we really need?

I do not mean to crush anyone’s dreams. But when someone says that a child can grow up to be president, first why would you ever wish that upon them? And second, there have been 46 presidents over the course of almost 250 years. Maybe shoot for something with better odds and less stress.

This is not about squelching anyone’s creativity or ambition. But it is a reminder that creativity and ambition typically require an enormous amount of work. Practice, practice, practice. And failure, failure, failure. A small handful of people get lucky, they get discovered on the street corner. But most people are not that lucky. Not even vaguely so. And you should probably not build your life around the stories of others completely unjustified success.

I also think that many Americans have an unhealthy preoccupation with work and career. We measure success by being the most this or the best that, which is a rather unforgiving model for success. We frequently conflate success and prestige with contentment and happiness.

And which would you wish upon someone you love: success or happiness? Those do not have to be mutually exclusive goals, but success can often be pursued at the expense of our happiness and happiness often has nothing to do with success. You can work your day job and still play in a band on weekends.

And yet one piece of perspective I might offer at this point is that you should not delay living in order to keep working. Yes, it is good to pay the bills and to have a roof over your head. But I would not defer the things you love until you are successful, whatever successful means. I would not put your life on hold until you retire or until some other distant milestone is achieved.

I was recently at a planning meeting for my upcoming college reunion. We are all in our fifties and have families at varying stages. I am unusual because my children are much older. My son is one of the oldest in my cohort, while my daughter is about average age. And I have a granddaughter, which absolutely floored some of my classmates.

But having a grandchild in my fifties is a bit easier on the body, I can say that much. I remember years ago, however, that my classmates thought I was crazy for having children so young. And then some of them only started having babies in their forties—that is not a tradeoff I would have chosen to make. But then again, free to be you and me, with all that assumes.

To be honest with you this morning, I do not like the Parable of the Talents very much. Two people get a massive head start on everyone else. One poor guy, nervous and afraid, panics and basically wastes his chance at living.

The reason I do not like the Parable of the Talents is because it is incredibly realistic. You might not ever come across the Prodigal Son on a street corner or see the Good Samaritan along the roadside. But I am betting that you have or you will meet someone who is too freaked out by life to make a choice, to make a decision, to take any step forward. You might meet someone like that or you might be someone like that or you might love someone like that.

What is missing in the Parable of the Talents? Someone to give advice early in the story. If the master hung around. If the third slave had asked the bankers what to do. If he had had someone to talk with about why he was so nervous. The story does not end well, with him being thrown out into the darkness. But how else might we describe a person who has spent their whole life hesitant and afraid to act? Whose working life as symbolized by a giant chunk of silver was buried in the ground?

First step: don’t bury your talent away. Second step: find someone to talk to about your worries, whatever they happen to be.

And third step: do not make the assumption that that which makes you happy is that which allows you to make ends meet. Honestly, having something we love separate from work might indeed be our greatest source of happiness. The people we love, the places we go, the tasks we return to again and again. That’s called having a life.

One of the Seven Deadly Sins is the sin of envy. And envy has become such an outsized part of our modern American life. Social media is practically designed to make us envious and insecure. No one is always that perfect. No one is always that pretty. No one is always that successful. And if we turn off such distractions for a moment and think about what we might do to foster the things that we love and care about, it would be time better spent.

Not that our responsibilities disappear. Not that our tasks suddenly get completed. But a purposeful life is better than a hesitant one, an aimless one, an envious one. The question then is what those purposes are in our lives.

These do not have to be momentous goals, but they should be goals that are important to us. The talents that we have and express in our lives can be the goal itself or the means of achieving those goals. Building a work of art or building a loving family. Those will generally not be how we make a living, but they will be how we make a life.

I will make the grand assumption that no one ever enjoyed burying their talents, burying their abilities, burying their hopes and dreams. Easy bet.

So, the hesitancy and anxiety of that hapless third man in the story might speak to us. But that realization does not suddenly turn us into the first guy in the parable, the one with three hundred pounds of silver and a lifetime of good luck. Wisdom is not the same as a trust fund. And sadly, we do not have the luxury of waiting around until the world suddenly becomes fair. I have been waiting quite a while.

But that also makes the assumption that in a fairer world my life would be…what? Different? Better? My lifelong dream of a career in the NBA at last fulfilled? Not really.

When I was younger, I would imagine that if I could go back in time, I would undo some mistake I had made or I would have made a different choice in some situation. That thought experiment will occasionally still pop into my mind, but now it is all very different. Why?

Because I would not go back. I would not go back because there are many good things that have happened over the years, along with some not entirely good things. But I would not give up those realized blessings for anything. Each decade has had its challenges, but each decade has also had its particular joys along the way.

A dream is a possibility, it is not a certainty. And once you have something you love, or someone you love, it becomes harder to imagine going back and rolling the dice all over again. There will always be something we regret. Which is why we need to hold tight to the good times and the good people along the way. And to hold them up to the light when we need a reminder of how we got here through it all.

I for one would not give up those things for a hundred pounds of silver or even for a chance to do it all over again. Especially for a chance, or the chore, of doing it all over again. There is something to be said for savoring what we have and continuing living in the ways and with the people we have come to love.

As the poet Mary Oliver asks us: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Only you can answer that question. And only you will truly know if it was indeed the right answer. Amen.