25th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28) – November 19th, 2023
Trinity Lutheran Church, Block, Kansas
Rev. Joshua Woelmer
Text: Matthew 25:14–30
“You Are Given Talents”
Theme: It does not matter how much talent you have, as long as you are using it with a heart of faith in the God who has given you what you have.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
One piece of biblical trivia that I find interesting is that our English word “talent” comes from the parable that we just heard from Jesus. A man going on a journey gives talents to three servants, five to one, two to another, and one to another. What is a talent though? Well, if we speak about the weight of measure in the ancient world, it’s a lot of money—one talent of silver is something like 20 years’ worth of salary. I’ll let you do that math.
But clearly “talent” in a parable should be taken metaphorically, similar to how we use it today. What are talents that God has given you? You might think of quite a few examples of talents that you or others might have. You might be good at music, for example, being able to play one or more instruments, or having a voice for singing. You might have a talent for food, being able to cook wonderful stews or desserts or other kinds of dishes. You might have a mechanical sort of mind, being able to figure out any system and what’s wrong with it. You might have a skill with your fingers, being able to create intricate things. You might have a talent for the dramatic, being able to entertain people on a stage, communicating a stories that delight the heart or tug on the heartstrings.
These are all talents to be sure. God gives these talents to each of us in varying degrees. Some are better at some things than others. You might have a great talent but know others who are better than you at that particular thing. Here is the first lesson of this parable: it does not matter how much talent you have, as long as you are using it with a heart of faith in the God who has given you what you have. The second lesson is this: the talents of the parable are more than the skills that we might have been given by God. The talents refer to your whole life. God has entrusted to you a life of relationships and opportunities and resources and yes, your skills and talents. It is far more precious than twenty years’ worth of salaries, or even a hundred years’ worth. You impact other people on a far deeper level than can even be measured. All this is a gift of God.
For this reason, I love this parable. I love that it occurs now in our lectionary, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It has a Thanksgiving ring to it, doesn’t it? It also has an End Times message to it, which we’ll get to later. But on that theme of Thanksgiving, you must first recognize that God has given you so much.
God has given you your life. He has given you time on this earth. He has given you family and friends and relationships. He has given you stuff. He gives you entertainment. He even gives you problems in your life that he encourages you to learn valuable lessons from.
It might be tempting to look at other people and compare what you have with what they have, or to wonder why they have more talents or skills than you. This is not a good thing to do. In fact, God covers coveting under the last two commandments. He doesn’t want you to look at what others have and covet them or their life. He’s given to them what he has decided to give to them—that includes blessings along with problems. You will never know what others might be going through even as their situation looks better than yours.
But if you let those thoughts fester, you might turn into the servant in our parable who only received one talent. When the master settled accounts with them and this servant showed the talent that he had buried in the ground, what account does he give for his actions? He says, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours” (24–25). He accuses the master of being a hard man! There might be a bit of jealousy and envy in this response, that he didn’t get as much as the others, and he blames the master for this. He doesn’t say this, of course. But when you’re angry, sometimes you don’t mention the reason for your anger, but everything else around that sore spot. So he talks about the master reaping where he didn’t sow and gathering where he didn’t scatter seed.
What’s funny about this passage is that the master responds in kind. He says, “Ok, you regard me as a hard master? Fine, I’ll be one towards you. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents” (28). Then the worthless servant is cast into the outer darkness where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (30).
The key to this parable is in how you see God, your master. If you see him as wrathful, you’re not likely to do anything in this life because he will only be an angry judge who hates anything you do and is more likely to punish you than to be pleased with you. On the other hand, if you see him as an indulgent dad who doesn’t punish anything, then you’re likely to do as you please, wasting your time playing video games and smoking weed.
God is in between. He is a true father who does discipline his children but who also loves them and gives them many good things. Like a father, he’s happy when you live your life in service to him and in service to one another, not living in fear of him, but living in love and joy.
If I were to expand on this parable, I probably wouldn’t depict the servants who had gotten five and two talents as being successful immediately. They probably suffered setbacks, losing some of their money from time to time, but in the end ending succeeding after learning many valuable life lessons with double what their master had given them. This is life, isn’t it? And even if the master had come back early and they had only broken even, do you think he would have been disappointed with them? No, because that’s not the point.
The point is to use the talents—your entire life—for the benefit of those around you. If someone despise their own life so much that they hide it in the ground, doing nothing but what pleases themselves, then God will respond to them in kind. Here is where the End Times theme comes in. God is coming again on a day when you do not expect. That day could be the Last Day, or it could be your death. Those who have buried their talent into their own lives will be punished by God for not using their talent. In the end, what they do have will be taken away from them.
For if you live for yourself, do not be surprised when that is taken away. But if you live for God and for your neighbor, do not be surprised when even more is given to you.
That too is a wonderful truth of Scripture: God is bountiful for those who trust him. Even if you struggle to put a Thanksgiving turkey on the table, God is still good. Even if you have many cares and worries about the problems in your life, God is still good. He is working through those to draw you closer to Him in prayer. Remember what a talent is: it is your life, with all of its relationships and opportunities and resources. And yes, it includes the talent of an artist, woodworker, musician, mechanic, homemaker, or actor. All of this—all of you—is valuable to God, and you are valuable to those around you. Whether it seems like God has given you much or little, he has given you enough to work with in this life.
Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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