Last week, maybe you remember, our text was the parable of the ten bridesmaids, in which there were ten bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom to arrive. Five of them failed to bring extra oil for their lamps, which put them in a very unfortunate position. It is a parable about living a life shaped by readiness, focused on what you are awaiting.
After the service someone came to me and asked, so should we see the bridegroom as representing Jesus? And the simple answer to that is yes. Like those early readers of Matthew, Jesus is the one we are waiting for, and the question we might ask ourselves each day is what does this waiting consist of? What does this life of readiness look like?
Immediately after Jesus finished that parable he said, “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour,” and in the next breath, “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them.”
To those of us who are wondering what the life of readiness looks like, he is about to tell us.
There is a man going on a journey – a very wealthy man with a lot of property – and before he leaves, he summons the men who serve him to give them instructions.
But he doesn’t really give instructions. He simply gives them his property. To the first he gives five talents, to the next he gives two. The third man receives one talent.
The talent, you may already know, was a unit of currency and it was large. A single talent was 6,000 denarii. A single denarius was the usual daily wage for one of these workers. So let’s just say this was a lot of money to fall into these men’s hands. Much more than they could dream of earning in a lifetime.
But they were aware that this was not really a gift. The master was entrusting these talents to their care. He couldn’t really take it all with him on his journey, so he left it in the care of these men who served him.
The safe thing to do, the prudent thing to do was to bury it. Everybody knew that. There were no banks back then with FDIC guarantees, so if you wanted the closest thing to a guarantee you would bury the money.
Jesus knew this too. In fact, there is another parable he once told about a hidden treasure. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44).
Clearly, there was no ironclad guarantee that the treasure would be safe, but most of the time it was a safe bet. And so that is what people did.
And that is just what the third man did. Unfortunately for him, because this master does not appreciate safe bets.
The first two men have just presented to their master the fruits of their labors while he was away. Here you go, Master, you gave me five talents to work with; I have managed to turn those five into ten talents. Here you go, Master, you left me with two talents; I have those two plus two more to give you now. The master is certainly pleased. Enter into the joy of your master, he says to them.
And now here comes the third man, who has gone out and dug up the talent his master entrusted to him. He brushed off the dirt, maybe, and handed it over. Here you go, Master. Take what is yours.
Obviously, something different happened with this third man. He didn’t lose anything, but neither did he gain anything. There was something different about his approach to dealing with the treasure that was given to him. There is something, clearly, different about this man – he is different from the other two.
On a scale of risk aversion, this third man is high. He doesn’t want to take any chances because when he imagines what could happen with his master’s talent he can only imagine losing it. He is afraid.
He says as much to the master when he returns. “I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” The man told the master just what he thought of him: that he is a harsh man. That he tends to reap where he did not sow and gather where he did not scatter seed. In other words, he sees this man, his master, as someone who lives off the fruits produced by others, and frankly he doesn’t like that.
He doesn’t like the expectation that he should use these resources to create something more for his master. He doesn’t like the notion that everything belongs to the master and his life is devoted to serving the master. He doesn’t like his position in life and all that is expected because to him it only looks like a chore. One chore after another and another and another, and then you die.
So he hid the talent in the ground and was done with it.
Now, on the one hand, we can sympathize with this man because the parable is all too close to the story of slaves and masters in our nation. For hundreds of years slavery was a massively cruel and exploitative way of life in America. What the third man says about the master could be said about too many people in this world and we condemn that.
But while we condemn such practices of men and women, we need to step back from the details, once again, and understand that this is a parable meant to point us toward the one whom we serve – God.
Two of these men served God well but the third did not. This is tragic, really. Even though he didn’t lose anything, technically speaking, he lost everything because for him there is no joy.
This man never knew the possibility of joy that awaited him. He never imagined the possibility of something better. He never understood that gain for his master was gain just as much for him.
He never realized that stepping outside the box he lived in could lead him to life as he had never seen before, could lead him into the joy of his master. No, this man had shut the door on joy.
This is a parable I sometimes preach in funerals because it speaks of the joy we will have awaiting us in the embrace of our Lord at the end of a faithful life, a life in which we have used the talents we have been given – along with all the other resources we have – to bring more love, more justice, more life to the world.
But it is not only a parable for death, it is a parable for life. For those of us who wonder what it means, on a day-to-day basis, to live a life of readiness, expecting to see Jesus, this is what it is like:
To use all that you have been given, to be creative, to take chances, to leave fear behind you and step out in faith for the sake of love. For the sake of our Master.
Because his joy is our joy.
Imagine that your life, that the world, could be better than it is right now. And know that God has given you what you need – more than you could imagine – to move it in that direction.
And enter into the joy of your master.
Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash
