Reading 38
What you did with what you were given
The reading
Matthew 25:14-30
“For it is like a man, going into another country, who called his own servants, and entrusted his goods to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one; to each according to his own ability. Then he went on his journey. Immediately he who received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. In the same way, he also who got the two gained another two. But he who received the one talent went away and dug in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
“Now after a long time the lord of those servants came, and reconciled accounts with them. He who received the five talents came and brought another five talents, saying, ‘Lord, you delivered to me five talents. Behold, I have gained another five talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ He also who got the two talents came and said, ‘Lord, you delivered to me two talents. Behold, I have gained another two talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’
“He also who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you that you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter. I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the earth. Behold, you have what is yours.’ But his lord answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I didn’t sow, and gather where I didn’t scatter. You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn’t have, even that which he has will be taken away. Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
The companions
Psalm 90:16-17
Let your work appear to your servants; your glory to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish the work of our hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands.
Haggai 2:4
“Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel,” says the LORD. “Be strong, Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,” says the LORD, “and work, for I am with you,” says the LORD of Armies.
The note
The third servant loses nothing. Hold onto that. He does not gamble the money away or spend it. He returns exactly what he was handed, intact, and he is the one thrown out.
His reason is fear and he says so plainly: I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the earth. He was more frightened of a loss than of a wasted life, and the parable is built to reverse that ranking.
Note also that the two who traded get the same welcome. Five into ten, two into four, identical words. It is not a leaderboard. Nobody is measured against anybody else.
Doing nothing looks neutral and is not. It is a decision with a result, and the result here is the harshest ending Jesus gave to any of these stories.
This week
There is something you have been sitting on because you might get it wrong. The message you have not sent, the work nobody has seen, the thing you have rewritten four times. Move it this week. Send it, ship it, say it out loud to one person.
Not perfect. Moved. Then write down what you were actually afraid of, now that you can see it from the other side of having done it.
For the watch
This parable shapes what our watching actually is. We are not waiting idly for the master’s return, staring at the door; we are put to work with what we have been given, and faithfulness is measured by use, not by hoarding. So the watch is active. We keep it by loving the person in front of us, by spending our gifts on the good, by being found busy about the way of Jesus whenever he comes. The buried talent is the warning: a watch that does nothing but wait, frozen by fear, is not the watch he asked for.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). The divine name is rendered “the LORD” in the Haggai reading.
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