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.
A word for the week
A man goes on a journey and entrusts his wealth to his servants, an enormous sum each, to manage while he is gone. To one he gives five talents, to another two, to another one, each according to his ability. A talent was a staggering amount of money, many years of wages, so even the servant with one has been handed a fortune. And then the master leaves, and the whole parable is about what the servants do with what they were given while they wait for him to come back.
The first two go straight to work. They trade, they invest, they take the risk of putting the money to use, and each doubles what he was given. When the master returns and settles accounts, he says to each the words every servant longs to hear: well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful with a little, I will put you in charge of much; enter into the joy of your master. Notice he does not compare them to each other; the one who turned two into four gets exactly the same welcome as the one who turned five into ten. It was never about the amount. It was about the faithfulness.
Then the third servant. He was given one talent, still a fortune, and he did nothing with it. He dug a hole and buried it, and when the master returns he digs it up and hands it back, untouched, with an excuse: I knew you were a hard man, so I was afraid, and I hid it. And the master is angry, and calls him wicked and lazy, because the problem was not that he lost the money; he did not lose it. The problem was that fear made him do nothing at all. He was so afraid of failing that he never tried, and playing it safe, burying the gift in the ground, turned out to be the one thing he could not be forgiven for. And Jesus does not trim the ending: the talent is taken, and the useless servant is put out into the dark. He told it that way on purpose, so that the fear of wasting a life would weigh more than the fear of risking one.
That is the sharp point of this parable, and it is bracing. The waiting for the master's return is not meant to be passive. It is not a matter of sitting still and keeping your head down until he comes. You have been given something, gifts, time, resources, a life, and the faithful thing is to put it to use, to risk it in love and service, to make something of it while you wait. The unfaithful servant is not the one who tried and failed. It is the one who was too afraid to try, who let the gift sit buried and safe and useless. Fear that produces nothing is the failure the parable names.
So the watching we are called to is an active watching. To keep watch for the master is not to freeze; it is to work, to invest what you have been given in the things that matter, to be found busy about love when he comes, not standing guard over a buried talent. Everyone has been handed something, and no one gets to say their portion was too small to bother with; the one-talent servant tried exactly that excuse and it did not hold. The question the parable leaves you with is not how much were you given, but what are you doing with it while you wait.
At the table
What has God entrusted to you that you have been burying out of fear instead of using? What would it look like this week to risk it in love rather than keep it safe and useless?
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.