Today’s Gospel is Matthew 25.14-30. It comes from the end of Matthew’s description of Jesus’ ministry and just before his arrest and suffering. There is an air of apocalyptic about it. There is a sense of judgement and the end of time. It is beautifully told and is unsettling for some.
Bishop Ruth, our new bishop of Horsham, recently talked about the figure of the man who is about to go away as an image of God. It is a God who is generous to an extreme, a God who is very rich. He gives one servant two and a half years’ wages (five talents), another a year’s wages (two talents) and the last six months’ wages. They are large sums. God is generous to us all in different ways. The talents we receive from God are not monetary of course, but they are real nonetheless. We are called upon to develop our talents to the best of our ability. God does not ask for anything more from us. Notice that the man, on his return, commends the first two servants with the same words - ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ Imagine the joy and wonder at hearing those words uttered by God at the end of the age. Both servants receive the same commendation. Both of them - those words are for all of us. The problem for the third servant is his total lack of trust in the fairness and justice of his master. He is totally unwilling to use what talents he has and develop them. His talents remain buried. There is no development, no growth. He does nothing, just waits for the return of his master with fear and dread. That is the picture of a person who is spiritually dead, unable to understand the generosity of God and unwilling to try to grasp it. His fate is horrible, and it gives Jesus an opportunity to use one of his favourite phrases - ‘where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’, a fate literally worse than death and a stern warning to his disciples. We notice the warning at the end of the parable - ‘Whoever does not have, even what he does have will be taken from him.’ It is indeed no laughing matter. What about us in November 2020? We are all in a very strange situation, where we find ourselves constrained by the lockdown and unable to live our lives as we feel God wants us to. I think this parable warns us to use what opportunities we have - with the God-given talents we certainly do have - to continue our mission of working for God’s Kingdom by whatever means we can. It is easy to take what God has given us and just bury it until the present situation passes. We cannot do that. We do not have, of course, our usual freedoms, but God has showered us with talents which we should try to use, even in the lockdown. The rewards have been promised to us. ‘Enter into the joy of your master!’ Yes, there is judgement here, but there is also great joy and a love more generous than we can ever imagine. We have only to try and to trust in the generosity and the justice of God.
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AuthorCanon John Green Archives
May 2021
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