25th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28, November 19,2023: Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30
When I first started reading today’s gospel, I groaned inwardly. This parable of the talents so easily slides into “being rich is good, and you’ll get richer”. After all, the slave with 5 talents trades with them and doubles his wealth, as does the slave with 2 talents. The slave given only one talent was afraid of losing it. When the master returns, he rewards the first two and then punishes the third, who is thrown into “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I’ve always had a soft spot for the third slave, who had little and was afraid of losing it.
But as I read it, I began to play with the biblical word “talent”, a unit of money, and the English word talent, or gift. And I started to think in the way I do in my day job as a teacher. Every teacher knows that their students have different abilities, skills, and knowledge. When I was in high school, I had a crusty Russian teacher who would ask students who were struggling if they did well in math. She then showed how learning a language was like learning math: she tried to help them use their gifts in a different context.
In my history classroom, some gifts and skills are more useful than others. What I and most teachers try to do is what my high school Russian teacher did: to help students use the skills and gifts they have as well as they can, to build on what they have to get a bit further.
God has given us each gifts, what Paul calls “gifts of the spirit”. We have choices about what to do with them. How do we share them? How do we ensure that the gifts we are given multiply? How can we avoid being so risk averse, like the third slave in the parable, that we don’t dare share our gifts? So often we are, like the slave with one talent, afraid that we won’t be good enough, holding ourselves to impossible standards. But whenever we share our gifts, even feeble ones, they somehow increase. Sharing our gifts is a risk, but it is a necessary one.
It’s not about making money. It’s about making God’s kingdom.