IS IT WORTH THE RISK?
A guy was talking to his pastor about talents, abilities and natural gifts one morning. He said, “Pastor, I think I have only one talent.”
The pastor asked, “What’s your talent?
The man said, "I believe I have the gift of criticism."
The pastor replied, "Then maybe you should go out and bury it.”
Just so you know there are shovels at the main entrance in case any of you want to go out and bury your talent right now. And please don’t mark the holes, we don’t want you digging them up again.
The parable of the Talents is an exciting and challenging little story. I love parables – they are filled with mystery and hidden treasures that beg to be found. They are a detective story and you have to search and use your mind to catch the insights into life that God has left for us. Parables are his way of making us take another look at life.
This particular parable has a present-future aspect to it. Jesus was warning and teaching his disciples about the coming of the Kingdom of God. In each parable Jesus tells there is a common element: a master goes away and promises to return one day to take account of what his servants did while he was gone.
For many of us who have read this story before we have always come to the conclusion that this is a parable about how you use your natural gifts, abilities, or, as the parable terms it “talents.” More specifically, how well are we using them for God’s kingdom? This is a common mistake and totally misinterprets the meaning of the parable. It is truly a puzzling parable unless we start with a proper understanding of what a talent is. This is the central question:
1. What do the talents represent?
When we think of a talent we think of someone’s ability to play the piano. Dedicating this talent to God they wonder, “How can I use my talent for Christ?”
But when the disciples think of a talent, as in this parable, they think of a measure of money. A talent was a weight used for measuring silver or gold. In this case, a talent’s worth of silver was more than a year’s wages. It was a lot of money. Though it was a specific amount of money, Jesus has it represent something else other than money in our lives.
There are four clues that can help us understand what a talent represents and what it does not mean:
Clue #1: We find this clue in the opening verse – “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them.” Notice those two words “his property” – another term for talents. They are the Lord’s property and are not something which man can give or control. It is something that God is in control of and possesses. They are not like natural gifts given to everyone but only to those who have some sort of relationship to God.
Clue #2: In the next verse we read this clue – “To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents and to another one talent, each according to his ability.” Here we learn that the talents are not natural abilities but are actually distributed on the basis of natural ability. One man received five talents because he was a man of great ability. The last man had the least ability and received only talent. It is clear we are not talking about natural ability but that talents are given according to ability.
Clue #3: This clue is implied – it is the unspoken implication of Jesus that these talents as they are given are meant to produce some sort of gain. It is something to be invested, something to be risked, and hopefully produce.
Clue #4: This clue is also implied – the investment and the resulting gain are not for the benefit of the servant but for the absent Lord. It is not for our own use; it is still his property. The gain is completely his.
2. How should we understand “talents”?
Now these four clues are helpful to eliminate any previous misconceptions about the talents as Jesus told the parable. But what do the talents represent for us in our modern context?
Ray Stedman asked a question that sums up the clues very nicely: “What do we professed Christians have which is God’s peculiar property, which comes to us on the basis of natural ability, which requires a risk on our part, and that risk appears to benefit only the Lord and not ourselves?” How would you answer that? It’s quite a riddle.
But consider this, if you have a natural ability or some kind of giftedness, what do you look for? Don’t you look for an opportunity to use that ability or gift?
The talents of the parable represent golden moments of opportunity. The point then of the parable is not that God gives me more abilities to use than you. The point is that God is the giver of opportunities to use our gifts and abilities in his kingdom. Opportunities are the investment potential he leaves with us. The number of opportunities we receive to invest in are based on how many natural gifts we possess.
That is why we often sit and wonder at the opportunities another person has in his or her life and ask “Why can’t I ever get a break?” What that person does is his business and God’s. God is the giver of opportunity and in his wisdom gives you the opportunities that fit your ability. Does the gift create the opportunity? No. God gives more opportunities to those who have more ability. The question is not “Why do I lack opportunity to serve God?” but rather “Am I being faithful with the opportunities God has given me?” That is the key to this parable: Faithfulness. And it leads us to our next major question….
3. What do we do with the opportunities God gives us?
There are two options presented in this parable. Let’s look at the negative option first. We could take the opportunities God gives us to serve him and bury them. If the third and fourth clue concerning talents suggests that a talent is an opportunity to gain for Christ and such an opportunity is given only to professed Christians, it stands apart from ordinary opportunities to display any old gift. The opportunities that God gives to us, his children, are moments of decision when we must choose to play it safe and get what we can for ourselves, or risk our reputation or even our life in order that God may have what he wants.
The last servant buried his talent. This was a safe and acceptable practice in those days so long as the spot was marked for retrieval. However, the intention of the master was that this talent be invested, that something be risked in order to gain.
Some say that the Pharisees were the target of this parable. They received the Law from their ancestors and preserved it just as it was without trying to apply its principles for good living to their present context. They kept it out of reach of the people by burying it in tradition and literal obedience. Ordinary people could not get at it. The Pharisees wanted a religion without change and without risk.
If they are represented by the servant who buried the talent, they are condemned for having had the truth of God but hiding it in religiosity, the status quo, and safeguarding the Word of God but doing nothing with it. Jesus says, “Take it away from them and cast them out my kingdom!”
However, the first two servants did what was appropriate when they were given the opportunities. They invested in them and the servant with five talents gained five more, the servant with two gained two more.
The key is recognizing these opportunities that have the potential for great gain in the Kingdom of God.
I read a story about a person who did recognize one of those opportunities. A young idealistic college student ended up on a mission trip to one of the more dangerous housing projects in Philadelphia. A brand new Christian, he didn’t have a clue how to evangelize. Frightened and anxious to share his new faith, the young man approached a very large tenement house. He chose an apartment in the dark hallway and knocked on the door. A woman answered holding a naked, howling baby. She was smoking and not in any mood to hear a white talk about Jesus. She started cursing and slammed the door in his face. The young man was devastated.
He sat on the curb and wept. Look at me. How in the world could someone like me think I could tell anyone about Jesus? Then he remembered that the baby was naked and the woman was smoking. A plan formed in his head…
He ran down the street to a local market and bought a box of diapers and a pack of cigarettes. When he knocked on the door again, he showed the woman his purchases. Hesitating, she invited him in. For the rest of the day, he played with the baby and changed its diapers (even though he had never changed diapers before). When the woman offered him a cigarette, even though he didn’t smoke, he smoked. He spent the entire day smoking and changing diapers, never saying a word about Jesus. Later though, the woman asked him why he was doing this, and finally he told her everything he knew about Jesus. Took about five minutes. When he finished, the woman said softly, “Pray for me and my baby that we can make it out of here alive,” so he did.
This white college boy learned a lesson in recognizing God’s opportunities. “He also learned that sometimes the Holy Spirit asks us to violate our convictions for a season in order to live the faith, not just talk about it.” This young man did not develop a smoking habit but he did start listening to the Holy Spirit. (Messy Spirituality – Yaconelli). What rules keep us from investing and risking for God? How can we look outside the box and grab God’s opportunities? (refer to rest of ch. 25)
4. What do we gain from faithfulness?
In terms of the application of this parable to our situation, the two servants who gained 100 % return on their investments made full use of the opportunities God gave them. That is the lesson for us, but what is the reward?
To both of these faithful servants the master said, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.”
It may seem foreign to us to consider that our master’s verbal praise should be a reward for seizing the opportunities. That’s it? Well done? Is that all we get? And yet this only reveals our attitude towards life and God. We constantly wonder, “What’s in it for me?” Shouldn’t our Lord’s praise be reward enough though? If we have the right perspective, that what we have done with our opportunities was for his benefit and success to begin with, and if we have the right attitude, that pleasing our Lord is a motivating factor in how we do life, then his verbal affirmation will be enormous encouragement for you and me. We will thrill to hear Jesus say, “You did real well with the opportunities I gave you. Come and share in my joy.”
Note the second part of this commendation. Jesus says you have been faithful with a few things; you have earned the responsibility of many things. What are these things? If the original talents represented opportunities, then the added talents would also represent more opportunities, whether that be on earth or later in heaven. These opportunities have spiritual impact that go beyond this world into the next. And you, having proved faithful, will receive infinitely more.
5. What is the biggest risk?
The main purpose of life is growth; to increase; to gain. To fail in this is to be unproductive. All life grows and should it not grow, it ceases to live and is no longer worth keeping. This is what Jesus means when he comes down hard on the servant who risked nothing and buried his opportunities for growth.
Another way to look at the Christian life is to consider our muscles. We need to use our muscles because the more we do with them the more burden or responsibility we can carry. If we lie in bed, atrophy takes over and we will find that we can do less and less. It is the same thing with our spiritual growth – if we do nothing with our spiritual opportunities, our ability to appreciate and respond to the things of the Holy Spirit will diminish. If you are a Christian who finds little value in speaking about Christ and the deeper meaning of his Word, you have allowed spiritual atrophy to eat away your fervor for the things of God.
The servant who risked nothing risked losing everything. If he had only one talent, one opportunity, it was to give himself to God; the opportunity to be saved. But he buried even that in the ground. He had a bitterness toward his master as some of us do toward God. He even had a speech prepared to justify why he would not honor his master’s wish. “Master, I knew that you are a hard man…”
The interesting thing is that the master makes this into a question in our Bibles. “Is that your understanding of me? Then by that understanding you will be judged. And you should have known that some sort of gain was necessary to please me. You should have put the talent in the bank.”
The real problem is that the last servant had no intention of being the servant he pretended to be. If he did then he would have risked everything to be a good servant. As it is, he risked nothing, and lost everything, including status as a servant of the kingdom. To risk nothing with the opportunities we receive from God is to say without a doubt exactly what we think of God in the first place. He is a tyrant, selfish and greedy, thinking only of himself. And if that is your understanding of God, then you don’t know him very well.
Final Thoughts
So then, what is the final message Jesus is telling in this story? Take a risk. Step out and seize the opportunities God gives you and do something with them. “Having risked yourself to become a Christian, now risk yourself again and again as opportunities arise” (Stedman). Don’t fear failure in this regard, for there is no failure when you risk all for God. Hudson Taylor said, “Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.”
Carpe Diem is Latin for “Seize the day.” Make the most of every opportunity. Paul told the Ephesians the same thing, “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil…be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:15-16 & 18). With Carpe Diem, the phrase is not to understood as “with utmost care and caution, after you have worked out the cost/benefit analysis and determined that there is no logical reason why all systems should not be go, and have assured yourself that the risk is zero, or as close to zero as is theoretically possible, slowly and timidly reach for the day, keeping eyes peeled at every moment for other factors which would render that decision less logical than previously expected and mitigate a sudden and calculated pull-back from the day-seizing operation.” No!! Take a risk, live and love dangerously for Christ. For to love others is the greatest and most rewarding risk.
C. S. Lewis said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love…is hell” (the Four Loves).
AMEN
