In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

One of the activities I do with my year 7s is a Gospel of the Year competition.  Each person in the group is given a gospel writer and they have to argue why their gospel is better than all of the rest.  It is a talent competition.  Matthew gets points for being written to show that Jesus is the fulfilment of Old Testament prophesies, that he shows Jesus to be speaking and acting with God’s authority.  Many like inclusion of magi in the birth narrative as it adds an air of mystery and excitement.   

Matthew loves talking about the Kingdom of God / Heaven and he does rather like a parable.  The word parable comes from the Greek parabole, which means to place two things side by side for the sake of comparison.  The term should only really be used for the stories that start with “The kingdom of heaven or God is like…..”, although the term is used for other stories, for example the Good Samaritan.  It is also used to mean a riddle, as the stories aren’t always easy to understand.

The purpose of parables is varied.  Jesus used parables to help explain his authority, to talk about the kingdom of God, and to give people the time to repent and change their ways.  Jesus was in constant conflict with the Pharisees.  He tried to show that they were complacent about their faith and that their opposition to him was wrong. 

The disciples and first Christians believed that the Second Coming was imminent.  In the words of Zephaniah, “The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast.”  Parables such as this one was a warning to the community that they needed to be ready for when Jesus returned as they would have to account for their actions, “settle their accounts.”  When the Second Coming did not occur in their lifetimes, the concept gradually became understood as eventual, at the end of THE age, not necessarily THIS age.

What do we mean by the word talent?  It isn’t the gift or skill in our modern understanding, but it was a value of money or a coin.  It was the equivalent of 6,000 drachmas or denarii.  In the New Testament context, it was the largest unit of currency at the time.  It is possible that a talent was 20 years of wages for an ordinary worker.  If you had 5 talents or gold or silver, you were a multimillionaire by today’s standards.  Whether it was these, the point is that it was a lot of money.  It was worth a lot.  So what was most precious to Jesus?  Us! 

In the parable of the talents, Jesus is the master who is going on a journey and entrusts his wealth with his slaves.  The master is the ascended Jesus, and the slaves are his Church.  The time he is away represents the Age of the Church.  He has entrusted the Church with looking after what Jesus sees as the most precious thing of all – us – until he returns from his journey, i.e. the Second Coming.  The slaves do different things with the talents, with the first gets five more to his five talents, the second two more to his and the third slave hasn’t done anything in Christ’s absence.  Is this a dig at the Pharisees who thought they had got it made?

This passage is not a standalone, though.  It needs to be understood as a part of a patchwork quilt with previous teachings.  It’s a small part of a long lecture given by Jesus.  He is answering his disciples’ earlier question “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” 

Jesus answers in terms of the end times during the subsequent chapters, yet throughout Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ instructions for his disciples are explicit: we are to spread the gospel, forgive those who have wronged us, ask forgiveness when we wrong others, be an example to the world, be hospitable to foreigners and outsiders.   

Within this lecture there is the faithful and wise servant who is rewarded and the wicked servant who is sent to a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Here the theme is how they have treated the master’s household while he has been absent. 

Just before the parable of the talents is that of the wise and foolish virgins, another parable that separates those who were prepared and those who weren’t.  They had been told the Bridegroom – Christ – would be coming, but they weren’t ready.  We are to be ready.  One of the things we have all had to grapple with during the Covid-19 pandemic – even more so than normal - is the fragility of life.  This can be tough, but rather than scare us, it can serve as a timely reminder to ask ourselves are we living as though we are bringing about the kingdom of God NOW?  What am I doing to play my part?  We are called to spread the message, to bring others to faith, not because we want to increase our numbers, improve our finances and get help on rotas, though that is a good thing, but because the Christian way of life is worth it.

It is appropriate as we approach Advent, when we await the first coming of Jesus the baby in a manger, the suffering servant, that we are given a peek into his second coming.

Though it would be tempting to explore “how are you using your God given talents in your life?” I think that Jesus is talking about how you look after his talents, namely the world around us, the environment, all God’s creatures including us.  The passage after this one is the judgement of the nations.  Those who are judged righteous are those who responded, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” So what did they do?  “…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 

It isn’t necessarily about hoping for salvation through law, acts or grace with the eventual hope of eternal life.  It is about bringing the values of the kingdom of God to the here and now.  Christians are expected to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit those in prison.  These are the talents, the precious ones.  Yes, we are all precious, but to put our faith into action we need to show our love for Christ by looking after all of his talents, giving more to those who have less.  If you put it like that it isn’t complicated.  It is not a case of “Jesus is coming, look busy” but “Jesus is coming, be busy bringing about the kingdom of God.”  Amen.