"I can't believe it!" "That is why you failed" [The Parable of the Talents]

Good morning everyone!  Yesterday a group of us went to visit the Greek Orthodox Monastery in Florence.  And I must say, it was so very beautiful. 

Incredibly, the monastery was only started in 1995.  And today, only 19 years later, it has acres and acres of beautiful churches, numerous chapels, gardens, walkways, orchards and orchards of citrus, olives, & date palms.  Plants are everywhere, as are fountains.  The brick and tile work amazing throughout, all created & built by the monks!  And all this was just bare desert 19 years ago!   

Think of the vision they must have had, the amount of work that they have done to create this beautiful and incredible place!  

They could have said “We can’t afford this!  We can’t build this, it’s the middle of the desert!     

But they didn’t.    

Today we just heard in our Gospel reading the well known story, the Parable of the Talents.  

These days when we hear the word “talent”, we tend to think of certain gifts & abilities that some people seem to have.  
Just look at the many talents right here in this room!

However, the word “talent” meant something totally different in Jesus’ time.  What did it mean?  A talent was an extraordinarily huge sum of money.   In the ancient world, a talent was worth what an ordinary laborer earned over the period of 15 years! 

So, a talent is A LOT OF MONEY!  And I do mean, a lot of money!

Now, this parable is tricky.  Why?  Because it seems like the lesson is all about making money!   Is that what this parable is saying?

In the story, we have a “master” and three servants.  The master gives his three servants three different sums of money before he goes away on a journey.    And the scripture reads, he gave each according to his ability.

To the first servant, the master gives five talents.  To the second servant, two talents.  And to the third servant, one talent.  

Now we know that one talent equals about 15 years of pay.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a modern day laborer earns on average about $30K a year.  So, calculating 15 years of 30K equals $450,000!  

So modern day wise, ONE TALENT nearly equals nearly a half a million dollars.  

But on with our story…

What did the first servant do?  He traded and invested his five talents, and made five more talents!    Let’s look at the numbers.   $450,000 times 5, (5 talents)= $2,250,000!  Making five more talents, that is a total sum of 4,500,000!  (Four million, 500 thousand dollars.)

The second servant invested his two talents, and made two more talents!   You do the math!

And the third servant, did he do with his talent?  How much money did he make?  He didn’t.  He dug a hole in the ground and hid the money!  

After a long time, the master comes home.   And then he goes to settle accounts with his three servants.

The first servant shows his master he had invested his five talents, and made a profit of five more talents!   The second servant, shows his master he had invested his two talents, and made 2 more talents!

The master was well pleased of course!  Hey, wouldn’t you be pleased if someone doubled your money?
 

And what of the third servant?   The third servant was afraid & buried his talent in the ground.  He then returned his talent to his master.   However, the master was not at all pleased.  

Not only was he not at all pleased, the master took the servant’s talent away & gave it the servant who had ten talents!  On top of that, he had him thrown into the outer darkness, along with lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth! 

Why was the master not happy?   The third servant did not lose or squander his money!!    He returned it in full!!  Is the moral of the story just about making money?   

The parable is not about money or ability, it is about trust & faith.

The 3^rd servant lives in fear and he puts his gift, his talent, his treasure in the ground.  He does not put his talent to use!  

“The Parable of the Talents” is not about money or abilities. It’s a story about trust, and taking risk.   In other words, a leap of faith!

A scene from the Star Wars movie “The Empire Strikes Back” pops into my mind here.  Young Luke Skywalker is getting his Jedi training from the Jedi master, Yoda.  Do you remember?  Yoda instructs Luke to raise his spacecraft where it had crashed in the swamp.  He tries, and seems to raise it just a bit….and then it falls.   Luke sighs in exasperation, “I can’t!”     

Then Yoda steps forward,  raises the spacecraft and moves it to higher ground.  Luke  watches in amazement, and says, “I can’t believe it!”   And Yoda’s reply,  “That is why you failed.”

Life is the same way. 

What turns out to be important is not 'how much money did you make' or our abilities, our talents in themselves, but our decision to use them in ways that show our willingness to risk and to trust.   

In other words, learning to live and walk in faith & love, and not fear…  

Believe!   And the seemingly impossible, really is possible!
Amen.

[Sermon given by The Rev. Laura Adelia, NOV 16, 2014]