Risk and reward
Text: Matthew 25:14–30
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We continue our focus on the end times and what Jesus says about the final judgment. Last week, we heard the Parable of the Ten Virgins. This week, we have the Parable of the Talents. We can take three main points from the parable today:
The master trusts the servants
Fear cripples while faith produces
Faith involves risk
The master trusts the servants
“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
Matthew 25:14–15
The master represents Jesus. The servants represent us. The talents (or coins) represent the gifts God gives to us.
From the very first line, we are faced with a master who is leaving. If the master is Jesus, what does that say? Is our God absent and distant, leaving us to find our own way? Well, kind of.
The Great Commission is probably the most preached text worldwide. What does He say? “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them everything I have commanded you.”
And then we have this promise: “And surely, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Mt. 28:19–20)
“I’ll be with you always,” and then He ascends into heaven. He promises to never leave, and then He leaves.
The other thing we know about the master in the parable is that he returns. So does Jesus, in two ways. The first is at Pentecost, when He comes to be present with His people through the Holy Spirit. This is what we call the age of the church, which we are still in. The second is his second and final coming, when all things will be completed and each of us will be held accountable for our deeds. The parable is addressing the second one: the Day of Judgment.
So, although the master leaves, he returns. The other thing we notice in the very first verse is that he is willing to entrust his whole property to these three servants. What does that say about Jesus?
Jesus entrusts us, His servants, with all kinds of gifts. He has given us everything we have—family, community, a home to live in, food to eat, money to use, and even the nice things in life that we don’t need but have anyway. The talents (or coins) in this parable are often interpreted in this way, representing all of the gifts God gives us. This might also include the skills and abilities we have, and even the love in our hearts.
There is one thing that is far more valuable than any of those things, and I think Jesus really means to be getting at this. You don’t have to be a faithful Christian person to have any of the things I’ve mentioned, but Jesus entrusts us with one thing that not everyone has: the forgiveness of sins.
God’s grace is available to all people because of Christ’s death and resurrection, but only those that have received it in faith can actually have it. Interestingly, the master gives to each servant “according to ability.” That leads us to our second point.
Fear cripples while faith produces
He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.
Matthew 25:16–18
Two of the servants make a 100% profit on what they were initially given, while the third servant makes no profit and returns what was given.
A silver talent is the equivalent of 7300 denarii. A denarius is a day’s wages. We’re talking about huge amounts of money. That’s the first thing to notice here.
The second thing is what the third servant says when the master returns:
‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’
Matthew 25:24b–25
The third servant is scared of losing what was given to him (which is still a significant amount of money). He knows that he’ll be punished for poor performance, so he does nothing at all with what was entrusted to him. He gives the master what rightfully belongs to him.
For the master, the money is not what matters. It’s the fear that crippled this servant and the lack of faith in his master.
As in all parables, we read ourselves into the story. What would it mean for us to be like this third servant before God?
If you have been taught the faith from the Small Catechism, you were taught to fear, love, and trust God. Loving and trusting sounds good, but fear sounds a little less comforting. To fear God is to recognise that He is holy and we are not. As a result, we can be fearful of the punishment we deserve and the wrath God has. He is loving and gracious, but He does also have holy anger when it is warranted.
If we only know God to be like that, we risk being crippled by the fear of making mistakes. Yes, we might still receive the forgiveness of sins on a regular basis, but, like the third servant, we bury all that in the ground and only let it surface again when the master comes back next Sunday. We fall for the trap of trying to be a “good Christian” and “live for God”, which of course we can never fully do.
The world around us expects our God to be like this and they expect Christians to live in this way. I’ve certainly experienced this, where a non-Christian friend was utterly shocked when I said a swear word once, or when I missed a Sunday service because of a late Saturday night. They expect us to be constantly trying to measure up to the expectations that our strict master has for us.
We don’t fear God like that because we know that there is much more to God than just His expectations and harsh anger. We read in our reading from 1 Thessalonians:
For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:9–11
We do not need to fear God like the servant feared his master. God has destined us for another kind of life before Him. He has a different plan for us. Through Christ, we have salvation and not wrath. Through the Spirit, we have faith. This leads us to our final point for today.
Faith involves risk
One talent is a significant amount of money, but the other two servants are trusted with even more. We know that the master entrusted his property to these servants “according to their ability”, so he must have already known that he would see at least some return on his investment.
The parable doesn’t describe the investment strategies or business dealings that the servants employ to make such a good profit, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that these two servants had the faith to take a risk and have a crack at growing what was given to them.
What they did was extremely risky. They probably knew like their fellow servant that their master could be harsh, so they risked disappointing him and receiving the same response their colleague got. They also risked losing what didn’t belong to them. Thankfully for them, their faith that their master would forgive them if it went wrong, and their confidence that things would work out in the end, paid off.
What does it mean for us to live in this kind of faith before God? Faith inevitably involves risk because faith implies that we can’t see the result before our eyes. There is an element of being convinced within ourselves that things will be OK. We might not be able to explain it or even justify it, but that’s what makes it faith.
We all have to step out in faith each and every day. Sometimes in small ways, like stepping out of bed trusting that the floor is there for your feet to land on. Sometimes in slightly bigger ways, like trusting that the car starts so that you can get to where you need to be on time.
Maybe only a few times in your life, there are those truly significant steps of faith that we take without really knowing how it’s going to go, like making the call to finally sell your business, propose to the person you love, or go through that medical treatment.
The master was pleased with the servants who took a risk on what he had given them. When God gives us the gift of forgiveness and new life in Him, our faithful response is to simply believe it, receive it, and share it.
Believing we are forgiven is risky because it means we have to admit our wrongs before God, the holy and just judge. Receiving that forgiveness is risky because it means we can’t use our sin as an excuse anymore. Sharing that forgiveness is risky because not everyone will recognise their need for it or hear that as good news at all. But these are the risks we are called to take in faith.
When the two faithful servants came back to their master with their profit, he responded:
Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.
Matthew 25:21, 23
May God strengthen your faith so that you, too, can hear these words on the Last Day, and finally enter into your master’s presence with eternal joy.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus. Amen.
