Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them,
and made another five.
What we have been given by the Lord contains within itself the power to multiply. The servants who return to the Lord with more did not earn more by simply doing more work. Rather they used the talents they have been give to be generative source of the additional talents they brought to the Lord. For our part, we must not be afraid to put the talents we have been given to use, even to have faith that they will in fact do what they are meant to do when do so choose.
But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground
and buried his master’s money.
It would seem that many of us often feel like the servant the received only one talent. Perhaps this servant was someone who did not already have robust confidence. When he only received one talent according to his ability he may have taken it personally, as confirmation of everything he had suspected was true about his own inadequacies. And maybe for that reason he felt that the best thing he could do would be to bury his master's money. In the hole, he thought, it would be safe from any mismanagement on his part. In the hole, there would be no action of his to tarnish the talent, nothing of which he could be accused on his master's return. Or so he thought.
His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant!
So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant
and gather where I did not scatter?
Should you not then have put my money in the bank
so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
The servant given one coin need not have felt inadequate for only receiving one coin. What if the judgment of his ability was just the reverse of what we assume? What if the other were given more because the man given one coin could do more with less? If the servant hadn't been concerned with comparing himself with others he need not lost what confidence he may have had.
Perhaps the servant given one coin also had a negative view of his master. The man given five went immediately to put the talents to work, no doubt convinced of the potential of the power his master placed in his hands, and excited about the possibilities. By contrast, the servant given one coin seemed convinced that his master was greedy and demanding, to the point of looking for excuses to condemn others. None of this, it is important to emphasize, was inherent in the master's act of generosity. It was all part of the perspective that the man brought to the interaction. If he had thought instead that his master was actually giving out of his abundance, for the sake of those to whom he gave his gifts rather than for himself, that servant may well have gone out with confidence and returned with more than mere bank interest. That one talent might well have brought a much greater return than he would have guessed. If we think of ourselves as having only one or a few talents let us reframe how we think of them. Let it no longer be only one or a few. Let it be instead, amazingly this one or these few. Let us be excited to see what happens when we put them to work.
For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
By all accounts, we are to be numbered among those who have. Let us lose the scarcity mindset, so that we can receive more and grow rich. When the Lord takes away from those who have not in this context it is only so that they can learn that they must not think of what they have as only their own, must not rely on solely themselves. He takes what they cannot keep so they can receive what cannot be lost or squandered.
There is a difference between planting a seed and burying a talent. When we bury a talent we do so in order to keep it hidden even from ourselves and God. We are asking the universe to look the other way, and would prefer if it weren't there at all, so that we would not be accountable. When we are giving seeds room to grow in us it is rather than we are keeping them central, close to our the deepest parts of our heart where God himself dwells with us. We are not keeping the seeds from him in this case, but rather relying on him for the growth. We could think of this as more like a strategic investment, bearing the initial interest so that, to mix metaphors, when the seed breaks through the soil, we will have enough to put it to work in the world.
Becoming fruitful, or earning talents for the master, takes as many forms as there are people. Paul's urged the Thessalonians to seek that growth in a particular way.
Nevertheless we urge you, brothers and sisters, to progress even more,
and to aspire to live a tranquil life,
to mind your own affairs,
and to work with your own hands,
as we instructed you.
He called to be a quiet, peaceful life, in many ways like seeds planted beneath the soil. But he did not call them a life of idleness, because he envisioned that they would be constantly engaged and growing, doing, not necessarily great works of heroism, but at least the simple work, perhaps very much the one talent tasks, set before them. Such a life really does bear just the sort of fruit that the Lord himself desires.
Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done wondrous deeds;
His right hand has won victory for him,
his holy arm.
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