All Saints Has Talent

 

What talent will you share with the world?

Zephaniah 1:7,12-18
Psalm 90:1-8, (9-11), 12
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

 ©The Rev. Seth Olson 2023

Holy God, giver of every good gift, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

Wednesday night was a little quiet compared to many midweek evenings at All Saints. Choirs were rehearsing. The Atria were open. Our men’s group was meeting. A few chefs had prepared a delicious dinner. I was about to head to the Jackson-Thorpe Room when I saw Jak Karn.

Jak was adorned in an apron, rubber gloves, and a ball cap. He grinned when he saw me. As he shuttled the dirty dishes into the kitchen to be cleaned, I offered my thanks for his contribution to the evening. Before my class would end, the entire kitchen and Great Hall would be cleaned—in no small part, thanks to Jak. As my words of gratitude landed upon Jak, his smile widened. “I don’t have many talents,” he said, “But, I am good at cleaning up, and I am happy to do it.”

Now, the truth is Jak has many talents. He’s a phenomenal friend, an excellent handy man, and yes, he’s a skillful dishwasher. I could not help but beam back at Jak when he shared about talents because he had articulated something of utmost importance. The talents we have—be it bookkeeping, teaching, public speaking, or anything else—the talents we have are not meant to be hidden away. We are to happily share them, like Jak! As a beloved children’s song goes, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…” and “Hide it under a bushel… NO! I’m gonna let it shine.”

Today’s Gospel lesson is all about this truth. Now when we read this parable, we might get distracted by some of the hyperbolic details that Jesus employed to get his point across. Let’s dive deeper into this tale of the talents and see how we might be like the exemplary characters and Jak Karn.

We are late in Matthew’s Gospel account. Jesus will soon face betrayal, torture, and death. So, Jesus’ intensity heightens in these last lessons with his followers and friends. Last week we heard the parable which immediately precedes this one. You may recall the story of the wise and foolish bridesmaids was about readiness. Today’s focus shifts to utilizing talents.

Before going any farther though, what was a talent? We might think of it as a gift or skill, but in those days, it was a large unit of money. A talent equaled 6,000 denarii, and a denarius was what the average worker earned in a day. Thus, one talent was equal to about sixteen years’ worth of work. Quick math will show that the first slave received eighty years’ wages, the second thirty-two, and the third sixteen.

Now, it’s worth articulating that the premise of this story remains fundamentally problematic from our modern perspective. Jesus’ story assumes slavery as the normal pattern. This is not to say that we as Christians should under any circumstances condone this way—we instead are to condemn human trafficking at every turn. Still, despite the troubling premise of this story, there is something for us to learn about God’s Reign.

When the first two slaves received their large sums of money what did they do? The text tells us, “[They] went off at once and traded with them.” In the story talent means money and this should not be lost on us, we are not to hoard away our treasure like Ebenezer Scrouge before his transformation in A Christmas Carol. However, talent has an expanded meaning, which points to anything of value to us. We have taken talent to mean something innately within us—like a gift from God—be it a photographic memory or a tireless spirit. In this story, the first two quickly doubled their money. The third slave? Well, before moving onto him, I want to take a timeout.

In this story there is a crucial detail that we may easily overlook. For me to illustrate this point though, let me tell you a story from early on in my time at All Saints. This story might as well be called, “All Saints Has Talent!” For we have an abundance of talent here at All Saints. We also have an abundance of skills, and as you may know, there is a difference!

A few times a year we at All Saints are witnesses of talent-turned-skill at our Wednesday night Contemplative Services. In November, around All Saints and All Souls Days, we remember those who have died. In December, we celebrate a longest night service, which allows community members a chance to grieve if the Christmas Season is more bittersweet than joyful. During Lent, we repent and pray for our world. This June, we even celebrated the gift of diversity. Now, early in my time here, after one of these beautiful services, I was talking with Maggie and Christin Gill about how amazing the whole evening was.

Trying to pay a compliment, I said, “Y’all are so talented.” Christin looked at me a little funny. I asked, “Did I say something wrong? What’s a better way of complementing you on the beauty of this service?” “Thank you for asking,” Christin said, “Talent is a gift from God. Skill though is developing that talent into something more.” Since then, we have a little running joke in which I tell our musicians not just how talented they are, but also how skilled they have become!

The same is true in this parable. The first two servants were talented—quite literally. They were given many talents, which is an obvious detail. However, what may be more hidden within this story is what they did with the talents—they skillfully used them. Note that they went and traded what they had—there was risk and vulnerability involved in their sharing. In a similar way, musicians trade their talents and rely upon others to help develop talent into skill. Musicians must practice. They must have someone, especially at first, to teach them. They need someone to help take care of their instruments. They benefit from having an audience with whom they share the music. You see, talent is not a solitary endeavor, which gets us to the third slave.

We might mistakenly think this third one is guilty of being lazy. That is indeed what the master says. And yet, there’s something more pernicious at work. The third slave let fear drive his talent into the ground. He isolated himself away from others. He hid the gift that had been given to him. To put it quite succinctly, he never got the biscuit because he was never willing to risk it.

At the same time, the mater’s reply scares me. He called the slave wicked and lazy. He threw him into the outer darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth! This response frightens me not because I am naïve enough to think that this sort of thing does not happen in the world. There are evil ones who doll out vengeance daily. All around this earth violence, oppression, war, genocide, famine, human trafficking, rape, and murder are happening at this very moment. As terrifying as our world is, what scares me even more is that God gets compared to a slave-owning, tyrannical, vengeful monster who looks nothing like God whose love is eternal, limitless, and unconditional.

And yet, there’s good news here. If the master is indeed God, then God was overly abundant. God gave years’ and years’ worth of gifts to these ones who had earned none of it. All God asked for in return was that the gift was not hidden, that the offering was shared with others, that the talent was nurtured within community such that it grew.

In my heart, there is an alternative ending to this parable found within another parable from another Gospel account. My New Testament Professor, the Very Rev. Dr. Cynthia Briggs-Kittredge would not like what I am about to do, so Cindy, do not tell her about this. Cynthia is the Dean and President of the Seminary of the Southwest for a little longer, so I do not want her mad at me for making what she called Gospel stew when you mix the different Gospel accounts together.

On a day when our collect mentions that all holy Scriptures are to be heard, read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested Gospel stew sounds admissible to me. There’s another parable in Luke’s account, one we probably all know about a loving father. A father who allows for the talents of his younger son to be completely squandered. To have even given his prodigal son an inheritance to misuse in riotous living would have been obscene. And yet, that’s what the father did. The father also welcomed his wayward son home and invited his dutiful son to join the party.

If that father and this master are one in the same, I imagine that the anger of the master in this story is because this third slave did not even live like the prodigal son did. He sat outside the party fearfully hiding his talent in the dirt. God does not desire success at all costs. That’s not the morale of the parable of the talents. God may not want us to squander what we’ve been given, but there does seem to be something even more antithetical to God’s Reign—hoarding and hiding the gifts given to us.

We are called to be exceedingly generous with the talents that God invests in us. We are called to be like Jak Karn who is happy to share his talents with the church. We are called to be like Christin Gill who utilizes a network of support to turn her talent into skill. We are called to be like the first two servants who share their talents so freely with others. God gifts us with light that we are to shine. Don’t you dare hide it under a bushel. How will you share your talent with others? How will you shine your light with this world?