Saturday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
This past summer we hosted an inter-generational VBS at the parish. It was four evenings and I think the whole thing went rather well. While the little ones were doing various activities, the adults spent half of there session doing a communal lectio divina, or prayerful reading of the day's scripture passage. The passage we selected for the last day was today's gospel, the Parable of the Talents. Half a session was not enough time to pray and process this passage!
This parable, the middle of the three concluding parables from Matthew (Ten Virgins, Talents, and the Sheep and the Goats), is a difficult one. I have heard commentaries referenced that depict the master as the villain and others that condemn the lazy servant. I've struggled with how wealth is depicted in this passage and how should we understand the redistribution of the lazy servant's money. Amid all of that, there are two places my prayer took me today.
Flowing from the first reading, we are reminded that God gives freely as best serves the mission and the plan. The grace of God is not earned, but is a gift. Do we remember that? Jesus knows that we have expectations and warns us that we will be judged by the measure with which we judge. We see that in the Parable of the Talents. The first two servants work as people who believe they have been entrusted with a great gift and they excel. The last servant rebels as one who despises a sense of obligation. One who does not believe he has been given a gift but is mere a pawn being used, from whom all will eventually be taken. The Master handles each according to their expectation. The lazy servant judged his actions as one who would have everything taken, and when he falsely judged the master that way it was taken, and given to the servant who had ten. Which is notable! His talent was not given to the servant who used to have ten, but in the text it is present tense. All that was given was not taken away from those who recognized the gift of the master in their lives. They trusted the master's gift and he never reneged.
This trust leads to the second place my prayer took me. It was their trust that was fruitful. They went out and they traded with the money. They took the gift of the master and they let it engage with the community, it passed hands to others, it flowed in and out of the marketplace and it bore fruit! They trusted the giver and therefore shared and traded the gift, learning from the Master's trust. However the lazy servant was a man without trust. He feared failing, losing, being used and maybe even looking in the mirror. He was given less for he was capable of managing less, but instead of trusting the Master, did he resent him? He did not trust the community with his talent, or even a bank. His lack of trust was fruitless.
Do we trust God? Do we trust that God gives good gifts or are we suspicious that we are under the yoke of a task master? Do we fear that God is somehow petty, stingy, or unjust? Do we trust that in the end God wishes to give us true joy? Or do we fear that in the end everything will be taken away?
May we trust God deeply, for he trusts us to take the greatest gift, the very life of Jesus, into the community to share it, trade it, and allow it to exchange hands. May we truly possess fruitful trust. For sharing the Lord will only allow us to encounter more of Him and return to the Father bearing an even greater resemblance to His Son.
- Spencer Hargadon