Receive your Master’s joy, THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

Some people are excellent gift givers. If you have ever been the recipient of such a gift you will immediately feel all the thoughtfulness and attention that has gone into picking this gift just for you. We are touched by the gift itself but even more so by the giver. In fact, something of the giver has been given to us beyond the gift itself. In a more perfect way, when God gives a gift, He gives more than something; He gives Himself.
 
In this season of gift giving, we can be lured into forgetting that Christ is the most important gift at Christmas. That sounds cliché or maybe too commonplace. The Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew 25:14-30 will help shake things up like a snow globe. Jesus says: 
We can easily identify the journeyman as Jesus, the Giver, who has ascended to the Father and gave gifts to men (c.f. Eph 4:8). From these initial verses we can sketch three significant qualities of the Giver as they are reflected in at least two recipients. 

The first quality is that the Giver is trusting; he entrusts what is His to His servants. God trusts us; he considers us trustworthy! That alone should fill us with great confidence … and also reverence. 

The second quality is the Giver’s generosity. His generosity provokes a generous response. In His gifts we feel a need to give. The parable gives the sense that the whole time the master was away the servants generously spent themselves trying to augment their master’s gifts. We should note here, that the Master gives “to each according to his ability.” The more fruitful we are with His gifts, the greater our capacity will be to receive more: “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” (v. 29). 

The third quality is excitement and energy. When God gives, the gift engenders great excitement and we have lots of energy to make the gift fruitful. Interestingly, the master doesn’t seem to give any instructions concerning the talents, and yet immediately the two servants set out industriously to double the investment. 

These qualities of being trustworthy, generous, and energetic have their source in the Giver and are engendered in the gifts. Yet, God does not just give us something, He gives us Himself. The servants have been given more than just a talent by the reply of the master upon his return: “Well done, good and faithful servant … Come, share your master’s joy” (v. 21). Above and beyond returning their investment to the rightful owner, these two servants share their master’s joy, that is, His presence! Wouldn’t we want to hear the Lord say that to us when we present the gift of our life to Him at the end of our days here on earth? 

Of course, there is that servant who buried/hid his master’s gift. He is the original Scrooge, exhibiting all the contrary qualities: distrustful, miserly, fearful, and slothful. By burying the gift, he didn’t actually receive it. Unfortunately, when the day came for the master to make good his investment, that servant would hear the harsh words: “And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” (v. 30). 

“An ox knows its owner, and an ass, its master’s manger” (Is 1:3). What happens when we recognize and fully accept the gift of Christ at Christmas? We become a gift ourselves! The Father gifted us with His Son at Christmas who gifts himself back to the Father. We too are ‘caught up through him in love’ and the qualities of the Giver are reflected in us as we give back our life to Him. The reward of a trustworthy, generous, and energetic self-gift to God will be to hear the words of the Giver: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come! Share your Master’s joy!”