Football Season: Revisiting the Parable of the Talents

Football and a parable in the same title?  I am going somewhere with this, trust me.

Odds are, the last time you heard a sermon commenting on the gospel story (Matthew 25:14-30) you heard the admonition to use the talents God gave you.  Talents like music, dance, art, teaching, etc. Unfortunately, the word talent had a different meaning for Matthew. Talent meant money, a great deal of money. Gobs and gobs of money. In fact, a talent was a measure of the weight of either gold or silver rather than coinage. For someone to hand out the weight of even one talent would have involved entrusting 1,400,116 dollars and 57 cents of gold to another.  If the talent was silver, the amount was a mere fraction—16, 500 dollars. Still a tidy sum. Also, the Law forbade the lending of money with an attached interest. Thus, a pious Jew would have given someone else the job of doing the lending for him. 

Even today, investing money can be a risky business. Fortunes have both been made or lost due to any one of several factors. Of these, one which Jesus must have encountered often was, as one resource put it, “doing business in a hostile environment.” Because the Roman government held Israel in a political clenched fist, any type of business was always a high-risk enterprise due to heavy taxation and violence.

Another clue in the text is that the three servants are given no instructions as to what to do with the money. All three “went away immediately.” In other words, this man threw a “football” to each of his servants and then let them run with it. Then came the moment of accountability. The first two returned their amount doubled. No doubt, Jesus’ listeners dropped their jaws when they heard, “Because you were faithful in small matters . . .”  Millions of dollars a small matter? Perhaps the hyperbole is another clue—what could this be the value of? Read on. The third, understandably fearful of his hostile cultural environment did what many other prudent individuals would have done: he buried the money for safekeeping. And it is this man who reveals the secret of the parable and in doing so, takes the story to a higher level. “I knew you were a demanding man . . .”  Knew. Not just head knowledge but knowledge of the heart, that is, relationship. He was terrified of this man who had entrusted him with immense wealth. “Fear of the Lord” may be the beginning of wisdom but in this case, fear paralyzed a relationship. 

Thus, the story turns on the dime of one word. And this one word challenges the reader—who is Jesus really?  For you?  Do you know Him so well that you wouldn’t need instructions to live out your relationship with Him?  Can you tell Him, “Throw me the football, Lord, and let me see how far I can run with it for You!”  Or is your relationship with Him one of fear; the type of fear that buries the priceless treasure of the Good News? 

Matthew continues his challenge as the next parable Jesus tells is the famous scene where He separates the sheep from the goats. “What you do to the least of these, you do to Me” should cause a healthy fear of the Last Judgment. Following that story is the beginning of Jesus’ passion week.  He is the man who will go away on a journey and then return. Fear or joy. That is the choice every Christian must make.

So, the next time your favorite team’s quarterback throws a touchdown pass, take a moment to remember the spiritual risk of this parable. God could be saying, “Let Me do the same with you.  I trust you with unimaginable wealth.  Give me the joy of watching you run with it.”