NOTES for Mat 25:14-30

In the Christian community in which the Gospel was created, as among modern followers of Christ, the same question arose: "What should we do?" All of us, in one way or another, have found ourselves in the position of servants of a traveling Master: we must decide what to do in His absence. And here this parable, told by Jesus to His disciples in Jerusalem, stands before us.

Already now He is preparing them for the time when they will live in expectation of the final meeting with Him. And the answer to the eternal question is given in a form that is not entirely familiar: "Do not be afraid! Act! Think! Risk!" Of all human activities, commerce best describes the behavior of faithful disciples. Only instead of money, the disciples received from Christ something else: the presence of the Spirit, the gifts of hope and love. Now it is up to them, that is, to us, to put them to work and multiply them, so that this world may become richer and richer in love.

The parable of the talents given in the Gospel of Matthew suggests a very simple thought: how fruitless fear is as a motive for our actions! Notice: the image of the master formed in the third servant's mind makes him afraid. It would seem that if you are afraid, then work, so as to avoid punishment if the master is the kind who "reaps where he did not sow." But fear spreads farther and leads to fear of taking risks; fear deprives a person of freedom and paralyzes. It is no accident that whenever God meets a person He says: "Do not be afraid." He sets us free. He wants our responsible initiative. He gives us various talents (gifts) in advance so that they may be multiplied - so that there will be more than we need, so that we can share them, growing in brotherly love and thereby bearing witness to God's love.

Some Christians torment themselves trying to understand what talent they have, afraid of accidentally burying it in the ground. Others resent God for gifts that are too small. But if we look carefully at the lives of the saints, it turns out that often in earthly life they suffered most precisely because of what was central in their holiness.

A saint is someone who succeeds better than others at imitating God, someone who is more like Him. It is clear that God gives talents to the saints, but among the saints there are not so many genius artists and musicians. So perhaps by talent we mean the wrong thing?

Instead, the saints imitate Christ in His sufferings; they help Him carry the Cross. Is this not the explanation? Often we do not understand what Cross we are supposed to take upon ourselves. Perhaps the Cross and the talent are one and the same. Then it is clear that the talent is what we have to suffer through most of all. And it is clear that the greater the talent, the greater the responsibility and the greater the suffering, and therefore the greater the reward.

We are used to using the word talent to designate special gifts, whether artistic or scientific and technical. In general, this interpretation is permissible, but it does not exhaust the whole meaning of this parable. After all, many people in whom special gifts have not appeared, as it seems, could say: no talent has been given to me, so this does not apply to me. One can object that such reasoning is at best self-deception, for the Lord has given each of us a great deal; we do not even suspect it, and after accepting a false idea about themselves, many really do bury their talents. Those who do this often act not only because of their own personal fear, but also because they have yielded to the dictates of public opinion, which suppresses initiative.

But talents should mean everything valuable with which the Lord has endowed us. This includes various abilities, qualities of soul, and numerous spiritual gifts. It is time to understand that the Lord has given each of us the opportunity to bear fruit. After all, He wants us to be His co-workers.

Today’s passage includes the parable of the talents, that is, the gold coins that a master, before leaving, entrusts to his servants for safekeeping (vv. 14–15). In those days, however, just as in our own, money could be preserved only by putting it into circulation. Two of the three servants understand this well and act accordingly (vv. 16–17), while the third prefers not to take the risk (v. 18). The result was predictable: two of the three received praise and promotion (vv. 20–23), while the third lost everything (vv. 24–30).

Such a turn of events would be somewhat strange if the issue were the laws of our world, which has not yet been transfigured. Indeed, the servant was given the money for safekeeping, and he managed to return to the master the entire sum entrusted to him. In fact, the master had not required anyone to increase the sum, although he was pleased that his servants proved to be good stewards and found a profitable investment for the money entrusted to them. As a reward, the resourceful servants receive not merely a new and higher position; they become co-owners of their master’s property (vv. 21, 23; “to enter into joy” is not a Greek but a Hebrew expression, and it means something quite material, such as taking part in dividing the spoils after a successful joint hunt or dividing the profit after a successful transaction). The third servant preferred not to take the risk primarily because he considered his master greedy and cruel (v. 24). And that is exactly what the master became for him: he demanded of the distrustful servant what he had not demanded of the others and what the others had offered him of their own accord (vv. 26–27).

From the standpoint of the laws of our world, this logic is strange, to say the least; but different laws and rules operate in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom one cannot preserve anything for oneself, but one can receive everything by multiplying, for the sake of the Kingdom and its Master, what the Master entrusted one to preserve. Here one cannot return His gift to the Master and say, “You are cruel; here is what belongs to you, now leave me alone.” Whoever says this and adopts such a position loses the Kingdom. The principle Jesus has already spoken about more than once operates here: in the Kingdom one can have “life in abundance,” but only if from the very beginning one abandons the thought of one’s own separate and finite life, the thought of tearing a piece from the fullness of the Kingdom and carrying it away. The fullness of the Kingdom can be received, but only in its entirety. And that fullness can be retained only by multiplying and giving it away.

The logic of the Kingdom is strange logic from the point of view of this world. There is no leveling there, which sometimes seems to us like justice. Even when we speak of the old world so familiar to us, we sometimes still understand that there are things that cannot be divided either equally or "fairly."

For example, love. Or talent, not the talent from the Gospel parable, where money is meant, but the talent we mean when speaking of a talented person. Here we submit to the inevitable: there are things that belong only to the one to whom they are given by God, and to no one else.

Why, then, does God act as He acts? Did the one who returned his master's money intact and safe act badly? Reasoning in human terms, he did nothing bad; he fulfilled his duty: he did not increase his master's wealth, but he did not squander it either, returning what had been received for safekeeping intact.

Still, even reasoning in human terms, one can guess that money lying in a hidden store not only brings no income, but sometimes loses value. When the matter concerns spiritual life and the Kingdom, the situation looks even more unambiguous. Spiritual life is always dynamic. When God created the human person, He breathed into his "nostrils," as the Hebrew text reads literally, His breath, the breath of life, and the person became alive. Breath is a process; there can be no stopping here, for stopping is equivalent to death. And the Kingdom, as it opened on the day of Pentecost, is also the breath of God breaking into the world in order to transform it.

Everyone who wants to participate in its life, and even simply in spiritual life, the very life that unites a person with God, must become part of a process where the small becomes great, a sprout becomes a branching tree, one breath becomes a mighty stream of life, in short, a process where one talent gains ten. Such is the logic of the Kingdom, the truth of its life. If one does not participate in it, he will not keep his minimum, even if it was given by God. Because this minimum is only a seed sown by God, which can either sprout and bear fruit or rot, something God, most likely, will not permit. There is no third option.

The parables of the Lord Jesus Christ that we read today give us an incredible hope, one we have in no way deserved. Two days before Passover, when the Son of Man was handed over to be crucified, He shows His disciples from different perspectives what the Kingdom of Heaven is, the Kingdom to which He has called us.

The Lord tells His disciples that they must keep watch and be ready to meet the Day of the Lord. In the parable of the ten virgins, He says that the Kingdom of Heaven itself is like people awaiting an encounter with God. The central point of this parable is the call to wait for that encounter and desire it with all one’s heart.

The parable of the talents speaks of the gift of God given to each of us. This gift is likened to immense wealth: one talent amounted to more than twenty-five kilograms of silver! And the Lord calls us to put this priceless treasure to work. Judging by the text that follows, the talents mean not so much natural abilities and inclinations (that sense belongs to much later usage, which developed under the influence of the New Testament). The parable of the Last Judgment clearly shows us that people’s principal treasure is the ability to show mercy to one another as God Himself shows mercy to us. This is His silver, entrusted to us to make it grow.

And, of course, the central place in the passage we read is occupied by the parable of the Last Judgment. We read it before Lent, and today this text once again reveals what matters most in our life, what the Lord expects from us and, above all, where He has arranged to meet us.