• A Curly Parable.

This is certainly one of Jesus’ curly parables. It seems to raise more tense questions than it answers. But as we try to interpret it, let’s sit with the difficulties and the discomfort it poses, remembering that Jesus whole ministry was centred around disturbing and challenging the thinking and values of people.

• Three Areas to explore:

There are three areas that I would like to explore today. The first is around the importance of the way the master is viewed. The second concerns the master’s expectations of his servants.

The last deals with the responses of the servants to these expectations.

The master can be viewed in two ways. Empowering leader or cruel land lord.

If the master is an empowering leader, then we can empathise with the first two servants who get into the spirit of the joyful investment scheme.

If the master is an exacting land lord then our sympathies lie with the servant who is fearful of him. The third servant is so fearful he is almost paralysed by it, a bit like those possums caught in the lights of the car. They do not run away, or do anything cunning even like playing dead, they simply freeze. The third servant froze in fear of the master’s anticipated anger, buried the talent and then handed it straight back to the master when he returned.

Our image of God is very important, for it will determine

So this why we must remind ourselves constantly that it is Jesus who most closely reflects God for he says: "I and the Father are one… if you have known me, you have known the Father."

This question is at the heart of the parable. This is not a parable about revealing the image of God; rather it deals with God’s expectations of us. We see this in the fact that the master makes no effort to defend himself against the unfavourable image the third servant has of him. He simply leaves him with the question so you think this of me; well what did you do with what I gave you?

If we understand God to represented by the master in the story and we are represented by the servants then what is the parable saying about God’s expectations of us?

If I put on this rugby jersey, does it make me a rugby player? No.

If I hold this rugby ball, does it make me a rugby player? No.

What would make me a rugby player? If I played the game.

So it is with Christianity. I am only a Christian when I commit to living my life as an active follower of Christ.

To take the rugby analogy a little further, sometimes we think that if we wear the gear, watch others play the game, celebrate the captain, go to the club we’re actually playing game. Wrong.

We are only playing the game when we are on the field, in the position allocated to us and using the skills given to us. Christianity is a way of being in a life of service.

Jesus says I am the life. God therefore expects the Christian to

To engage life.

To use the talents he has given us. It is no accident that the present day use of the word talent derives from this parable.

To actively serve people in appropriate ways.

In the story the servants are entrusted with the work of the master while the master is away.

Jesus told this parable two days before Passover, two days before his crucifixion. He was preparing them for the fact that he would be leaving them in body, but that he would return in glory at an unspecified time. He was making a point about what they should do until his return, how they should wait for him.

Waiting means gospel living. It means investing in our community and taking risks for God. God gives us talents and these are like the matches in the box, but matches unlit are pretty useless. God wants us to be fired up, to glow and burn for him, to bring warmth and light wherever we go and whatever we do.

The positive light in which the first two faithful servants are placed gives us a clue that theirs is the response Jesus desires from us.

We are called ignite those matches,

-to take risks for God

-to enhance lives and add to situations.

-To evangelise which means loving people so much that as a result of the out flowing of that love, people are brought into a relationship with God.

-to be agents of salvation which means helping people find God where there is life and sharing that life with others.

Jesus is lifted high, glorified, as we use our talents to multiply kingdom work, as the first two servants did with their talents.

But what about the third servant? Oh dear.

This is why the master is so angry, frustrated, exasperated. The third servant refuses to use the talents and gifts that God has given him and especially the gift of Faith in the goodness of the master.

Sadly, if you don’t use it you lose it and everything else, just as he did.

I think this parable is saying that:

-Christianity is not a waiting game/ a spectator’s sport.

-as we wait for Jesus’ return, we are called to be God’s agents of hope and spiritual liberation.

-We do this by using our talents in Jesus’ name, to serve people, meeting their needs and in so doing adding to their lives as Jesus did.