What To Do With Your Talents?

The more we delve into the concept of grace, the more complexity we see, and the more we discover how easily grace can be misunderstood. Examining the parable of the talents last week, we saw new aspects of grace which I think we need to explore further. Here is the parable again:

For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey. The one who had received the five talents immediately went and did business with them, and earned five more talents. In the same way the one who had received the two talents earned two more. But he who received the one talent went away and dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.

Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have earned five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter the joy of your master.’

Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, ‘Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have earned two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter the joy of your master.’

Now the one who had received the one talent also came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed. And I was afraid, so I went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you still have what is yours.’ “But his master answered and said to him, ‘You worthless, lazy slave! Did you know that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter seed? Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore: take the talent away from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’

For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. And throw the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 25:14-30)

Two things are clear from this, I think. First, it is a judgment parable, since at the conclusion, the single talent servant is condemned to outer darkness, the place where there is no light. It is the ultimate separation from God, who is the source and the embodiment of light. It is a place of separation from grace because—as we have discussed—grace and light are fundamental aspects of God’s character and are for the most part, interchangeable nouns.

For that same reason, the second thing that’s clear from this parable is that it is a parable of grace—grace received by the five-talent and the two -talent servants, and grace lost by the single-talent servant. It a parable of both judgment and grace. Notice, too, that grace comes before judgment, as it does in the story of the Fall that we alluded to last week in Genesis 3. Man seeks to judge himself after he eats the forbidden fruit. But God rejects that judgment:

 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?” (Genesis 3:9-11)

As a demonstration of grace, God made a covering of skin to replace the shoddy fig leaves they were wearing. This is God’s covering robe of grace, to replace the fruitless fig leaves sown by a man, but only then does God pronounce judgment:

 And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.  Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:21-24)

They were (Wo/Mankind was) banished from the garden, banished from the promised land, but not (apparently) banished from God—due to grace. Grace came in this case before judgment. How reassuring! It does bring joy to judgment.

Notice that in the parable, each servant was given “according to his ability.” What does that really mean? One got five talents, one got two, one got a single talent—each according to his ability. The inference is that there is a grace which might be too much for you. What is too much grace? Can you be overwhelmed by grace? Is the single-talent servant overwhelmed by grace? He did, after all (did he not), get what was according to his own ability?

Here is a startling concept of judgment—it is about one thing and one thing only: What do you do with the grace that you’ve been given? The master, when he returns, asks nothing about the work that they’ve done in the meantime, nothing about the crops in the field, nothing about the flocks and the herds, nothing about the household or what might have gone wrong in the home, nothing about calculation errors, or missteps in management. There is only one question: “What did you do with the grace? What did you do with the goodness I gave you?”

But even more shocking (Jason alluded to it last week): If the judgment is about what you did with grace, then the judgment is not about what you did with your sin. It has nothing to do with how bad you were. Since unlimited grace is available, how bad you are is not important. How much goodness you have and how much you’ve done with the grace, is really the issue. To repeat: The real question is: “What have you done with the goodness that you’ve been given?”

This is not a license to be bad, although being bad is our sinful human condition, something that Paul described :

 For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold into bondage to sin. For I do not understand what I am doing; for I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate. However, if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, that the Law is good. But now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I do the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.  I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:14-25)

 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

Thank God, I say, for grace. So what then do you do with your grace? What do you do with your goodness? The question changes. It’s not “How much badness do I display?” The question is, “How much goodness do I display?” What do you do with the grace that has been given to you.

In the parable, the five- and two-talent recipients put them to work. This is point number one about what to do with grace: You must put the grace you’ve been given to work. You cannot bury it, you cannot suffocate it. Notice that the single-talent servant buries the grace because he’s afraid to take a risk. His fear of losing grace is overwhelming. He’s too analytical, he is too confident of his understanding of the master. He violates the number one rule of grace, which is never to underestimate it. The five- and two-talent servants put grace to work.

They seem to realize that you cannot kill grace by using it. Grace is expansive and immortal. Like light, if it is exposed, it illuminates. It leads to the second rule of grace: Playing it safe with grace leads to outer darkness. When it comes to grace, you must be willing to risk everything, risk it all. When grace is given to you, you must be all in to invest that grace. What does that mean to you? What does that mean for me?

To accept grace is to invest it. To hoard grace is to suffocate it. The five- and two-talent servants had 100% ROI (return on investment). This, I think, is a metaphor for risking it all. They could have lost it all as well. What does it mean to risk it all, to risk all of the goodness that you have been given, that you possess? Grace, it seems, is a risky business. It’s controversial. It’s easily misunderstood. People are suspicious when you talk about grace too much. Too much grace is a license to sin. That is the risk. People will find a way to misinterpret and misunderstand what grace is all about.

Risking it all is to take a risk of being misunderstood. It’s the risk of being misquoted. It’s the risk of being misguided when it comes to God’s grace. It’s the risk of being, it seems, soft on sin, of extending grace to people who offend us, to sinners, to people of other faiths. But with grace, it seems, risk is a requirement. We must never waver in our working to expose God’s grace. We must never underestimate God’s grace. This is our judgment: Preaching grace, teaching grace, showing grace. It’s a risky business but taking that risk is the judgment. Paul said:

Therefore, having been justified [a judgment word—DW] by faith [or, you could say, by grace—[DW}], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand;… (Romans 5:1-2)

Unforgiven sinners don’t stand before God in peace. To stand before God in peace is to have been declared righteous by God; it is to be covered with the robe of grace. We may be at war within ourselves, as we just read in Romans 7, but we are declared righteous nonetheless by God’s grace. We may not be baptized, we may not have joined the church, we may not be spotless, we may have simply accepted and invested the grace and then have become at peace with Christ.

What then, does Scripture teach us about grace and judgment? Why does grace come before judgment? What is risky with grace? What is playing it safe with grace? And why is the outer darkness reserved for those who play it safe with grace? What does it mean to put grace at risk? What does it mean to put grace to work? Do you understand that risking all of the grace that you’ve been given will not put you into any kind of grace deficit? Grace at work is always expansive. Can you embrace the idea that your judgment is based on what you do with grace?

Remember, grace has two rules: Number one, never underestimate it; Number two, playing it safe with grace leads to outer darkness. Risky grace accepts sinners, accepts different people of different faiths, accepts people of different cultures, attempts to see people as God sees them. Imagine the 100% return on investment in a church that did that! What is your view of how to handle grace? If your mission is to dispense grace, how can you handle the grace that’s been given to you? Do you want to invest it? Risk it? Or do you want to hoard it? What are your thoughts on the grace and risk?

Donald: I really think that the theme or the component you’re talking around is fear of being misunderstood. We don’t want to be misunderstood. Fear prevents us from really being the people we want to be. We might want to discuss what causes fear because it really does shield us. We’re protecting ourselves. So we’re living in a world of fear, it seems to me. We lock ourselves in.

Don: That is exactly what the one-talent servant says when the master returns: “I was afraid.”

David: Last week I said I was not sure that we are talking about real grace. Maybe what we are talking about is a kind of “grace lite.” I suppose I could accept that the parable has something to do with grace lite. But to me, the parable is fundamentally about faith. Indeed, this is what God himself (the master) thanks his servants for: Their faithfulness. He thanks them for believing in him. They didn’t take a risk. If you believe in God, you’re not taking a risk. The one-talent servant did not believe in the master, he didn’t believe that all he had to do was invest the talent and it would pay dividends.

The master told both the five and the two-talent servants that each of them was a “good and faithful slave. You were faithful….” So it is faith that is rewarded. Paul (in the Romans 5 quote) talks about grace being achieved through faith. So faith comes first. To me, that’s what this parable is about. It’s about faith. The man with one talent had no faith.

C-J: I’ve been in really bad places in my life. I know that when I felt the grace of God the most it humbled me in the sense that with it came this profound sense of love. It had nothing to do with my faith. There are a lot of people who come to God in desperation—from a faith of any kind, whatever denomination or their tradition is or their culture—to ask for help. But I have found that the measurement isn’t so important as being able to receive. And when I stood in the presence of God (not that I entered the throne room), just standing there and somebody laid hands on me and prayed for me and I was healed. To me, that was grace in the sense that I had nothing to put in. Nothing. It was just God’s grace, I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t have anything in my favor. I came with empty pockets, broken. So to me, that’s another level of faith.

But the kind of grace that David’s talking about and what Paul speaks of is as we grow in our relationship with God. I don’t think God wants us always to be like a child at the knee—”I need, can I have.” I think he expects us to grow up and go out and do something with that time we’ve been given and whatever gifts he has given us as a sign of grace. We’ve each had our journey and from what I can tell here most of us have been cognizant of that and try to use our gifts and talents and our stories that others can see witnessed in us.

My fear is that I don’t represent God well. It’s not that I’m afraid to be in the presence of God or other people judging me. (I can be pretty critical on myself—I don’t need them to tell me what I already know!) But my concern about not being on those corners of the world when I’m selfish and I hold back, thinking they won’t respect it, they won’t understand what I’m giving them, they don’t realize what it costs me to give this to them, whatever it is. Sometimes I have to dance with that in my head. Just go do it anyway. Let God deal with it. Give the gift. Let God deal with what comes of that gift. That’s hard.

But mostly, I’m just afraid I’ll disappoint God, because God’s in control anyway. But I’m not afraid to stand before God.

Donald: What causes us to hold back? If we are filled with what God has blessed us with, why would we not want to share it and attribute it to God? What causes us to be afraid?

C-J: I think ignorance causes fear. Roosevelt said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Fear is often a lie. It’s contrived in our awareness and out of our experience. But real fear is paralyzing, like a deer caught in the headlights. That’s a different kind of fear. We walk in fear every day. The minute you walk out of your house, you might think: “Will I come home tonight? I hope I don’t get sick. Am I gonna have enough to pay my bills? I hope this person I’m going to meet hears what I’m trying to say. I hope I’m a blessing to others.” We live in fear every day, but most of us don’t dwell on the fear. We just go out and do the mission. Get out there and do it, and we come home and we say “I did the best I could” and we remember the commitments that we’ve made, and we’re good with that.

I think the fear is the lie. God says that perfect love casts out fear, if we completely commit our life and our being and this speck in time to God and trust that if we’re doing our part he’s the one who multiplies.

Kiran: I had a bad habit of not budgeting and spending without limit, and got into a big mess. Then someone gave me the money to start over.. I was really sorry for what I had done and now I want to be very careful with my money. But if someone were to show up in a mess like me, even though their debt might be small enough for me to handle I would be scared to take care of them because I know that tomorrow I’m gonna mess up and then I might need more grace.

That comes from ignorance of the character of God, because his grace is sufficient. That means he accounted for me, for all the things that I would do in the future, and then he gave enough grace so that even if I shared it with others, I would have still more tomorrow.

Where I am struggling is because I’m not looking at the provider—I’m looking at myself. It’s the old problem: I’m trying to fix my sin on my own. The five and two-talent servants realized there was no point fixing themselves—they had resources and just went out and used them. The promise is that no matter how wise or unwise you are, when you invest grace you’re going to get a 100% return. I think that’s the point that we miss.

So if it is an opportunity to help others, you’re always going to get 100% back. But if it is an opportunity to use it for your own benefit, you’re always going to lose it. I think that’s the fear. It is about faith, faith that God is going to account for all the risks that you take, but I know the fear very well and I think we have to keep looking at Christ for this fear not to be present.

C-J: I think it’s always about relationship. God gives us the desire to know and understand like a parent. We don’t say to our newborn: “Why can’t you walk and talk? It would make this whole thing a lot easier!” We understand it’s a process and as the baby grows, so does the adult caring for that baby.

I think we come to a place of mutual regard. I think God regards us as much as we regard God. That’s a profound relationship. I don’t think a lot of people understand that there’s always a reverent respect when we are with someone we love deeply and how we choose our words. Even if we’re arguing, we know that it’s done out of a concern for the other, a concern for the relationship, because the relationship will be healthier with full disclosure and sometimes with passion—”I love you so much, I’m willing to risk this, because I don’t want you to do something that will be harmful to you. And when you’re harmed, all these other things are going to be impacted by it as well.”

I think God loves us a great deal, as witnessed by the sacrifice of Jesus. If we can just stop for a minute as human beings in the finite and realize that God’s not going to abandon us or ask us to do anything we can’t do and that his whole mission is to make us mature in the relationship with him within our spiritual communities, and with the community of people so we have no clue what this faith requires of us, with this walk, this grace, this relationship requires of us, “Not my will, but Thy will.”

A child doesn’t really understand the intention of a parent when he or she says, “I prefer you don’t do that.” And then moves into “What did I just say to you?” You don’t start with that. You try to teach a child critical thinking skills. I think the whole journey with God is teaching us critical thinking skills, long term consequences, impact, and trust, faith, all those things.

The words we see in the Bible are not mistakes. They’re not like close-to’s, I truly believe they’re inspired, even if they come out of traditional myth. I think that they found the common denominator by the spirit that we refer to as God, the divine, the creator. Humanity is not capable of that. I’ve never met a good person without some kind of a faith base operational in their life. They make good choices, but they lack a sense of “You live, you die.” There’s a richness there that I can’t begin to describe, but I know when God touches them, they’ll say “I never knew. If I had only known.”

Kiran: It is a profound point Jason made last week that we’re judged not on our sins, our mistakes, but on the opportunities to be good to other people. Doing good to others is important because when we focus on it we don’t think about ourselves anymore, but we look to enrich other people’s lives. So this whole thing is about others. If we always focus on grace wiping away our sins, then falling, then assuming that grace will cover our failure, I think we’re hiding the grace under a bushel. If you get grace you must ask “How can I impact somebody else’s life?” I think that’s the proper use of grace. It is so easy for us to be me-centric all the time. But I think the call of God is to be other-centric.

Reinhard: The parable is interesting. The one-talent servant acted fairly in terms of human monetary transactions. He gave back what he owed. But I think this is not a matter of fairness. There’s no fairness in receiving grace or forgiveness. On the other hand, the servant was rebellious in that he knew the masted has power over his life but didn’t accept his sovereignty. So he didn’t do anything with the money, he didn’t do good things with it. I think the master wanted him to put the talent to use for something good.

James said:

So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:17)

If we don’t do good to our fellow man, we will judged and maybe punished. I think this is something that we as believers have to consider in our lives. I think it teaches us what to do as Christian believers.

Don: Are you willing to take a risk with grace, to extend it to people who aren’t very gracious and who the law would condemn? People of different faiths, people of different persuasions, people of different practices? People who are sinners, people who are bad? Can a church work on that basis?

Anonymous: The church can, I think, but not the individual. A church as a body cannot suffer personal hurt, a personal negative response or a negative outcome. It’s harder for the individual.

I’m curious about the receiver of grace, not the giver. I understand the giver. But the receiver is limited by reality, by fear, by culture, by the way s/he was raised. S/he can’t be always submissive and accepting grace from God, because God is sinless but when you when you deal with people, you can’t be the same kind of receiver.

C-J: I think that’s the job of the holy spirit. I think that’s about covenant relationship. I think that’s about believing the lie that we aren’t worthy. It isn’t about worthiness. It’s about grace. And it’s about trusting the holy spirit that’s resident within us. It is trusting what we see in Scripture as being holy and inspired. It’s trusting that we’ll find the right teachers that will help us grow in that relationship.

I know I can’t do it in the flesh, but I trust the holy spirit in that covenant relationship and I trust the Word of God. I don’t look to myself. I don’t even look to good teachers to tell me always because there are things that I’m not always aware of that float in the back of my conscience or in my spirit that need to be dealt with. It’s the holy spirit in covenant relationship.

Donald: If we are supposed to be accepting of and generous to the “other,” it seems to me when a church body forms itself, over time what it tries to do is unify itself, to become a culture unto itself. The more it does that, the “other” isn’t really feeling very included within that body. I think it’s natural— I’m not being critical of it. The journey of a faith group forms a pattern. The more it forms, unless it’s quite unique, it’s not terribly generous to the other. And that is “Us and them” and that’s the risk and that’s not sharing. That’s not graceful. A community gets together and finds its values for itself.

Carolyn: When was the word “grace” first used in the Bible, Was grace there in the garden at the time of the first sin? Where was the holy spirit at that time? It was a long time before Jesus came, and a long time between the garden of Eden and the garden in our back yard.

Don:  But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:8, KJV)

Don: So it goes back at least that far. I think in the narrative of the fall of man in the garden you find elements of grace, but the first appearance of the word “grace” in Scriptures is probably that just cited.

C-J: I think grace is the nature of God. When he finished the creation, he said, “It is good.” I think grace has always been there. It wasn’t something that was pulled out of the pocket. “Oh, I didn’t know that was there. Who can I give this to?” Some parents are just naturally loving, instinctively great parents. I believe that the nature of God is grace and beauty and abundance. I don’t think we have to go looking for its inception. I think that it is and always has been.

Don: A few weeks ago we talked about the parallel between grace and light. In the first chapter of the book of Genesis we see that the first act of creation is to create light, which is, I think, synonymous with God’s grace as a fundamental characteristic of who God is. Grace and light can be used almost interchangeably throughout many of the passages of Scripture where those nouns are in play.

Carolyn: Then truthfully, burying the talent means just not being able to confess that Jesus is our king and our Lord. Faith, belief, is the talent that we are not using. We lose sight of our salvation if we do not declare and allow others to hear the good news.

C-J: I think we all are born with grace. And it’s the light that reveals it. I don’t think God loves any child more or less than another. We’re all given a portion. It’s how much light we’re able to receive or become aware of. It’s hard to believe in something that’s not tangible. It’s hard to look at the Bible and say, “Well, do you know the origin of this book, and the cultures and histories and the paganism behind it and passing their children through fire? This is a pretty wild book here, you want me to believe this? And somebody’s dying and coming back to life and God’s sitting on a throne in a cloud, really?” You have to understand that if they take it that way it is the gift of grace in us that has to be given in everyday acts of courage, loving someone who might spit on us, bite us, hurt us, not appreciating what we’re giving freely. There are all kinds of things that create an environment to have reasonable fear.

Carolyn: What tangible thing can we compare to the talent that was put in the ground, and what are we not doing?

C-J: It’s not about us, it’s about the holy spirit’s light, presence, being in us. It’s not me showing up, it’s the holy spirit in me that they recognize.

Carolyn: We have to allow the holy spirit to come in. We have to have that element of grace that God gives us and that we are covered with. But I do not want to be losing out.

David: I understand where Carolyn is coming from, and I think she gets it. It is about faith. It is about belief. I will repeat testimony I gave to this class a long time ago. I tell it rarely and perhaps I’m at fault in that. Forty years ago, I had the most terrifying dream I’ve ever had, in which an absolute malevolence was about to devour me in some way. (There we no images—this was pure feeling.) I have never before or since experienced fear anything like it. With the great difficulty in speaking that often happens in a bad dream, I gurgled that I was not afraid of this malevolence because I knew God was more powerful and would save me. And that’s exactly what then happened. I felt a benign presence and the malevolent presence disappeared. I woke up in a cold sweat, but much relieved.

The dream was totally fresh and vivid in my mind and viscera then, and remains fresh and vivid 40 years later. I have never been able to remember any other dream I have had. This was undoubtedly special and meaningful. I think what I experienced was grace through faith. It was a dream but it was me having a real personal experience, a real personal relationship with God. It was not based upon any specific scripture or any religion. The spirit within me knew to cry out and to have faith. Where that faith came from. I really don’t know. I have to believe it must have been the holy spirit.

I think any human being on the planet—Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist, anybody—could have. I believe God will be there for anyone if they are prepared to profess faith. I think that’s what this parable is about. It’s about having faith.

Reinhard: I think faith is the key here. We can appreciate what grace is. For proof that someone received grace, we can look at how they share it with other people. First, I think we have to appreciate, we have to internalize, the grace in ourselves through faith. That’s the talent we have to share with others. No matter where we are or what we do, I think there’s a window of opportunity to share the grace of God with other people. I think that’s what God wants from us.

The emphasis on the grace of God, the resurrection, and salvation is more apparent in the New than in the Old Testament.

I think God wants us to share the grace with others, no matter their background. Given a chance to talk about God’s grace, I think we have to do it, we have to share it. Whether they accept it or not is another matter, but it is our duty to extend the grace to others.

Don: We’ll talk about that some more next week—how to share the grace with others and how to avoid becoming a hoarder of grace, which is really Carolyn’s question, I think.