Around April, we all tend to think about money, and taxes, and rendering unto Ceasar. I’ve been working with my investment advisor to decide which stocks and bonds to invest it. Some investments can be very risky – a huge reward is possible, but so is gong broke.Jesus tells of a master who is going on a journey. Before he leaves, he entrusts his servants with his wealth:

• To one, he gives five talents

• To another, two

• To another, one

Each servant according to their ability.

The first servant looks around for an investment with a high return, and he’s lucky – he doubles the money.

The second servant is more risk adverse, so he loans some money to trusted friends, and makes a modest return

The third servant knows that his master is old, and this money is to keep him alive when he is too old to work. So he buries the money, secretly, for safekeeping.

The master praises the first two servants, equally, but is rather harsh with the third. Personally, I think he was a bit too harsh – the third servant wasn’t lazy or careless; he just didn’t understand the assignment.

Now when I first read this, I saw the first two servants as riverboat gamblers who got lucky. I figured I’d hire the third one, because he kept the money safe. Wouldn’t you do something similar?

The word ’talent’ here is used to mean a sum of money, in particular gold. Google says one talent is about 75 pounds, worth roughly $5 million.

But nowadays the word talent means something closer to skill, or artistic mastery. I find this ironic, in light of what Jesus evidently meant by this parable. The servants who use their talents to spread the Word of God and the teaching of Jesus are doing the right thing. The third servant is wasting what we can take to represent his God-given talent, not merely money.

OK, I mis-understood this parable. But there is a connection: the use of the word “talent” to mean “gift or skill” in English and other languages originated from an interpretation of this parable, sometime in the 1200s AD, or thereabouts,

Besides the etymology of the word Talent, what can we learn fro this parable?

The question is not, “What do I have?” The question is, “What am I doing with what I have?”

Notice something important: the servant with two talents received the same praise as the one with five. Jesus is telling us to use the talents we have to create goodness in the world. Maybe you don’t create as much as some other person, but Jesus is telling us that it doesn’t matter.

Teddy Roosevelt understood this. He said “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Personally, I think Teddy’s version avoids the confusion over mere money, but that’s just me. 

The Christian life is not about preservation—it is about multiplication. About increasing the amount of love and kindness in the world.