What are the "talents" of Matthew 25?

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psychemusic

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Hello, all. I have been trying to figure out the meaning behind the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, and although I believe I at least have a superficial understanding, I have the nagging feeling I’m missing something. The crucial question for me is, what do the talents represent? I have heard the teaching that the talents simply refer to one’s natural talents, i.e. if you have the gift of music, you should develop it for the glory of God. However, I feel that this misses the meaning – Jesus speaks of two servants who double the number of talents given to them, and the lazy steward who hid the single talent entrusted to him, ostensibly for fear of his master. I have a hard time seeing the talents, in this almost business context, as natural giftings.

My theory is, perhaps the talents refer to faith in some way. Jesus Christ came to spread the kingdom of heaven, and yet the kingdom of heaven resides within our hearts . . . could this mean then that the talents refer to a predisposition toward faith, which results in the increase of the kingdom of heaven with us individually?

OR, if it speaks of bringing an increase to the kingdom of heaven, does it then refer to evangelization? This interpretation scares me a little, I must admit, the idea of my being included or excluded from heaven on the basis of whether or not I doubled my talents (i.e. brought others successfully to the faith) seems to leave a lot of things outside of my control. So I don’t feel that this could be the correct interpretation.

A penny for your thoughts, thanks.
 
A talent is a measure of gold, usually quite considerable. (Sometimes as much as 60 lbs.)

Each person in the parable was given a measure of resources that God felt was proportionate to each person’s abilities, or “lot in life.”

Those who were profitable were rewarded, the one who buried his talent in the ground was punished basically because he didn’t even care to try to be profitable to the master. Even when it would have been so easy as to simply put the sum in the bank and let the “pros” draw interest on it.

Consider your talent of gold to be the gift of life God has given you with all of its accompanying opportunites. Try your best to make good on those gifts for the Lord. You are only in danger if you don’t care to even try… like the atheists.

Thal59
 
If one notices, the parable of the talents and the ten bridesmaids precede Jesus’ explicit talk on Judgment (Matthew 25). From there you can tie the parables up with the Judgment scene and make your conclusion (which isn’t very hard, really).
 
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Milliardo:
If one notices, the parable of the talents and the ten bridesmaids precede Jesus’ explicit talk on Judgment (Matthew 25). From there you can tie the parables up with the Judgment scene and make your conclusion (which isn’t very hard, really).
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In much the same way, the blessings of chapter 5 (beatitudes), the woes of chapter 23, and the “blessing and curse” of Deuteronomy can also be linked. Matthew chapters 24 and 25 are the topic our bible study next week.
 
parable of the talents can be compared to the other kingdom parables, notably that of the virgins with their lamps and the sower. the talents, the oil for the lamps, the seed all stand for the Word of God, the entire Sacred Scripture, Tradition and teaching revealed by God, which Jesus is giving, defining and interpreting to the disciples with the specific commandment that they pass it on, share it, evangelize, and that they will be judged on the basis of how well they do it. Paul gives the ways and means in his teaching on the various gifts that serve and build up the Church, and the fact that the Holy Spirit gifts each person differently, but all gifts are to be used for evangelization in its fullest sense.
 
In reference to Matthew 25:14-30, The Navarre Bible: The New Testament, Scepter Publishers: 2001, pages 70-71, says:A talent was not any kind of coin but a measure of value worth about thirty-four kilos (seventy-five pounds) of silver. In this parable our Lord teaches the need to respond to grace by making a genuine effort right through one’s life. All the gifts of nature and grace which God has given us should yield a profit. It does not matter how many gifts we have received; what matters is our generosity in putting them to good use: “You think your life is for yourself? Your life is for God, for the good of all men, through your love for our Lord. Your buried talent, dig it up again!” (Bl. J. Escriva, Hom. 2, 47).

In reference to Matthew 25:14-30, The Ignatius Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Ignatius Press: 2000, page 63, says:The parable to the Talents is about stewardship. It warns against the dangers of sloth, whereby God-given blessings and abilities are squandered because of fear (25:25) and laziness (25:26-28). Personal diligence, however, is greatly rewarded with superior gifts and responsibilities (25:21, 23). Accountability to Christ entails risk and challenges; God’s endowments must be invested in and for the good of others to increase heavenly earnings.

And the footnote on the word talent, also on page 63, says:This talent was more than fifteen years’ wages of a laborer.
 
Many years ago, back when I was still a protestant, I was told that these talents were a form of money. Like we have pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and dollars. And, yes, it was also about stewardship. Notice that the one with the fewest “talents” didn’t invest it. And he was told off for not doing something with it. :tsktsk:
 
I like all of these responses (thanks especially to the person who cited from the various commentaries), but I suppose the difficult thing for me is that the talents still represent something a bit ambiguous, or at best something difficult to measure. If the talents, as one post mentioned, represents the sum of the Christian teaching for living a godly life (to paraphrase), then how does one know if one’s investment has “doubled”?

And what of the steward who buried his one talent? He claimed that he buried it out of fear of the master; the master accused him not of fear, but of sloth. Do we also have among us those who are frozen into inaction out of fear who someday will be accused, not of fear, but of sloth by our Father in heaven? I was very concerned about this passage precisely because of the context, namely, the parable of the sheep and the goats that follows. It is difficult to know the narrow way, and especially to know when one has doubled one’s talents, so to speak, when the talent itself is an ambiguous thing.

And why does Christ use the image of the talent? Does its great worth – 15 years wages according to one post – give weight to the interpretation that we’re talking about the Sacred Deposit within each of us? What is the significance of this fact?

Thank you guys for your thoughtful replies.
  • Michael
 
I think the point is there is **action **taken. The guy who just buried the money–he is basically just sitting back, doing nothing. The others are using what they have been given.
I don’t think that we need to worry about reaching a certain percentage of it. The point is to keep things in circulation.
Think of it, for a minute, as food in the pantry. If you put all the grain in the pantry, you have a nice safe supply of grain, however–come spring, what are you going to plant?? Well, there is a risk involved. If you plant it, there could be a flood, or some kind of disease could kill the plants in the field. But if you never take that chance, you will eventually be left with nothing.
So we could sit around, content in our own little cloud cuckoo land, because there is a degree of risk in moving out into the world to do something. But that is condemned by our Lord. He says we are supposed to be doing something more than twiddle our thumbs…
 
So part of what you’re saying is, it’s about taking a risk for the kingdom of heaven. And this fits because the parable itself is in a business context: taking five talents and investing them to make five more. You can’t do that without taking a risk. I wonder if it’s worth speculating what Christ would have thought about somebody who tried to invest his talents and wound up losing them, which can happen in business; but then again, doesn’t it say somewhere in Isaiah that God sends His word into the world and it does not return void?

So here is a practical application of the question: I have a wife, a small daughter, another kiddo on the way, and I have had to carve out a lot of study time to prepare for some professional examinations. I am doing this because if I don’t try to get a better-paying job, I won’t be able to support my family or pay my debts. In the meantime, I have a great talent (no pun intended) for music – before we had our first child, I spent a great deal of time composing for various ensembles, including full orchestra. I made a decision a long time ago, back in my Protestant “bible-church” days, based in part on this parable, to develop my gift for composition and to find a way to use it to glorify God. But the investment doesn’t seem to be panning out, and my hands are tied (have been for nearly two years now) as it is. I still want to compose – I feel I have something special to contribute – but it is difficult to know if I am being wise about it.

So do the talents refer to everyday, what we might think of as “secular” talents or abilities, and if so, how does one use them to glorify God? Or even more to the point, how could a person most please God in this instance?

Michael
 
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psychemusic:
So do the talents refer to everyday, what we might think of as “secular” talents or abilities, and if so, how does one use them to glorify God? Or even more to the point, how could a person most please God in this instance?
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Talents refer to everything - because everything we have is given to us by God. We are to use everything to glorify Him. It really doesn’t have anything to do with $ or the type of work a person is doing for God. It is all in our hearts. A person can sit all day at a computer screen (name removed by moderator)utting useless infomation in for their employer and be glorifying God more than someone who writes praise & worship music - it all depends where our heart is. A mother who stays home to raise her children may be using her talents more for God than a mother who goes to her well-paying CEO job. I am not making a distinction in the job - but it depends on the heart.

How can a person most please God? Serve Him in all you do - no matter what you do.
 
The talent must signify something of great value that could be multiplied with rewards or ignored at one’s eternal peril. This is true of the Gospel and parallels the Parable of the Sower and Four Soils in St. Matthew 13, where Jesus explains that the “seed” is the word of God, namely the Gospel of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This Gospel, if accepted, as by the 5-talent and 2-talent servants, will bring life and a life of a ministry of reconciliation (multiplying the Gospel in others) which St. Paul explained in 2 Cor. 5:18. This Gospel, if reject, as by the 1-talent servant, will receive a condemnation of “outer darkness” - the imagery of Gehenna. Jesus offered an alternative for the last servant of at least a minimum of faith similar to that descirbed by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15.
 
Hello psychemusic,

My thoughts on Christ’s Parable of the Silver Pieces (MAT 25:14) is that God grants us what is His, the Holy Spirit, temporarily while we are on earth. We are to use our portion of God’s Holy Spirit to produce fruit for the God while on earth. Upon the Masters return, those who did well with God’s possessions and made them fruitful are rewarded and given some of God’s possessions for their own. Those who bury God’s possessions in a hole and do not produce for the Lord are stripped of everything God has entrusted them with.

Jesus associates the parable of the silver pieces with his parable of the ten virgins (MAT 25:1). In the parable of the ten virgins those who did not provide to keep their torches (the Holy Spirit) burning where cast into hell.

Scripture says that Jesus will pour out the Holy Spirit on us. Those who are begotten of God into the Kingdom of God to live for all eternity, I would think, recieve a portion of the Holy Spirit, large or small, which allows them to do so.

It seems that the gifts of the Holy Spirit people possess on earth, when not properly used to produce fruit for God, are taken away from non producers and the non producers are cast into hell (Throw this worthless sevant into the darkness outside, where he can wail and grind his teeth). Their portion of the Holy Spirit is given to the producing heaven goers until they are rich. I do not see how you could take away physical atributes from a hell goer and give them to a heaven goer. Many people who go to hell will have recieved, during physical life, a portion of the Holy Spirit similiar to that which came upon the Apostles at Penticost. This, very valuable possession of God bestowed on man on earth, can be taken away from man and given to another.

These are only my thoughts on Jesus’ parable of the silver peices.

NAB MAT 25:24"Finally the man who had recieved the thousand stepped forward. ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘I knew you were a hard man. You reap where you did not sow and gather where you did not scatter, so out of fear I went off and buried your thousand silver pieces in the ground. Here is your money back.’ His master exclaimed: You worthless, lazy lout! You know I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter. All the more reason to deposit my money with the bankers, so that on my return I could have had it back with interest. You there! Take the thousand away from him and give it to the man with the ten thousand. Those who have, will get more until they grow rich, while those who have not, will lose even the little they have. Throw this worthless sevant into the darkness outside, where he can wail and grind his teeth."

NAB ACT 2:33**"Exalted at God’s right hand, he first received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father, then poured this Spirit out on us.** This is what you now see and hear. David did not go up to heaven, yet David says,

‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Therefore let the whole house of Israel know beyond any doubt that **God has made both Lord and Messiah this Jesus **whom you crucified.’"

NAB JOH 3:3Jesus gave him this answer: “I solemnly assure you, no one can see the reign of God unless he is begotten from above.” “How can a man be born again once he is old?” retorted Nicodemus. “Can he return to his mother’s womb and be born over again?” Jesus replied: “I solemnly assure you, no one can enter into God’s kingdom without being begotten of water and Spirit.”

Peace in Christ,

Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com
 
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