After the Talents

I’ve always loved Matthew 25:14-30 — or better known as the Parable of the Talents. It’s the parable that lit a fire under me when I was a janitor. It’s the parable that’s lighting a fire under me today, 21 years later. I always wondered, did the one servant ever learn his lesson? Did he survive the darkness and the gnashing of the teeth?  Here’s a short story about if he did…

Thunder rumbled off in the distance. The hot afternoon breeze stilled as the older man in a fine robe pointed his bony finger at the gate.  A broken man gathered his things and began to walk  slowly away.

He was the infamous servant who buried his talent. He paused and looked  back at soon to be ex-boss. Still crimson-faced, the master glared back at him. The worker had never taken a brutal tongue lashing like that. Apparently he had committed an egregious sin. A sin brought on by his own fear of failure. A fear that crippled him and made him play it safe. He was so afraid he would lose the master’s precious assets. That fear cost him dearly.  He looked down at the broken clay pot in the dirt. Tears welled in his eyes.

He looked over at his co-workers. They had been rewarded nicely for taking risks with the talents they had been given. Now they held more.  Of course, they hadn’t failed. The servant wondered how the master would have reacted if they had lost his talents. But they hadn’t.  Maybe the very fact that they took risks was the lesson here.

He had failed because he refused to take action. His non-decision became a powerful decision.  He loved working for the master and he didn’t want to disappoint him.  Now, he was being cast out into the wilderness because he had. Now he was forced to rebuild everything.  He could almost feel the gnashing of the teeth.  He could still hear the master’s angry words, “‘You wicked, lazy servant!”

Talents were money, of course — worth about 20 years of a day laborer’s wage. But they could also be a metaphor for a person’s talents. He had several of those and wasn’t using them. He could be a great painter. But he chose not to paint.  He didn’t want people laughing at his work. That would strike directly at his ego.  So he played it safe. He buried that artistic talent just like he had the coin he had been given.

Then he thought on a larger scale. What if his talent was the very life he had been blessed with? What if it was very the breath his Master above had given him?  Was his wasting his life the ultimate sin?  The darkness wrapped around him like a smothering cloak.

The servant gathered his things and left with only a powerful lesson. A lesson that was more valuable than all the talents in the world.

He would always use his gifts to their fullest. And he would never allow fear to steal his life  again.