Jesus rightly reminded his listeners that they could not "serve both God and Mammon" (Matt 6:24). But that did not stop him from talking about money, and using it to illustrate his parables. The widow's mite was not quite the same as a five-rappen piece (indeed, it was two mites, and was "all she had to live on", according to Mark 12:43), but was scarcely "riches". The denarius paid to the workers in the vineyard, the same whether they had worked for an hour or all day long, was the standard day's wage in those times.
In one parable, though, Jesus talks of large sums of money - though not quite as large as those we have read about in our newspapers recently. The version we remember best is in Matt 25:14-30. A rich man leaves his slaves in charge of his money. Lots of it. A talent was equivalent to about eight year's pay for a labourer (though if you were a slave, you didn't get any pay!), so one slave is put in charge of this amount, a second receives twice as much, and a third has to look after almost a lifetime's earnings. Two of them are good administrators, and double their master's capital. The third goes and hides the money in the ground, because the master is "a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed." When the rich man returns, this third slave is "cast into outer darkness" for making nothing of the small fortune entrusted to him - he could at least have put the money on deposit with the local bankers.
"And that is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like," says Jesus, introducing the story, straight after the parable of the wise and the foolish bridesmaids. Just like the bridesmaids who forgot their oil for their lamps, the slave who hides his sackful of silver excludes himself from the Kingdom.
We all know that the story is not really about money, but about our skills and our abilities - the word 'talent' has almost totally lost its original meaning as a quantity of coinage. But what we often forget is that we all have talents. We may talk of someone as "a talented writer" - or cook, or teacher, or scientist. But a bus driver, a cashier in Migros, a farmer, these people too have talents. And our talents are not restricted to our jobs. We can have a talent for explaining things to our friends, for seeing what needs doing and getting on with it in the background, for encouraging others to do things we cannot do ourself. Even being able to count to more than two is a talent. In short, we all have talents, and we all need to use them, if we can.
Realizing what our talents are and using them is only part of the story, though. The slaves administering the five and the two talents of silver were just as aware as the third slave that the capital they were using had come as a loan, and that the return on this capital belonged to their master, and not to them. We too should remember that our talents are not just to benefit us - perhaps not even to benefit us - but to be used in God's service.
This does not mean we can earn ourselves a place in Heaven by using "our" talents in God's service. We are only doing what God wants us to do - like the shepherd and the servant ploughing in Luke 17:7-10. If we do anything less, it shows that we have not fully appreciated what God has given us, and why.
For God wants us all, with our varied talents, to work together for the coming of the Kingdom. We should take time to look at ourselves and ask what our true talents are, and how we can use them best. We can only do what our talents allow - even if we want to do more. And like Job, we should not complain about the talents we do not have ("The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." (1:20)). God knows our strengths and our weaknesses, and we can take strength from the seventeenth-century poet John Milton, who saw his eyesight as his "one talent", and who, when he went blind found comfort in the thought that
....God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts.
Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.
His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
For waiting, too, is a talent.
HD