Since Nov. 1st, Tourism Windsor-Essex has been promoting their holiday gift guide through 50 days of giveaways. All the prizes are donated by local businesses. Today’s draw includes a $50 gift card for Donuts and Fizz bath bombs and a $50 gift card for Little Foot Foods known especially for their pierogies. Artists, distilleries, breweries, bakers, wineries, and more are featured in the guide. Every one of these businesses exists because people had the courage to offer their talents for trade.
The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
The parable makes it sound like a simple transaction. Go and trade with your talents and you can double them! Wouldn’t it be nice if that were the case? No doubt, every business owner in the gift guide would say, it isn’t that easy. Profiting from talents takes courage, commitment, hard work, and a willingness to take risks that could include losing it all!
Can we imagine what this story would sound like if the one who started with five talents tried to trade with them and lost? How do we think the landowner would have responded in that case? Would he have been benevolent and understanding? Or would that servant be cast into the outer darkness too?
When we consider the risks associated with sharing talents, it is easier to understand the perspective of the servant who only received one. That servant recognises his master can be ruthless. He imagines that, were he to fail in his task and lose what the master has given him, the consequences would be dire. Instead, he chooses to protect what has been given by hiding it and simply keeping it safe. What could possibly go wrong?
That this parable criticises the one too fearful to do anything with the talent given him, suggests the point that being made is that effort is valued. Talents, gifts from God, are not given to be hidden and protected. They are given to be used, traded, and shared. Like the landowner, God entrusts talents to us, each according to our own ability, with the hope that God can work in and through each of us via these gifts.
We have a sense of what this looks like through the ministries of this church. The clothing cupboard was inspired by a talent, an idea planted in the hearts of this congregation. It was a risk that started with nothing. It remains an ongoing risk as we trust that there will be people who will generously donate clothing, money, and time to ensure that we are continually able to support those who are struggling. The willingness to trade the talents associated with this cupboard have more than doubled over the years enabling us to help thousands of individuals and families.
The market held yesterday, was built on a willingness to open our doors to the talents of local entrepreneurs. We give them space to share, to trade their talents. This, in turn, supports the challenge we have set for ourselves, to be a community hub.
The Trans Day of Remembrance Vigil we will hold tonight is also based on an openness to share talents, a sense of compassion for those in the Queer and Trans community who are longing to hear a message of acceptance and love. It is a risk, offering a safe space for a marginalised community. Trusting that this is in line with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus makes this risk one worth taking. That we have seen more and more people from the Queer and Trans community engaging in events like these and finding this space, this Church family to be safe, is how we have seen those talents multiply.
These are examples of how trading our talents has created space for God to work in and through us. Our 3-year plan contains other opportunities to take risks in the service of God. What more can we do? How else can we proclaim the Good News, seek and serve Christ in all persons, and transform unjust structures?
Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”
God entrusts us with talents, God-given gifts with the expectation that we will do something with them. May we continually be willing to take risks with the talents we have been given, trusting that God’s power, working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. This we pray as we sing: 435 Take My Life and Let it Be