Drawing Borders To Imprison Ourselves 劃地自限

Thirty-Third Ordinary Sunday, Year A
Theme: Drawing Borders To Imprison Ourselves 劃地自限

Modern people have no idea how much a talent worths today. Here is a rough estimate obtained from information found in Wikipedia. A talent was roughly 60 kg of silver¹. Today, one kg of silver costs about $6,000 HKD². Therefore, one talent worths roughly $360,000 HKD, 2 talents $720,000 HKD and 5 talents 1.8 million HKD. Parents please explain to your children the value of talents. God has entrusted the religious education of your children to you and the Church. To help you discharge your responsibility, I am going to conduct a simple opinion poll. The reason why I ask parents to explain the value of a talent to their children is that unlike the Bible, I will count both women and children in! Here are the questions: After hearing the parable of the Talents, how many of you want to receive 5 talents from the master? How many two? How many of you one? Thank you.

We usually interpret the parable of Talents in the following manner: Every person is unique. God gave each one of us different talents to proclaim the good news of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19-20). In other words, God wants us to invite our neighbour to repent and receive His unconditional forgiveness. Some of us are given many talents and have converted the most people during their life time. So, God rewards them the most. They will be the most glorious at the end of the world. Some are given less and have converted less people. Thus, God rewards them less(Matthew 25:21, 23). Don’t question God’s fairness because in the parable, Jesus has already explained that the talents were given “to each according to his ability” (25:15d). Men should not be too ambitious and demand more talents from God. They might not be able to handle them. Lastly, some buried their talents because they were afraid to lose even the little talents the master gave them when they ran their businesses. They were punished for their laziness (25:26).

This interpretation is good but not good enough. Such an interpretation can easily make us complacent and does not inspire us to go beyond the boundaries we have drawn around us. In fact, nobody wanted to be given one talent in the show of hands mentioned above. More people chose five talents than two. I congratulated them for their zeal in making use of God’s given talents. However, if they think that they have fulfilled their responsibilities and have done well by making five more (25:20b) and by making two more (25:22b), they cannot be more wrong! When Jesus says, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48), He invites us to fully utilize talents given by the Father. Has the servant who was given five talents and made five more talents fully utilized the five talents? Let us dive deeper to explore.

I’m sure all of you are familiar with the story of Jesus driving out a legion of demons into 2000 pigs, sacrificing them in order to liberate a possessed man (8:28-32; Mark 5:13). Now, let’s do some more calculations. A pig weighs about 300 catties to be profitable and in average the price of 100 catties of pig is roughly $1,200 HKD³. Thus, a pig worths $3,600 HKD and 2,000 pigs will cost $7,200,000 HKD. To make the discussion/reflection concrete, we conclude from this exorcism of the possessed man that a human soul roughly worths 7.2 million Hong Kong Dollar! Therefore, the servant who earned 5 more talents is only capable of saving a quarter of a man’s soul! In other words, he needs to make not five more talents but twenty talents more in order to save one soul! He is not commandable, is he? You might protest and say that even the master praises him saying, “Well done, my good and faithful servant … Come, share your master’s joy” (25:21). I would counter and ask what God would say to a servant who does not perform up to his full potential. Would God scold the servant for not giving his best or would God encourage him to build him up as told in the parable? We should not read the Bible too literally. By the way, assuming that a period of ten years is long enough for “After a long time” (25:19a). Had the servant with one talent followed the master’s advice to deposit the one talent into the bank, how high should the interest rate be so that in ten years, the one talent would have been doubled? About 7.18% per annum. Was the master really a demanding person (25:24b)?

In fact, why did the servant with 5 talents make only 5 more but not 20 more? Couldn’t the servant with 2 talents make 200 more? Why not? Is it impossible? Or have we drawn boundaries to live comfortably inside and as a result confined ourselves within a very narrow space? Reflecting in this light, the servant with 5 talents and the one with 2 were no better than the servant with only one talent. Of course, the servant with only one talent deserves to be punished because he had not even tried whereas the other two servants had at least tried, though not their best.

Remember that you will not be able to find the word “impossible” in God’s dictionary (Luke 1:37). No, this is not God’s modus operandi. In order to show that “It is not because of your justice that the Lord, your God, is giving you this good land to possess” (Deuteronomy 9:6) and “lest Israel vaunt itself against me and say, ‘My own power saved me’” (Judges 7:2b), God usually made use of an extremely small number of soldiers to defeat a huge army to show the Chosen People that Yahweh is fighting their adversaries for them, e.g. the stories of Gideon leading 300 men to defeat 130,000 Midianites, and David defeating Goliath amply demonstrate it. Fast forward to the New Testament. It is admirable of the Blessed Virgin Mary to harbour the intention to serve the Lord in the capacity of a virgin (Luke 1:34). But God has reserved for her a higher position, namely the Mother of God. It seems to contradict the virgin’s wish but in the end, God is able to retain her virginity while making her a mother! God be praised forever!

In light of the modus operandi of God, we have a better understanding of what Jesus teaches about the faithfulness of a Christian. Listen to Jesus' words which He speaks twice, “Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities” (Matthew 25:21, 23). In God's eyes, making full use of our talents are only “small matters”! He has in store for us “great responsibilities” at the end of the world. Being faithful is NOT how deeply you believe in God, or how literally you obey His orders. Rather, it is a matter of to what extent we are able to surrender all our will and allow God to work through us to do things we even dare not to dream of because those things are impossible. The servant with one talent was wicked and lazy (25:26) because he denied God the opportunity to work through him. The other two servants were “good and faithful” but I would say not good and faithful enough because they had limited God and stopped short of advancing beyond doubling the principal! Indeed, we all do!
Beloved brethren! Allow God to bear us up on eagles’ wings and bring us to Him (Exodus 19:4). Amen.

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¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement)
²https://www.kitco.com/silver-price-today-hong-kong/index.html
³https://www.fehd.gov.hk/tc_chi/sh/data/supply_tw.html
Picture Credit:catholiccourier.com
2020 Reflection