The servant who
is given one talent believes his master is harsh, reaping where he did not sow
and gathering what he did not scatter, while the first two servants take
advantage of the master’s generosity to the benefit of both master and servant.
It could be that the one talent servant reaps what he sows and gets the harsh
master he imagines. Even so it hardly seems fair that from those who have
nothing even what they have will be taken away. On the other hand the image of
God as a harsh master can be found throughout the scriptures and would give us
good reason to fear judgment and bury our lives in rigid rules not risking
anything lest everything be taken away. But there is a more profitable image of
God as one whose “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” compassion
compelled him to reap the harvest of our sin that he did not sow and gather
those scattered by their own rebellious will. To live that vision means we take advantage
of God’s generosity and risk the kind of things Jesus did by investing the five
and two and one talent of the Gospel in our everyday and everywhere so that in
the end God might reap a harvest of abundance beyond our one talent servant
imagination.
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