Enter into the Joy of Your Master

The Parable of the Talents is a problematic one from the get go. A landowner goes away, entrusting his three slaves with his money. Two of the three slaves double the master's money and are well praised for doing so, but the third, the cautious servant, is cast into outer darkness when he merely returns his master's money. He says he was fearful of losing it, so he buried it. He says he was afraid of his master's reputation as a harsh man, so he played it safe. Surely the moral of the story is not: "For all those who have, more will be given, and for all those have the least, they will be cast into outer darkness." No, that doesn't sound like Jesus' methodology at all.

Upon reading the text again this week, I found this small line that almost seemed inconsequential, but then I noticed the same lie appears twice in the text. The line reads, "Enter into the Joy of your master." And perhaps this was it. Perhaps this was Jesus' message to us all. Perhaps the point is to claim our blessedness; to claim our belovedness as children of God. God has bestowed each of us with an abundance of gifts, gifts that God would have us use; gifts that God would have us claim. The point is to enter into God's joy: to enter into the process of life.

The cautious servant did not claim his gift and work to multiply it for the sake of the Master. He buried it. He lived in fear. Fear is a problem because fear paralyzes us; renders us unable to live life as citizens of the Kingdom. God has no use for those who will not enter into God's joy. To enter into the purview of God, we must allow ourselves to enter into God's joy. For without it, we cannot do what God' has given us to do.