"Parable of the Talents"(Image found here)
If you want to read a truly thoughtful sermon on this morning's gospel reading, please go over to Mad Priest's place and take a look. Here's a sample:
I think that when you take into account who Jesus was talking to, where the passage is in the Gospel, following on, as it does, from the attack on the pharisees, and that it was written down by Matthew, with hindsight, most probably after the fall of the Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, then the talents represent the gifts of the covenant that had been given to the Jews by God. The scribes and pharisees had been given the law of Moses. They had been given the Temple, the sign of God’s presence among them. They had been given wonderful promises about how God would bless not only Israel, but, through Israel, the whole world. And they had buried them in the ground. They had turned the command to be the light of the world into an encouragement to keep the light for themselves.
I had never before thought of the parable this way. Whether that is "really" what Jesus was talking about or not (and we can't possibly know), it's a fascinating interpretation.
This interpretation makes a lot more sense than the traditional one. The traditional interpretation always struck me as a justification for capitalism. Somehow I don't think Jesus spent a lot of time thinking about economic advantage. :)
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Thank you for the link, Sr. Ellie, that is a powerful new view on that parable.
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