Well done, good and faithful servant

 SERMON BY FATHER JONATHAN E MOORE - LINK HERE

33rd Sunday "Per Annum" 2026

 

Well done, good and faithful servant   

  

I had a lovely picture book of Bible Stories when I was little. One of the pictures showed the servant with the one talent, burying what looked awfully like an old penny coin in the ground. It rather left one with the impression that a Talent was not a very significant sum of money at all. This was not, of course, the case. In terms of present day currency would be worth around £36,000 - a long, long way from the penny in my picture book!

 

From this we can see that all of the servants in the story were given significant sums of money, ranging from £36,000 to £180,000. At the time of Our Lord, interest rates were very low, and inflation was running a good deal higher than the Bank Rate - how little things change! Then, as now, the wealthy had to "speculate to accumulate", investing their money where they hoped for a growth in value beyond inflation. A rich person would have kept a wide variety of servants, doing everything from working the fields to managing his money. The three servants would all have been Stewards, who were the money-managers. Their master has entrusted each with serious cash; he is a "hard man", a shrewd businessman who likes to drive a hard bargain. At the same time, however, he is a realistic man; he has made an assessment of each of his stewards, and will not ask any one of them to do more than he can manage.

 

When he comes looking for a return on his investments, he is delighted to find that the first two men have done very well indeed. Both the first and the second steward have doubled his money, and are well rewarded and promoted. Number three, however, has disappointed his master's expectations. He hid the money away so that now it is worth less than its value when he received it. Even low bank interest would have lessened the loss. The third man's only excuse is that the was afraid of his master - "a hard man", and thought he'd be better to keep the money to himself and guard against any possible loss. Unsurprisingly, he is not rewarded at all. No more money will be given to him, his original Talent will be given into the care of the man who made the most profit, while he himself is given the sack, losing his status, his home and his livelihood. The irony of the story is that the man who has had the least asked of him is the most unwilling to do it. 

 

These days, we speak of the gifts and abilities people have as "Talents", and it is a good use of the word. Today's Gospel comes with an invitation to consider the gifts and skills God has given us, and to see how well we use them.

 

First of all, remember that even one Talent was a big sum of money. We may not all have the same gifts, some people indeed may be far more talented than you or I. It is nevertheless to be remembered that God's gifts are always valuable. So, when you start to think of your own gifts, don't make the common mistake of looking first at what other people have and do. They have their gifts, you have yours. More gifts mean greater responsibility, so don't envy the rich, talented and famous - they might well be happier men and women if they were free to live as you do!

 

In order to have a true picture of God's gifts, we need to grow in the Virtue of Humility. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, then you don't understand humility at all! Humility does not mean seeing ourselves as worthless, stupid fools, less than the dust beneath another's feet. What it does mean is to have true self-knowledge, being aware of the things we can do, and the things we can't, and not allowing our limitations to stop us doing what we can do well.  The wisdom to know our talents and work within them is a great way to serve God, benefit humanity, and be at peace in our own selves.

 

The failed steward excused his unprofitable inactivity by claiming  to be "afraid" of his master. It is better by far to be  "God-loving" in our lives. The love of God will motivate and strengthen us far better than fear ever could. The two stewards who did well with their master's money took risks in so doing. As we are reminded with tedious regularity in advertisements "The value of your investments can go down as well as up, and you may not recover the amount originally invested." They were, however, men who loved their master, and wanted to to do their best by him. At the same time, they were also confident of their master's understanding if things hadn't gone as well as they had hoped; if things didn't turn out so well, the boss would at least see that they had made the effort, and hadn't just sat on their hands, unmoving and unmoved.

 

The spiritual qualities Our Lord recommends to us today are Humility, a desire to give God the greatest and best we can, and confidence in the Father's mercy when we don't get things quite right. The failed steward evidently thought that doing nothing was the safest thing to do, but he was wrong!