Entrusted to Us Sermons at St. Dunstan's

The parable we hear this morning follows the one we heard last week. In that parable, Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to ten virgins who were waiting for the bridegroom. The bridegroom was delayed, and his delay revealed which of the virgins were foolish and which were wise. The wise virgins brought extra oil with them, while the foolish virgins did not. In short, the wise virgins made provisions for the delay, while the foolish virgins did not. As a result, only those who were prepared were welcomed to the wedding feast, while those who were not were denied entry. Even worse, the Lord says:




But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
Matthew 25:12 (ESV)



The final command is not spoken to the virgins but to those listening to Jesus. He says:




Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
Matthew 25:13



In the history of biblical interpretation, this parable is often interpreted as a command to stay vigilant in response to what is known as the delay of the parousia.



‌The Delay of the Parousia



I won’t get into this topic now, but suffice it to say that many have argued that the kingdom of God parables containing this notion of a delay or an extended period were reshaped by the early church because Jesus didn’t return as quickly as they expected. So, the idea here is Jesus takes longer to return than we thought, so the early church reshaped or even invented parables on the lips of Jesus to be able to see, “Look, he told us all along that this would take a while.”



There is no doubt that many of the earliest Christians expected Jesus to return in their lifetime. I suspect many of them thought he would return at the fall of Jerusalem, and some might even argue that he did, at least in some sense of the word “return.” But that does not necessitate that these parables, the one last week and ours this Sunday, were reshaped or invented out of thin air.



That is to say, they make sense in their historical context if we don’t assume that WE are the original audience for the parables. So, this is a reminder for all of us, when we read our Bibles (and I expect and hope that we are reading them daily), that before we start asking what a passage means today, we must first ask what it meant in its historical context.



Before we ask what a passage means, we must ask what it meant.



Suppose we apply this principle to last week’s parable and this morning’s parable. In that case, we come away with relatively straightforward and overlapping ideas. The delay in the parable of the ten virgins and the long journey in the parable of the talents are two sides of the same Old Testament idea.



Yahweh, Israel’s husband, was supposed to come back to his land and his people at the end of the exile, but that exile had been delayed and extended. Since then, Israel has been waiting for its God to return, so the question in both parables is: What should Israel have been doing while they waited? ‌



In this morning’s parable, the man who goes on a journey is God, who has entrusted his servants Israel with his “property.” Paul says in Romans about the physical offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:




They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Romans 9:4–5



In short, God entrusted his salvific plan to his servants, and he expected them to take what he had given them and invest it back into the world. Notice that, in this parable, the master commends all the servants but one. The only one he does not commend is the one who hid his master’s talents in the ground rather than sharing them with the world.



The imagery ought to draw our mind to Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says:




“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hi