talents

• ungrateful steward owed 10,000 t.

159:1.4Si­mon Pe­ter was the apos­tle in charge of the work­ers at Hip­pos, and when he heard Je­sus thus speak, he asked: “Lord, how of­ten shall my brother sin against me, and I for­give him? Un­til seven times?” And Je­sus an­swered Pe­ter: “Not only seven times but even to sev­enty times and seven. There­fore may the king­dom of heaven be likened to a cer­tain king who or­dered a fi­nan­cial reck­on­ing with his stew­ards. And when they had be­gun to con­duct this ex­am­i­na­tion of ac­counts, one of his chief re­tain­ers was brought be­fore him con­fess­ing that he owed his king ten thou­sand tal­ents. Now this of­fi­cer of the king’s court pleaded that hard times had come upon him, and that he did not have where­with to pay this obli­ga­tion. And so the king com­manded that his prop­erty be con­fis­cated, and that his chil­dren be sold to pay his debt. When this chief stew­ard heard this stern de­cree, he fell down on his face be­fore the king and im­plored him to have mercy and grant him more time, say­ing, ‘Lord, have a lit­tle more pa­tience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And when the king looked upon this neg­li­gent ser­vant and his fam­ily, he was moved with com­pas­sion. He or­dered that he should be re­leased, and that the loan should be wholly for­given.

• parable of t.; intended for all disciples

171:8.2The para­ble of the pounds, un­like the para­ble of the tal­ents, which was in­tended for all the dis­ci­ples, was spo­ken more ex­clu­sively to the apos­tles and was largely based on the ex­pe­ri­ence of Archelaus and his fu­tile at­tempt to gain the rule of the king­dom of Judea. This is one of the few para­bles of the Mas­ter to be founded on an ac­tual his­toric char­ac­ter. It was not strange that they should have had Archelaus in mind inas­much as the house of Zac­cheus in Jeri­cho was very near the or­nate palace of Archelaus, and his aque­duct ran along the road by which they had de­parted from Jeri­cho.

• parable of t.; intended for all disciples

176:3.4“As in­di­vid­u­als, and as a gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers, hear me while I speak a para­ble: There was a cer­tain great man who, be­fore start­ing out on a long jour­ney to an­other coun­try, called all his trusted ser­vants be­fore him and de­liv­ered into their hands all his goods. To one he gave five tal­ents, to an­other two, and to an­other one. And so on down through the en­tire group of hon­ored stew­ards, to each he in­trusted his goods ac­cord­ing to their sev­eral abil­i­ties; and then he set out on his jour­ney. When their lord had de­parted, his ser­vants set them­selves at work to gain prof­its from the wealth in­trusted to them. Im­me­di­ately he who had re­ceived five tal­ents be­gan to trade with them and very soon had made a profit of an­other five tal­ents. In like man­ner he who had re­ceived two tal­ents soon had gained two more. And so did all of these ser­vants make gains for their mas­ter ex­cept him who re­ceived but one tal­ent. He went away by him­self and dug a hole in the earth where he hid his lord’s money. Pres­ently the lord of those ser­vants un­ex­pect­edly re­turned and called upon his stew­ards for a reck­on­ing. And when they had all been called be­fore their mas­ter, he who had re­ceived the five tal­ents came for­ward with the money which had been in­trusted to him and brought five ad­di­tional tal­ents, say­ing, ‘Lord, you gave me five tal­ents to in­vest, and I am glad to pre­sent five other tal­ents as my gain.’ And then his lord said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant, you have been faith­ful over a few things; I will now set you as stew­ard over many; en­ter forth­with into the joy of your lord.’ And then he who had re­ceived the two tal­ents came for­ward, say­ing: ‘Lord, you de­liv­ered into my hands two tal­ents; be­hold, I have gained these other two tal­ents.’ And his lord then said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful stew­ard; you also have been faith­ful over a few things, and I will now set you over many; en­ter you into the joy of your lord.’ And then there came to the ac­count­ing he who had re­ceived the one tal­ent. This ser­vant came for­ward, say­ing, ‘Lord, I knew you and re­al­ized that you were a shrewd man in that you ex­pected gains where you had not per­son­ally la­bored; there­fore was I afraid to risk aught of that which was in­trusted to me. I safely hid your tal­ent in the earth; here it is; you now have what be­longs to you.’ But his lord an­swered: ‘You are an in­do­lent and sloth­ful stew­ard. By your own words you con­fess that you knew I would re­quire of you an ac­count­ing with rea­son­able profit, such as your dili­gent fel­low ser­vants have this day ren­dered. Know­ing this, you ought, there­fore, to have at least put my money into the hands of the bankers that on my re­turn I might have re­ceived my own with in­ter­est.’ And then to the chief stew­ard this lord said: ‘Take away this one tal­ent from this un­prof­itable ser­vant and give it to him who has the ten tal­ents.’

• time is the one talent intrusted to all

28:6.93. The Im­port of Time. Time is the one uni­ver­sal en­dow­ment of all will crea­tures; it is the “one tal­ent” in­trusted to all in­tel­li­gent be­ings. You all have time in which to in­sure your sur­vival; and time is fa­tally squan­dered only when it is buried in ne­glect, when you fail so to uti­lize it as to make cer­tain the sur­vival of your soul. Fail­ure to im­prove one’s time to the fullest ex­tent pos­si­ble does not im­pose fa­tal penal­ties; it merely re­tards the pil­grim of time in his jour­ney of as­cent. If sur­vival is gained, all other losses can be re­trieved.

• man’s gift makes room for him

133:5.2A great uni­ver­sity still thrived in Athens, and the trio made fre­quent vis­its to its halls of learn­ing. Je­sus and Ga­nid had thor­oughly dis­cussed the teach­ings of Plato when they at­tended the lec­tures in the mu­seum at Alexan­dria. They all en­joyed the art of Greece, ex­am­ples of which were still to be found here and there about the city.

• chiefly devote to powers of mind and spirit

136:6.10This great de­ci­sion of Je­sus por­trays dra­mat­i­cally the truth that self­ish sat­is­fac­tion and sen­su­ous grat­i­fi­ca­tion, alone and of them­selves, are not able to con­fer hap­pi­ness upon evolv­ing hu­man be­ings. There are higher val­ues in mor­tal ex­is­tence—in­tel­lec­tual mas­tery and spir­i­tual achieve­ment—which far tran­scend the nec­es­sary grat­i­fi­ca­tion of man’s purely phys­i­cal ap­petites and urges. Man’s nat­u­ral en­dow­ment of tal­ent and abil­ity should be chiefly de­voted to the de­vel­op­ment and en­no­ble­ment of his higher pow­ers of mind and spirit.

• Jesus refused to prostitute t. for political prestige

136:8.8Je­sus por­trayed to all the worlds of his vast uni­verse the folly of cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tions for the pur­pose of ex­hibit­ing ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity or of in­dulging ex­cep­tional power for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing moral val­ues or ac­cel­er­at­ing spir­i­tual prog­ress. Je­sus de­cided that he would not lend his mis­sion on earth to a rep­e­ti­tion of the dis­ap­point­ment of the reign of the Mac­cabees. He re­fused to pros­ti­tute his di­vine at­tri­butes for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing un­earned pop­u­lar­ity or for gain­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. He would not coun­te­nance the trans­mu­ta­tion of di­vine and cre­ative en­ergy into na­tional power or in­ter­na­tional pres­tige. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth re­fused to com­pro­mise with evil, much less to con­sort with sin. The Mas­ter tri­umphantly put loy­alty to his Fa­ther’s will above ev­ery other earthly and tem­po­ral con­sid­er­a­tion.

• whether one’s t. are few or many, reckoning must be faced

176:3.7Truth is liv­ing; the Spirit of Truth is ever lead­ing the chil­dren of light into new realms of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and di­vine ser­vice. You are not given truth to crys­tal­lize into set­tled, safe, and hon­ored forms. Your rev­e­la­tion of truth must be so en­hanced by pass­ing through your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence that new beauty and ac­tual spir­i­tual gains will be dis­closed to all who be­hold your spir­i­tual fruits and in con­se­quence thereof are led to glo­rify the Fa­ther who is in heaven. Only those faith­ful ser­vants who thus grow in the knowl­edge of the truth, and who thereby de­velop the ca­pac­ity for di­vine ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties, can ever hope to “en­ter fully into the joy of their Lord.” What a sorry sight for suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus to say, re­gard­ing their stew­ard­ship of di­vine truth: “Here, Mas­ter, is the truth you com­mit­ted to us a hun­dred or a thou­sand years ago. We have lost noth­ing; we have faith­fully pre­served all you gave us; we have al­lowed no changes to be made in that which you taught us; here is the truth you gave us.” But such a plea con­cern­ing spir­i­tual in­do­lence will not jus­tify the bar­ren stew­ard of truth in the pres­ence of the Mas­ter. In ac­cor­dance with the truth com­mit­ted to your hands will the Mas­ter of truth re­quire a reck­on­ing.

176:3.8In the next world you will be asked to give an ac­count of the en­dow­ments and stew­ard­ships of this world. Whether in­her­ent tal­ents are few or many, a just and mer­ci­ful reck­on­ing must be faced. If en­dow­ments are used only in self­ish pur­suits and no thought is be­stowed upon the higher duty of ob­tain­ing in­creased yield of the fruits of the spirit, as they are man­i­fested in the ever-ex­pand­ing ser­vice of men and the wor­ship of God, such self­ish stew­ards must ac­cept the con­se­quences of their de­lib­er­ate choos­ing.