Jesus begins with another parable. When you see a religious text mention a group of virgin women, it takes a sort of Islamic feel, but that’s not what we’re dealing with and is meant strictly to make a point about heaven to the people using cultural references they’d be familiar with. Which has the unfortunate side effect of being a reference we’re completely unfamiliar with. Luckily we have historians. So, a virgin, in this context, is just any young and unmarried woman (which would make her a virgin necessarily). They’d be like bridesmaids. The ceremony would be at night (hence the lamps) and would go over the course of a few days, at which any time the groom could appear to claim his bride. Sure, why not. Half the bridesmaids came prepared with extra oil, the other half didn’t. Remember, they’d need these lamps for an unknown amount of time over a multi-day event. But something held up the groom in this story and the girls all passed out while waiting until at midnight, the call is given that he’s on the way. Thank goodness we brought all this extra oil, the wise girls said. The foolish ones ask for some but the wise know there’s not enough. I can’t cripple myself to account for your poor planning, go buy some. This won’t be easy because it’s midnight and I can’t imagine any shops are open and the groom is already here, so they’d have to hope to find someone and hope to make it back in time (unlikely). Well, they at least need to try. By the time they get back though, everyone has gone with the groom to the banquet and the doors are shut behind them. They call through the door to the event to which they were invited but the groom says he doesn’t know them. Reminder that back then, missing this event would be a massively disrespectful move at best and at worst, he may actually not recognize them (since they missed the procession) and they could be troublemakers trying to get in. The takeaway here is that it’s not enough to merely wait for Jesus, you must be prepared because the day and hour of His return, unknown to all but the Father, is entirely too late to begin making your preparations (getting right with your faith).

Next parable is a man going on a journey and leaving the servants to watch over his property. Before setting off, he leaves his servants with talents. A “talent” in this context is a weight measurement, so this would be a “talent” of gold or something. So exactly what the talent was is unclear, but like how a pound is a little and a ton is a huge amount, we know a talent is a decent amount. And by decent amount I mean the value is estimated to be a little over half a million dollars American. And this man leaves his servants with 1 to 5 talents, based on their ability. Let’s be clear: if you even only got one talent, that’s plenty of money to work with. No one got stuck with a child’s allowance here, they all got a small loan of half a million dollars at minimum. The servant who received 5 talents goes to work immediately and turns 5 into 10. Buy low, sell high kinda trading activity. The others follow suit, turning what’s given to them in to more, except the guy who got one talent. That guy, who received less according to his ability, buried the talent and did nothing with it.

Reading this, you might try to find a reasonable angle here. Don’t lose sight of the fact that this is a parable, not a historical account, so we don’t have to be dead-on with our analysis, but what would possess a man to do this? The master did NOT leave them the money with any instructions. He gave it to them and went on his journey. Were the others being reckless with it? Gambling on trades can backfire enormously. Though many of us know how this story resolves, we should attempt to put ourselves in this character’s shoes. Jesus gave us this character to learn from. Let’s examine what kind of thought process could steer us into the same decision, since we can already tell his was wrong. I’m guessing that this guy buried it so it would be safe. It seemed too risky to go out and try to work it in the market to get high returns. Maybe it could be stolen. Surely, burying it in the ground is the safest option.

The master returns to settle accounts. The master obviously being Christ and the servants being us. These talents–these blessings, you might call them–will be inspected to see how they were used. Do you receive instructions with your blessings? Many of us barely recognize we received a blessing at all, let alone consider the correct way to use it. But the first servants did. The first servant took enormous blessings and accomplished incredible things, so the master is thrilled with him and not only rewards him, but draws him closer to his presence. To share in the master’s happiness is a gift of a strong relationship with him. The next servant got two, returned 4. Another case of doubling, if not as jaw-dropping a performance as the first guy. Believe me when I tell you, even if you don’t get a round of applause and popped champagne, “well done, good and faithful servant” is PLENTY reward coming from Jesus. The last guy presents himself and tells the master to his face that he’s scared of the master because the master is a difficult man, a tyrant, and a thief–ruling with an iron fist and taking what isn’t his. Wow. That is a bold plan, pal. And we really have no reason to sympathize with his take because the other two servants went right out and did it. What is this guy talking about? He appears to be afraid of failure. That even if he tried to go out, it wouldn’t be enough and he’d get in trouble. At least if it was buried, he could hand it back, no harm done?

The master flips out on him, calling him immoral and lazy. Here he uses the servants accusations against him to disprove them, not affirm them. He’s saying effectively “if you thought I was so bad, then why didn’t you try? Put it in a bank if you’re so scared where it will at least accrue PASSIVE interest. You didn’t even do that”. And he’s right. You can’t look at this inaction through a lens that makes the servant sympathetic. Laziness is the best explanation. And at that point, in what capacity can you still call yourself a servant? You’re just in rebellion. You call yourself a Christian but literally do nothing to advance God’s kingdom, not even passive obedience to the faith. Sorry, I mean you call yourself a servant and don’t try to use the master’s talents well.

Judgement time. The master takes from this useless servant and gives to those who make good use of his gifts. This is the Kingdom Rule again. Things should be given to those who will make the most use of them. If you’re given blessings and you take them and put them to work for God’s kingdom, you will receive more to reinvest. For the guy who did nothing, even what little he had was taken from him, in this case his life. We reflect on this story properly be recognizing that if the servant had tried and only made a penny, that would have accomplished something. Trying and failing is a very different animal than disobedience and apathy. This man goes to the outer darkness and we go to hell when it’s revealed we were never God’s servants at all.

Speaking of judgement, we leave the judgement of the parable and discuss Jesus’s plan for judgement on the end of days and things get a little hazy. This is another fun card I often play when discussing the bible. If it’s not perfectly clearly laid out in scripture, it may not be asked of you to perfectly clearly understand it. Jesus has demonstrated that He’s fine with you getting the general gist of it and I think with certain passages we should have a “focus on pleasing God today and worry about judgement when you get there” attitude. Like we don’t need to ask what color the curtains in heaven are. That’s not a priority. Go be charitable or something, you’ll find out when you get there.

He’s going to gather all the nations. So this can mean all the people of all the nations as we understand it, all the Christians, or all the people EXCEPT Christians. More importantly, He’s sorting the good from the bad. If you aim for the good, you’re covered in all cases, hence why I say you have bigger things to focus on. Jesus doesn’t seem to treat this as a metaphor either, it sounds like you’re being lined up and sorted. But He’s God, so I imagine He has plenty of resources to do this. He says to the good sheep on the right side that they have been blessed by the Father and will inherit the kingdom prepared for them. They fed and clothed Him, visited Him in prison and looked after Him. And the righteous will ask what He’s talking about. He was in heaven at the time they did their charitable work. Christ answers that by doing it for the least of the children of God, they did it for Him. To the goats on the left, He’ll tell them to kick rocks. Straight off to hell with these ones. This is because He was hungry and they gave Him no food and all the other little ways they could’ve served the Lord, they discover that by ignoring them, they ignored God. By ignoring the starving man, you let Jesus go hungry. By not helping the widow, you abandon Jesus. By being rude to someone, you spit in the face of Jesus. “Oh but if I knew it was someone important uh….” Yeah well, you didn’t and you blew it. Maybe act right all the time and you won’t get caught off guard.