<p>19:20 <i>And another came, saying: Lord, behold, here is your mina- </i>So many of the parables build up to a final climax which is the essence of the point the Lord was trying to get across; and this &lsquo;end stress&rsquo; is also seen in the talents parable. The warning is not to be like the man who didn&rsquo;t have the vision to do anything with his mina, but returned it unused to the Lord. This perhaps is our greatest temptation in our postmodern age of passivity, of staring at computer screens and clicking a mouse. &ldquo;Behold, here is your mina&rdquo; suggests an air of confidence in this man; he really didn&rsquo;t get it, that he was asked to trade what he&rsquo;d been given. The fact he had retained it pristine appears to have been his reason for thinking that he ought to be accepted, or at least, didn&rsquo;t ought to be condemned. The story line penetrates deep into the mentality of many small time Protestant sects, according to which the ultimate test of loyalty to the Lord is whether we have retained our understanding of whatever curious or specific interpretations were entrusted to us via the charismatic founder of the sect. This man thought that that was all there was to it. He didn&rsquo;t spend it on himself, he wasn&rsquo;t like the prodigal son. But too late he was to learn that sins of omission are the ground for condemnation. To do nothing with God&rsquo;s Truth is described by the Lord as &lsquo;wickedness&rsquo;. The grammar emphasizes personal possession:&nbsp;<i>You&nbsp;</i>have what&nbsp;<i>belongs to You</i>. As if to say &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t steal it It&rsquo;s yours, and it remains yours&rsquo;. But the whole point was that the Lord had given the talents to the servants and gone away- they had to trade in their own name, as if they were theirs. We&rsquo;re not simply receptacles of intellectual truths which are to be preserved for the sake of it until the end of our days. That would be of itself pointless, a kind of mind game played between God and man for no ultimate purpose. We are given God&rsquo;s Truth, the riches of Christ, in order to use it for others; the whole talk of &lsquo;preserving the Truth in its purity&rsquo; is dangerously close to inculcating the mentality of the one talent man- the mentality that led to his condemnation.</p><p><i>I kept it laid away in a piece of cloth</i>- The judgment of the righteous comes before that of the rejected. The faithful respond first to the news that &lsquo;He&rsquo;s back&rsquo;, and their willingness to go and be with Him is effectively their judgment. Those who delay are the unworthy and are therefore judged slightly later.</p><p>One of the Lord's pen pictures of the rejected included that of the man who thought that because he had preserved the mina (the basic doctrines of the Gospel) intact, therefore he was entitled to a place in the Kingdom. We are left to imagine him half-proudly, half sheepishly, holding it out to the Lord (Mt. 25:25). But he should have traded with his pounds (Lk. 19:13 RV)- done something with it all. The crowds hung upon Jesus' every word and teaching; it was so fascinating for them, so wonderful (Lk. 19:48 RV); and yet they still crucified Him. Those words, those wonderful ideas, didn't pierce deep within.</p><p>In the culture of the orient, it was not usual for a person to keep money in a cloth. Their culture was to trade and barter with what they had. That a man should just bury such a talent was therefore unreal for the original hearers. The point of this unreality is surely that spiritual laziness is <i>so</i> bad. It was better to have traded and lost through genuine mistakes, through naivety, through the betrayal and deception of others, than to simply <i>do nothing</i>. I fear, really fear, that our Christian culture has bred for many of us a &lsquo;do nothing&rsquo; culture- which is exactly what this element of unreality is warning against. We can delegate responsibility to church committees, to others, to our leaders; or we can do nothing out of fear, fear of making a mistake, fear of taking a risk, fear of what other brethren may think of us&hellip; all the time denying this principle of Divine delegation. And it might be added that the &lsquo;do nothing&rsquo; man of the parable emphasized that the talent or money was not <i>his</i>; he returned to his Lord what was his &ldquo;your singular mina&rdquo;. In order to trade it, or even to put it in the bank and get interest, he had to take personal ownership of it. And this he failed to do. And it is just this that we are being asked to do by our Lord- that His truth, all that He has given us, is in a sense <i>ours</i> now, to be used on our initiative, for His glory and service. Indeed, the reward of the faithful will be to be given <i>more</i> of their Lord&rsquo;s riches in the Kingdom, with which likewise to use their initiative in order to bring Him glory. We are left to think how the story might have gone on- the faithful were given <i>more</i> talents and they go away and do, in the Kingdom age, what they did in this life- using what they were given for <i>His glory and service, on their own initiative.</i></p><p>We are <i>expected</i> by the Lord to realize that our relationship with Him means total commitment to His cause. In this sense Jesus is a demanding Lord. Thus when He gave the talents to His servants, He doesn't tell them to trade with them; it seems that the one talent man is making this point when he says 'You gave me your money to look after, and I looked after it, I didn't steal it; you're unreasonable to think I should have done anything else with it, you're expecting what you didn't give'. And the Lord is; He expects that if we realize we have the honour of knowing His Truth, we should get on and do something with it, not just keep it until He comes back. He doesn't have to ask us to do this; He takes it as being obvious. The anger of the rejected man comes over as genuine; he really can't understand his Master. He's done what he was asked, and now he's condemned because he didn't do something extra. He was a Lord that man never knew- until all too late. You can imagine how you'd feel if someone gives you some money to look after, and then expects you to have doubled it, although he didn't ask you to do anything with it.</p>