<p>25:25- see on Mt. 25:14.<br /><em>And I was afraid-&nbsp;</em>Fear of the judgment of others is a source of false guilt. It is this which militates against the true and free life of which the Lord speaks so enthusiastically. We fear showing ourselves for who we really are, because we fear others&rsquo; judgments. This fear makes us uncreative, not bearing the unique spiritual fruits which the Lord so eagerly seeks from us and in us. The Lord said this plainly, when He characterized the man who did nothing with his talents as lamely but truthfully saying: &ldquo;I was afraid&rdquo; (Mt. 25:25). Think about this: What or whom was he afraid of? His fear was not so much of his Lord&rsquo;s judgment, but rather perhaps of the judgments of others, that he might do something wrong, wrongly invest, look stupid, mess it all up... And thus John writes that it is fear that leads to torment of soul now and final condemnation. The Lord&rsquo;s words in the parable are almost exactly those of Adam. The rejected one talent man says &lsquo;I was afraid, and so I hid&nbsp;<em>my talent</em>&rsquo;. Adam said: &lsquo;I was afraid, and I hid&nbsp;<em>myself</em>&rsquo;. The talent God gave that man was therefore himself, his real self. To not use our talent, to not blossom from the experience of God&rsquo;s love and grace, is to not use ourselves, is to not be ourselves, the&nbsp;<em>real</em>&nbsp;self as God intended.</p><p><em>And went away and hid your talent in the earth</em>- Just as Achan did, hoping that what was not his would somehow become his in time. In line with our earlier suggestions that the man was alluding to the Lord&rsquo;s words, one wonders if here he has in mind the Lord&rsquo;s teaching about the Kingdom as treasure hid in a field i.e. in the ground which must be found (13:44).&nbsp; Of course, it&rsquo;s terribly out of context. But that&rsquo;s the way so many people use the Lord&rsquo;s words, as if sharing the same lexical items with Him somehow adds legitimacy to their doing just precisely what&nbsp;<em>they</em>&nbsp;want to do- rather than serving Him. The Lord Jesus was the man of 13:44 who sold all that He had to buy / redeem the field in which the treasure was buried. By returning the treasure into the earth, the man was effectively undoing the work of the Lord on the cross; for the field is the world (13:38), and the price of the field&rsquo;s redemption was the Lord&rsquo;s blood. But by laziness and a vague hope that the wealth would by default become his own, the Lord&rsquo;s work on the cross was undone for this man. The connection with 13:44 is surely purposeful.</p><p><em>Here, have what is yours-&nbsp;</em>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 talent, but buried it and 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;Lo, there You have what is Yours&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;<em>You&nbsp;</em>have what&nbsp;<em>belongs to You</em>. 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. Thus the other two servants speak somewhat differently, of the talents which had been &ldquo;delivered&rdquo; to them. 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. See on :29&nbsp;<em>Taken away</em>.</p><p>Perhaps we have never seriously thought of being generous to someone else even if it&rsquo;s a few pennies from our poverty; of actively telling an acquaintance about the Gospel; of doing acts of kindness for someone &lsquo;out of the blue&rsquo;, thinking up something nice for them which will make them feel &lsquo;Wow&rsquo;; doing mission work; reconciliation with our enemies; seeing beyond our immediate emotions of hurt, pleasure, anger, passion. When we step out in faith and do these things, we start living a totally new kind of life. We find God setting us up with situations, working with and through us- and we feel it. We will see beyond the steely silence of the skies to know the reality of Angelic existence. One of my favourite Bible stories is that of Elisha and his frightened servant. Elisha asks God to open the man&rsquo;s eyes so that he might see the Angelic armies surrounding them; Elisha and I so love this didn&rsquo;t ask for his own eyes to be opened to see them; he was so certain they were there.&nbsp;</p>