Gospel: Mark 8:34-9:1 (§37); Matt. 25:14-30 (§105)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Dear Father, brothers and sisters: Spraznecom! Happy Feast!

I congratulate you all for this blessed feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross. For us Christians it is easy for us to become rather oblivious to the Cross in a certain sense. In each Divine Liturgy we probably make the sign of the Cross over ourselves many, many times. Sometimes this can become almost an automatic reflex, something we do almost unthinkingly. Yet, Holy Mother Church on and around this feast as well as Great and Holy Friday, places the cross in the centre of the Church for us to take a moment to reflect properly on this great sign which is at the very heart, the very centre of our Christian Faith. As we shall see through exploring our reading from St Mark’s Gospel, a Christian is one who doesn’t just wear a cross around his neck, or that can make the sign of the cross correctly. No, to be a Christian is to carry the Cross. To be a Christian is to crucify our passions, our selfishness and egoism. Let us now reflect on our Sunday reading, the last of our readings from the Gospel of Matthew with the help of St Theophan the Recluse and then turn to meditate on the place of the Cross.

Our final reading from the series of readings from St Matthew’s Gospel comes from chapter 25 immediately before the Prophesy of the Last Judgment and then the other dread events of Holy Week.

The parable about the talents offers the thought that life is a time for trading.

At first glance, or on first reflection, this seems a strange analogy. How can the Christian life possibly be like trading. The parable’s repeated reference to the necessity of making profit and interest is also very much the opposite of what we would expect. I have even heard of someone who interpreted this passage as endorsement of the idea that we should all have a portfolio of private financial investments. However, again it is important to underline that this is a parable and not to be taken at surface value and in a completely literal way. Thus, as St Theophan says, our Lord used the analogy of trading meaning –

it is necessary to hasten to use this time as a person would hurry to a market to bargain for what he can.

How are we to interpret the different talents that are referred to in the parable? With one person given five talents, another two and another just one? At the literal level, a talent was a unit of money, weighing approximately 80 pounds which was worth about 6,000 denarii. A denarius was the usual payment for a day’s labour. At one denarius per day, a single talent was therefore worth 20 years of labour. But what does this mean spiritually? St Theophan interprets talent as the natural gifts that God has given to each and everyone of us –

No one who has received life from the Lord can say that he does not have a single talent – everyone has something.

It is also important to stress that the talents that our Lord is spiritually referring to in the present parable are not restricted, as it were, to “super-skills” which perhaps only very few of us have. You know the kind of thing: a gift to learn languages, maybe multiple languages, a mathematical genius, an incredible ability to paint or to play the piano or violin etc. I don’t know about you, but on this kind of definition I have absolutely no talents whatsoever – I can’t draw, I am utterly useless at maths, and can only speak one language, I can play chopstiks on the piano and can just about play the recorder and violin badly! Fortunately, this restricted definition of talents is not at all what our Lord had in mind, but rather a much more expansive one. As St Theophan says – everyone has something. All of us have been created in the image of God, and in our very differences from each other, we reflect a diversity of gifts, abilities, aptitudes and characteristics. And the gifts or talents that God has given us don’t need to be superskills or particularly exceptional – 

… you had hands and feet. You will be asked, what did you gain with them? You had a tongue – what did you gain with it.

All of us, I think, have use of hands and feet. How have we used them to serve Christ, to serve our neighbour, to live according to His commandments? Have we used our hands and feet to serve Christ or to serve the Devil? Have our hands been used to help, to comfort, to give or have our hands been used graspingly, selfishly, violently? Have our feet taken us to the homes of the lonely, the elderly, the forsaken, have they taken us to the Church or have they instead taken us to places clubs, to parties to shops anywhere and everywhere but Church. Ans all of us have a tongue – in what way have we used our mouths for God’s glory, to speak a word of kindness, of love, or consolation and encouragement. Or have we misused our tongues to swear, to curse, to blaspheme, to insult, gossip, hurt, deride and ridicule? When we understand that talents are not superskills we can see that each of us is more talented than we may have thought, that each of us have been given more than we realise to serve God. I am reminded of the Lorica or Protecting Prayer of our own local saint, St Fursey of Burgh Castle –

May the guiding hands of God be on my shoulders,
may the presence of the Holy Spirit be on my head,
may the sign of Christ be on my forehead,
may the voice of the Holy Spirit be in my ears,
may the smell of the Holy Spirit be in my nose,
may the sight of the company of heaven be in my eyes,
may the speech of the company of heaven be in my mouth,
may the work of the church of God be in my hands,
may the serving of God and my neighbor be in my feet,
may God make my heart his home,
and may I belong to God, my Father, completely.

Like so many of the Celtic saints, there is this deeply embodied understanding of the Protecting Grace of Christ reflecting off our every limb and faculty.

All of this serves to help us from engaging in another common temptation in the spiritual life, that of seeing that the grass is always greener on the other side, that we could be better if we had this, or that.

Do not look around and calculate what others have received, but take a good look at yourself and determine more precisely what lies within you and what you can gain for what you have, and they act according to this plan without laziness.

Our own weaknesses, our own failures can also become talents, gifts we can use positively to humble ourselves and help other people. What we must do is to discern the different opportunities and life experiences that the Lord has given us and how we can use this positively for God’s glory, and for our salvation. If even our difficulties, wounds and brokenness can become spiritual talents, opportunities for spiritual growth for spiritual trading, then how many more talents does each of us have then?

Thus the Lord in the parable is not angry that the person with one talent was not some kind of opportunistic capitalist. Rather the spiritual meaning is that the Lord will be angry with us if we bury the talent, that is we become self-serving, self-protecting. 

And this is where we come to the Cross, for it is through using our talents, using everything that the Lord has given us for His Gospel, for His glory to serve Him and to serve our neighbour that we find salvation. 

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.

Taking up the cross, carrying the cross means to use our bodies, to use our gifts our talents – whether they be small and simple or big and extraordinary – for God’s glory and for our brother and our sister. It is to turn away from the idolatry of our own egoism. It is to refuse to allow us to waste the talents that have been given to us by God for the building up of His Church and the illumination of His world – on our own greed, pride and self-worship. It is to refuse to bury the talents in the ground of our own egos or our own laziness. Of course, to the world, this seems utter lunacy. But in this we see the true wisdom of God. As St Paul says –

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Dear father, brothers and sisters: let us therefore, when we make the sign of the Cross today, and when we come forward to kiss the Cross at the end of the service, let us not see this as merely an empty ritualistic gesture, which of course it could so easily become for us. Rather, let us commit ourselves to carrying our cross, to using the talents that God has given us not to serve ourselves, but to serve God, His Church and our brother.

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

Amen.