The Second Sunday Before Advent Year A

The Second Sunday Before Advent

Zephaniah 1.7, 12–18
1 Thessalonians 5.1–11
Matthew 25.14–30

This parable gave ‘talent’ a new meaning, so common that we don’t realize how far we have domesticated a warning about more serious matters than developing one’s personal potential and skill. In Jesus’ day a talent was a measure of weight, particularly of (a large sum of) money. Countless moralizing sermons have applied the parable to what we now mean by ‘talents’; the word, and the interpretation, have
stuck.

Nor is it a bad lesson to learn at that level (though the normal reading comes unglued at the climax of the story, where the person with ten talents is given one more). But let us not trivialize Jesus’ teaching. Here we are in the middle of Matthew 25, itself located within the climactic section 23—25, immediately preceding the huge and dark events of the next two chapters. What is at stake is rather more serious than whether Jack and Jill get Bs instead of Cs in their Physics GCSEs...

Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A by N T Wright

Published by SPCK