Seated deep in anonymity within the gloomy recesses of Dunblane Cathedral I heard once more of the parable of the talents, the story of the man I identify with, perhaps more than any other in the gospels, with the possible exception of Nicodemus. I mean the one talent man. Afterwards, at the church door, I did here the minister remark that he had passed over the one talent man’s predicament, and concentrated on the two talent, and the five talent men. Other versions are available: there are five and ten talent men elsewhere, but the message is essentially the same. (That reminds me of a colleague of my father’s, in the police force, who was known for a certain whimsicality in his dealings with criminal evidence. In the witness stand, he described the alleged theft of five four pound notes. The judge corrected him. “You mean four five pound notes.” He replied, “Four five pound notes, five four pound notes. What’s the difference?”)
Anyway, the essential message of this parable, apparently, is that we must use the God-given talents, no matter how modest, that have been bestowed upon us, for the benefit of all. Don’t bury your talent in the ground. I suppose that is a bit like hiding your light under a bushel. Yeez are, after all, the light of the world.
But I feel for the man who hid his talent in the ground. After all, he dug it up again and gave it back, untouched, to his master. He knew his master was a hard man. He certainly got that right. His master called him wicked and lazy, and threw him out into the darkness, to weep and gnash his teeth. But I don’t think the one talent man was either wicked or lazy; he was afraid.
Is the minister’s interpretation of this parable justified? What exactly is a talent? As usual I consulted Chambers.
talent n. An ancient unit of weight and of money – 60 minas or 6000 drachmas, or about 38 kilograms (Aeginetan talent), 25 (Euboic), 26 (Attic), of gold or silver: hence (from the parable, Matt. xxv. 14-30) faculty: any natural or special gift: special aptitude: eminent ability short of genius: persons of special ability: young girls or young men, esp. attractive, handsome, etc (coll.): disposition: (Shak. tallent) perh. wealth, abundance, or perh. golden tresses.
We might add to this that BBC managers sometimes refer to the people at the mic, or in front of the camera, as “the talent”. But it would appear that our modern understanding of talent is based solely on a metaphorical interpretation of a biblical parable. Yet the parable itself is all about money. When the master rebukes the one talent man, he tells him that the least he could have done was to put his one talent in the bank, in order that it might accrue interest. It would appear that the two and five talent men were more adventurous than this. They “cast their bread upon the waters”. They were venture capitalists. Entrepreneurs. There’s something a bit fawning about the way they reported back to their master to say they had doubled his money. They got a pat on the back and were rewarded with considerably more responsibility. I suppose they were entrusted with a superabundance of talents in order to double them again. They must have become very wealthy. Were they alive today, they would be hoping that Mr Hunt in his Autumn Statement on Wednesday abolishes inheritance tax. Meanwhile I worry about the one talent man, cast out into darkness. I see him sitting on the pavement outside the Thistle Centre in Stirling, holding an empty polystyrene cup, shivering. I put a pound into the cup, conscious that Ms Braverman would rebuke me. I’m only encouraging him in his lifestyle choice. Even Mrs Thatcher was more compassionate than that. In her “Sermon on the Mound”, she had a good word for the Good Samaritan who went out of his way to assist a man who had been mugged. But, she pointed out, he was only able to do that because he was a wealth creator. He had cast his bread upon the waters and doubled his talents.
I find most of the parables to be extremely disturbing. I’ve given up trying to interpret them. There’s the one about the banquet which none of the invited guests attend. So the master (could be the same one as in the talents parable) instructs his servants to trawl the street and bring in the lame, the halt and the blind. Perhaps the one talent man, already cast out, was included. But then, it turns out that one of this latest batch of invitees is improperly dressed. So he gets chucked out. Perhaps once more it was that one talent guy. He might have raised his eyes despairingly to heaven and cried, “Not again!” What on earth is all that about? It comes across to me as an anxiety dream. It reminds me of a professional orchestral musician I know who has a recurring dream that she turns up on the night of the concert wearing the wrong attire. She is humiliated and instructed to leave. More outer darkness and teeth gnashing.
Talking of dress codes, after the morning service I dressed soberly in black and turned up in the chapel of Queen Victoria School to perform with the Dunblane Chamber Orchestra. I was not evicted, although sometimes, when my viola sounds like a Black & Decker drill, I feel I ought to be. We played Mozart’s Overture to Idomeneo, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, and then, after the interval, Beethoven 7. The Apotheosis of the Dance, said Wagner. It’s an exhausting play on the viola, constantly fortissimo, even once fff. Sturm und Drang. I’m not sure that Haydn would have approved. And didn’t Benjamin Britten say that, with Beethoven, the rot set in? Maybe Beethoven wrote fff because it was the only way he could hear his own music. The poor man knew more about gnashing of teeth than most of us. I will seize fate by the throat! After Beethoven 7, I was exhausted, and a mass of aches and pains. But we repaired to the Lion & Unicorn, and a pint, a plate of lasagne, and the company of dear friends did much to attenuate my customary post-performance flatness.
jamescalumcampbell 