Sunday Worship
Welcome to Leesfield Parish Sunday Worship. Once again we are all worshipping from home for a while, and you'll find the Gospel, reflection, prayers and hymns here on this page.
St Thomas' Church is open for private prayer from 2-3 pm each Sunday, and from 10-11 am each Thursday. From this Tuesday St Agnes' is also open for private prayer from 6-6.30 pm.
Our first hymn this morning is "When Morning Guilds the Skies"
Reflection
In this week’s Gospel reading we again think about the being prepared for Jesus’ second coming and the day of reckoning. Last week we looked at the need to be prepared and to nurture our relationship with God.
In this Gospel, the parable of the Talents addresses how we should use what we have for the benefit of others and what risk should we take.
The word Talent has a dual meaning here. In literal terms a Talent was a form of currency which equated to 6000 dinarii. To put that into context a dinarii was worth about a week’s wage for an average worker, so each Talent was worth about 20 years’ pay. According to the Office of National statistics the average UK salary is £36,611 – so 1 talent would be worth £3/4 million. Therefore, the Master going on his journey was entrusting his slaves with hugely significantly amount of money to look after for when he returned.
The second meaning of the word Talent can be interpreted to mean skill or ability. Hopefully, most of you can remember Stewardship campaigns that Edith promoted during her tenure with us at St. Thomas where the focus was about how each of us in the parish can use our talents for the benefit of others.
There is a direct parallel here with this Gospel message. Each of the servants was given a huge amount to look after, based on their ability. All knew that the Master was certain to return even though they did not know when. The first two servants took the money and whilst we do not know how they did it, both used their ability to make a good return for their master. For this they were justly rewarded.
The third servant however, was lazy and even frightened to risk losing the money so he simply buried it rather than doing what his master expected by using it to prosper his master’s affairs. He couldn’t even be bothered to put the money in the bank to earn interest. To make matters worse he also tried to justify his actions by suggesting his master didn’t deserve because he was greedy and not entitled to a return.
So, what does this mean for us? God has endowed each of us in various ways and whilst we have different blessings - spiritual and physical gifts, people and technical skills, wealth, education and time; it is right to use them as Jesus would expect us to in loving our neighbours.
The first step is to recognise the talents we have and the opportunities to use them; whether it’s ringing someone who’s lonely, helping out in the community and church or something more adventurous. Secondly, it’s about taking some risk - is it acceptable to say ‘I’ve never done that before” or “I might not be able to do that” as an excuse not to help? I’ve seen so many examples this year where people have stepped out of their comfort zone to make things happen – How many of us knew how to have Zoom meetings in January or even what Zoom was? Similarly, we have new people volunteering to do things in the parish and bringing new ideas forward. This is God’s mission in action. What will we have to show for our Talents when Jesus returns?
This morning's prayers -
