'reliable' or 'believing'. Those two meanings are of course not disconnected, for we show that we are believers by. the obedience of our lives. The two qualities hang together. In vain do we pretend that we 'trust', if we are not trustworthy servants.
Jesus, of course, is using a financial metaphor to describe the trustworthiness for which God is looking. What precisely does he mean by this 'mina' which the Master has given to his servants? Some suggest it is a symbol for the Holy Spirit, others that it symbolizes the gospel message. Still others suggest that it stands for any sort of talent, gift, or endowment that an individual might possess and hold in trust for God.
The answer is, I suppose, that it can be all of those things. The mina is what Jesus has left us with in his absence—the resources, the endowments, the charge, the mandate, which he has given us to be getting on with now that he has returned to heaven.
By the same token, the cities which are placed under the servants' jurisdiction as a reward for their faithfulness are also clearly symbolic. Jesus is not suggesting here that heaven will be territorially parcelled out as if he were Henry VIII awarding political patronage to his favourites. The cities in the story stand for the fact that the use we make of our resources and opportunities, here, in this period of time, while we're waiting for his return, can have and will have eternal consequences. It is possible, he's saying, to live here and now in such a way that heaven will be enriched for us.
How can that be? What is the nature of this reward which he pictures in the gift of cities? The Bible does not spell that out very clearly. Jesus elsewhere talks about 'laying up treasure in heaven', but never completely explains just what that celestial treasure is. What he is clear about is that it is possible to live our lives now directed in such a way that what we achieve lasts. It is not all thrown away. The mark of good servants is that they
