1Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. 2For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! 4But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; 5for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. 6So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; 7for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. 11Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
14“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; 15to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. 17In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. 18But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. 19After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. 20Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ 21His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ 22And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ 23His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ 24Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? 27Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. 28So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. 29For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. 30As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
“Good and Trustworthy…Oh, Really?”
Does it seem like our parable for today could be speaking directly to the financial upheavals that have bedeviled all of us these past several months? Unfortunately you and I may have heard this story one time too many and think that we know what it’s all about – and yet that’s right where parables are meant to trip us up. So how are we supposed to hear this one, yet again, today?
The traditional interpretation has long been something like what my colleague, Mark Trotter, delivered from the pulpit of the First United Methodist Church of San Diego, when he said, with absolute conviction:
It’s clear where Jesus comes out. Religion…[is] not to sit on, or bury, or shelve, or can, or preserve, or even to pass [on] to somebody else. Religion is to invest, use, spread, splurge, risk. So said a Texas “philosopher,” Charles Jarvis: “Sitting in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a chicken coop makes you a chicken.”3
I may have even said something like that in the past myself (well, maybe not as colorfully as that Texas philosopher): make use of your gifts before it’s too late! What’s more, God will richly bless you for it! It’s made me feel good because, after all, I haven’t buried my talents in the dirt and hidden fearfully in the shadows. And yet it’s exactly because of this feel-good-about-myself assumption that I’m in immediate trouble with what might just be the more disturbing point of this parable.
You see, part of our problem is that when we’ve heard this parable in the past, we’ve tended to hear it through the ears of comfortable capitalists – which views wealth as something that always can be increased by hard work and shrewd investments. But in the social world of the parable (both in its original oral telling and in its later edited form by Matthew’s community) it was believed that there was just so much wealth that a person could accumulate before it became obscene; and any increase that benefited one person was bound to come at the expense of somebody else – and, in Jesus’ day, almost always that meant that it was placed on the backs of the poor and landless peasants.
So here’s what another theologian has said about this parable:
From this perspective, the man who expects his money to be increased is the [really] wicked one, [the one] who is unfettered in his greed.... The third servant, then, is not wicked (or incompetent), except in the eyes of those who are greedy [about their own acquisitions and]…who are co-opted by them, as are the first two servants. … The parable is [actually] a warning to the rich to stop exploiting the poor and is one that encourages poor people to take measures that expose such greed for the sin that it is.4
Oops. Is there anybody in this parable, then, who truly is “good and trustworthy” with the resources that have been given us?
The owner is a tough, ruthless, and powerful businessman. He doesn’t care how he gets his profit just so long as he gets it. The first two servants are simply following his lead. But the third is fearful of such ruthless exploitation and will not participate in it. Like most, if not all, of those who speak the truth to the face of the powerful, though, he’s totally vulnerable. Vilified. Shamed. Humiliated. Do the other servants care what happens to him at all? It doesn’t seem so. They’re just glad for somebody else to be the scapegoat so that their master’s wrath won’t be unleashed on them.
I’ve got to tell you, I’m really uncomfortable understanding the message of this parable this way. It turns my expectations and earlier interpretations upside down: from a reward in the kingdom of heaven to an exposure of greed, from unfettered self interest to a call for compassionate concern for the interests of others. Jesus may really be saying to us that when we have the courage to expose exploitation for what it truly is, instead of leaning into the feeding-trough for our own selfish reward, we are re-imagining the world – we are re-imagining the realm of God. Hearing the parable this way will always make those who hold the power and the influence angry and defensive, and yet the powerless will find themselves empowered in ways that they never imagined were possible!
It’s important for us to remember that Jesus’ life and ministry was set in the social context of the ancient Roman world. It was a world marked by political oppression, economic exploitation, and armed conflict. What’s more it was religiously legitimized. Does that sound like any world that you know? This explains Jesus’ constant concern for the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast – those that had the most to lose in such systems. All that I, finally, have come to embrace about Jesus, then, is the way in which he approached the world with prophetic compassion. It’s even reported that he announced the beginning of his ministry with words taken from the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.5
He measured the value of a community by whether or not it provided food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, care for the sick, compassion for the imprisoned, and a welcome for the stranger.6 Any single one of these categories easily translates into a political agenda for us. Don’t they? Jesus is saying that these are the things that are really important!
It’s good for us to be reminded by biblical scholars that parables are stories that are meant to turn our views of the world upside down. So what is the world view that this parable wants to reverse in that way? You tell me. I invite you simply to ponder that very important question. Because our world view – you know, the one that says “this is just the way that it is” – can make all the difference as to how we live in the present and claim a future open to all of the people of God.
Is our future to be claimed by preserving things as they are, hoarding what we’ve got, and telling others, “I don’t care how you get yours, just don’t expect me to share with you what I have; and stay out of my way or I’ll walk all over you!” – is that the message that we want to give? Is that the kind of future we dream of? Or is the future that Jesus has imagined one that claims a new interconnectedness of all of life? Isn’t the kind of community that Jesus envisions one that claims the sustainability and sharing of all of our resources – whether that refers to a livable wage or affordable health care, freedom from fear or the right of all persons to marry?7 Are we being called (as we all sang just a few moment ago) “to be hope for the hopeless…to love tenderly…to serve one another,”8 or not?
I don’t know about you, but pondering this parable with such questions in mind has caused me to pause.
* * *
1 It is fascinating; the church has yoked this reading with the parable which follows and asks us to believe that it’s all about the “end of the world” and the “second-coming” of the Christ. But listen carefully to Paul’s final exhortation here. The real task is about encouraging those who may be discouraged and about the establishment of real community – one that cares for the well-being of not just a few, but everybody.
2 It may be that our word “talent” can be traced back to this very parable. It’s come to mean a natural gift, like what might mark an artist or genius in most any field. Originally, though, a “talent” was a unit of money – a whole lot of money! A “talent” was a measurement of weight, equivalent to about sixty or seventy pounds, and it was a way of measuring silver. So the master here has left each servant a lot of silver, a precious legacy, a valuable estate.
Scholars of the Jesus Seminar (the Westar Institute) consider the judgment/reward aspects of this parable (vv. 21c, 23c and 29-30 in particular) to be additions – i.e., not to be the point of view taken by Jesus, but one established later by specific concerns that Matthew’s community had – i.e., identifying the returning master as the so-called “second coming” of Jesus and, in effect, editorializing its message to be about the “final judgment” (This, reported by biblical scholars who are the leading experts in the field, comes from The Parables of Jesus: Red Letter Edition, A Report of the Jesus Seminar, Polebridge Press, Sonoma, CA, 1988, ed. Robert W. Funk, Bernard Brandon Scott and James R. Butts, p. 55).
3 Mark Trotter, What Are You Waiting For? Sermons on the Parables of Jesus (Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 1992), p. 89.
4 Barbara E. Reid, Parables for Preachers: The Gospel of Matthew, Year A, The Liturgical Press. Collegeville, MN, 2001), pp. 207-208.
5 Luke 4: 18-19 (cf. Isaiah 61: 1-2).
6 See Matthew 25: 31-46.
7 In the face of California’s adoption of Proposition 8 in the recent election, some of us here in this church expressed a completely different point of view. We took out an ad in the local paper that said this:
The initiative to pass a constitutional amendment which attempts to ban marriage for gay and lesbian couples in California…known as Proposition 8, is trying to amend the California Constitution to only recognize marriages "between a man and a woman."
We believe, however, that when any two people are in a committed and loving relationship and doing the work of marriage, they not only deserve the cultural respect and social support that society can give them, but that they be given the legal rights and responsibilities that come with that relationship. It is unfair to shut some people out.
…we oppose Proposition 8 and pledge our support for the freedom to marry that should be the right of all people. That equality should be extended to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples within our community who deserve the same fundamental freedoms that all other Californians enjoy.
At the moment, Proposition 8 has prevailed, but – as always – the struggle for equality and “liberty and justice for all” isn’t over.
8 David Haas, “We Are Called,” a song based upon Micah 6: 8 in The Faith We Sing (Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 2000), #2172.